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First, To protect and defend it against harms and injuries.

Secondly, To cultivate its manners with good precepts and counsels.

Thirdly, To correct and chasten its faults and irregularities.

Fourthly, To supply it with decent raiment and convenient sustenance: answerable to which, sovereign powers being constituted by our Saviour the foster fathers of his church, are, by virtue of this relation, obliged,

I. To protect and defend it in the profession and exercise of the true religion.

II. To fence and cultivate its peace and good order, either by wholesome laws of their own, or by permitting and requiring it to make good laws for itself, and, if need be, enforcing them with civil coercions.

III. To chasten and correct the irregular and disorderly members of it.

IV. To make provision for the decency of its worship, and for the convenient maintenance of its officers and ministers; which answers to the decent raiment and convenient sustenance with which the foster father is obliged to supply his foster child.

These particulars I shall but very briefly insist on, it being none of my province to instruct princes and

governors.

I. One of those ministries which princes, by virtue of their subjection to Christ, are obliged to render to his church, is to protect and defend her in the profession and exercise of the true religion, that is, not only to permit her openly to profess the true religion, and to perform the public offices of it without

disturbance or interruption, but also to fence her with legal securities, and guard her with the temporal sword against the power and malice of such as would disturb and persecute her; and therefore sovereign powers are concerned above all things impartially to inquire and studiously to examine what the true religion is; lest being imposed upon by false pretences, they misemploy that power in the patronage of error, which was given them for the protection of the truth.

II. Another of those ministries which princes are obliged, by virtue of their subjection to Christ, to render his church, is to fence and cultivate its peace and good order, either by wholesome laws of their own, or by permitting and requiring it, when occasion requires, to make good laws for itself, and, if need be, by enforcing them with civil coercions: for so, when the church was either broken by schisms, or corrupted by errors and disorderly customs, it was always the practice of Christian kings and emperors, even from the time that they became Christians, to restrain and give a check to those divisions and disorders, either by their own royal and imperial edicts, or by convening the ecclesiastical governors to councils, there to consult and agree upon such good laws and expedients as the present necessities of the church required: and because these laws, being grounded upon more spiritual authority, could as such be enforced by no other penalties than spiritual, which by bold and obstinate offenders were frequently despised and disregarded, therefore those holy kings and emperors thought themselves obliged, as they were the ministers of Jesus, to strengthen and reinforce them with temporal sanctions and pe

nalties, by which means they became the laws of the empire, as well as of the church: of all which I have given sufficient instances; and all this was no more than what they were obliged to by virtue of their subjection to Christ: for being subjected to him, they are his viceroys in the world, and do reign and govern by his authority: and since their authority is his, they must be accountable to him, if they do not employ it for him in ministering to the necessities of his church and kingdom; and therefore, if when it is in their power to check a prevailing schism or corruption in the church by wholesome laws and edicts, they refuse or neglect to do it, they must doubtless answer to him from whom they received their power, and who, being himself the supreme head of the church, hath constituted them its guardians and nursing fathers.

III. Another of those ministries which princes are obliged to render his church, is to chasten and correct the irregular and disorderly members of it; for though there are spiritual rods and corrections which Christ hath solely committed to the spiritual government, and which, if men understood and considered the dire effects and consequences of them, are sufficient to restrain and keep in awe the most obstinate offenders, yet when men are stupified in sin, and do feel nothing but only what pains or pleases their bodies, these spiritual corrections are insignificant to them, they being such as make no impression on their corporeal senses; and so, when men are hardened in schism or heresy, to be sure they will despise the ecclesiastical rods, as being confidently persuaded that they cannot be justly applied to them, and that where they are applied unjustly, they are only so many spi

ritual scarecrows, that can only threaten, but not hurt them; and therefore in these cases the secular powers are obliged, by virtue of their subjection to Jesus, to second the spiritual with the temporal rod, and to awe such offenders with corporeal corrections as are fearless and insensible of the censures of the church. And conformable hereunto hath been the constant practice of all good kings and emperors, even from their first conversion to Christianity, as might easily be demonstrated by innumerable instances out of ecclesiastical history; for they not only made laws enforced with temporal penalties for the regulation of the clergy, as well as laity, not only commanded and obliged their bishops, in case of notorious neglect, to execute the church censures on the schismatical, heretical, and disorderly of both sorts; but when they found those spiritual executions ineffectual, they very often seconded them with temporal, such as pecuniary mulcts, imprisonments, and banishments: and though in the case of error and false belief they were always very tender and gentle, yet whenever they found men busily propagating their errors into sects and divisions, to the disturbances of the church's peace, they thought themselves obliged to restrain their petulancy with temporal chastisements. And indeed, as they are the viceroys of our Saviour, they are ex officio the conservators of the peace of his kingdom, and stand obliged to exert that authority he hath devolved upon them in the defence of its unity and good order, which in many cases they can no otherwise do, but only by restraining the schismatical and disorderly with the terror of temporal corrections; so that, as well in the church as in the civil state, they are the

ministers of God to us for our good; and therefore, if we do that which is evil, we have just cause to be afraid; for they bear not the sword in vain: for they are the ministers of God, revengers to execute wrath upon them that do evil. Rom. xiii. 14.

IV. And lastly, Another of those ministries which princes are obliged to render to Christ's church, by virtue of their subjection to him, is to make good provision for the decency of its worship, and for the convenient maintenance of its officers and ministers; to take care that it hath decent and commodious places set apart for the public celebration of its worship, and that those places be supplied with such ornaments and accommodations as are suitable to those venerable solemnities that are to be performed in them; that so its worship may not be exposed to contempt by the slovenliness and barbarity of its outward appendages. And this is the clothing of the church, which, as it ought not, on the one hand, to be too pompous and gaudy, that being naturally apt to distract and carnalize the minds of its votaries, and to divert their attention from those spiritual exercises, wherein the life and soul of its worship consists; so neither ought it, on the other hand, to be sordid and nasty, that being as naturally apt to prejudice and distaste men against it, and to create in their minds a loathing and contempt of it. Now the furnishing the church with such decent places and ornaments of worship, as do become the grave solemnities of a spiritual religion, being a matter of cost and charge, must necessarily belong to the civil powers, who alone can lay rates upon the subject, and have the sole command and disposal of the public purse and therefore, by virtue of their subjection

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