10. If the pope, or his council, were the infallible or the governing expositors of all God's laws and Scriptures, 1. God would have enabled them to do it by a universal commentary which all men should be obliged to believe, or at least not to contradict. For there is no authority and obligation given to men (yea, to so many successively) to do that (for the needful decision of controversies) which they never have ability given them to do. For that were to oblige them to things impossible. 2. And the pope and his council would be the most treacherous miscreants on earth, that in so many hundred years, would never write such an infallible nor governing commentary, to end the differences of the christian world. Indeed they have judged (with others) against Arius, that Christ is true God, and one with the Father in substance, &c. But if they had said the contrary, must we have taken it for God's truth, or have believed them? 11. To judge who, for heresy or scandal, shall be punished by the sword, belongeth to none but the magistrate in his own dominions: as to judge who shall have communion or be excommunicated from the church, belongeth, as aforesaid, to the pastors. And the said magistrate hath first as a man his own judgment of discerning what is heresy, and who of his subjects are guilty of it, in order to his public governing judgment. 12. The civil, supreme ruler may antecedently exercise this judgment of discerning (by the teaching of their proper teachers) in order to his consequent sentences on offenders; and so in his laws may tell the subjects, what doctrines and practices he will either tolerate or punish. And thus may the church pastors do in their canons to their several flocks, in relation to communion or non-communion. 13. He that will condemn particular persons as heretics or offenders, must allow them to speak for themselves, and hear the proofs, and give them that which justice requireth, &c. And if the pope can do so at the antipodes, and in all the world, either _per se_, or _per alium_, without giving that other his essential claimed power, let him prove it by better experience than we have had. 14. As the prime and sole universal legislation belongeth to Jesus Christ, so the final judgment, universal and particular, belongeth to him, which only will end all controversies, and from which there is no appeal. [271] Eph. iv. 7, 13-16; 1 Cor. xii. 28, 29; Acts xv. 17. [272] See my "Key for Catholics." Quest. XXIX. _Whether a parent's power over his children, or a pastor or many pastors or bishops over the same children, as parts of their flock, be greater, or more obliging in matters of religion and public worship?_ This being touched on somewhere else, I only now say, That if the case were my own, I would, 1. Labour to know their different powers, as to the matter commanded, and obey each in that which is proper to its place.