6. p. 212.
An argument necessary and demonstrative is such, as being proposed unto any man, and understood, the mind cannot choose but inwardly assent. Any one such reason dischargeth, I grant, the conscience, and setteth it at full liberty.
I would not concede even so much as this. It may well chance that even an argument demonstrative, if understood, may be adducible against some one sentence of a whole liturgy; and yet the means of removing it without a palpable overbalance of evil may not exist for a time; and either there is no command against schism, or we are bound in such small matters to offer the sacrifice of willing silence to the public peace of the Church. This would not, however, prevent a minister from pointing out the defect in his character as a doctor or learned theologian.
Ib.
c. viii. 1. p. 2-20.
For adventuring to erect the discipline of Christ without the leave of the Christian magistrate, haply ye may condemn us as fools, in that we hazard thereby our estates and persons further than you which are that way more wise think necessary: but of any offence or sin therein committed against God, with what conscience can you accuse us, when your own positions are, that the things we observe should every of them be dearer unto us than ten thousand lives; that they are the peremptory commandments of God; that no mortal man can dispense with them, and that the magistrate grievously sinneth in not constraining thereunto?
Hoc argumentum ad invidiam nimis sycophanticum est quam ut mihi placeat a tanto viro
. Besides, it contradicts Hooker's own very judicious rule, that to discuss and represent is the office of the learned, as individuals, because the truth may be entire in any one mind; but to do belongs to the supreme power as the will of the whole body politic, and in effective action individuals are mere fractions without any legitimate referee to add them together. Hooker's objection from the nobility and gentry of the realm is unanswerable and within half a century afterwards proved insurmountable. Imagine a sun containing within its proper atmosphere a multitude of transparent satellites, lost in the glory, or all joining to form the visible
phasis
or disk; and then beyond the precincts of this sun a number of opake bodies at various distances, and having a common center of their own round which they revolve, and each more or less according to the lesser or greater distance partaking of the light and natural warmth of the sun, which I have been supposing; but not sharing in its peculiar influences, or in the solar life sustainable only by the vital air of the solar atmosphere. The opake bodies constitute the national churches, the sun the churches spiritual.