Page:The reason of church-governement urg'd against prelaty - Milton (1641).djvu/20

 Sabbath, she does not therefore imitate the law her underling, but perfect her. All that was morally deliver'd from the law to the Gospell in the office of the Priests and Levites, was that there should be a ministery set a part to teach and discipline the Church, both which duties the Apostles thought good to commit to the Presbyters. And if any distinction of honour were to be made among them, they directed it should be to those not that only rule well, but especially to those that labour in the word and doctrine. By which we are taught that laborious teaching is the most honourable Prelaty that one Minister can have above another in the Gospell: if therefore the superiority of Bishopship be grounded on the Priesthood as part of the morall law, it cannot be said to be an imitation; for it were ridiculous that morality should imitate morality, which ever was the same thing. This very word of patterning or imitating excludes Episcopacy from the solid and grave Ethicall law, and betraies it to be a meere childe of ceremony, or likelier some misbegotten thing, that having pluckt the gay feathers of her obsolet bravery to hide her own deformed barenesse, now vaunts and glories in her stolne plumes. In the meane while what danger there is against the very life of the Gospell to make in any thing the typical law her pattern, and how impossible in that which touches the Priestly government, I shall use such light as I have receav'd, to lay open. It cannot be unknowne by what expressions the holy Apostle S. Paul spares not to explane to us the nature and condition of the law, calling those ordinances which were the chiefe and essentiall offices of the Priests, the elements and rudiments of the world both weake and beggarly. Now to breed, and bring up the children of the promise, the heirs of liberty and grace under such a kinde of government as is profest to be but an imitation of that ministery which engender'd to bondage the sons of Agar, how can this be but a foul injury and derogation, if not a cancelling of that birth-right and immunity which Christ hath purchas'd for us with his blood. For the ministration of the law consisting of carnall things, drew to it such a ministery as consisted of carnall respects, dignity, precedence, and the like. And such a ministery establish't in the Gospell, as is founded upon the points and termes of superiority, and nests it selfe in worldly honours, will draw to it, and we see it doth, such a religion as runnes back againe to the old pompe and glory of the flesh. For doubtlesse there is a certaine attraction and magnetick force betwixt the religion and the ministeriall forme thereof. If the religion be pure, spirituall, simple, and lowly