who shall take the votes, or moderate or guide the disputations of the assembly; who shall be the scribe, and record what is done; who shall send abroad their agreements, and who shall be the church-messenger to carry them. The agents of such circumstantials may be chosen by the magistrate, or by the churches, or pastors, as is most convenient. Though I doubt not but in the beginning the deacons were mere servants to the pastors, to do as much of such circumstantial work as they were able; of which serving at tables, and looking to the poor, and carrying bread and wine to the absent, &c. were but parts; and all went under the name of ministering to the pastors or churches. And therefore they seem to be such an accidental office, appointed by the apostles, on such common reasons, as magistrates or churches might have appointed them, if they had not.

2. If one will call all or many of these, church-officers,' and another will not, it is but a strife about names, which one will use more largely and the other more narrowly or strictly.

3. If magistrates by authority, or the churches by agreement, shall distribute the country for conveniency into parishes (not making all to be church-members that dwell in those precincts, but determining that all persons that are fit in those proximities, and they only, shall be members of that particular church) and then shall denominate the church from this accident of place, it is but what is left to their discretion.

4. And if the said magistrates or churches shall divide a kingdom into provinces, and say, that whereas God commandeth us the use of correspondencies, mutual advice, and synods, for the due help, concord, and communion of churches, and all things must be done in order and to edification; therefore we determine that so many churches shall make up such a synod, and the churches of such a district shall make up another synod, and so shall be specially related to each other for concord as advisers, all this is but the prudent determining of church circumstances or accidents left to man.

5. And if they shall appoint that either a magistrate or one pastor shall be for order's sake the appointer of the times

and places of meeting, or the president of the synod, to regulate and order proceedings, and. keep peace, as is aforesaid, it is but an accident of the sacred work which man may determine of. Therefore a layman may be such a president or regulator.

6. And if they will call this man by the name of a church-governor, who doth but a common part therein, and from thence will call this association or province by the name of a church, which is but a company of churches associated for concord and counsel, the name maketh it not another thing than it is without that name; and the name may be lawful or unlawful as times and probable consequents make it fit or unfit as to use.

7. So much of church matters as is left to the magistrate's government, may be under monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, and under such subordinate officers as the supreme ruler shall appoint.

8. And if the magistrate will make assemblies or councils of pastors, to be his councils, and require them frequently to meet to advise him in the performance of his own trust and work about religion and the church, he may accordingly distribute them into provinces for that use, or order such circumstances as he please.

9. And if a province of churches be called one church, because it is under one magistrate, or a nation of churches called a national church, because it is under one king, or many kingdoms or an empire called one Catholic church, because they are all under one emperor; it must be confessed that this question is but de nomine,' and not 'de re.'

And further, 1. That in sacred things that which is of Divine and primary institution is the 'famosius analogatum,' and not that which is but formed by man. 2. That when such an ambiguous word is used without explication or explicating circumstances, it is to be taken for the famosius analogatum.' 3. That in this case the word church or church-form is certainly ambiguous and not unequivocal. 4. That a national, imperial, or provincial church as headed by a king, emperor, magistrate, or any head of man's appointment, is another thing, from a church of Christ's institution; and is but an accident or adjunct of it: and the

head of the human form, if called the head of the church of Christ, is but an accidental head, and not constitutive. And if Christ's churches be denominated from such a head, they are denominated but from an accident, as a man may be denominated clothed or unclothed, clothed gorgeously or sordidly, a neighbour to this man or that, &c. It is no formal denomination of a church in the first acceptation, as it signifieth the famosius analogatum;' though otherwise many kind of societies may be called 'ecclesia' or 'cœtus;' but divines should not love confusion.

