great act of charity to men's souls, reducing pertinacious sinners to repentance, should be so, either wholly dilapidated, or piteously deformed, as to continue in the Church, only under one of these two notions, either of an empty piece of formality, or of an engine of state and secular contrivance, (the true Christian use of shaming sinners into reformation, being well nigh vanished out of Christendom,) might by an alien, or an heathen, much more by the pondering Christian, be conceived very strange and unreasonable, were it not a little clear that we are fallen into those times, of which it was foretold by two Apostles, that in "these last days, there should come scoffers, walking after their own lusts," &c.... I shall design to infer no further conclusion, but only this, that they which live ill in the profession of a most holy faith.... but especially they that discharge and banish out of the Church those means which might help to make the generality of Christians better, have the spirit of Antichrist working into them, even when (they think themselves most zealously busied in beating down his kingdom. What those means are which might most effectually tend to the amending the lives of Christians, I shall need no farther to interpose my judgment, than, 1st, by submitting it to Christ, who put the keys into the Apostles' hands, on purpose as a means to exemplify the end of His coming..... 2nd, by minding myself and others what the Apostles say of this power, that it was given them πρὃς οἰκοδομὴν, to build up the Church of Christ, &c.
Chapter 3. The only difficulty remaining on the point, will be, who are the Apostles' successors in that power; and when the question is asked of that power, I must be understood of the power of governing the Church peculiarly, (of which the power of the keys was and is a principal branch,) for it must again be remembered that the Apostles are to be considered under a double notion, first, as planters, then as governors, of the Church.... Which distinction being premised, the question will now more easily be satisfied, being proposed in these terms; who were the Apostles' successors in that power, which concerned the governing their Churches which they planted? and first, I answer, that it being a matter of fact, or story, later than that the Scripture
