e the matters controverted betwixt them; in which conference
he requireth the princes themselves to be judges.

_Sect._ 5. It remaineth to try what force of reason the Bishop hath to
back his opinion. As for the ragged rabble of human testimonies which he
raketh together, I should but weary my reader, and spend paper and ink in
vain, if I should insist to answer them one by one. Only thus much I say
of all those sentences of the fathers and constitutions of princes and
emperors about things ecclesiastical, together with the histories of the
submission of some ecclesiastical causes to emperors,--let him who pleaseth
read them; and it shall appear,

1. That some of those things whereunto the power of princes was applied
were unlawful.

2. There were many of them things temporal or civil, not ecclesiastical or
spiritual, nor such as pertain to the worship of God.

3. There were some of them ecclesiastical or spiritual things, but then
princes did only ratify that which had been determined by councils, and
punish with the civil sword such as did stubbornly disobey the church's
lawful constitutions. Neither were princes allowed to do any more.

4. Sometimes they interposed their authority, and meddled in causes
spiritual or ecclesiastical, even before the definition of councils; yet
did they not judge nor decide those matters, but did only convocate
councils, and urge the clergy to see to the mis-ordered and troubled state
of the church, and by their wholesome laws and ordinances, to provide the
best remedies for the same which they could.

5. At other times princes have done somewhat more in ecclesiastical
matters; but this was only in extraordinary cases, when the clergy were so
corrupted, that either through ignorance they were unable, or through
malice and perverseness unwilling, to do their duty in deciding of
controversies, making of canons, using the keys, and managing of other
ecclesiastical matters, in which case princes might and did, by their
coactive temporal jurisdiction, avoid disorder, error, and superstition,
and cause a reformation of the church.

6. Princes have likewise, in rightly constituted and well reformed
churches, by their own regal authority, straitly enjoined things
pertaining to the worship of God, but those things were the very same
which God's own written word had expressly commanded.

7. When princes went beyond those limits and bounds, they took upon them
to judge and command more tha