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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.
II. Since the God of heaven is the greatest king, who is to rule and reign over you by his Word, which he hath published to the world, and, tunc vere, &c., then is God truly said to reign in us when no worldly thing is harboured and haunted in our souls, saith Theophylact, since also the wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God, Rom. viii. 7, who hath made foolish the wisdom of this world, 1 Cor. i. 20, therefore never shall you rightly deprehend the truth of God, nor submit yourselves to be guided by the same, unless, laying aside all the high soaring fancies and presumptuous conceits of natural and worldly wisdom, you come in an unfeigned humility and babe-like simplicity to be edified by the word of righteousness.
He is tricked out in all the accoutrements of learning, and at the first encounter none passes better. He is oftener in his study than at his book, and you cannot pleasure him better than to deprehend him: yet he hears you not till the third knock, and then comes out very angry as interrupted. You find him in his slippers and a pen in his ear, in which formality he was asleep.
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