(vi)

of Christianity; some of whom I remember to have heard often for several years, at a Council next in authority to your own, so well joining religion with civil prudence, and yet so well distinguishing the different power of either; and this not only voting, but frequently reasoning why it should be so, that if any there present had been before of an opinion contrary, he might doubtless have departed thence a convert in that point, and have confessed that then both commonwealth and religion will at length, if ever, flourish in Christendom, when either they who govern discern between civil and religious, or they only who so discern shall be admitted to govern. Till then, nothing but troubles, persecutions, commotions, can be expected; the inward decay of true religion among ourselves, and the utter overthrow, at last, by a common enemy. Of civil liberty I have written heretofore, by the appointment, and not without the approbation, of civil power of Christian liberty I write now, which others long since having done with all freedom under Heathen emperors, I should do wrong to suspect that I now shall with less under Christian governors, and such especially as profess openly their defence of Christian liberty; although I write this not otherwise appointed or induced than by an inward persuasion of the Christian duty which I may usefully discharge herein to the common Lord and Master of us all, and the certain hope of his approbation, first and chiefest to be sought; in the hand of whose providence I remain, praying all success and good event on your public counsels to the defence of true religion and our civil rights.

JOHN MILTON.

CIVIL POWER

IN

ECCLESIASTICAL CAUSES.

Two things there be which have been ever found working much mischief to the church of God and the advancement of truth; force on the one side restraining, and hire on the other side corrupting, the teachers thereof. Few ages have been since the ascension of our Saviour, wherein the one of these two, or both together, have not prevailed. It can be at no time, therefore, unseasonable to speak of these things, since by them the church is either in continual detriment and oppression, or in continual danger. The former shall be at this time my argument; the latter, as I shall find God disposing me and opportunity inviting. What I argue, shall be drawn from the Scripture only, and therein from true fundamental principles of the Gospel, to all knowing Christians undeniable. And if the governors of this commonwealth since the rooting out of prelates have made least use of force in religion, and most have favoured Christian liberty of any in this island before them, since the first preaching of the Gospel, for which we are not to forget our thanks to God and their due praise, they may, I doubt not, in this treatise find that which not only will confirm them to defend still the Christian liberty which we enjoy, but will incite them also to enlarge it, if in aught they yet straighten it. To them who perhaps hereafter, less experienced in religion, may come to govern or give us laws, this or other such, if they please, may be a timely instruction: however, to the truth it will be, at all times, no unneedful testimony; at least some discharge of that general duty which no Christian but, according to what he hath received, knows is required of him, if he have aught more conducing to the advancement of religion than what is usually endeavoured, freely to impart it.

It will require no great labour of exposition to unfold what is here meant by matters of religion, being as soon apprehended as defined,-such things as belong chiefly to the knowledge and service of God; and are either above the reach and light of nature without revelation from above, and therefore liable to be variously understood by human reason; or such things as are enjoined or forbidden by divine precept, which else by the light of reason would seem indifferent to be done or not done; and so likewise must needs appear to every man as the precept is understood. Whence I here mean by conscience or religion, that full persuasion whereby we are assured that our belief and practice, as far as we are able to apprehend and probably make appear, is according to the will of God and his holy spirit within us, which we ought to follow much rather than any law of man, as not only his word every where bids us, but the very dictate of reason tells us. Acts iv. 19: "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." That for belief or practice in religion according to this conscientious persuasion no man ought to be punished or molested by any outward force on earth whatsoever, I distrust not, through God's implored assistance, to make plain by these following arguments.

