_Answ._ 1. When you tell us by your description what you will mean by a particular church, we may understand your denomination; but yet while it is unusual, you must not expect that other men so use the word. Had you called your description a definition, I would have asked you, 1. Whether by a society, you mean not strictly a political society constituted by a _pars gubernans, et gubernata_? If not, it is no church save equivocally. If so, should not the _pars regens_ which is constitutive have been put in? If private men join together, &c. it makes but a community. 2. A right to gospel ordinances is supposed, but need not be in the definition. 3. The enjoying of them, is not essential to a church. The relation may continue, when the enjoyment is a long time hindered. 4. Among them is a very ambiguous word; is it among them in the same place; or in the same country or kingdom; or in the same world? If you difference and define them not, by relation to the same bishops or pastors, and by intended personal holy communion, your description confoundeth the universal church, as well as the national, with a particular church; for the whole christian world, is a society of men joining together in the visible profession of the true faith, having a right to, and enjoying among them, the ordinances of the gospel.
_Object._ A nation joining in the profession of christianity is a true church of God; whence it evidently followeth, that there must be a form of ecclesiastical government over a nation as a church, as well as of civil government over it, as a society governed by the same laws.--For every society must have its government belonging to it as such a society; and the same reason that makes government necessary in any particular congregation, will make it necessary for all the particular congregations, joining together in one visible society, as a particular national church, for the unity and peace of that church ought much more to be looked after than any one particular congregation, &c.
_Answ._ 1. From one absurdity many follow: our controversy before was but of the name: if an accidental royal or civil head may equivocally denominate an ecclesiastical society, and we grant you the use of an equivocal name, (or rather the abuse,) you will grow too hard upon us, if thence you will gather a necessity of a real ecclesiastical policy, besides the civil. Names abused infer not the things signified by an univocal term.
2. You must first prove the form of government, and thence infer the denomination, and not, contrarily, first beg the name, and then infer the government.
3. If yet by a form of ecclesiastical government, you meant nothing but the king's extrinsic government, which you may as well call also a form of school government, of college government, &c. we would grant you all. But if I can understand you, you now speak of ecclesiastical government as distinct from that. And then,
4. You are now grown up from a may be, to a must be, and necessity; and a greater necessity of one national ecclesiastical government, than of a particular church government; which being undeniably of Christ's institution, (by the Holy Ghost in the apostles,) you do not make all forms to be indifferent, or deny this to be _jure divino_. What! necessary and more necessary than that which is _jure divino_, and yet indifferent and not _jure divino_? If you say, It is necessary only on supposition that there be a national church: I answer, But your reasons evidently infer that it is also necessary that there be such a national church where it may be had; though you deny the necessity of monarchical government by one high priest in it. But I know you call not this a form of government, unless as determinately managed by one, many or most. But why a national spiritual policy as distinct from congregational, may not be called a form of government, as well as one man is distinct from two, over the same people, I see not: but this is at your liberty. But your necessity of such a national regimen is a matter of greater moment.
In these three senses I confess a national church. 1. As all the christians in a nation are under one civil church governor. 2. As they are consociated for concord, and meet in synods or hold correspondences. 3. As they are all a part of the universal church, cohabiting in one nation. But all these are equivocal uses of the word church; the denomination being taken in the first from an accident; in the second the name of a policy being given to a community agreeing for concord; in the third the name of the whole is given to a small integral part.
But the necessity of any other church, headed by your ecclesiastical, national governor, personal or collective, monarchical, aristocratical, or democratical, I utterly deny, and find not a word of proof which I think I have any need to furnish the reader with an answer to.