Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/13

Rh of church-authority, and that most other writers took their arguments from it.

In a postscript to this work he informs us, p. 271, that, in it, the reader will see confuted at large, what he calls a puritanical principle, and also an absurd assertion of Hooker's, by which he entangled himself and his cause in inextricable difficulties, viz. that civil and ecclesiastical power are things separated by nature, and more especially by divine institution; and so independent of one another, that they must always continue independent. Whatever success this writer may have had in pullng up other foundations, I think he had better have left those of the church as he found them: for the difficulties in which the scheme of the Alliance is entangled, appear to me to be far more inextricable, than those of any other scheme of church-authority that I have yet seen. All that can be said in its favour is, that, having less of the simplicity of truth, and, consequently, being supported with more art and sophistry, the absurdity of it is not so obvious at first sight, though it be