[Sidenote:  Brownists and Barrowists]

A third inducement may be to dislike of the discipline, if we consider not only how far the Reformers themselves have proceeded, but what others upon their foundations have built.  Here come the Brownists[5] in the first rank, their lineal descendants, who have seized upon a number of strange opinions; whereof, although their ancestors, the Reformers, were never actually possessed, yet, by right and interest from them derived, the Brownists and Barrowists[6] have taken possession of them:  for if the positions of the Reformers be true, I cannot see how the main and general conclusions of Brownism should be false; for upon these two points, as I conceive, they stand.

[Sidenote:  Their two points]

1.  That, because we have no Church, they are to sever themselves from us. 2.  That without Civil authority they are to erect a Church of their own.  And if the former of these be true, the latter, I suppose, will follow:  for if above all things men be to regard their salvation; and if out of the Church there be no salvation; it followeth, that, if we have no Church, we have no means of salvation; and therefore separation from us in that respect is both lawful and necessary; as also, that men, so separated from the false and counterfeit Church, are to associate themselves unto some Church; not to ours; to the Popish much less; therefore to one of their own making.  Now the ground of all these inferences being this, That in our Church there is no means of salvation, is out of the Reformers’ principles most clearly to be proved.  For wheresoever any matter of faith unto salvation necessary is denied, there can be no means of salvation; but in the Church of England, the discipline, by them accounted a matter of faith, and necessary to salvation, is not only denied, but impugned, and the professors thereof oppressed. Ergo.

Again,—­but this reason perhaps is weak,—­every true Church of Christ acknowledgeth the whole Gospel of Christ:  the discipline, in their opinion, is a part of the Gospel, and yet by our Church resisted. Ergo.

[Sidenote:  Essential discipline]

Again, the discipline is essentially united to the Church:  by which term essentially, they must mean either an essential part, or an essential property.  Both which ways it must needs be, that where that essential discipline is not, neither is there any Church.  If therefore between them and the Brownists there should be appointed a solemn disputation, whereof with us they have been oftentimes so earnest challengers; it doth not yet appear what other answer they could possibly frame to these and the like arguments, wherewith they may be pressed, but fairly to deny the conclusion,—­for all the premises are their own,—­or rather ingeniously to reverse their own principles before laid, whereon so foul absurdities have been so firmly built.  What further proofs you can bring out