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name of Bishops, others under the name of Seniors, “unto this day; (I meddle not with the Socinians :) they unchurch not the Lutheran Churches in Germany, who both assert Episcopacy in their confessions, and have actual superintendents in their practice, and would have Bishops, name and thing, "if it were in their power. Let him not mistake "himself: those Churches which he is so tender of,

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though they be better known to us by reason of "their vicinity, are so far from being 'all or most part of the Protestant Churches,' that being all put together, they amount not to so great a proportion as the Britannick Churches alone. And if one "excluded out of them all those who want an ordi66 nary succession without their own faults, out of "invincible ignorance or necessity, and all those who "desire to have an ordinary succession either explicitly or implicitly, they will be reduced to a "little flock indeed.

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"But let him set his heart at rest. I will remove "this scruple out of his mind, that he may sleep securely upon both ears. Episcopal divines do not "deny those Churches to be true Churches, wherein "salvation may be had. We advise them, as it is "our duty, to be circumspect for themselves, and "not to put it to more question, whether they have "ordination or not, or desert the general practice of "the universal Church for nothing, when they may "clear it if they please. Their case is not the same "with those who labour under invincible necessity.

"What mine own sense is of it, I have declared

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many years since to the world in print; and in the "same way received thanks, and a public acknowledgment of my moderation from a French divine.

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"And yet more particularly in my reply to the Bishop of Chalcedon, Pres. p. 144. and cap. 1. p. 164. Episcopal divines will readily subscribe to "the determination of the learned Bishop of Winchester, in his answer to the Second Epistle of Molineus. Nevertheless, if our form (of Episcopacy) be of divine right, it doth not follow from thence, that there is no salvation without it, or "that a Church cannot consist without it. He is "blind who does not see Churches consisting without "it: he is hard-hearted who denyeth them salvation. "We are none of those hard-hearted persons, we put "a great difference between these things. There may be something absent in the exterior regiment, "which is of divine right, and yet salvation to be "had.' This mistake proceedeth, from not distin

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guishing between the true nature and essence of a

Church, which we do readily grant them, and the integrity or perfection of a Church, which we can"not grant them, without swerving from the 'judg"ment of the Catholic Church."

Exactly the same line is taken by the mild and moderate Bishop Hall, as all know, a tender lover of peace, and whose natural prejudices, through his education by a Puritan mother, ran the other way; yet these were his matured thoughts. It is well also

to hear the solemn feelings with which he commenced his "Episcopacy by Divine Right." "For me, I am "now breathing towards the end of my race, the

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goal is already in my eyes-I that am now setting "foot over the threshhold of the house of my age, "what aim can I have but the issue of my last "account, whereto I am ready to be summoned "before the Judge of quick and dead? Setting, therefore, that awful Tribunal, to which we shall shortly be presented, before our eyes, let us reason "the case with a modest earnestness." This frame of mind of the aged and pious man, who thought the defence of Episcopacy, as a "Divine institu"tion," an acceptable employment of his latter days, when "the time of his departure was at hand," is surely somewhat different from those of the younger men now, who adduce anxiety about the Apostolic succession as a foremost testimony, that we "pay1

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greater attention to the form and vehicle in which "the divine mercy is conveyed to us, than to the "truth and power of the blessing itself." Bishop Hall then proceeds to distinguish between the case of the Scottish Bishop, with whom he was expostulating for having renounced his Episcopal function, and that of the foreign Protestant bodies; "know 2, their case "and your's is far enough different; they plead to be "by a kind of necessity cast upon that condition,

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"which you have willingly chosen; they were not,

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they could not be, what you were, and still might have been. Did any of them forsake and abjure that function of Episcopacy, which he might freely have enjoyed with the full liberty of professing the reformed religion?" It is then on this same plea of necessity, that Bishop Hall excused the German reformers;-because1 they were willing to “maintain and establish Episcopal government, de"sirous to restore it, troubled that they might not "continue it: might they have enjoyed the Gospel, they would have enjoyed Episcopacy;" "all the "world sees the Apologist professeth for them, [the German reformers,] that they greatly desired to "conserve the government of Bishops, that they were altogether unwillingly driven from it; that it was utterly against their heart, that it should have been "impaired or weakened; that it was only the per"sonal cruelty and violence of their Romish perse

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cutors which was then excepted against ;" he excuses it, because 2" they took up this equality of govern"ment only provisionally;" because "they meant not "to traverse the state of the Clergy, or to submit it to "their orders, whensoever the Clergy or whole state of "France should happen to admit the Reformation;" because "they were by the iniquity of their times in a manner forcibly driven (at least as they imagined)

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1 Episcopacy by Divine Right, p. i. § 3.

2 lb. § 5.

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upon this form, and necessarily put to their choice "whether they would still submit to Popery, or no

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longer submit to Episcopal Administration, which "there was only managed by Popish hands." He likens the abandonment of Episcopacy in such a case, to a "mariner casting out his goods in a storm," cutting off a limb to prevent the deadly malignity "of a gangrene," "pulling down the next roof when an house is on fire in the City;" and yet though he would not take upon himself to judge others, yet we see that he himself would have waited, with a more constant faith, "until the tyranny were overpast,” rather than throw over with his own hands the deposit committed to him. "Fear not, thou bearest "Cæsar" was thought assurance enough when the storm lay vehemently upon his vessel; much more then to us, "Fear not, thou bearest an Ordinance "of thy Lord's; it is thy Lord Himself asleep in the "hinder part of the ship.'" For in the midst of this palliation of their case, Bishop Hall cannot but express his own doubts, whether any plea of necessity should have been admitted in such a case: "Though also," he adds, "it is very considerable, whether the condition they were in, doth altogether absolutely warrant such a proceeding; for was it not so with us, after Reforma"tion was stept in, during those fiery times of Queen

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Mary? Was it not so with you, when those holy

men, Patrick Hamilton, and George Wischart, "sowed the first seeds of Reformation among you “in their own blood? With that spirit the Holy

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