The Literary Remains | Page 9

was prelacy, not primitive episcopacy, the thing,
not the name, that the reformers contended against, and, if the Catholic
Church and the national Clerisy were (as both parties unhappily took
for granted) one and the same, contended against with good reason.
Knox's ecclesiastical polity (worthy of Lycurgus), adopted bishops
under a different name, or rather under a translation instead of
corruption of the name [Greek: epáskapoi]. He would have had
superintendents.
Ib. c. v. 2. p. 204.
A law is the deed of the whole body politic, whereof if ye judge
yourselves to be any part, then is the law even your deed also.
This is a fiction of law for the purpose of giving to that, which is
necessarily empirical, the form and consequence of a science, to the
reality of which a code of laws can only approximate by compressing
all liberty and individuality into a despotism. As Justinian to Alfred,
and Constantinople, the Consuls and Senate of Rome to the Lord
Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of London; so is the imperial
Roman code to the common and statute law of England. The advocates
of the discipline would, according to our present notions of civil rights,
have been justified in putting fact against fiction, and might have
challenged Hooker to shew, first, that the constitution of the Church in
Christ was a congruous subject of parliamentary legislation; that the
legislators were 'bona fide' determined by spiritual views, and that the
jealousy and arbitrary principles of the Queen, aided by motives of
worldly state policy,--for example, the desire of conciliating the Roman
Catholic potentates by retaining all she could of the exterior of the
Romish Church, its hierarchy, its ornaments, and its ceremonies,--were
not the substitutes for the Holy Spirit in influencing the majorities in

the two Houses of Parliament. It is my own belief that the Puritans and
the Prelatists divided the truth between them; and, as half-truths are
whole errors, were both equally in the wrong;--the Prelatists in
contending for that as incident to the Church in Christ, that is, the
collective number [Greek: t_on ekkaloumén_on] or 'ecclesia', which
only belonged, but which rightfully did belong, to the National Church
as a component estate of the realm, the 'enclesia';--the Puritans in
requiring of the 'enclesia' what was only requisite or possible for the
'ecclesia'.[5] Archbishop Grindal is an illustrious exception. He saw the
whole truth, and that the functions of the enclesiastic and those of the
ecclesiastic were not the less distinct, because both were capable of
being exercised by the same person; and vice versa, not the less
compatible in the same subject because distinct in themselves. The
Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench is a Fellow of the Royal
Society.
Ib. c. vi. 3. p. 209.
God was not ignorant, that the priests and judges, whose sentence in
matters of controversy he ordained should stand, both might and
oftentimes would be deceived in their judgment. However, better it was
in the eye of His understanding, that sometime an erroneous sentence
definitive should prevail, till the same authority perceiving such
oversight, might afterwards correct or reverse it, than that strifes should
have respite to grow, and not come speedily to some end.
It is difficult to say, which most shines through this whole passage, the
spirit of wisdom or the spirit of meekness. The fatal error of the
Romish Church did not consist in the inappellability of the Councils, or
that an acquiescence in their decisions and decree was a duty binding
on the conscience of the dissentients,--not I say in contending for a
practical infallibility of Council or Pope; but in laying claim to an
actual and absolute immunity from error, and consequently for the
unrepealability of their decisions by any succeeding Council or Pope.
Hence, even wise decisions--wise under the particular circumstances
and times--degenerated into mischievous follies, by having the
privilege of immortality without any exemption from the dotage of

superannuation. Hence errors became like glaciers, or ice-bergs in the
frozen ocean, unthawed by summer, and growing from the fresh
deposits of each returning winter.
Ib. 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