Catholic communion defended against both extremes, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…Catholick communion defended against both extreams, and unnecessary division confuted in five parts ...…

2. Reader, pardon me, that in the beginning I commended him, as being for Diocesan Independency in Power. These words make me again uncertain what he's for. Plain English would distinguish dependence of Subjects on Rulers in a Polity, and dependence of Equals by Concord in a Community: These are plain words. He after saith, that Diocesans have no proper Governors Ecclesiastic over them, or to that sense: But here he saith, they are not independent in Power and Government: Yet the man saith so little in any determinate sense, that I know not whether by [dependence in Government], he mean [a political dependence on superior Governors], or [a political Union of many persons to make one superior governing power (like a Senate), or a mere voluntary concord of many Governors that are Equals, like that of many School-Masters or Princes, whose Concord maketh them not One Polity, but One Community. The former sense some words of his do favour; but elsewhere he so much denieth them, that I hope it is but the last that he meaneth.

2. Reader, pardon me, that in the beginning I commended him, as being for Diocesan Independency in Power. These words make me again uncertain what he's for. Plain English would distinguish dependance of Subjects on Rulers in a Polity, and dependance of Equals by Concord in a Community: These are plain words. He after saith, that Diocesans have no proper Governors Ecclesiastick over them, or to that sence: But here he saith, they are not independent in Power and Government: Yet the man saith so little in any determinate sence, that I know not whether by [dependance in Government], he mean [a political dependance on superior Governors], or [a political Union of many persons to make one superior governing power (like a Senate), or a meer voluntary concord of many Governors that are Equals, like that of many School-Masters or Princes, whose Concord maketh them not One Polity, but One Community. The former sence some words of his do favour; but elsewhere he so much denieth them, that I hope it is but the last that he meaneth.

3. But if this be his sense, What independent (whom he so much damneth) doth not acknowledge a dependence in Community, on all true Christians (and in Polity on Christ)? Doth not every Christian confess, that all true Churches and Christians depend on the Whole, as Parts, and on each other, as Fellow-Members, obliged to live on the same Christ, in the same Love and Communion in Essentials, and in as many Integrals of Religion as they can reach to? I never met with the Christian that denied this: Therefore what to make of this man's words, I know not.