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Next, I say, that the prince, having assembled a council, may not take so much upon him as imperiously to command what he thinketh good in the disputes and deliberations, and to have everything ordered, disposed, and handled according to his mind. “To debate and define theological controversies, and to teach what is orthodoxal, what heretical, is the office of divines, yet, by a coactive authority, to judge this orthodox faith to be received by all, and heretical pravity to be rejected, is the office of kings, or the supreme magistrates, in every commonwealth,” saith the Bishop of Salisbury.
For this belongeth to common law and equity, that unto extraordinary evils, extraordinary remedies must also be applied.” We acknowledge that it belongeth to princes “to reform things in the church, as often as the ecclesiastical persons shall, either through ignorance, disorder of the affection of covetousness, or ambition, defile the Lord’s sanctuary.” At such extraordinary times, princes, by their coactive temporal power, ought to procure and cause a reformation of abuses, and the avoiding of misorders in the church, though with the discontent of the clergy, for which end and purpose they may not only enjoin and command the profession of that faith, and the practice of that religion which God’s word appointeth, but also prescribe such an order and policy in the circumstances of divine worship as they in their judgment of Christian discretion, observing and following the rules of the word, shall judge and try to be convenient for the present time and case, and all this under the commination of such temporal losses, pains, or punishments as they shall deprehend to be reasonable.
Then will be felt, and too late will be acknowledged, the ruin which follows the disjoining of religion from the state, the separation of morality from policy, and the giving conscience no concern and no coactive or coercive force in the most material of all the social ties, the principle of our obligations to government.
At other times princes have done somewhat more in ecclesiastical matters; but this was only in extraordinary cases, when the clergy were so corrupted, that either through ignorance they were unable, or through malice and perverseness unwilling, to do their duty in deciding of controversies, making of canons, using the keys, and managing of other ecclesiastical matters, in which case princes might and did, by their coactive temporal jurisdiction, avoid disorder, error, and superstition, and cause a reformation of the church.
The miracle of life which will not be expounded but will remain a miracle, introduces a new element. In the growth of the embryo, Sir Everard Home I think noticed that the evolution was not from one central point, but coactive from three or more points. Life has no memory.
A compulsive, coactive, punitive, or corrective power, formally political, is also granted to the political magistrate in matters of religion, in reference to all sorts of persons and things under his jurisdiction.
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