An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlock, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical…An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlocke, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical…

That Excommunication is not only, nor alway chiefly, to bring the person Excommunicated to obedience (no more than hanging) but to keep the purity and reputation of the Church, and the safety of the members, and to warn others. 3. That the way by which it is to affect the offender, is, 1. By shaming him; 2. By striking his Conscience with the sense of Gods displeasure declared thus by his Ministers. 4. So far as the Sacrament is a means of conveying grace, to deny it, is not to reform but to destroy. But when the person hath made himself uncapable of the benefit of the Sacrament, and apt to receive it abusively to his hurt, then it may possibly humble him to be denied it. 5. If the denial of the Sacrament work not on a mans Conscience morally (as threatenings do) it no way compelleth him to his duty, nor saveth him from sin. 6. De facto many hundred thousands of ignorant wicked members of Episcopal Churches are so far from being constrained to goodness by being without the Sacrament, that they are content to be without it, and loth to be forced to it. 7. The more sin and wickedness any man hath, the less true conscience; and the less conscience, the less doth he regard a due Excommunication. 8. The Bishops themselves are conscious of the insufficiency of their Excommunications alone to compel any to obedience, while they confess that without the Secular power of the sword to back it, they would be but laughed at, and despised by the most. Nor durst they ever try to govern by their Church Keys alone among us without the enforcement of the sword. And at the same time while they Excommunicate them from the Sacrament, ⟨p. 106⟩they have a Law to lay them in Gaol, and utterly ruin them if they will not receive it. How loth are the Bishops to lose this compelling Law. 9. I think few of my acquaintance in England do believe that any great number are brought to holy reformation, no nor to Episcopal obedience, by the fear of being kept from the Sacrament, but that which they fear is the Corporal penalty that followeth; lay by that, and you may try. 10. If you will trust to that spiritual power alone, & valeat quantum valere potest, without corporal force, few that I know of will resist you, (but many thousands will despise you, as the Bishops well foresee) bring as many to obedience by it as you can.

That Excommunication is not only, nor alway chiefly, to bring the person Excommunicated to obedience (no more than hanging) but to keep the purity and reputation of the Church, and the safety of the members, and to warn others. 3. That the way by which it is to affect the offender, is, 1. By shaming him; 2. By striking his Conscience with the sense of Gods displeasure declared thus by his Ministers. 4. So far as the Sacrament is a means of conveying grace, to deny it, is not to reform but to destroy. But when the person hath made himself uncapable of the benefit of the Sacrament, and apt to receive it abusively to his hurt, then it may possibly humble him to be denied it. 5. If the denial of the Sacrament work not on a mans Conscience morally (as threatnings do) it no way compelleth him to his duty, nor saveth him from sin. 6. De facto many hundred thousands of ignorant wicked members of Episcopal Churches are so far from being constrained to goodness by being without the Sacrament, that they are content to be without it, and loth to be forced to it. 7. The more sin and wickedness any man hath, the less true conscience; and the less conscience, the less doth he regard a due Excommunication. 8. The Bishops themselves are conscious of the insufficiency of their Excommunications alone to compel any to obedience, while they confess that without the Secular power of the sword to back it, they would be but laught at, and despised by the most. Nor durst they ever try to govern by their Church Keys alone among us without the enforcement of the sword. And at the same time while they Excommunicate them from the Sacrament,