A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

I cannot in Reason be thought to speak otherwise, if we would use true Logic, of the Identity of the head, then I do of the Identity of the body of the Church. This body is not numerically the same; for the men of the first age are long ago gone out of the world, and another generation come, who yet are a body of Christians of the same kind, though not numerically the same; So do I require that since Jesus Christ as man, the head immediate of other believing men, is departed hence to the glory of his father, that the Church should still have an Head of the same kind, as visibly now present, as she had in the beginning; or else say I, she cannot be completely the same body, or a body of the same kind visible as she was. But this she hath not, this she is not, except she have a visible Bishop as she had in the beginning present with her guiding and ruling under God. Christ our Lord is indeed still Man God, but his manhood is now separate; nor is he visibly present as man, which immediately headed his believers under God, on whose influence their nature depended. His Godhead is still the same in all things not only in its self, but in order to his Church also as it was before equally invisible, and in the like manner believed; but the nature delegate under God, and once ruling visibly amongst us by words nnd examples, is now utterly withdrawn. And if a nature of the same kind be not now delegate with a power of exterior Government, as at the first then was, then hath not the Church the same head now, which she had then: qui habet aures andiendi audiat.

I cannot in Reason be thought to speak otherwise, if we would use true Logick, of the Identity of the head, then I do of the Identity of the body of the Church. This body is not numerically the same; for the men of the first age are long ago gone out of the world, and another generation come, who yet are a body of Christians of the same kind, though not numerically the same; So do I require that since Jesus Christ as man, the head immediate of other believing men, is departed hence to the glory of his father, that the Church should still have an Head of the same kind, as visibly now present, as she had in the beginning; or else say I, she cannot be compleatly the same body, or a body of the same kind visible as she was. But this she hath not, this she is not, except she have a visible Bishop as she had in the beginning present with her guiding and ruling under God. Christ our Lord is indeed still Man God, but his manhood is now separate; nor is he visibly present as man, which immediately headed his believers under God, on whose influence their nature depended. His Godhead is still the same in all things not only in its self, but in order to his Church also as it was before equally invisible, and in the like manner believed; but the nature delegate under God, and once ruling visibly amongst us by words nnd examples, is now utterly withdrawn. And if a nature of the same kind be not now delegate with a power of exterior Government, as at the first then was, then hath not the Church the same head now, which she had then: qui habet aures andiendi audiat.