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the magistrate to use force; you, with the atheists, as you call them, who do so, give the people up in every country to the coactive force of the magistrate to be employed for the assisting the ministers of his religion : and king Louis of good right comes in with his dragoons; for it is not much doubted that he as strongly believed his popish priests and Jesuits to be the ministry which our Lord appointed, as either king Charles or king James the Second believed that of the church of England to be so. And of what use such an exercise of the coactive power of all magistrates is to the people, or to the true religion, you are concerned to show. But it is, you know, but to tell me I only trifle, and this is all answered.

What in other places you tell us is to make men "hear, consider, study, embrace, and bring men to the true religion," you here do very well to tell us is to assist the ministry: and to that, it is true, "common experience discovers the magistrate's coactive force to be useful and necessary, viz. to those who taking the reward, but not over-busying themselves in the care of souls, find it for their ease, that the magistrate's coactive power should supply their want of pastoral care, and be made use of to bring those into an outward conformity to the national church, whom either for want of ability they cannot, or want of due and friendly application, joined with an exemplary life, they never so much as endeavoured to prevail on heartily to embrace it. That there may be such neglects in the best constituted national church in the world, the complaints of a very knowing bishop of our church, [Dr. Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury] in a late discourse of the pastoral care, is too plain an evidence.

Without so great an authority I should scarce have ventured, though it lay just in my way, to have taken notice of what is so visible, that it is in every one's mouth; for fear you should have told me again, “I made myself an occasion to show my good-will toward the clergy;" for you will not, I suppose, suspect that eminent prelate to have any ill-will to them.

If this were not so, that some were negligent, I imagine the preachers of the true religion, which lies, as you tell us, so obvious and exposed, as to be easily distinguished from the false, would need or desire no other assistance from the magistrate's coactive power but what should be directed against the irregularity of men's lives; their lusts being that alone, as you tell us, that makes force necessary to assist the true reli gion; which, were it not for our depraved nature, would by its light and reasonableness have the advantage against all false religions.

You tell us too, that the magistrate may impose creeds and ceremonies; indeed, you say sound creeds, and decent ceremonies, but that helps not your cause; for who must be judge of that sound, and that decent? If the imposer, then those words signify nothing at all, but that the magistrate may impose those creeds and ceremonies which he thinks sound and decent, which is in effect such as he thinks fit. Indeed, you telling us a little above, in the same page, that it is "a vice not to worship God in ways prescribed by those to whom God has left the ordering of such matters;" you seem to make other judges of what is sound and decent, and the magistrate but the executor of their decrees, with the assistance of his coactive power. A pretty foundation to establish creeds and ceremonies on, that God has left the ordering of them to those who cannot order them! But still the same difficulty returns; for, after they have prescribed, must the magistrate judge them to be sound and decent, or must he impose them, though he judge them not sound or decent? If he must judge them so himself, we are but where we were: if he must impose them when prescribed, though he judge them not sound nor decent, it is a pretty sort of drudg ery is put on the magistrate. And how far is this short of implicit faith? But if he must not judge what is sound and decent, he must judge at least who are those to whom God has left the ordering of such matters; and then the king of France is ready again with his dragoons for the sound doctrine and decent ceremonies of his prescribers in the council of Trent; and that upon

this ground, with as good right as any other has for the prescriptions of any others. Do not mistake me again, sir; I do not say, he judges as right; but I do say, that whilst he judges the council of Trent, or the clergy of Rome, to be those to whom God has left the ordering of those matters, he has as much right to follow their decrees, as any other to follow the judgment of any other set of mortal men whom he believes to be so.

But whoever is to be judge of what is sound or decent in the case, I ask,

Of what use and necessity is it to impose creeds and ceremonies? For that use and necessity is all the commission you can find the magistrate hath to use his coactive power to impose them.

