at the presbyters and deacons were
differently set apart, always by the bishops: That none but the
ecclesiastics presumed to pray or preach in places set apart for God's
worship, or to administer the Lord's Supper: That all questions relating
either to discipline or doctrine, were determined in ecclesiastical
conventions. These and the like doctrines and practices, being most of
them directly proved, and the rest by very fair consequences deduced
from the words of our Saviour and His apostles, were certainly received
as a divine law by every prince or state which admitted the Christian
religion: and, consequently, what they could not justly alter
afterwards, any more than the common laws of nature. And, therefore,
although the supreme power can hinder the clergy or Church from making
any new canons, or executing the old; from consecrating bishops, or
refuse those that they do consecrate; or, in short, from performing any
ecclesiastical office, as they may from eating, drinking, and sleeping;
yet they cannot themselves perform those offices, which are assigned to
the clergy by our Saviour and His apostles; or, if they do, it is not
according to the divine institution, and, consequently, null and void.
Our Saviour telleth us, "His kingdom is not of this world;" and
therefore, to be sure, the world is not of His kingdom, nor can ever
please Him by interfering in the administration of it, since He hath
appointed ministers of His own, and hath empowered and instructed them
for that purpose: So that, I believe, the clergy, who, as he sayeth, are
good at distinguishing, would think it reasonable to distinguish between
their power, and the liberty of exercising this power. The former they
claim immediately from Christ, and the latter from the permission,
connivance, or authority of the civil government; with which the
clergy's power, according to the solution I have given, cannot possibly
interfere.

But this writer, setting up to form a system upon stale, scanty topics,
and a narrow circle of thought, falleth into a thousand absurdities. And
for a further help, he hath a talent of rattling out phrases, which seem
to have sense, but have none at all: the usual fate of those who are
ignorant of the force and compass of words, without which it is
impossible for a man to write either pertinently or intelligibly upon
the most obvious subjects.

So, in the beginning of his preface, page iv, he says, "The Church of
England being es