t they use the sword wherewith they
are furnished, for the maintaining of God's worship. But in the mean
time there are inconsiderate men, that make them too spiritual; and this
fault reigns up and down Germany; yea, spreads too much in
these countries. And now we perceive what fruits spring from this root,
viz: that princes, and all that are in place of government, think
themselves to be so spiritual, that there is no other ecclesiastical
government. And this sacrilege creeps among us, because they cannot
measure their office with certain and lawful bounds, but are of opinion
they cannot reign, unless they abolish all the authority of the Church,
and become the chief judges both in doctrine, and in the whole spiritual
government. At the beginning they pretend some zeal; but mere ambition
drives them, that so solicitously they snatch all things to themselves.
Therefore there ought to be a temper kept; for this disease hath always
reigned in princes, to desire to bend religion according to their own
pleasure and lust, and for their own profits in the mean time. For they
have respect to their profit, because for the most part they are not
acted by the Spirit of God, but their ambition carries them." Thus
Calvin in Amos vii. 13. Oh what exclamations would this holy man have
poured out, had he lived to see the passages of our days! _Quis talia
fando temperet a lachrymis!_[25]

II. Subordinate ministerial power, which is either,

1. Indirectly, improperly, and only objectively ecclesiastical or
spiritual, (so called, because it is exercised about spiritual or
ecclesiastical objects, though formally in its own nature it be properly
a mere civil or political power.) This is that power which is allowed to
the civil magistrate about religion; he is _an overseer of things
without the Church_, having an external care of religion as a
_nurse-father_, Isa. xlix. 23; as had Hezekiah, Josiah, Asa,
Jehoshaphat, &c.; so as, by the law, to restore religion decayed, reform
the Church corrupted, protect the Church reformed, &c.

2. Directly, properly, and formally ecclesiastical or spiritual, having
respect properly to matters within the Church. This power only belongs
to church officers, who are overseers of things within, 1 Cor. iv. 20,
21; 2 Cor. x. 8, and xiii. 10; and this is either, 1. More special and
peculiar to the office of some church governors only, as the power of
preaching the gospel, dispensing the sacraments, &c., which i