9. And if a province of churches be called one church, because it is under one magistrate, or a nation of churches called a national church, because it is under one king, or many kingdoms or an empire called one catholic church, because they are all under one emperor; it must be confessed that this question is but de nomine, and not de re.
And further, 1. That in sacred things that which is of divine and primary institution is the famosius analogatum, and not that which is but formed by man. 2. That when such an ambiguous word is used without explication or explicating circumstances, it is to be taken for the famosius analogatum. 3. That in this case the word church or church form is certainly ambiguous and not univocal. 4. That a national, imperial, or provincial church as headed by a king, emperor, magistrate, or any head of man's appointment, is another thing from a church of Christ's institution; and is but an accident or adjunct of it: and the head of the human form, if called the head of the church of Christ, is but an accidental head, and not constitutive. And if Christ's churches be denominated from such a head, they are denominated but from an accident, as a man may be denominated clothed or unclothed, clothed gorgeously or sordidly, a neighbour to this man or that, &c. It is no formal denomination of a church in the first acception, as it signifieth the famosius analogatum; though otherwise many kind of societies may be called ecclesiæ or cœtus: but divines should not love confusion.
10. It seemeth to me that the first distribution of churches in the Roman empire, into patriarchal, primates, metropolitical, provincial, diocesan, were only the determination of such adjuncts or extrinsic things, partly by the emperors, and partly by the church's consent upon the emperor's permission; and so that these new church governments were partly magistratical, or by power derived from the emperors, and partly mere agreements or contracts by degrees degenerating into governments; and so the new forms and names are all but accidental, of adjuncts of the true christian churches. And though I cannot prove it unlawful to make such adjunctive or extrinsic constitutions, forms, and names, considering the matter simply itself, yet by accident these accidents have proved such to the true churches, as the accident of sickness is to the body, and have been the causes of the divisions, wars, rebellions, ruins, and confusions of the christian world. 1. As they have served the covetousness and ambition of carnal men. 2. And have enabled them to oppress simplicity and sincerity. 3. And because princes have not exercised their own power themselves, nor committed it to lay officers, but to churchmen. 4. Whereby the extrinsic government hath so degenerated, and obscured the intrinsic, and been confounded with it, that both going under the equivocal name of ecclesiastical government, few churches have had the happiness to see them practically distinct.[309] Nay, few divines do clearly in their controversy distinguish them. (Though Marsilius Patavinus and some few more have formerly given them very fair light, yet hath it been but slenderly improved.)
11. There seemeth to me no readier and directer way, to reduce the churches to holy concord, and true reformation, than for the princes and magistrates who are the extrinsic rulers, to re-assume their own, and to distinguish openly and practically between the properly priestly or pastoral intrinsic office, and their extrinsic part, and to strip the pastors of all that is not intrinsically their own (it being enough for them, and things so heterogeneous not well consisting in one person): and then when the people know what is claimed as from the magistrate only, it will take off most of their scruples as to subjection and consent.
12. No mortal man may abrogate or take down the pastoral office, and the intrinsic, real power thereof, and the church form which is constituted thereby; seeing God hath instituted them for perpetuity on earth.
13. But whether one church shall have one pastor or many is not at all of the form of a particular church; but it is of the integrity or gradual perfection of such churches as need many, to have many, and to others not so: not that it is left merely to the will of man, but it is to be varied as natural necessity and cause requireth.
14. The nature of the intrinsic office or power (anon to be described) is most necessary to be understood as distinct from the power of magistrates, by them that would truly understand this. The number of governors in a civil state make that which is called a variety of forms of commonwealths, monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy: because commanding power is the thing which is there most notably exercised, and primarily magnified. And a wiser and better man, yea, a thousand, must stand by as subjects, for want of authority or true power; which can be but in one supreme, either natural or political person; because it cannot consist in the exercise with self-contradiction. If one be for war, and another for peace, &c. there is no rule. Therefore the many must be one collective or political person, and must consent or go by the major vote, or they cannot govern. But that which is called government in priests or ministers, is of another nature; it is but a secondary subservient branch of their office: the first parts are teaching and guiding the people, as their priests, to God in public worship: and they govern them by teaching, and in order to further teaching and worshipping God; and that not by might, but by reason and love. Of which more anon. Therefore if a sacred congregation be taught and conducted in public worship, and so governed as conduceth hereunto, whether by one, two, or many, it no more altereth the form of the church, than it doth the form of a school, when a small one hath one schoolmaster, and a great one four: or of an hospital, when a small one hath one physician, and a great one many; seeing that teaching in the one, and healing in the other, is the main denominating work, to which government is but subservient in the most notable acts of it.
15. No mortal man may take on him to make another church, or another office for the church, as a divine thing, on the same grounds, and of the same nature pretendedly as Christ hath made those already made. The case of adding new church officers or forms of churches, is the same with that of making new worship ordinances for God, and accordingly to be determined (which I have largely opened in its place). Accidents may be added. Substantials of like pretended nature may not be added; because it is a usurping of Christ's power, without derivation by any proved commission; and an accusing of him, as having done his own work imperfectly.
16. Indeed no man can here make a new church officer of this intrinsic sort, without making him new work, which is to make new doctrine, or new worship (which are forbidden): for to do God's work already made belongs to the office already instituted. If every king will make his own officers, or authorize the greater to make the less, none must presume to make Christ officers and churches without his commission.
17. No man must make any office, church, or ordinance, which is corruptive or destructive, or contrary or injurious to the offices, churches, and ordinances which Christ himself hath made. This Bellarmin confesseth, and therefore I suppose protestants will not deny it. Those human officers which usurp the work of Christ's own officers, and take it out of their hands, do malignantly fight against Christ's institutions: and while they pretend that it is but preserving and not corrupting or opposing additions which they make, and yet with these words in their mouths, do either give Christ's officers' work to others, or hinder and oppress his officers themselves, and by their new church forms undermine or openly destroy the old, by this expression of their enmity they confute themselves.