seems inconsistent with a state in which all these events are ART. known. This which they lay for the foundation of prayers to XXII. saints, is a thing concerning which God has revealed nothing to us, and in which we can have no certainty. God has commanded us to pray for one another, to join our prayers together, and we have clear warrants for desiring the intercession of others. It is a high act of charity, and a great instance of the mutual love that ought to be among Christians: it is a part of the communion of the saints: and as they do certainly know, that those, whose assistance they desire, understand their wants when they signify them to them; so they are sure that God has commanded this mutual praying one for another. It is a strange thing therefore to argue from what God has commanded, and which may have many good effects, and can have no bad one, to that which he has not commanded; on the contrary, against which there are many plain intimations in scripture, and which may have many bad effects, and we are not sure that it can have any one that is good. Beside, that the solemnity of devotion and prayer is a thing very different from our desiring the prayers of such as are alive; the one is as visibly an act of religious worship, as the other is not. God has called himself a jealous God, that will not give his glory to another.' And Isa. xlii. 8. through the whole scripture, prayer is represented as a main part of the service due to him; and as that in which he takes Ps. cxli. 2. the most pleasure. It is a sacrifice, and is so called: and Hos. xiv. 2. every other sacrifice can only be accepted of God, as it is accompanied with the internal acts of prayers and praises; which are the spiritual sacrifices with which God is well pleased. The only thing, which the church of Rome reserves to God, proves to be the sacrifice of the mass: which, as shall appear upon another Article, is a sacrifice that they have invented, but which is no where commanded by God; so that if this is well made out, there will be nothing reserved to God to be the act of their latria: though it is not to be forgotten, that even the Virgin and the saints have a share in that sacrifice.

The excusing this, from the addresses made to princes by those that are in favour with them, is as bad as the thing itself; it gives us a low idea of God, and of Christ, and of that goodness and mercy, that is so often declared to be infinite, as if he were to be addressed to by those about him, and might not be come to without an interposition: whereas the scriptures speak always of God, as a hearer of prayer, and as ready to accept of and answer the prayers of his people: to seek to other assistances, looks as if the mercies of God were not infinite, or the intercessions of Christ were not of infinite efficacy. This is a corrupting of the main design of the gospel, which is to draw our affections wholly to God, to free us from all low notions of him, and from every thing that may incline us to idolatry and superstition.

Ps. lxv. 2.

ART.

Thus I have gone through all the heads contained in this XXII. Article. It seemed necessary to explain these with a due copiousness; they being not only points of speculation, in which errors are not always so dangerous, but practical things, which enter into the worship of God, and that run through it. And certainly it is the will of God, that we should preserve it pure, from being corrupted with heathenish or idolatrous practices. It seems to be the chief end of revealed religion to deliver the world from idolatry; a great part of the Mosaical law did consist of rites of which we can give no other account, that is so like to be true, as, that they were fences and hedges, that were intended to keep that nation in the greatest opposition, and at the utmost distance possible from idolatry: we cannot therefore think that in the Christian religion, in which we are carried to higher notions of God, and to a more spiritual way of worshipping him, there should be such an approach to some of the worst pieces of Gentilism, that it seems to be outdone by Christians in some of its most scandalous parts; such as the worship of subordinate gods, and of images. These are the chief grounds upon which we separate from the Roman communion; since we cannot have fellowship with them, unless we will join in those acts, which we look on as direct violations of the First and Second Cemmandments. God is a jealous God, and therefore we must rather venture on their wrath, how burning soever it may be, than on his, who is a consuming fire.

ART.
XXIII.

ARTICLE XXIII.

Of Ministering in the Congregation.

It is not lawful for any Man to take upon him the Office of public Preaching or Ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this Work by Men, who have public Authority given unto them, in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord's Vineyard.*

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We have two particulars fixed in this Article: the first is against any that shall assume to themselves, without a lawful vocation, the authority of dispensing the things of God: the second is, the defining, in very general words, what it is that makes a lawful call. As to the first, it will bear no great difficulty: we see in the old dispensation, that the family, the age, and the qualifications, of those that might serve in the priesthood, are very particularly set forth. In the New Testament our Lord called the twelve apostles, and sent them out: he also sent out upon another occasion seventy disciples: and before he left his apostles, he told them, that as his Father John xx. had sent him, so he sent them :' which seems to import, that 21. as he was sent into the world with this, among other powers, that he might send others in his name; so he likewise empowered them to do the same: and when they went planting churches, as they took some to be companions of labour with themselves, so they appointed others over the particular churches in which they fixed them: such were Epaphras, or Epaphroditus at Colosse, Timothy at Ephesus, and Titus in Crete. To them the apostles gave authority: otherwise it was a needless thing to write so many directions to them, in order to their conduct. They had the depositum of the faith, with 2 Tim. i. which they were chiefly intrusted: concerning the succession 13. in which that was to be continued, we have these words of St. Paul: The things which thou hast heard of me, among many 2 Tim.ii.2. witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be

able to teach others also. To them directions are given, concerning all the different parts of their worship; supplications, 1 Tim. ii. 1, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks:' and also the keep- 2,3. ii. 12.

