The true nature of a Gospel church and its government

IT was the Roman Empire under one Monarch in its Civil Distributions for Rule and Government, which gave the first rise and occasion unto a pretended visibly Ruling Catholic Church under one Spiritual Monarch, distributed into those that were Patriarchal, Diocesan, Metropolitical, and others of inferior kinds. For retaining the people in their Civil Distributions ⟨p. 258⟩whereinto they were cast according to the Polity and Interest of the Empire, there were Ecclesiastical Officers assigned unto each distribution, answerable unto the Civil Officers which were ordained in the Polity of the Empire. So in answer unto Deputies, Exarchs, Prefects, Governors of Provinces and Cities, there were found out and erected Patriarchs, Metropolitans, Diocesans, in various Allotments of Territories and Powers, requiring unto their complete State one visible Monarchical Head, as the Empire had, which was the Pope. And whereas the Emperors had not only a Civil Rule and Power, but a Military also, exercised under them by Legates, Generals, Tribunes, Centurions, and the like; so there was raised an Ecclesiastical Militia in various Orders of Monks, Friars, and Votaries of all sorts, who under their immediate Generals and Prefects did depend absolutely on the Sovereign Power of the New Ecclesiastical Monarch. So was the visible professing Church moulded and fashioned into an Image of the old Roman Pagan Empire, as it was foretold it should be, Revel. 13, 14, 15. And although this Image was first framed in compliance with it, and for a resemblance of it; yet in process of time it substituted it self entirely in the room of the Empire, taking all its Power unto it self, and doing all its Works.

IT was the Roman Empire under one Monarch in its Civil Distributions for Rule and Government, which gave the first rise and occasion unto a pretended visibly Ruling Catholick Church under one Spiritual Monarch, distributed into those that were Patriarchal, Diocesan, Metropolitical, and others of inferior kinds. For retaining the people in their Civil Distributions ⟨p. 258⟩whereinto they were cast according to the Polity and Interest of the Empire, there were Ecclesiastical Officers assigned unto each distribution, answerable unto the Civil Officers which were ordained in the Polity of the Empire. So in answer unto Deputies, Exarchs, Praefects, Governours of Provinces and Cities, there were found out and erected Patriarchs, Metropolitans, Diocesans, in various Allotments of Territories and Powers, requiring unto their compleat State one visible Monarchical Head, as the Empire had, which was the Pope. And whereas the Emperors had not only a Civil Rule and Power, but a Military also, exercised under them by Legates, Generals, Tribunes, Centurions, and the like; so there was raised an Ecclesiastical Militia in various Orders of Monks, Friars, and Votaries of all sorts, who under their immediate Generals and Praefects did depend absolutely on the Sovereign Power of the New Ecclesiastical Monarch. So was the visible professing Church moulded and fashioned into an Image of the old Roman Pagan Empire, as it was foretold it should be,