This is now grown to so intolerable an height, that at present there is not any Ecclesiastical authority in England to call a Clergyman to an accompt, and punish him for preaching or printing any heretical doctrine or any erroneous tenets of the Court of Rome: so that unless the Common Law be restrained in this respect, and the use and authority of provincial and diocesan Synods be revived, I do not see how it can be practicable to secure the Church of England from being overrun with false doctrines. For unless there be a short and easy way of punishing those that vent them, many will be induced to do so, when temptations shall be offered and encouragements given for the attempt: and this power can be vested nowhere so properly, so safely and so unexceptionally as in provincial and diocesan Synods, agreeable to the constitution of the Primitive Church. If it be apprehended that these Synods may be apt to assume too great a power (not to say that such an apprehension is groundless) it is a very easy matter to prevent their doing so by restraining their jurisdiction to the crimes of heresy, false doctrine and Simony and to the persons of the Clergy, leaving all Laicks who are guilty of the like offences to the cognisance of the Civil Courts. 3. Another method for the security of religion is, to distinguish between _Legatine_, and the _Archiepiscopal_ power of the ArchBp. of Canterbury, and to reduce that exorbitant power he possesses at present to what it was before the year 1400, when he enjoyed only his Archiepiscopal authority, not being made _legaties natus_ till after that year. These two powers are compounded at present, and the ArchBp., though he enjoys the legatine, only in virtue of the exercise thereof by his predecessors, derived originally from a Papal grant of no force in England, does yet continue to exercise it, tho’ he hereby encroaches upon the jurisdiction and rights of all the Bishops and the Kingdom in several cases, and by the abuse thereof may ruin the established church when he pleases. It was in virtue of this Legatine power, which is as yet affirmed by no law, that Dr. Tennison deprived Watson Bp. of St. Davids by his single authority; tho’ according to the ancient Canons and constitution of the Christian Church, no Bp. can be regularly condemned, but by the sentence of a Provincial Synod, in which twelve Bps. are present. ’Tis easy to see how fatal such a claim of power, now supported by the seeming countenance of an House of Lords, may be in its consequence to the Church of England.