* On the question of Holy Orders, the reader should examine Mason's celebrated work in Defence of the Orders of the Church of England. He will also find this point ably discussed in a work undertaken by the command of archbishop Sancroft, and entitled, A Legacy to the Church of England, vindicating her orders from the objections of Papists and Dissenters,' by the Rev. Luke Milbourn. This subject is also handled by bishop Taylor in his Episcopacy Asserted.'-[ED.]

XXIII.

1 Tim. iii.

1 Tim. iii.

15.

3, 17, 19, 22.

>

ART. ing up the decency of the worship, and the not suffering of women to teach; like the women priests among the heathens, who were believed to be filled with a Bacchic fury. To them are directed all the qualifications of such as might be made either bishops or deacons: they were to examine them according to these, and either to receive or reject them. All this was directed to Timothy, that he might know how he ought to 'behave himself in the house of God. He had authority given 1 Tim. v.1, him to rebuke and intreat, to honour and to censure. He was to order what widows might be received into the number, and who should be refused. He was to receive accusations against elders, or presbyters, according to directed methods, and was either to censure some, or to lay hands on others, as should agree with the rules that were set him; and in conclusion, he 1 Tim. vi. is very solemnly charged, to 'keep that which was committed to his trust.' He is required rightly to divide the word of truth,' to 'preach the word,' to 'be instant in season and out of season,' 2 Tim. iv. to 'reprove, rebuke, and exhort, and to do the work of an evangelist, and to make full proof of his ministry.' Some of the same things are charged upon Titus, whom St. Paul had left in Crete, to set in order the things that were wanting, and to ordain elders in every city:' several of the characters by which he was to try them are also set down: he is charged to rebuke the people sharply, and to speak the things that became sound doctrine: he is instructed concerning the doctrines which he was to teach, and those which he was to avoid; and also how to Tit. iii. 10. censure an heretic: he was to admonish him twice; and if that did not prevail, he was to reject him, by some public

20.

2 Tim. ii. 15.

2, 5.

Tit. i. 5, 9. 13.

censure.

These rules given to Timothy and Titus do plainly import, that there was to be an authority in the church, and that no man was to assume this authority to himself; according to that maxim, that seems to be founded on the light of nature, as well as it is set down in scripture, as a standing rule agreed to Heb. v. 4. in all times and places: 'no man taketh this honour to himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.

Rom. xii. 6, 7, 8.

1 Cor. xii. 28.

for

St. Paul, in his Epistles to the Romans and Corinthians, did reckon the several orders and functions that God had set up in his church, and in his Epistle to the Ephesians he shews, Eph.iv.11, that these were not transient but lasting constitutions; 12, 13, 16. there, as he reckons the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, as the gifts which Christ at his ascension had given to men; so he tells the ends for which they were given; "for the perfecting the saints,' (by perfecting seems to be meant the initiating them by holy mysteries, rather than the compacting or putting them in joint; for as that is the proper signification of the word, so it being set first, the other things that come after it make that the strict sense of perfecting that is, completing does not so well agree with the period,) 'for the work of the ministry,' (the whole ecclesiastical or

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sacred services,) for the edifying the body of Christ,' (to ART. which instructing, exhorting, comforting, and all the other XXJIL parts of preaching may well be reduced ;) and then the duration of these gifts is defined, Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man.' This seems to import the whole state of this life.

23.

We cannot think that all this belonged only to the infancy of the church, and that it was to be laid aside by her when she was further advanced; for when we consider that in the beginnings of Christianity there was so liberal an effusion of the Holy Spirit poured out upon such great numbers, who had very extraordinary credentials, miracles, and the gift of tongues, to prove their mission; it does not seem so necessary in such a time, or rather for the sake of such a time only, to have settled those functions in the church, and that the apostles should have 'ordained elders in every church.' Those extra- Acts xiv ordinary gifts that were then, without any authoritative settlement, might have served in that time to have procured to men so qualified all due regards. We have therefore much better reason to conclude, that this was settled at that time, chiefly with respect to the following ages, which as they were to fall off from that zeal and purity that did then reign among them, so they would need rule and government to maintain the unity of the church, and the order of sacred things. And for that reason chiefly we may conclude, that the apostles settled order and government in the church, not so much for the age in which they themselves lived, as once to establish and give credit to constitutions, that they foresaw would be yet more necessary to the succeeding ages.

1 Pet. v.

2, 3.

This is confirmed by that which is in the Epistle to the Hebrews, both concerning those who had ruled over them,' and Heb. xiii. those who were then their guides. St. Peter gives directions 7, 17. to the elders of the churches to whom he writ, how they ought both to 'feed and govern the flock;' and his charging them not to do it out of covetousness, or with ambition, insinuates that either some were beginning to do so, or that, in a spirit of prophecy, he foresaw that some might fall under such corruptions. This is hint enough to teach us, that, though such things should happen, they could furnish no argument against the function. Abuses ought to be corrected, but upon that pretence the function ought not to be taken away.

If from the scriptures we go to the first writings of Christians, we find that the main subject of St. Clemens' and St. Ignatius' Epistles is to keep the churches in order and union, in subjection to their pastors, and in the due subordination of all the members of the body one to another. After the first age the thing grows too clear to need any further proof. The argument for this from the standing rules of order, of decency, of the authority in which the holy things ought to be maintained, and the care that must be taken to repress vanity