Page:The reason of church-governement urg'd against prelaty - Milton (1641).djvu/33

 to live, and yet are dead; to be Protestants, and are indeed Papists in most of their principles. Thus perswaded, this your old fallacy wee shall soone unmask, and quickly apprehend how you prevent schisme, and who are your schismaticks. But what if ye prevent, and hinder all good means of preventing schisme? that way which the Apostles us'd, was to call a councell; from which by any thing that can be learnt from the fifteenth of the Acts, no faithfull Christian was debarr'd, to whom knowledge and piety might give entrance. Of such a councell as this every parochiall Consistory is a right homogeneous and constituting part being in it selfe as it were a little Synod, and towards a generall assembly moving upon her own basis in an even and firme progression, as those smaller squares in battell unite in one great cube, the main phalanx, an embleme of truth and stedfastnesse. Whereas on the other side Prelaty ascending by a graduall monarchy from Bishop to Arch-bishop, from thence to Primat, and from thence, for there can be no reason yeilded neither in nature, nor in religion, wherefore, if it have lawfully mounted thus high, it should not be a Lordly ascendent in the horoscope of the Church, from Primate to Patriarch, and so to Pope. I say Prelaty thus ascending in a continuall pyramid upon pretence to perfect the Churches unity, if notwithstanding it be found most needfull, yea the utmost helpe to dearn up the rents of schisme by calling a councell, what does it but teach us that Prelaty is of no force to effect this work which she boasts to be her maister-peice; and that her pyramid aspires and sharpens to ambition, not to perfection, or unity. This we know, that as often as any great schisme disparts the Church, and Synonds be proclam'd, the Presbyters have as great right there, and as free vote of old, as the Bishops, which the Canon law conceals not. So that Prelaty if she will seek to close up divisions in the Church, must be forc't to dissolve, and unmake her own pyramidal figure, which she affirmes to be of such uniting power, when as indeed it is the most dividing and schismaticall forme that Geometricians know of, and must be faine to inglobe, or incube her selfe among the Presbyters; which she hating to do, sends her haughty Prelates from all parts with their forked Miters, the badge of schisme or the stampe of his cloven foot whom they serve I think, who according to their hierarchies acuminating still higher and higher in a cone of Prelaty, in stead of healing up the gashes of the Church, as it happens in such pointed bodies meeting, fall to gore one another with their sharpe Rh