Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/99

 fundamental laws in things ecclesiastical that no earthly legislator could abrogate. The Levellers simply transferred the principle to politics when they pronounced Parliament bound not only by the ecclesiastical law of Christ, but also by the law of the land, the law of God, and the law of reason.

To be more specific, the Independent system gave to politics a clear model of an ecclesiastical body limited and regulated by law. Independency assigned by divine right certain powers to the church officers; it assigned other powers no less by divine right to the church members. In either case these powers were limited and bounded by the supreme law—call it “constitution” if you will—that Christ had ordained his church. Each congregation enjoyed definite powers as being “indowed with a Charter to a body politique to Christ.” The legislation of any inferior lawgiver could not interfere with the rights enjoyed by officers and people under this supreme law; for, in comparison with it, such legislation would be null and void. The first check imposed on the claims of Parliament by its own supporters was imposed by the radical Independent pamphleteers. Further, there is a significant analogy between the Leveller Agreements of the People—constitutions intended to be perpetual because, as their framers believed, they were based on rules of reason self-evident to all rational men—and the congregational church system, unchangeable because founded in the rules of God’s Word.