4. Canons made by princes or inferior magistrates, are no laws purely and formally ecclesiastical, which are essentially acts of pastoral power; but only materially ecclesiastical, and formally magistratical.
5. No church officers as such, (much less the people,) can make laws with a co-active or coercive sanction; that is, to be enforced by their authority with the sword or any corporal penalty, mulct, or force; this being the sole privilege of secular powers, civil, or economical, or scholastic.
6. There is no obligation ariseth to the subject for particular obedience of any law, which is evidently against the laws of God (in nature or holy Scripture).
7. They are no laws which pastors make to people out of their power: as the popes, &c.
8. There is no power on earth under Christ, that hath authority to make universal laws; to bind the whole church on all the earth; or all mankind. Because there is no universal sovereign, civil or spiritual, personal or collective.
9. Therefore it is no schism, but loyalty to Christ, to renounce or separate from such a society of usurpation; nor any disobedience or rebellion, to deny them obedience.
10. Pastors may and must be obeyed in things lawful as magistrates, if the king make them magistrates: though I think it unmeet for them to accept a magistracy with the sword, except in case of some rare necessity.
11. If pope, patriarchs, or pastors shall usurp any of the king's authority, loyalty to Christ and him, and the love of the church and state, oblige us to take part with Christ and the king against such usurpation, but only by lawful means, in the compass of our proper place and calling.
12. The canons made by the councils of many churches, have a double nature: as they are made for the people and the subjects of the pastors, they are a sort of laws; that is, they oblige by the derived authority of the pastors; because the pastors of several churches do not lose any of their power by their assembling, but exercise it with the greater advantage of concord. But as they are made only to oblige the present or absent pastors who separatedly are of equal office power, so they are no laws, except in an equivocal sense, but only agreements or contracts.[268] So Bishop Usher professed his judgment to be; and before him the council of Carthage in Cyprian's time; but it needs no proof, any more than that a convention of kings may make no laws to bind the kings of England, but contracts only.
13. But yet we are aliunde obliged even by God, to keep these agreements in things lawful, for the church's peace and concord, when greater contrary reasons, a fine, do not disoblige us. For when God saith, You shall keep peace and concord, and keep lawful covenants, the canons afford us the minor, But these are lawful contracts or agreements, and means of the church's peace and concord; therefore (saith God's law) you shall observe them. So though the contracts (as of husband and wife, buyer and seller, &c.) be not laws, yet that is a law of God which bindeth us to keep them.