are to be examined; and unless a man knows what the Church was in centuries before the Reformation, he will see but darkly into the troubled waters of later times, in which faction and party have confounded things; and it hath become as much the interest of some, that the Church of Christ should be found every where, as it is the desire of others that it should be found no where.... If we would guard against popular mistakes in the subject at large, it will be necessary to examine first, what the Church was under the Old Testament; for there we find its original establishment, its form, its authority, its ministry, its unity and uniformity, its maintenance, its independence; which things being so particularly laid down, no new establishment is to be found in the Epistles or the Gospels of the New Testament, but the ancient constitution is referred to, to show us, in certain cases, what ought to be from what had been....... From the Scripture we should proceed next to observe, what the Church was in the first ages of the Gospel, before worldly policy, miscalled moderation, had any influence upon the opinions of Christians. There is an epistle of St. Clement, on Church unity and Church authority, with which all students in divinity should be acquainted. It will teach them what the Christian society then was, and what it ought to be. Ignatius and Cyprian, both of them martyrs, will give further instruction. The latter is so particular and copious, that a code of discipline might nearly be formed upon his authority. With these preparations, we shall be the better able to judge of what happened at the Reformation, when many things were right and many wrong; when the Church of England, by the singular blessing of God, preserved its constitution and its doctrines, while many of the reformed fell off by degrees, some into disorder, some into dissolution. What remains with us we must defend and preserve; trusting that the same God who hath raised this Church, when trodden down to the dust, will never forsake us till we forsake Him......
But I must now hasten, in the last place, to a subject of more quietness or less suspicion [than the subject of civil government], in which wise men of all persuasions are more nearly of a mind; 1 mean, the conduct of the Christian life. Modern times and
