Page:The reason of church-governement urg'd against prelaty - Milton (1641).djvu/27

. Ierome the learned'st of the Fathers hides not his opinion, that custome only, which the Proverbe cals a tyrant, was the maker of Prelaty; before his audacious workmanship the Churches were rul'd in common by the Presbyters. and such a certaine truth this was esteem'd, that it became a decree among the Papall Canons compil'd by ''Gratian. Anselme also of Canturbury, who to uphold the points of his Prelatisme made himselfe a traytor to his country, yet commenting the Epistles to Titus and the Philippians acknowledges from the cleernesse of the text, what Ierome'' and the Church Rubrick hath before acknowledg'd. He little dreamt then that the weeding-hook of reformation would after two ages pluck up his glorious poppy from insulting over the good corne. Though since some of our Brittish Prelates seeing themselves prest to produce Scripture, try all their cunning, if the New Testament will not help them, to frame of their own heads as it were with wax a kind of Mimick Bishop limm'd out to the life of a dead Priesthood. Or else they would straine us out a certaine figurative Prelat, by wringing the collective allegory of those seven Angels into seven single Rochets. Howsoever since it thus appeares that custome was the creator of Prelaty being lesse ancient then the government of Presbyters, it is an extreme folly to give them the hearing that tell us of Bishops through so many ages: and if against their tedious muster of citations, Sees, and successions, it be reply'd that wagers and Church antiquities, such as are repugnant to the plaine dictat of Scripture are both alike the arguments of fooles, they have their answer. We rather are to cite all those ages to an arraignment before the word of God, wherefore, and what pretending, how presuming they durst alter that divine institution of Presbyters, which the Apostles who were no various and inconstant men surely had set up in the Churches, and why they choose to live by custome and catalogue, or as S. Paul saith by sight and visibility, rather then by faith? But first I conclude from their owne mouthes that Gods command in Scripture, which doubtlesse ought to be the first and greatest reason of Church-government, is wanting to Prelaty. And certainly we have plenteous warrant in the doctrine of Christ to determine that the want of this reason is of it selfe sufficient to confute all other presences that may be brought in favour of it.

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