en the ministers of the gospel and those
that are not ministers, is no less than a dishonouring and aspersing of
the Christian religion. To return, you see his words tend to the taking
away of all church government out of the hands of church-officers. Now may
we know his reasons? He fetcheth the ground of an argument out of his own
heart: "I have a heart (saith he) that knows better how to be governed
than govern." I wish his words might hold true in a sense of pliableness
and yielding to government. How he knows to govern I know not; but it
should seem in this particular he knows not how to be governed; for after
both houses of parliament have concluded "that many particular
congregations shall be under one presbyterial government," he still
acknowledgeth no such thing as presbyterial government. I dare be bold to
say he is the first divine, in all the Christian world, that ever advised
a state to give no government to church-officers, after the state had
resolved to establish presbyterian government; but let us take the
strength of his argument as he pretendeth it. He means not of an humble
pliableness and subjection (for that should ease him from his fear of an
ambitious ensnarement, and so were contrary to his intention), but of a
sinful infirmity and ambition in the heart, which makes it fitter for him
and others to be kept under the yoke than to govern. And thus his
argumentation runs: "Might I measure others by myself, and I know not why
I may not (God fashions men's hearts alike; and as in water face answers
face, so the heart of man to man), I ingenuously profess I have a heart
that knows better how to be governed than govern,--I fear an ambitious
ensnarement, and I have cause,--I see what raised Prelacy and Papacy to
such a height," &c. The two scriptures will not prove what he would. The
first of them, Psal. xxxiii. 15, "He fashioneth their hearts alike," gives
him no ground at all, except it be the homonomy of the English word
_alike_, which in this place noteth nothing else but {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~},--all men's
hearts are alike in this, that God fashioneth them all, and therefore
knoweth them all _aeque_ or alike (that is the scope of the place). The
Hebrew _