Page:The reason of church-governement urg'd against prelaty - Milton (1641).djvu/19

 which assertion, had I heard it, because I see they are so insatiable of antiquity, I should have gladly assented, and confest them yet more ancient. For Lucifer before Adam was the first prelat Angel, and both he, as is commonly thought, and our forefather Adam, as we all know, for aspiring above their orders, were miserably degraded. But others better advis'd are content to receive their beginning from Aaron and his sons, among whom B. Andrews of late yeares, and in these times the Primat of Armagh for their learning are reputed the best able to say what may be said in this opinion. The Primat in his discourse about the originall of Episcopacy newly revis'd begins thus. The ground of Episcopacy is fetcht partly from the pattern prescrib'd by God in the Old Testament, and partly from the imitation thereof brought in by the Apostles. Herein I must entreat to be excus'd of the desire I have to be satisfi'd, how for example the ground of Episcop. is fetch't partly from the example of the old Testament, by whom next, and by whose authority. Secondly, how the Church-government under the Gospell can be rightly call'd an imitation of that in the old Testament? for that the Gospell is the end and fulfilling of the Law, our liberty also from the bondage of the Law I plainly reade. How then the ripe age of the Gospell should be put to schoole againe, and learn to governe her selfe from the infancy of the Law, the stronger to imitate the weaker, the freeman to follow the captive, the learned to be lesson'd by the rude, will be a hard undertaking to evince from any of those principles which either art or inspiration hath written. If any thing done by the Apostles may be drawne howsoever to a likenesse of something Mosaicall, if it cannot be prov'd that it was done of purpose in imitation, as having the right thereof grounded in nature, and not in ceremony or type, it will little availe the matter. The whole Judaick law is either politicall, and to take pattern by that, no Christian nation ever thought it selfe oblig'd in conscience; or morall, which containes in it the observation of whatsoever is substantially, and perpetually true and good, either in religion, or course of life. That which is thus morall, besides what we fetch from those unwritten lawes and Ideas which nature hath ingraven in us, the Gospell, as stands with her dignity most, lectures to us from her own authentick hand-writing and command, not copies out from the borrow'd manuscript of a subservient scrowl, by way of imitating. As well might she be said in her Sacrament of water to imitate the baptisme of Iohn. What though she retaine excommunication us'd in the Synagogue, retain the morality of the Rh