An Apology for the Nonconformists Ministry, Treatise · Part 1 · Objection 13
13 Obj. But what you before denied of the Magistrate, you cannot deny of the Church: The Church calleth you, and giveth you your power: Therefore it may take it from you: And so Mr. Rathband confesseth, and the old Nonconformists practised.
Ans. 1. The [Church] is an ambiguous word. If you mean the Bishops, all those whom you call to be re-ordained, deny that ever the Bishops gave them their power.
2. And it was One Bishop who ordained each of the rest, or two at most, who are both dead, and cannot take away what they gave.
3. I have answered this before, and more largely in my Dispute of Ordination: Men give us not our Power at all, as from themselves; but as Servants of Christ invest them solemnly to whom he giveth it. And a servant cannot dispossess him whom by his Masters Orders he hath invested.
4. You give us our Baptism and Matrimony, as truly as our Ministry: And yet you cannot take them from us.
5. But indeed, if the Church, that is, the People, refuse us, we cannot teach and edifie them against their wills.
6. And if one Bishop silence us, he doth it but as exercising Government in his Diocess; and it followeth not, that we are silenced in all others.
7. And they that dissent from our Diocesan frame of Prelacy, do not much reverence their Governing Spiritual Power: And if the Kings prohibition bind them not against their Conscience of Gods obligations to be silent, much less will yours.
8. No Bishops have silenced us by Spiritual Government that we know of, but only as Barons by the Secular Laws, to which they gave their Votes (which yet all did not): How then are we obliged by their Power of the Keys to be silent? For my part I have one or two of their Licenses never re-called or nulled.
9. If a Bishop should silence him under pretence of Government and Order, whom God obligeth to preach, as much as I have before proved that we are obliged, it were ipso facto null as to our Consciences, as being against the Laws of God.
10. He that is silenced in every Bishops Diocess, is not yet thereby degraded, but is still a Minister, to the world at least for their conversion; For those without (the Infidels and Heathens) are of no Bishops Diocess; And it's a question, whether those among us that openly renounce the Prelacy, and declare themselves to be none of their Church, are yet indeed members of their Church whether they will or not? We believe not, that a Law of the Land doth make any man a Church-member without his own consent. If you think otherwise, why distinguish you the Sons of the Church from others? If all the people of London be not the Sons, or members of your Church, the rest are not under your Pastoral Spiritual Government: And as for your Secular Power, enough is said of that before. And I think no man will say that the extent of your Diocess to many hundred Parishes, is a Divine Institution, obliging all mens consciences to obey you, that shall come within that circuit of ground: you will ascribe this extent of your power to the King and Laws; of which more in due place.
And as to the old Nonconformists, they forbore the Temples and publick maintenance, and so do we: And I am sure they used to preach in private, as well as we; yea and in the Churches when they thought it brought no great inconvenience by offence. Mr. Hildersham, Mr. Nichols, and abundance more, did preach in publick after they were forbidden and silenced, till execution hindered them as well as Law. And Mr. Nichols, Mr. Langley, Mr. Bromskill, and many more, when they were driven from one place, would preach where they found opportunity in another. And Mr. Herring was wont privately to preach in Shrewsbury, as his most credible friends and hearers told me. And indeed the far greatest part of the Nonconformists, that ever I knew, had publick liberty, in some small peculiar, for most of their time, if not by connivence in greater places: So had Mr. Knewstubs, Ash, Slater, Root, Ball, Barnet, Gilpin, and many more.
And yet we as well as Mr. Rathband will submit to a suspension, or prohibition of authority, when it is but an act of Order and Government of just authority, and not a notorious subversion of the thing Ordered, or the End, and Gods Laws and mens necessities oblige us not to the contrary. The Papists hold that a Father may not keep his Son from taking Orders. If the Bishops were our Fathers then, they could not hinder us from the faithful exercise of what we have undertaken.