The Conclusion: Shewing that neither God, nor Christ, or the Apostles, ever instituted any Government Ecclesiastical or

TO sum up this second book in the uses that may be made of it: certain it is of the Greec and Roman storys, that he who has not som good idea or notion of the government to which they relate, cannot rightly understand them. If the like holds as to the Scripture story, som light may be contributed to it by this book. Again, if som gifted men happening to read it, should chance to be of the same judgment, it is an argument for acquir’d learning, in that for the means of acquir’d learning, and in the means of acquir’d learning for universitys. For how little soever this performance be, had it not bin the fashion with the English gentry, in the breeding of their sons, to give them a smack of the university, I should not have don so much.

But letting these pass. If there were commonwealths, or governments exercising soverain power by the senat and the people, before that of Israel, as namely, Gibeon: if the inferior orders and courts in Israel, as those instituted by Moses after the advice of Jethro a Heathen, were transcrib’d out of another government tho Heathen, as namely, that of Midian: if the order of the church introduc’d by Christ in his twelve apostles and his seventy disciples, were after the pattern of Israel, namely, in the twelve princes of the tribes, and the seventy elders: if there were three distinct ways of ordination introduc’d by the apostles; one exactly according to the ballot of Israel, as namely, in the ordination of Matthias; another exactly according to the way of the Jewish sanhedrim or synagog, as namely, that of Timothy; and a third, compos’d of these two, as namely, that of the deacons: then it is a clear and undeniable result of the whole, that neither God, nor Christ, or the Apostles, ever instituted any government ecclesiastical or civil upon any other principles than those only of human prudence.

An observation of such consequence, as, where it has bin rightly consider’d, there the truth of religion and of government once planted, have taken root and flourish’d; and where it has not bin rightly heeded, there has religion or the pretence of it bin the hook and the line, and the state the prey of impostors and false prophets, as was shewn in the hypocritical Pharisees, for ever stigmatiz’d by the word of truth.

And for might, let her be never so much exalted in her self, let her sword be never so dreadfully brandish’d; the government not founded upon reason, a creature of God, and the creature of God whose undoubted right in this part is by himself undeniably avow’d and asserted, is a weapon fram’d against God; and no weapon fram’d against God shall prosper.

The principles of human prudence, and in them the art of lawgiving, being shewn in the first book, and vindicated throout the whole course of Scripture by this second, I com in the third to shew a model of government, fram’d according to the art thus shewn, and the principles thus vindicated.