4. Not as if all the external parts or actions of religion were exempted from the pastor's power. For preaching, praying, reading, sacraments, church assemblies, are external parts of religion, and under the pastor's care.
But in two respects the external power is only the king's or civil magistrate's. 1. As it is denominated from the sword, or mulcts, or corporal penalties, which is the external means of execution; though in this respect the distinction were far more intelligibly expressed by, The government by the sword, and by the sacred word.[315]
2. But the principal sense of their distinction is the same with Constantine's, who distinguished of a bishop without and within; or of our common distinction of intrinsic and extrinsic government. And though internal and external have the same signification, use maketh intrinsic and extrinsic more intelligible. And by internal is meant that power which intrinsically belongeth to the pastor's office as instituted by Christ; and so is intrinsical to the pastorship and the church (as preaching, praying, sacraments, the keys of admission and exclusion, ordination, &c.). And by external is meant, that which is extrinsical to the pastorship and the church; which princes have sometimes granted them, but Christ hath made no part of their office. In this sense the assertion is good, and clear, and necessary; that the disposal of all things circa sacra, all accidents and circumstances whatsoever, which by Christ's institution are not intrinsical to the pastorship and church, but extrinsical, do belong to the power of kings and magistrates.
[315] As Bishop Bilson of Obed. useth still to distinguish them; with many others. See B. Carlton of Jurisdiction.
Quest. LXII. Is the trial, judgment, or consent of the laity necessary to the admittance of a member into the universal or particular church?
Answ. 1. It is the pastor's office to bear and exercise the keys of Christ's church; therefore by office he is to receive those that come in; and consequently to be the trier and judge of their fitness.
2. It belongeth to the same office which is to baptize, to judge who is to be baptized; otherwise ministers should not be rational judges of their own actions, but the executioners of other men's judgment. It is more the judging who is to be baptized, which the minister's office consisteth in, than in the bare doing of the outward act of baptizing.
3. He that must be the ordinary judge in church admissions, is supposed to have both ability and leisure to make him fit; and authority and obligation to do the work.
4. The ordinary body of the laity have none of all these four qualifications, much less all. 1. They are not ordinarily able, so to examine a man's faith and resolution with judgment and skill, as may neither tend to the wrong of himself nor of the church; for it is great skill that is required thereunto. 2. They have not ordinarily leisure from their proper callings and labours, to wait on such a work as it must be waited on, especially in populous places. 3. They are not therefore obliged to do that which they cannot be supposed to have ability or leisure for. 4. And where they have not the other three, they can have no authority to do it.
5. It is therefore as great a crime for the laity to usurp the pastor's office in this matter, as in preaching, baptizing, or other parts of it.