Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/93

 by force of numbers; they had drawn up for presentation to Parliament a church polity distinctively Presbyterian. The doctrine that this polity was of divine right was tacitly accepted by the Presbyterian majority, and quietly opposed by the few Erastian divines. Not till the summer of 1645 did the latter show their hand. July 30, Thomas Coleman of the Assembly preached the monthly fast-day sermon before the House of Commons and stated the Erastian position. He urged the House to establish as little church government jure divino as possible. He warned it to be careful how it allowed government to be based as jure divino on the authority of insufficient or uncertain texts. He bade it lay no more burden on the shoulders of ministers than Christ had laid on them, and he held up as a horrible example the usurped powers of the Pope! Coleman professed he could not see how two coördinate governments exempt from superiority or inferiority could be in one state; he could find nothing of it in Scripture! He laid down as the proper rule of division: “Give us doctrine, take you the government.” Such a challenge from the Erastians, delivered in the face of the House of Commons and of reading London, the Presbyterians could not decline. George Gillespie, one of the Scotch commissioners, undertook the task of refuting Coleman’s argument in a sermon delivered under similar circumstances a month later.