Peace. This heavenly invitation makes me bold once more to crave thy patient ear and holy tongue. Error’s impatient and soon tired, but thou art light, and like the Father of lights, unwearied in thy shinings. Lo here! what once again I present to thy impartial censure.
A MODEL OF CHURCH AND CIVIL POWER;
COMPOSED BY
MR. COTTON AND THE MINISTERS OF NEW ENGLAND,
AND SENT TO THE CHURCH AT SALEM, AS A FURTHER CONFIRMATION OF THE BLOODY DOCTRINE OF PERSECUTION FOR CAUSE OF CONSCIENCE,
EXAMINED AND ANSWERED.
CHAP. LXXXII.
Truth. What hast thou there?
A strange model of a church and commonweal, after the Mosaical and Jewish pattern.
Peace. Here is a combination of thine own children against thy very life and mine: here is a model, framed by many able, learned, and godly hands, of such a church and commonweal as wakens Moses from his unknown grave, and denies Jesus yet to have seen the earth.
Truth. Begin, sweet Peace, read and propound. My hand shall not be tired with holding the balances of the sanctuary: do thou put in, and I shall weigh as in the presence of Him whose pure eyes cannot behold iniquity.
Matt. xvi. 19, with John xx. 23, Rom. xiii. 1, Matt. x. 18, Tit. iii. 1, Acts xv. 20, Isa. xlix. 23, Gal. iii. 28.
Peace. Thus, then, speaks the preface or entrance: “Seeing God hath given a distinct power to church and commonweal, the one spiritual (called the power of the keys), the other civil (called the power of the sword), and hath made the members of both societies subject to both authorities, so that every soul in the church is subject to the higher powers in the commonweal, and every member of the commonweal, being a member of the church, is subject to the laws of Christ’s kingdom, and in him to the censures of the church:—the question is, how the civil state and the church may dispense their several governments without infringement and impeachment of the power and honour of the one or of the other, and what bounds and limits the Lord hath set between both the administrations.”