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Thus a zealous botcher in Moorfields, while he was contriving some quirpocut of Church-Government, by the help of his outlying ears and the Otacousticon of the spirit, discovered such a plot, that Selden intends to combat antiquity, and maintain it was a tailor's goose that preserved the capital.
He did in his last Will, give an account of his faith and persuasion in point of religion, and Church-government, in these very words: "I, Robert Sanderson, Doctor of Divinity, an unworthy Minister of Jesus Christ, and, by the providence of God, Bishop of Lincoln, being by the long continuance of an habitual distemper brought to a great bodily weakness and faintness of spirits, but by the great mercy of God without any bodily pain otherwise, or decay of understanding, do make this my Will and Testament, written all with my own hand, revoking all former Wills by me heretofore made, if any such shall be found.
She hath also blasphemed the Holy Ghost, in that she hath set up her own church-government, offices, officers and discipline: None of all which is the church of Christ directed to by the wisdom of the Spirit of God in his testament.
Their principle, so far as it was intelligible, asserted that paramount species of presbyterian church-government which was established in the year 1648, and they continued to regard the established church as erastian and time-serving, because they prudently remained silent upon certain abstract and delicate topics, where there might be some collision between the absolute liberty asserted by the church and the civil government of the state.
But let's be serious, and pass by all these kind of waggeries; if we consider the husband as Captain, and the Wife as Lieutenant, is it not in the highest degree necessary, that she should have also a part of the masculine knowledge and authority? Besides, women must be silent in Politick and Church-government, why should not they have somthing to say in those places where they are houswives?
Their very argument was that truth and piety would prosper best in a system of Church-government which trusted all to the vigilance of the members of every particular congregation over each other, their reasonings among themselves, their practice of mutual admonition, and, in last resort, their power of excommunicating the unworthy.
"In their tenets, in their church-government, in the nature of their endowments, the Dissenters are infinitely more distant from the Church of England than the Catholics are." But he grounded a claim to promotion on the fact that he had "always avoided speculative, and preached practical, religion."
So he went to England, not only prepared to welcome the episcopal form of church-government and to graciously receive the episcopal adulation so freely showered upon him, but also determined to suppress, at all hazards, "the proud Puritanes, who, claining to their Paritie, and crying, 'We are all but vile wormes', yet will judge and give Law to their king, but will be judged nor controlled by none". "God's sillie vassal" was Melville's summing-up of the royal character in James's own presence.
The work expected by Parliament from the Assembly consisted of the compilation of a Confession of Faith, or Articles of Religion, which should supersede the Thirty-nine Articles, and be the Creed of the new National Church of England about to be established; the composition of a Catechism or Catechisms, which should be a manual or manuals for the instruction of the people, and especially the young, in the theology of the Articles; the devising of a Frame of Discipline or Church-government, to come in lieu of Episcopacy, and form the constitution of the new National Church; and the preparation of a Directory of Worship, which should supplant the Liturgy, &c., and settle the methods and forms to be adopted in worship, and on such occasions as baptisms, marriages, and funerals.
Some weeks ago I complained to you of Major-general Crawford, because he would trouble these men, and would have no soldiers of Parliament in my Lord Manchester's army that did not agree with his own notions of Religion and Church-government. Now I complain of my Lord Manchester himself. In this last Battle of Newbury, I tell you, the King was beaten less than he might have been.
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