First, it cannot be denied, being the main foundation of our Protestant religion, that we of these ages, having no other divine rule or authority from without us warrantable to one another as a common ground but the holy Scripture, and no other within us but the illumination of the Holy Spirit so interpreting that Scripture as warrantable only to ourselves, and to such whose consciences we can so persuade, can have no other ground in matters of religion but only from the Scriptures. And these being not possible to be understood without this divine illumination, which no man can know at all times to be in himself, much less to be at any time for certain in any other, it follows clearly, that no man or body of men in these times can be the infallible judges or determiners in matters of religion to any other men's consciences but their own. And therefore those Bereans are commended (Acts xvii. 11) who, after the preaching even of St. Paul, "searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so." Nor did they more than what God himself in many places commands us by the same apostle, to search,

66

to try, to judge of these things ourselves, and gives us reason also, (Gal. vi. 4, 5,) Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another: for every man shall bear his own burden." If, then, we count it so ignorant and irreligious in the Papist to think himself discharged in God's account, believing only as the church believes, how much greater condemnation will it be to the Protestant, his condemner, to think himself justified, believing only as the state believes!

With good cause, therefore, it is the general consent of all sound Protestant writers, that neither traditions, counsels, nor canons of any visible church, much less edicts of any magistrate or civil session, but the Scripture only, can be the final judge or rule in matters of religion, and that only in the conscience of every Christian to himself: which protestation made by the first public reformers of our religion against the imperial edicts of Charles the Fifth, imposing church traditions without Scripture, gave first beginning to the name of PROTESTANT; and with that name hath ever been received this doctrine, which prefers the Scripture before the Church, and acknowledges none but the Scripture sole interpreter of itself to the conscience. For if the church be not sufficient to be implicitly believed, as we hold it is not, what can there else be named of more authority than the church but the conscience; than which God only is greater? (1 John iii. 20). But if any man shall pretend that the Scripture judges to his conscience for other men, he makes himself greater not only than the church, but also than the Scripture, than the consciences of other men,- —a presumption too high for any mortal; since every true Christian able to give a reason of his faith, hath the word of God before him, the promised Holy Spirit, and the mind of Christ within him (1 Cor. ii. 16); ;-a much better and safer guide of conscience, which as far as concerns himself he may far more certainly know than any outward rule imposed upon him by others whom he inwardly neither knows nor can know, at least knows nothing of them more sure than this one thing, that they cannot be his judges in religion. 1 Cor. ii. 15, The spiritual man judgeth all things, but he himself is judged

of no man."

66

Chiefly for this cause do all true Protestants account

66

the Pope antichrist, for that he assumes to himself this infallibility over both the conscience and the Scripture; sitting in the temple of God," as it were opposite to God, "and exalting himself above all that is called God, or is worshiped" (2 Thess. ii. 4). That is to say, not only above all judges and magistrates, who, though they be called gods, are far beneath infallible, but also above God himself, by giving law both to the Scripture, to the conscience, and to the Spirit itself of God within us. Whereas we find, (James iv. 12,) "there is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?" That Christ is the only lawgiver of his church, and that it is here meant in religious matters, no well-grounded Christian will deny. Thus also St. Paul, (Rom. xiv. 4,) "Who art thou that judgest the servant of another? To his own lord he standeth or falleth but he shall stand; for God is able to make him stand." As, therefore, of one beyond expression bold and presumptuous, both these apostles demand, “Who art thou" that presumest to impose other law or judgment in religion than the only lawgiver and judge, Christ, who only can save and can destroy, gives to the conscience? And the forecited place to the Thessalonians by compared effects resolves us, that be he or they who or wherever they be or can be, they are of far less authority than the church, whom in these things as Protestants they receive not, and yet no less antichrist in this main point of antichristianism, no less a pope or popedom than he at Rome, if not much more, by setting up supreme interpreters of Scripture either those doctors whom they follow, or, which is far worse, themselves, as a civil papacy, assuming unaccountable supremacy to themselves, not in civil only, but ecclesiastical causes.

Seeing then that in matters of religion, as hath been proved, none can judge or determine here on earth—no, not church-governors themselves, against the consciences of other believers, my inference is, or rather not mine but our Saviour's own, that in those matters they neither can command nor use constraint, lest they run rashly on a pernicious consequence, forewarned in that parable, Matt. xiii. from verse 26 to 30,-"lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first