Part II. The Pastor and the Prelate Compared by Antiquity, and the Proceedings of the Ancient Kirk
PART II. THE PASTOR AND PRELATE COMPARED BY ANTIQUITY, AND THE PROCEEDING OF THE ANCIENT KIRK.
Antiquity, and the primitive kirk, the fathers of two sorts—The maintainers of conformity forget themselves about antiquity three ways.—The pastor is not older than the New Testament, the prelate would fetch his prelacy from the Old Testament.—The pastor, and not the prelate, warranted by Christ.—The pastor, and not the prelate, warranted by the apostles—The pastor keepeth his place and authority in the primitive kirk, when the prelate beginneth to work, and to be constant moderator, or perpetual president—The pastor seeketh no honour but by his doctrine and life; the prelate forsaketh this way, and taketh him to the world.—The pastor witnesseth for the truth, in the time of defection, which is wrought by the prelate, perverting all after he is once entered.—The pastor complained of that which he could not mend, and the prelate persecuted them that complained—The pastor desired, and urged a reformation, which, by all means, the prelate refused.—Objection, The Christian kirk, fbr three hundred years, had such bishops as we have now.—Answer, Showing, in many particulars, the difference between the primitive bishops and our prelates, who are like unto the Roman bishops, in the most corrupt times.
We reverence the hoary head and name of antiquity, but, withal, we know that there is antiquity of truth and antiquity of error, and therefore would make difference betwixt original antiquity, or that which was from the beginning, and of the first institution and antiquity of custom, or that which is of long continuance. They that take themselves wilfully to custom, against the first institution, resolve, not unlike the Council of Constaiice, when they set down their blasphemous act, Non obstante.{1} We do not disregard the practice of the primitive kirk after the apostles, especially it being compared with the ages following, but would have it, in comparison of the apostolic kirk, to be esteemed but derivative, as which admitted many changes, from better to worse, both in doctrine and discipline. We honour the fathers, but so that we give the first honour to the Father of fathers, besides whom we have no father—to his Son Jesus Christ, the only prophet, whom we should hear—to the Holy Ghost, who only teacheth us the truth, and to the Holy Scripture, which only carrieth their divine authority. Wishing all that are studious of the truth, in the point of the controversy in hand, to take notice of these two things: First, that the maintainers of conformity many ways forget themselves in the matter of the authority of the fathers, for albeit they daub us with the fathers, the ancients, and all antiquity, yet they themselves will not hear the voice of the fathers in their disputes, whether against papists, whom they answer with the same exceptions against the fathers which we bring in this cause against them, or in their disputes with us, when the fathers make against them;{2} and, thus, while they profess that they honour the fathers, they do but mock them, sometimes putting upon them the purple robe of authority, and at their pleasure pulling it off again. Next, they forget themselves in this, that albeit they bow that the witness and not the testimony, is to be believed, they allege, notwithstanding, some counterfeit, some corrupted authors, and some late schoolmen,{3} for the ancient fathers, against us. Becanus, Calvin, Beza, Martyr, Juell &c., bring them against the papists, who deny not their authority. And, thirdly, they disregard the order of divine dispensation in the course of time, not without ingratitude to God for his gifts, and to good men for their labours, by profaning the meanest, that carrieth the name of antiquity,{4} unto the worthiest instruments of that blessed work of Reformation, who had, above all that went before them, many great helps of the languages of human literature and of printing, and to whom many secrets were made known by the accomplishment of prophecies, espe. daily concerning the antichrist, who, being conceived in the apostles’ times, was brought forth and brought up unwittingly by the fathers, who looked for the antichrist from another quarter, which maketh them to be incompetent judges in the matter of hierarchy and ceremonies thereof. The Romanists themselves, who profess to be the greatest ibvourers of the ancient fathers, are forced to blush at many of their gross and shameful absurdities, and to confess, that many things that were of old either doubtful or altogether unknown, are now to the meanest become dear and certain. Some of them have exploded it as an impertinent similitude, that we, being compared to the ancients, are as dwarfs upon the shoulders of giants. The other thing that we would have the studious reader to take notice of is this, that of the prelates and maintainers of conformity seeking the fountain of antiquity, and uncertain where to find it, some go back to the Old Testament, to bring the prelate’s pedigree from thence; some would bring his descent from Christ; some from the apostles; and a fourth sort from the primitive kirk. But before they get a sight of their own prelate in his pomp, in his power, and in his busk of ceremonies, they must go farther down the stream, till they come in sight of the antichrist, and there they shall see him not far off, waiting on, as may be apparent by this which followeth:—
1. The PASTOR acknowledgeth the difference of the kirk and ministry of the Old and New Testaments; seeketh neither type nor pattern of his office from the Levitical priesthood, but bringeth his oldest warrant from Christ and his apostles, and exponeth the ancients, as Jerome and others, who insist on the similitide of the ministers of the Old and New Testaments,{5} as speaking by the way of allusion, and not from any warrant of divine translation. The PRELATE, searching the fountains of Nuns, would bring his descent as high as from Levi, as if the chief priests, who had no episcopal authority over their brethren, were turned now into prelates; the inferior priests into pastors; and the Levites, who had no proper care of the poor, were changed into our deacons. He bringeth the ancients to reckon this genealogy, but with such success as the sons of Habaiah had, when they failed in reckoning their line from Aaron, and so proved unworthy of the priesthood, Nehemiah 7:63-64.
