The English nonconformity as under King Charles II and King James II truly stated…

L. If the Excommunicate be no further punished, nor forced to repent, the Church censures will be despised: How little will men care for an Excommunication?

M. This is commonly said, and much of it is true: But, 1. Can you force men to Repent, or rather Lye? You make him Repent that he brought himself into your hands and into suffering: But that is not to Repent of Sin. Will you tell a man before hand, If thou wilt but say thou repentest rather than lye in Gaol till death, we will pronounce thee absolved and forgiven in Christ's Name? Who can think ill enough of such an Absolution? 2. Do not they scorn Christ that say he hath advanced his Church to the Dignity of Government, by putting into their hands a Reed for a Sceptre, and a Leaden Sword that will do nothing without the Magistrate's Sword of Steel? Hath he set up an useless mock-power in the Church? 3. Did the Primitive-Churches for 300 years use any Sword but Spiritual? Or did they find it so uneffectual and vain? 4. Yea for some hundred years after there were Christian Magistrates, did not the Church abhor such a thing as forcing the Excommunicate to repent by imprisonment or the Sword? 5. No man is meet to be a just Member that careth not for a just Excommunication? And still this showeth what a wickedness it is to force in the unmeet, that despise God's Ordinance and the Church that they are in: And then God's Ordinance must be debauched for their unfitness. 6. The Sword doth the Keys much more hindrance than help, when it is thus annexed to them; for then it cannot be discerned whether Excommunication do any Good or none; or whether it be only the Sword that doth the cure: And do not they that profess Excommunication to be vain without the Sword, teach men to call them as Church Governors Vain, and to despise them? And is it not all one, as to say, if any good be done by Church-Government, it is by the Magistrate's Sword, and not by ours by the Keys? 7. And is it not then ridiculous contradiction to dispute so hard about Church-Power, and against the Presbyters claim, when you confess that it is an useless shadow that you dispute ⟨p. 257⟩for, and it's not it, but the Sword that doth the deed. 8. Is it not an odious defacing of Princes and Magistrates, to say, That they are bound to Imprison and Ruin a man as a mere Lictor or Executioner of the Judgment of the Clergy, or of a Chancellor, without ever hearing or trying his Cause; and to punish him again because they punished him before, or because he hath not got their pardon? 9.