3;--That the establishment of Bishops by the Apostle Paul being granted (as who can deny it?)--yet was this done 'jure Apostolico' for the universal Church in all places and ages; or only as expedient for that time and under those circumstances; by Paul not as an Apostle, but as the head and founder of those particular churches, and so entitled to determine their bye laws? DEDICATION OF THE SACRED ORDER AND OFFICES OF EPISCOPACY. Ib. p. xxiii. But the interest of the Bishops is conjunct with the prosperity of the King, besides the interest of their own security, by the obligation of secular advantages. For they who have their livelihood from the King, and are in expectance of their fortune from him, are more likely to pay a tribute of exacter duty, than others, whose fortunes are not in such immediate dependency on His Majesty. The cat out of the bag! Consult the whole reigns of Charles I. and II. and the beginning of James II. Jeremy Taylor was at this time (blamelessly for himself and most honourably for his patrons) ambling on the high road of preferment; and to men so situated, however sagacious in other respects, it is not given to read the signs of the times. Little did Taylor foresee that to indiscreet avowals, like these, on the part of the court clergy, the exauctorations of the Bishops and the temporary overthrow of the Church itself would be in no small portion attributable. But the scanty measure and obscurity (if not rather, for so bright a luminary, the occultation) of his preferment after the Restoration is a problem, of which perhaps his virtues present the most probable solution. Ib. p. xxv. A second return that episcopacy makes to royalty, is that which is the duty of all Christians, the paying tributes and impositions. This is true; and it was an evil hour for the Church,--and led to the loss of its Convocation, the greatest and, in an enlarged state-policy, the most impolitic affront ever offered by a government to its own established Church,--in which the clergy surrendered their right of taxing themselves. Ib. p. xxvii. I mean the conversion of the kingdom from Paganism by St. Augustine, Archbishop of Canterbury; and the Reformation begun and promoted by Bishops. From Paganism in part; but in part from primitive Christianity to Popery. But neither this nor the following boast will bear narrow looking into, I suspect. 'In fine.' Like all Taylor's dedications and dedicatory epistles, this is easy, dignified, and pregnant. The happiest 'synthesis' of the divine, the scholar, and the gentleman was perhaps exhibited in him and Bishop Berkeley. Introd. p.3. In all those accursed machinations, which the device and artifice of hell hath invented for the supplanting of the Church, 'inimicus homo,' that old superseminator of heresies and crude mischiefs, hath endeavoured to be curiously compendious, and, with Tarquin's device, 'putare summa papaverum.'