2. The PASTOR hath an ordinary and perpetual office appointed by Christ, but the office of the apostle end evangelist was extraordinary, and to continue but for a time. So that howsoever antiquity useth the words of apostle and bishop amply, calling the apostles bishops, and bishops or pastors apostles, and suecenon to the apostles, yet neither is the one kind of office compatible with the other, nor can the one properly be said to succeed the other, so different are they, as well in respect of charge as of gifts and discharge of duty;{6} for the superior doth not only do that which the inferior may not do, but his manner of doing of that which is common to both, is far higher and more eminent. The PRELATE, repelled by the office-bearers of the Old Testament, seeketh to enter with his directive power and jurisdiction among the ministers of the gospel, but with like success. For a pastor and doo tor, his power over pastors and doctors suffereth them not to be. He urgeth to be taken in with the apostle or evangelist, and to be esteemed successor to them,{7} but his office and theirs is not compatible; for formerly their office was extraordinary and without succession, and materially his office is not contained in their offices, as is the office of a pastor; there being no example in Scripture, without the office of apostle or evangelist, of such power as the prelate claimeth. Whether his life and form of ministration be apostolical, all that know him may discern.
3. The PASTOR, and not the prelate, is the first minister (by the prelate’s own confession) whom the apostles appointed in kirks when they first planted them. The pastor, and not the prelate, is the minister whom the apostles in their time did approve; and the pastor, and not the prelate, is the last minister to whom the apostles, when they were to remove, or were near unto death, did recommend the care of the kirks; and therefore the pastor, and not the prelate, is the minister warranted by the apostles. The PRELATE, denied of Christ, would father himself upon the apostles, and finding no warrant from their doctrine or practice in Scripture, albeit the Acts of the apostles contain the history of many years after Christ’s ascension, he seemeth to be sure of the ecciesiastioal history recorded in the apostles’ times,{8} and by apostolic institution, a begun succession of bishops in Jerusalem, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, &c. But he also be standeth without, because the bishops of those places were either apostles, and therefore could not be properly bishops, or else ordinary pastors, of no greater place nor power, except for age and gift, than other presbyters labouring with them. Such were Linus, Clemens, Cletus, Anacletus,—fellow presbyters at Rome at one time,—one of them living some space after another; and, to show the order of succession from the apostles against heretics who urged it, they were numbered as if they had not lived at one time; and in the line of succession were called bishops by Eusebius, and others after him, agreeable to the corruption of their own times,{9} when now men had, of their own head, put a difference betwixt a bisbop and a pastor, and not according to the purity of the primitive times, of which they did write, when a pastor and a bishop was one and the same.
