trained up in the church only, by the fcriptuse, and in the original languages thereof at fchool; without fetching the compafs of other arts and fciences, more than what they can well learn at fecondary leifure and at home.

Neither speak I this in contempt of learning or the ministry, but hating the common cheats of both; hating that they who have preached out bifhops, prelates, and canonifts, fhould, in what ferves their own ends, retain their falfe opinions, their Pharifaical leaven, their avarice and closely their ambition, their pluralities, their non-refidences, their odious fees, and ufe their legal and Popish arguments for tithes : That Independents should take that name (as they may juftly, from the true freedom of Chriftian doctrine and church-difcipline, fubject to no fuperior judge but God only), and feek to be dependents on the magiftrate for their maintenance; which two things, independence and flate-hire in religion, can never confift long or certainly together. For magiftrates, at one time or other, not like thefe at prefent, our pa trons of Chriftian liberty, will pay none but fuch whom, by their committees of examination, they find conformable to their intereft and opinions: And hirelings will foon frame themselves to that intereft, and thofe opinions, which they fee beft pleafing to their pay-mafters; and to feem right themselves, will force others as to the truth,

if

But most of all they are to be reviled and shamed, who cry out with the diftinct voice of notorious hirelings, that ye fettle not our maintenance by law, farewel the gofpel: Than which nothing can be uttered more false, more ignominious, and, I may fay, more blafphemous againft our Saviour; who hath promifed, without this condition, both his holy Spirit, and his own presence with his church, to the world's end: Nothing more falfe (unless with their own mouths they condemn themfelves, for the unworthieft and moft mercenary of all other minifters), by the experience of 300 years after Chrift; and the churches at this day in France, Auftria, Polonia, and other places, witneffing the contrary under an adverse magiftrate, not a favourable: Nothing more ignominious,

ignominious, levelling, or rather undervaluing Chrift beneath Mahomet. For if it must be thus, how can any Christian object it to a Turk, that his religion ftands by force only; and not juftly fear from him this reply, Yours both by force and money, in the judgment of your own preachers.

This is that which makes Atheists in the land, whom they fo much complain of: Not the want of maintenance or preachers, as they allege, but the many hirelings and cheaters that have the gospel in their hands; hands that fill crave, and are never fatisfied. Likely minifters, indeed, to proclaim the faith, or to exhort our truft in God, when they themselves will not truft him to provide for them in the message whereon, they fay, he fent them; but threaten for want of temporal means to defert it; calling that want of means, which is nothing else but the want of their own faith; and would force us to pay the hire of building our faith to their covetous incredulity.

Doubtless, if God only be he who gives minifters to his church till the world's end; and, through the whole gofpel, never fent us for minifters to the schools of philofophy, but rather bids us beware of such vain deceit, Col. ii. 8. (which the primitive church, after two or three ages, not remembering, brought herself quickly to confufion) if all the faithful be now a holy and a royal priefhood, 1 Peter ii. 5. 9. not excluded from the difpenfation of things holieft, after free election of the church and impo fition of hands, there will not want ministers, elected out of all forts and orders of men, for the gospel makes no difference from the magiftrate himself to the meanest artificer, if God evidently favour him with fpiritual gifts, as he can easily and oft hath done, while thofe bachelordivines and doctors of the tippet have been paffed by.

Heretofore in the firft evangelic times (and it were happy for Christendom if it were so again) minifters of the gofpel were by nothing elfe diftinguifhed from other Chriftians, but by their spiritual knowledge and fanctity of life, for which the church elected them to be her teachers and overfeers, though not thereby to feparate them from whatever calling fie then found them follow

ing

ing befides, as the example of St. Paul declares, and the first times of Christianity.

When once they affected to be called a clergy, and became as it were a peculiar tribe of Levites, a party, a distinct order in the common-wealth, bred up for divines in babbling schools, and fed at the public coft, good for nothing elfe but what was good for nothing, they foon grew idle: That idlenefs, with fulness of bread, begat pride, and perpetual contention with their feeders, the defpifed laity, through all ages ever fince; to the perverting of religion, and the disturbance of all Chriftendom. And we may confidently conclude, it never will be otherwise while they are thus upheld undepending on the church, on which alone they anciently depended, and are by the magiftrate publicly maintained, a numerous faction of indigent perfons, crept for the moft part out of extreme want and bad nurture, claiming by divine right and freehold the tenth of our eftates, to monopolize the miniftry as their peculiar, which is free and open to all able Chriftians, elected by any church. Under this pretence exempt from all other employment, and enriching themselves on the public, they laft of all prove common incendiaries, and exalt their horns against the magiftrate himself that maintains them, as the priest of Rome did foon after against his benefactor the emperor, and the prefbyters of late in Sd. Of which hireling crew, together with all the mischiefs, diffenfions, troubles, wars, merely of their kindling, Chriftendom might foon rid herfelf and be happy, if Chriftians would but know their own dignity, their liberty, their adoption, and let it not be wondered if I fay, their fpiritual priefthood, whereby they have all equally accefs to any minifterial function whenever called by their own abilities and the church, though they never came near commencement or univerfity. But while Proteftants, to avoid the due labour of understanding their own religion, are content to lodge it in the breaft, or rather in the books of a clergyman, and to take it thence by fcraps and mammocks, as he difpenfes it in his Sunday's dole, they will be always learning and never knowing, always infants, always either his vaffals,

Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church.

als, as lay Papifts are to their priests, or at odds with him, es reformed principles give them fome light to be not wholly conformable, whence infinite difturbances in the flate, as they do, muft needs follow.

Thus much I had to fay; and, I fuppofe, what may be enough to them who are not avariciously bent otherwife, touching the likelieft means to remove hirelings out of the church; than which nothing can more conduce to truth, to peace and all happinefs both in church and fat. If I be not heard nor believed, the event will bear me witnefs to have spoken truth: And I, in the mean-while, have borne my witnefs, not out of feafon to the church and to my country.

THE END.