It was in such provincial Synods, that all disputes about matters of faith were determined and heresies condemned during the 3 first centuries of Christianity. It is in these that the authority and jurisdiction of the Church has in all ages been chiefly and most usefully exerted. ’Tis a hardship peculiar to the Church of England to be deprived of a benefit which all other Churches upon earth enjoy, and therefore it is much to be wished this right of holding provincial Synods were restored. There would then be no want of visible judge of doctrine and controversies, such as served to direct the primitive Christians and martyrs in the first ages of the Gospel in the way of salvation. There would not then be any want either of a ready antidote against any heretical or irreligious books that are published nowadays with encouragement rather than impunity, or of power to censure them and punch the authors thereof if they should prove to be Clergymen. There would not then, if any Bp. or other Ecclesiastick should preach and maintain any heretical tenets or assert any of the new erroneous doctrines which the Court or Church of Rome have grafted upon the ancient faith of the Church, or be guilty of any other crime the Canons have decreed to be punished with deprivation, be any want of canonical authority to take cognisance of the cause, and pronounce sentence in a regular manner. For it is in these provincial Synods that Bishops have in all ages of the Church been ever judged and deprived in such cases: and if the same method had been established in England in Q. Mary’s time, the church would not then have been ruined. For none of the Edwards Bps. were deprived canonically by a Synod of their comprovincial Bps., but by a few persons, some of them Laicks, empowered by a particular commission from Her Majesty. The High Commission Court has indeed been since put down by an Act of Parliament, which provides that neither that Court nor any like it shall ever be erected for the future. But lawyers may possible dispute whether that Act extends to such particular commission as Q. Mary issued (which perhaps were not thought of in 1690 when this Act passed); so that it is highly to be wished that Provincial Synods might be restored, and the offences of Bps. and Clergymen inferring deprivation, subject to their cognisance.