1. Of what use and necessity is it among Christians, that own the Scripture to be the word of God and rule of faith, to make and impose a creed? What commission for this hath the magistrate from the law of nature? God hath given a revelation that contains in it all things necessary to salvation, and of this his people are all persuaded. What necessity now is there? How does their good require it, that the magistrate should single out, as he thinks fit, any number of those truths as more necessary to salvation than the rest, if God himself has not done it?

2. But next, are these creeds in the words of the Scripture, or not? If they are, they are certainly sound, as containing nothing but truth in them: and so they were before, as they lay in the Scripture. But thus though they contain nothing but sound truths, yet they may be imperfect, and so unsound rules of faith, since they may require more or less than God requires to be believed as necessary to salvation. For what greater necessity, I pray, is there that a man should believe that Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, than that he was born at Bethlehem of Judah? Both are certainly true, and no Christian doubts of either: but how comes one to be made an article of faith, and imposed by the magistrate as necessary to salvation, (for otherwise there can be no necessity of imposition) and the other not?

Do not mistake me here, as if I would lay by that summary of the Christian religion which is contained in that which is called the Apostles' Creed; which though nobody, who examines the matter, will have reason to conclude of the apostles' compiling, yet is certainly of reverend antiquity, and ought still to be preserved in the church. I mention it not to argue against it, but against your imposition; and to show that even that creed, though of that antiquity, though it contain in it all the credenda necessary to salvation, cannot yet upon your principles be imposed by the coercive power of the magistrate, who, even by the commission you have found out for him, can use his force for nothing but what is absolutely necessary to salvation.

But if the creed to be imposed be not in the words of divine revelation; then it is in plainer, more clear and intelligible expressions, or not: If no plainer, what necessity of changing those which men inspired by the Holy Ghost made use of? If you say, they are plainer; then they explain and determine the sense of some obscure and dubious places of Scripture; which explication not being of divine revelation, though sound to one man, may be unsound to another, and cannot be imposed as truths necessary to salvation. Besides that, this destroys what you tell us of the obviousness of all truths necessary to salvation.

And as to rites and ceremonies, are there any necessary to salvation, which Christ has not instituted? If not, how can the magistrate impose them? What commission has he, from the care he ought to have for the salvation of men's souls, to use his coactive force for the establishment of any new ones which our Lord and Saviour, with due reverence be it spoken, had forgotten? He instituted two rites in his church; can any one add any new one to them? Christ commanded simply to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; but the signing the cross, how came that necessary?" Human authority, which is necessary to assist the truth against the corruption of nature," has made it so. But it is a "decent" ceremony. I ask,

is it so decent that the administration of baptism, simply, as our Saviour instituted, would be indecent without it? If not, then there is no reason to impose it for decency's sake; for there can be no reason to alter or add any thing to the institution of Christ, or introduce any ceremony or circumstance into religion for decency, where the action would be decent without it. The command to do all things decently, and in order," gave no authority to add to Christ's institution any new ceremony; it only prescribed the manner how, what was necessary to be done in the congregation, should be there done, viz. after such a manner, that if it were omitted, there would appear some indecency, whereof the congregation or collective body was to be judge, for to them that rule was given: And if that rule go beyond what I have said, and gives power to men to introduce into religious worship whatever they shall think decent, and impose the use of it; I do not see how the greatest part of the infinite ceremonies of the church of Rome could be complained of, or refused, if introduced into another church, and there imposed by the magistrate. But if such a power were given to the magistrate, that whatever he thought a decent ceremony he might de novo impose, he would need some express commission from God in Scripture, since the commission you say he has from the law of nature, will never give him a power to institute new ceremonies in the Christian religion, which, be they decent or what they will, can never be necessary to salvation.

The Gospel was to be preached in their assemblies; the rule then was, that the habit, gesture, voice, language, &c. of the preacher, for these were necessary circumstances of the action, should have nothing ridiculous or indecent in it. The praises of God were to be sung; it must be then in such postures and tunes as became the solemnity of that action. And so a convert was to be baptized; Christ instituted the essential part of that action, which was washing with water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: in which care was also to be had, that in the doing this nothing

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