CHAPTER II.

A CONFUTATION OF THAT WHICH MR COLEMAN HATH SAID AGAINST CHURCH
GOVERNMENT; SHOWING ALSO THAT HIS LAST REPLY IS NOT MORE, BUT LESS
SATISFACTORY THAN THE FORMER, AND FOR THE MOST PART IS BUT A
TERGIVERSATION AND FLEEING FROM ARGUMENTS BROUGHT AGAINST HIM, AND FROM
MAKING GOOD HIS OWN ASSERTIONS AND ARGUMENTS CONCERNING THE DISTINCTION OF
CIVIL AND CHURCH GOVERNMENT.

The reverend brother said in his sermon, "I could never yet see how two
coordinate governments, exempt from superiority and inferiority, can be in
one state." To overthrow this general thesis, I brought some instances to
the contrary; such as the governments of a general and an admiral, of a
master and a father, of a captain and a master in a ship. He being thus
put to his vindication, replieth, "The Commissioner acknowledgeth he did
not apply them to the Assembly (I said the General Assembly) and
Parliament; yet that was the controversy in hand," _Male Dicis_, p. 5.
But, by his favour, that was not the controversy; for he was not speaking
particularly against the distinction of the government of the General
Assembly and of the government of the Parliament (neither had he one
syllable to that purpose), but generally against the distinction of church
government and civil government, and particularly against excommunication;
in all which he excluded presbyteries as well as General Assemblies.
Wherefore he doth now recede not only from defending his thesis, but from
applying it against the power of presbyteries. And so far we are agreed.

2. I having confuted his argument grounded on Psal. xxxiii. 15; Prov.
xxvii. 19, he shifteth the vindication of it, and still tells me he
grounded no argument on those places, but spake "by way of allusion,"
_Male Dicis_, p. 6. Now let the reader judge. His words to the Parliament
were these: "Might I measure others by myself, and I know not why I may
not (God fashions men's hearts alike; and as in water face answers face,
so the heart of man to man), I ingenuously profess I have a heart that
knows better how to be governed than govern; I fear an ambitious
ensnarement," &c. This argument, there largely prosecuted, hath no other
ground but the parenthesis using the words (though not quoting the places)
of Scripture. And now, forsooth, he hath served the Parliament well, when,
being put to make good the sole confirmation of his argument, he tells it
was but an allusion. But this is not all.