8. The largeness of these Councils should be suited to the occasion and necessity: As the Scandals, Heresies, Schisms or Contentions do require. But to make proper Universal Councils to be the ordinary Supreme Governing Lawgivers to a Body Politic called the Universal Church is a device of those who would do Christs work in their own mistaking way, and for the preserving of the Churches Unity, will desperately divide, corrupt and injure it. There is no necessity of it, Christs Universal Laws being sufficient, with the Civil Government of Princes, and the Circumstantial Determinations of the particular Churches: And it is pernicious, if not impossible: The many thousand Miles distance of the Churches, the paucity of the Pastors, and necessity of their presence in many Churches; the many years that must be spent in Travel; the opposition of Heathen and Infidel Princes whose Subjects they are, or through whose Countries they must Travel; the Wars and Jealousies of Princes; the probability of the death of the ablest Pastors in such a Voyage; they being usually aged Men and weak; their diversity of Tongues, and unintelligibleness to one another; their long continuance in such Councils; their incapacity to meet and hear together in any one Room; the probability that the numerousness of the nearest Bishops, and paucity of the remote, will make a Faction go for the Council; the improbability that ever they will return to bring home the Decrees; the unsatisfiedness of the Churches in their Decrees, when a thousand, or an hundred Pastors who choose one single Delegate, know not whether he will speak their sense or not; with many such Reasons, make it as pernicious as unnecessary. Nor have the Christian Churches ever had such Councils (the meetings of the Twelve Apostles being nothing to this purpose:) But as all Men know that the Roman Emperors had no power to Summon the Pastors who were the Subjects of other Princes; so the recorded Suffrages of all the Councils certify us, that they were none such; but the Subjects only of the Roman Empire, (or those that had been such) with a very inconsiderable number of some adjacent Bishops, and that but very seldom: So that those Councils were Universal only as to the Empire of Rome (and that but very rarely, if ever) but never as to the Christian World.
8. The largeness of these Councils should be suited to the occasion and necessity: As the Scandals, Heresies, Schisms or Contentions do require. But to make proper Universal Councils to be the ordinary Supreme Governing Lawgivers to a Body Politick called the Universal Church is a device of those who would do Christs work in their own mistaking way, and for the preserving of the Churches Unity, will desperately divide, corrupt and injure it. There is no necessity of it, Christs Universal Laws being sufficient, with the Civil Government of Princes, and the Circumstantial Determinations of the particular Churches: And it is pernicious, if not impossible: The many thousand Miles distance of the Churches, the paucity of the Pastors, and necessity of their presence in many Churches; the many years that must be spent in Travel; the opposition of Heathen and Infidel Princes whose Subjects they are, or through whose Countreys they must Travel; the Wars and Jealousies of Princes; the probability of the death of the ablest Pastors in such a Voyage; they being usually aged Men and weak; their diversity of Tongues, and unintelligibleness to one another; their long continuance in such Councils; their incapacity to meet and hear together in any one Room; the probability that the numerousness of the nearest Bishops, and paucity of the remote, will make a Faction go for the Council; the improbability that ever they will return to bring home the Decrees; the unsatisfiedness of the Churches in their Decrees, when a thousand, or an hundred Pastors who chuse one single Delegate, know not whether he will speak their sense or not; with many such Reasons, make it as pernicious as unnecessary. Nor have the Christian Churches ever had such Councils (the meetings of the Twelve Apostles being nothing to this purpose:) But as all Men know that the Roman Emperors had no power to Summon the Pastors who were the Subjects of other Princes; so the recorded Suffrages of all the Councils certifie us, that they were none such; but the Subjects only of the Roman Empire, (or those that had been such) with a very inconsiderable number of some adjacent Bishops, and that but very seldom: So that those Councils were Universal only as to the Empire of Rome (and that but very rarely, if ever) but never as to the Christian World.