4. The PASTOR is the divine and apostolic bishop, of the lawfulness of whose calling and power in the primitive kirk, after the apostles, there was no question. The pastor by consent of antiquity, (when now, by human wisdom, the constant moderator was brought in and called the bishop) had right and power, not by grant, but by his office, not only to preach the word, minister the sacraments, and use the keys in binding and loosing the conscience, but also, with the fellow presbyters, to ordain ministers,{10} and in the presbyterial, provincial, and national assemblies, to decide controversies, to make constitutions, to inflict censures, even upon bishops, and, by his pastoral authority, to do all things necessary for the edification of the kirk; and this right and power, that God gave him, he maintained in some kirks in the most corrupt times, when now antichrist was set in his chair, and prelacy, for the most part, of human was become satanical. The PRELATE, holden at the door by Christ and his apostles, after their times, by the ambition of some pastors and simplicity of others,{11} when he had long hung on, got in the foot to be constant moderator; but not finding entry at the first for his great head, made up of sole ordination, of monarchial jurisdiction, of civil power, worldly pomp and superstitious ceremonies, he hideth his mitre in the mystery of iniquity, going on with it foot for foot, and draweth in, by fraud and force, one limb after another, till at last, after many ages and much working (for he attained not to the degree of an archbishop till after the Council of Nice) he showeth himself lord in the house of God, having no more of the first institution of a bishop, than the ship Argo had of her first building, when, after her expedition, she had lain at a full sea some hundreds of years, or the beggar’s cloak, patched with many clouts and colours, that hath passed through some generations, which he, it maybe, makes more of than of a parliament robe of the first shaping.
5. The PASTOR, as became the humble servant of Christ and a minister of the New Testament, procured and maintained the dignity and true honor of his ministry, by holding forth the glorious light of the gospel in his doctrine, and the shining light of holiness in his conversation; esteeming the preaching of the glad tidings of peace to be the beauty of ministers, and righteousness their robe and ornament The PRELATE took him to the contrary course for his credit, and transformed the beautiful simplicity of Christ’s kingdom into the glory of the kingdom of the world. Albeit when he was of his old stamp his greatest dignity was his chair, and faithful teaching the flower of his garland, yet now, degenerating from his flrst sincerity, and being infected with secular smoke, he came to the east in the mould of the first beast. His chair gave place to his consistory and throne. His jurisdiction and government, honoured with the title of pre-eminence, carried all the credit. Teaching, as a base work, was given over to the petty presbyters, and every office in the kirk was counted a dignity worthy of honour, less or more, as it had more or less jurisdiction annexed; as those are more or less honourable in the commonwealth, that have more or less civil authority; and thus prelacy came up, and preaching came down, and the kirk became more worldly than the world itself.
6. The PASTOR, when all was going wrong, some raising contentions, others gaping after honours, the brains of many being big with heresies, all given to heap up superstition and atheism; end the prelate, with his popish hierarchy, possessing both the holy city and outward court, he then gave testimony to the truth, kept still the temple, and, withih the temple, kept in the light, as two olive trees growing up by the sides of the candlestick, and dropping down from the branches oil into the lamps, for the comfort of such as Jehovah-Shammah had chosen for life, and would save from the deluge of defection. The PRELATE, once possessed into the kirk, never ceased till he had changed the kirk into a court; power ecclesiastical into civil policy; the Scripture into tradition; the truth into heresy; sincerity into superstition; the worship of God into idolatry—as the worship of images, saints and bread-worship; the pure ordinances of God into masses, altars, images, garments, fasting, and follies of Paganism and Judaism, like a smoke out of the bottomless pit, growing grosser and thicker every day; and, in the midst of the mist, built up his greatness upon the ruins not only of the kirks, but of the commonwealths of the world; for when the stars of heaven fell into the earth, the mountains and islands were moved out of their places; and as this unhappy wilt swelled big in the body with wealth and honour, the life of religion became faint, the princes and nobles of the earth, like the noble parts in the body, decayed, and the meaner ones, like the hands and feet, withered away. The Pope’s felicity was the whole world’s misery, and so was the prelate’s to several nations and provinces.
