Of national churches their description, institution, use, preservation, danger, maladies and cure, partly applied…

1. Those called Erastians, carry it too far, and give the Magistrate part of the Office of the Pastors, even the Keys of Admission into the Church as a Church, and of Excommunication; which God hath put into the hand of the Pastors, by as immediate a Commission, as he hath put the Sword into the hand of the Magistrate. And by this over-doing they undo: They would ruin the Prince on pretence of defending his Power: For all Authority hath also Obligation to duty: And must Princes and Magistrates be put on the task of trying the Faith and Repentance of all that are to be Baptized, Confirmed, Absolved or Excommunicated? Then they must leave their own Calling, for they will here find work enough. This is like the Separatists making the People Judges, by which they would undo them, calling them from their Callings, to take on them a work of which they are uncapable, and about which they will never long agree, and making them responsible to God for all their Male-administration: As if the King must not only be Governor of Physicians, but must be a Physician himself, and give Medicines, and be answerable for the Patients lives: Or must be a Schoolmaster because he governeth Schoolmasters: And this puts them on a necessity of casting out true Discipline, and holding the Opinion that Sacramental Communication should be common to the Godly, and the openly Wicked, as being a Converting Ordinance; and that Excommunication is but Tyranny. Just as those Diocesans that will have no Bishops but one over a thousand or many score or hundred Parishes, by pleading for their sole Episcopal Power, take on them the sole Obligation to Episcopal duty, and so make themselves responsible for that work which requireth many hundred men, and under themselves while they undo the Churches, and leave all true Discipline undone, and mock (not God, but) men and themselves with names and ceremonious shadows.

1. Those called Erastians, carry it too far, and give the Magistrate part of the Office of the Pastors, even the Keys of Admission into the Church as a Church, and of Excommunication; which God hath put into the hand of the Pastors, by as immediate a Commission, as he hath put the Sword into the hand of the Magistrate. And by this over-doing they undo: They would ruine the Prince on pretence of defending his Power: For all Authority hath also Obligation to duty: And must Princes and Magistrates be put on the task of trying the Faith and Repentance of all that are to be Baptized, Confirmed, Absolved or Excommunicated? Then they must leave their own Calling, for they will here find work enough. This is like the Separatists making the People Judges, by which they would undo them, calling them from their Callings, to take on them a work of which they are uncapable, and about which they will never long agree, and making them responsible to God for all their Male-administration: As if the King must not only be Governour of Physicions, but must be a Physicion himself, and give Medicines, and be answerable for the Patients lives: Or must be a Schoolmaster because he governeth Schoolmasters: And this puts them on a necessity of casting out true Discipline, and holding the Opinion that Sacramental Communication should be common to the Godly, and the openly Wicked, as being a Converting Ordinance; and that Excommunication is but Tyranny. Just as those Diocesans that will have no Bishops but one over a thousand or many score or hundred Parishes, by pleading for their sole Episcopal Power, take on them the sole Obligation to Episcopal duty, and so make themselves responsible for that work which requireth many hundred men, and under themselves while they undo the Churches, and leave all true Discipline undone, and mock (not God, but) men and themselves with names and ceremonious shadows.