_Answ._ It hath many a time grieved me to hear so easy a question frequently propounded, and pitifully answered, by such as the public good required to have had more understanding in such things. In a word, judgment is public or private. The private judgment, which is nothing but a rational discerning of truth and duty, in order to our own choice and practice, belongeth to every rational person. The public judgment is ever in order to execution. Now the execution is of two sorts, 1. By the sword. 2. By God's word applied to the case and person. One is upon the body or estate; the other is upon the conscience of the person, or of the church, to bring him to repentance, or to bind him to avoid communion with the church, and the church to avoid communion with him.[66] And thus public judgment is civil or ecclesiastical; coercive and violent in the execution; or only upon consenters and volunteers. In the first, the magistrate is the only judge, and the pastors in the second. About faith or worship, if the question be, Who shall be protected as orthodox, and who shall be punished by the sword as heretical, idolatrous, or irreligious? here the magistrate is the only judge. If the question be, Who shall be admitted to church communion as orthodox, or ejected and excommunicated as heretical or profane? here the pastors are the proper judges. This is the truth, and this is enough to end all the voluminous wranglings upon the question, Who shall be judge? and to answer the cavils of the papists against the power of princes in matters of religion. It is pity that such gross and silly sophisms, in a case that a child may answer, should debase christian princes, and take away their chief power, and give it to a proud and wrangling clergy, to persecute and divide the church with.[67] [Sidenote: Of the oath of supremacy.] _Quest._ II. May our oath of supremacy be lawfully taken, wherein the king is pronounced supreme governor in all causes ecclesiastical as well as civil?