23. Evils not curable by Law to be mitigated or endured.

In evils that cannot be removed, without the manifest danger of greater to succeed in their rooms; wisdom (of necessity) must give place to necessity. All it can do in those cases is, to devise how that which must be endured may be mitigated, and the inconveniences thereof countervailed' as near as may be; that when the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those things that are.

24. Law, her divine origin.

All things do work after a sort according to law; all other things according to a law, whereof some superior, unto whom they are subject, is author; only the works and operations of God have him both for their worker, and for the law whereby they are wrought.

Of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.

"Countervailed;" counterbalanced.

СНАРТER III.

LAW AND OBEDIENCE, NECESSARY TO ORDER
IN THE CHURCH.

1. Origin and design of the Laws of the Church.

The spiritual power of the Church being such as neither can be challenged by right of nature nor could by human authority be instituted, because the forces and effects thereof are supernatural and divine, we are to make no doubt or question but that from him which is the head, it hath descended unto us that are the body now invested therewith. He gave it for the good and benefit of souls, as a mean to keep them in the path which leadeth unto endless felicity, a bridle to hold them within their due and convenient bounds, and, if they do go astray, a forcible help to reclaim them. Now although there be no kind of spiritual power, for which our Lord Jesus Christ did not give both commission to exercise, and direction how to use the same, although his laws on that behalf recorded by the holy Evangelists be the only ground and foundation, whereupon the practice of the Church must sustain itself; yet, as all multitudes once grown to the form of societies are even thereby naturally warranted to inforce upon their own subjects particularly those things which public wisdom shall judge expedient for the common good; so it were absurd to imagine the Church itself, the most glorious amongst them, abridged of this liberty, or to think

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that no law, constitution or canon, can be further made either for limitation or amplification in the practice of our Saviour's ordinances, whatsoever occasion be offered through variety of times and things, during the state of this inconstant world, which bringeth forth daily such new evils as must of necessity by new remedies be redressed, and did both of old enforce our venerable predecessors, and will always constrain others, sometime to make, sometime to abrogate, sometime to augment, and again to abridge sometime; in sum, often to vary, alter, and change customs incident unto the manner of exercising that power which doth itself continue always one and the same. I therefore conclude, that spiritual authority is a power which Christ hath given to be used over them which are subject unto it for the eternal good of their souls, according to his own most sacred laws and the wholesome positive constitutions of his Church.

The laws which the very Heathens did gather to direct their actions by, so far forth as they proceed from the light of nature, God himself doth acknowledge to have proceeded even from himself, and that he was the writer of them in the tables of their hearts. How much more then is he the Author of those laws which have been made by his saints, endued farther with the heavenly grace of his Spirit, and directed as much as might be with such instructions as his sacred word doth yield? Surely, if we have unto those laws that dutiful regard which their dignity doth require, it will not greatly need that we should be exhorted to live in obedience unto them. If they have God himself for their author, contempt which is offered unto them cannot choose but redound unto him.

2. Necessity for Church Law.

All things natural have in them naturally, more or less, the power of providing for their own safety; and as each particular man hath this power, so every politic society of men must needs have the same, that thereby the whole may provide for the good of all parts therein. For other benefit we have not any by sorting ourselves into politic societies, saving only that by this mean each part hath that relief, which the virtue of the whole is able to yield it. The Church therefore being a politic society or body, cannot possibly want the power of providing for itself; and the chiefest part of that power consisteth in the authority of making laws.

3. Church Government.

Authority is a constraining power; which power were needless if we were all such as we should be, willing to do the things we ought to do without constraint. But, because generally we are otherwise, therefore we all reap singular benefit by that authority which permitteth no men, though they would, to slack their duty. It doth not suffice, that the lord of an household appoint labourers what they should do, unless he set over them some chief workman to see that they do it. Constitutions and canons made for the ordering of Church affairs are dead task-masters.

Amongst the principal blessings wherewith God enriched Israel, the prophet in the Psalm acknowledgeth especially this for one, Thou didst lead thy people like sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron. That which sheep are, if pastors be wanting, the same are the people of God, if so be they want governors and that which the principal civil governors are, in comparison of regents under them,

the same are the prelates of the Church, being compared with the rest of God's clergy.

4. One form of Polity not necessary to all Churches.

He which affirmeth speech to be necessary amongst all men throughout the world, doth not thereby import that all men must necessarily speak one kind of language; even so the necessity of polity and regiment in all churches may be held without holding any one certain form to be necessary in them all; nor is it possible that any form of polity, much less of polity ecclesiastical, should be good, unless God himself be the author of it.

5. The fellowship of Christ's Church.

For preservation of Christianity there is not any thing more needful, than that such as are of the visible Church have mutual fellowship and society one with another. In which consideration, as the main body of the sea being one, yet within divers precincts hath divers names; so the Catholic Church is in like sort divided into a number of distinct societies, every of which is termed a Church within itself.

6. Necessity of Order in the Church, as seen in duly appointed places and persons, for Divine Worship.

To him which considereth the grievous and scandalous inconveniences whereunto they make themselves daily subject, with whom any blind and secret corner is judged a fit house of common prayer; the manifold confusions which they fall into, where every man's private spirit and gift (as they term it,) is the only bishop that ordaineth him to his ministry; the irksome deformities whereby, through endless and senseless effusions of indigested prayers, they