7. The PASTOR, and with him the godly of the time, wearied with long opposition, poured out their heavy complaints, that the grief of the kirk was more bitter in peace than either under persecution or heresy:{12} that she had brought up and exalted her sons, and they had despised her. If a professed here. tic should arise, she could cast him forth of her bosom; if a violent enemy, she could hide herself from him; but now, whom could the kirk cast out, or from whom shall she hide herself? All are friends, and yet all are enemies; all are domestics, and yet none seek her true peace, for all seek their own things, and not the things of Jesus Christ. They are the ministers of Christ, and serve the antichrist. He complaineth that devotion had brought forth riches, and the mother had devoured her daughter:{13} that of old the bishops were of gold, and the cups of wood, but now the bishops have changed their metal with the cups:{14} that of old, Christians had dark kirks but lightsome hearts; but now, lightsome kirks and dark hearts:{15} that the prelates Inquired what rent the bishopric rendered, and not how many souls were to be fed in it: that their bodies were clad with purple and silk, but they had threadbare conscierwes: that their care was greater to empty men’s purses than to extirpate their vices: that when they consecrate a prelate, they kill a good man by advancing him: that no greater evil could be wished to any man, than that he be made Pope: that in the estate of the kirk, heaven is below and earth is above; the spirit obeyeth, and the flesh commandeth: that in the mouths of the prelates was the law of v!tnity, and not the law of verity; aud that the lips of the priests under them, kept secular, and not spiritual knowledge; and when he searched the causes of the kirk’s misery, he condescended upon the neglecting of Scriptures and multiplication of men’s inventions; the ignorance and idleness of prelates, like dumb dogs that could not bark,—their covetousness above the Pharisees’. They suffered doves to be sold in the temple, but these sell both kirk affd sacrifice. Their pride and ambition declared in their great horses, and other superfluous pump, and that, as sons of Belial, they have cast off the yoke, not enduring that any shoultask them, why they do so and so: the unequal proportion seen in the kirk, when one is hungry and another dtunk; some so enormously overgone in riches and pomp, that the weakness of the rest is not able to bear them. The PRELATE, still mad of avarice and ambition, stood upon the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth that they should not blow, and opposed himself against the doctrine and complaint of the pastors,—condenining them for heretics, giving out against them decrees of corrupt councils, thundering them with anathematisms, and persecuting them by fire and sword. He punished the clergy under him more severely for the neglect of a ceremony than for sacrilege or adultery; and finally, lest his fraud and falsehood should be known, he forbade all men the reading and using of the holy Scriptures.
8. The PASTOR, and all good men that longed and laboured for the Reformation of the Christian kirk, for the space of five hundred years, as the Waldenses, Marsilius Patavinus, Wickliffe and his scholars, Husse and his followers, and all such as the Lord used for instruments in working the Reformation, as Luther, Calvin, Brentius, Bullingerus, Musculus, &c., did teach that all pastors are of equal authority by the word of God, and all that space of time urged this point of reformation, as without which no success could be expected in the reformation of the doctrine and worship.{16} The PRELATE knowing (as it was often preached and written all that time of five hundred years) that the main cause of the corruptions of the kirk was his own place, his pride, and his avarice, and that the desired and urged reformation of the kirk, which was now brought to that pass, that as one says well, she could neither bear her own disease nor yet sudden remedy, behoved to begin at himself, the greatest bile in all the body, by all means held off reformation as his own ruin; and when several nations were bringing it about, he could never be moved to give his consent, so dear was his mitre and belly unto him. The Prelate’s objection—The PRELATE will confess, that it were better to have no bishops than such monsters as the Roman kirk brought forth, but prideth himself in antiquity, and affirrneth that the Christian kirk in all places, for the space of three hundred years after Christ and his apostles, bad bishops in every thing like himself, and that afterwards the shepherds became wolves. The Pastor’s answer.—That which Tertullian in his time said unto the Gentiles, may be replied to our prelates,— "Ye boast of antiquity, but your daily life is after the new fashion.” Mr. Phantastico at Athena, whensoever he perceived any ships entering into the harbour, strongly apprehended that they were his own, and used to seize upon them, as if they had been his own indeed. So deal our prelates with the ancient bishops, they come no sooner in their sight, but they take them for their own, albeit they be very unlike unto them, for were they living, they would blush and be ashamed that such should be called their successors; as Angelo, the famous Italian painter, portrayed Peter and Paul, for the use of a cardinal at Rome, with red and high-coloured faces, showing thereby that if they were living, they would blush at the pomp and pride of the prelates of that time. Our prelates are rather of the late Roman cut, and not so like unto the primitive as unto the popish bishop’s who, comparing themselves with others before, and ours now come .afteitheth, might say with the poet:{17} Our parent’s age, worse than their predecessors, Math brought us forth more wicked, their successors;
Ere it be long, if we continue thus, We will brihg forth a brood more vicious.