10. It seemeth to me that the first distribution of churches in the Roman empire, into patriarchal, primates, metropolitical, provincial, diocesan, were only the determination of such adjuncts or extrinsic things, partly by the emperors, and partly by the church's consent upon the emperor's permission; and so that these new church governments were partly magistratical, or by power derived from the emperors, and partly mere agreements or contracts by degrees degenerating into governments; and so the new forms and names are all but accidental, of adjuncts of the true Christian churches. And though I cannot prove it unlawful to make such adjunctive or extrinsic constitutions, forms, and names, considering the matter simply itself, yet by accident these accidents have proved such to the true churches, as the accident of sickness is to the body, and have been the causes of the divisions, wars, rebellions, ruins, and confusions of the Christian world. 1. As they have served the covetousness and ambition of carnal men. 2. And have enabled them to oppress simplicity and sincerity. 3. And because princes have not exercised their own power themselves, nor committed it to lay-officers, but to churchmen. 4. Whereby the extrinsic government hath so degenerated, and obscured the intrinsic and been confounded with it, that both going under the equivocal name of ecclesiastical government, few churches have had the happiness to see them practically distinct'. Nay, few divines do clearly in their controversy distinguish them: (though Marsilius Patavinus

Which tempteth the Erastians to deny and pull down both together, because they find one in the pastor's hands which belongeth to the magistrate, and we do not teach them to untwist and separate them.

and some few more have formerly given them very fair light, yet hath it been but slenderly improved).

11. There seemeth to me no readier and directer way, to reduce the churches to holy concord, and true reformation, than for the princes and magistrates who are the extrinsic rulers, to re-assume their own, and to distinguish openly and practically between the properly priestly or pastoral intrinsic office, and their extrinsic part, and to strip the pastors of all that is not intrinsically their own (it being enough for them, and things so heterogeneous not well consisting in one person): and then when the people know what is claimed as from the magistrate only, it will take off most of their scruples as to subjection and consent.

12. No mortal man may abrogate or take down the pastoral office, and the intrinsic, real power thereof, and the church-form which is constituted thereby; seeing God hath instituted them for perpetuity on earth.

13. But whether one church shall have one pastor or many is not at all of the form of a particular church; but it is of the integrity or gradual perfection of such churches as need many, to have many, and to others not so: but it is to be varied as natural necessity and cause requireth.

14. The nature of the intrinsic office or power (anon to be described) is most necessary to be understood as distinct from the power of magistrates, by them that would truly understand this. The number of governors in a civil state make that which is called a variety of forms of commonwealths, monarchy, aristocracy or democracy: because commanding power is the thing which is there most notably exercised, and primarily magnified. And a wiser and better man, yea, a thousand must stand by as subjects, for want of authority or true power; which can be but in one supreme, either natural or political person; because it cannot consist in the exercise with self-contradiction. If one be for war, and another for peace, &c., there is no rule. Therefore the many, must be one collective or political person, and must consent or go by the major vote or they cannot govern. But that which is called government in priests or ministers, is of another nature; it is but a secondary subservient branch of their office: the first parts are teaching and guiding the people, as their priests, to God in public worship:

and they govern them by teaching, and in order to further teaching and worshipping God; and that not by might, but by reason and love. Of which more anon. Therefore if a sacred congregation be taught and conducted in public worship, and so governed as conduceth hereunto, whether by one, two, or many, it no more altereth the form of the church, than it doth the form of a school, when a small one hath one schoolmaster, and a great one four: or of a hospital, when a small one hath one physician, and a great one many; seeing that teaching in the one, and healing in the other is the main denominating work, to which government is but subservient in the most notable acts of it.

15. No mortal man may take on him to make another church, or another office for the church, as a divine thing, on the same grounds, and of the same nature pretendedly as Christ hath made those already made. The case of adding new church officers or forms of churches, is the same with that of making new worship ordinances for God, and accordingly to be determined (which I have largely opened in its place). Accidents may be added. Substantials of like pretended nature may not be added; because it is an usurping of Christ's power, without derivation by any proved commission; and an accusing of him, as having done his own work imperfectly.

16. Indeed no man can here make a new church officer of this intrinsic sort, without making him new work, which is to make new doctrine, or new worship (which are forbidden): for to do God's work already made belongs to the office already instituted. If every king will make his own officers, or authorize the greater to make the less, none must presume to make Christ officers and churches without his commission.

17. No man must make any office, church or ordinance, which is corruptive or destructive, or contrary or injurious to the offices, churches and ordinances which Christ himself hath made. This Bellarmin confesseth, and therefore I suppose Protestants will not deny it. Those human officers which usurp the work of Christ's own officers, and take it out of their hands, do malignantly fight against Christ's institutions and while they pretend that it is but preserving and not corrupting or opposing additions which they make,