Page:The reason of church-governement urg'd against prelaty - Milton (1641).djvu/59

inward bed of corruption, and that hectick disposition to evill, the sourse of all vice, and obliquity against the rule of Law. Which how insufficient it is to cure the soul of man, we cannot better guesse then by the art of bodily phisick. Therefore God to the intent of further healing mans deprav'd mind, to this power of the Magistrat which contents it self with the restraint of evil doing in the external man, added that which we call censure, to purge it and remove it clean out of the inmost soul. In the beginning this autority seems to have bin plac't, as all both civil and religious rites once were, only in each father of family. Afterwards among the heathen, in the wise men and Philosophers of the age; but so as it was a thing voluntary, and no set government. More distinctly among the Jews as being Gods peculiar, where the Priests, Levites, Profets, and at last the Scribes and Pharises took charge of instructing, and overseeing the lives of the people. But in the Gospel, which is the straitest and the dearest cov'nant can be made between God and man, wee being now his adopted sons, and nothing fitter for us to think on, then to be like him, united to him, and as he pleases to expresse it, to have fellowship with him, it is all necessity that we should expect this blest efficacy of healing our inward man to be minister'd to us in a more familiar and effectual method then ever before. God being now no more a judge after the sentence of the Law, nor as it were a schoolmaister of perishable rites, but a most indulgent father governing his Church as a family of sons in their discreet age; and therfore in the sweetest and mildest manner of paternal discipline he hath committed this other office of preserving in healthful constitution the innerman, which may be term'd the spirit of the soul, to his spiritual deputy the minister of each Congregation; who being best acquainted with his own flock, hath best reason to know all the secretest diseases likely to be there. And look by how much the internal man is more excellent and noble then the external, by so much is his cure more exactly, more throughly, and more particularly to be perform'd. For which cause the holy Ghost by the Apostles joyn'd to the minister, as assistant in this great office sometimes a certain number of grave and faithful brethren, (for neither doth the phisitian doe all in restoring his patient, he prescribes, another prepares the med'cin, some tend, some watch, some visit) much more may a minister partly not see all, partly erre as a man: besides that nothing can be more for the mutuall honour and love of the people to their