Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/78

 insistence on the divine right of their system, and the nullity of all ecclesiastical impositions not directly warranted by Christ’s word.

At times, indeed, the Presbyterians endeavored to support certain features of their system, such as the subordination of assemblies, by arguments based on the law of nature and the analogy of civil government. Their Scripture proofs of such points were framed cautiously. “It is lawful and agreeable to the word of God.” “It is agreeable to the light of nature.” Presbyterians seemed at times to argue that the Presbyterian system was a system deducible from Scripture; not the only system so to be deduced. The Independents on the other hand clung stubbornly to the last proposition, saying that Christ had not been so remiss as not to leave his church a complete and perfect law. The Independents were, therefore, the logical defenders of fundamental law in the ecclesiastical world against the Erastian doctrine of parliamentary legislative supremacy.

The Presbyterian hierarchy of assemblies of clergymen was, however, the bugbear of both Independents and Erastians, though for different reasons. Erastians feared it because it erected in the state a spiritual government as elaborately organized as the civil, with offices that might maintain a political party, and with authority to inflict spiritual censures that were also social—such as suspension from the sacrament. Erastian writers disagreed as to whether this system would prove a spiritual tyranny over the nobles and gentry, or