1st, For the primitive bishops (after that the name of bishop, common to all pastors, began to be inape propriate) were neither ordained by bishops nor metropolitans, but only chosen by pastors, to be their constant moderators, or perpetual presidents, but without warrant from God or his truth.{18} Our prelate must first, by a simulate form of election, be made my lord elect, and then receive a new consecration, with a new guise of ceremonies drawn from the Roman pontifical, as little known to pure antiquity as the words themselves of ordination, consecration, &c.
2d, The primitive bishops, looking more to the beauty than dignity, suffered violence, and were constrained, by pastors and people, whether they would or not, to receive the charge. Our prelate, when the bishop is an old man, then he standeth diligently and learneth fast, but only how to make credit at court, and when after long expectation the place is void, by posting, promising, and propining, he procureth himself to be chosen, first without the knowledge, and then against the will both of pastors and people.
3d, The primitive bishops knew not such a creature as was designed afterwards by the proud name of an archbishop, who should be a bishop of bishops, having power over comprovincial bishops, his suffragans. Our prelate prideth himself in this proud title, and will have one and the same creature to be metropolitan archbishop and primate, that what he may not do as metropolitan, he may do as archbishop, and what he may not as archbishop, he may as primate, and as another pope.
4th, The primitive bishop was in the presbytery, like the consul in the senate,—as first among the prosbyters, he moderated in their meetings, reported matters previously done, and asked the voters what they concluded: he saw it executed upon others, and was subject to it himself. Our prelate, in the presbytery, will be like a king in his council, and thinketh his authority no less without the presbytery than with it; and what the synod may do with the archbishop, that he may do without the synod.
5th, The primitive bishops dwelt so near together, that six of them convened in a cause that concerned an elder, and three for a deacon. In a synod they convened in great numbers. Privatus was condemned by ninety bishops. Against Novatus were convened eighty-four bishops. In some synods two hundred and seventeen; in some two hundred and seventy. Our prelate spreadeth his wings over several hundreds of kirks, lying in divers provinces, wide as Merse, Lothian, Fife, Angus, Mearns, &c.
As, therefore, our prelate was shown before not to be the Lord’s bishop, authorized by Scripture, so is he not man’s bishop, made up - in the primitive times of the kirk, but the same that we had before the Reformation, the same with the Italian, Spanish, or French prelate under the Pope, and the same with the anti-christian prelates in the most corrupt times of the kirk, especially the last five hundred years; excepting his subordination to the Pope, by which exception our princely prelate is made greater than the popish; and what was written of the popish prelate in those times, is now again reverified of ours, as of their civil offices and advocations:
Vintoniensis armiger, Præsidet ad scacarium;
Ad computandum impiger, Piger ad evangelium Sic lucrum Lucam superat, Marcam marco præponderat Et libræ librum subjicit.
Some bishops metropolitan Preside at the Exchequer; For counting he’s a busy man, To preach the gospel slacker.
Lucre worth is more than Luke, And merks tban Mark weigh better;
He sets the pound above the book, And cares not for the matter. Of their zeal in urging ceremonies upon others, while they failed in substance themselves, the old poem called Asini Prenitentiarius, wherein the wolf confesseth himself to the fox; and the fox to the wolf, and both are absolved; but the poor ass, trusting to his innocence for absolution, was condemned to die by the other two, for no other cause but that, in his extreme hunger, he had been so profane as to eat the straw garters of a religious pilgrim.
Immensum scelus est injuria, quam perigrino Fecisti: stramen surripiendo sibi.
Non advertisti, quod plura pericula passus, Plurima passurus, quod peregrinus erat?
Non advertisti, quod el per maxima terræ
Et pelagi spatia sit peragranda via?
Totius ecciesiæ fuerit cum nuncius iste, Pertulit abstracto stramine damna viæ.
Cum sis confessus, cum sis couvictus, habes no Quo tales noxas occuluisse qucas?
Es fur, ignoto cum feceris hoc peregrino:
Scis bene, fur quali debet honore mori.
How great a sin were this to thee A pilgrim poor to wrong;
Hadst thou not mind what dangers he Had travelled far among?
Couldst thou not think that he, dull ass, B’hov’d pass through sea and land; That nunce of holy kirk he was, Running at their command.
Thou hast confess’d, convinced thou art, Nothing thy crime can hide;
Thief, thou didst eat his straw garters, Death shall thee now betide.