_T. H._ For answer to this period, I say only this; that taking the church, as I do, in all those places, for a company of Christian men on earth incorporated into one person, that can speak, command, or do any act of a person, all that he citeth out of what I have written is true; and that all private conventicles, though their belief be right, are not properly called churches; and that there is not any one universal church here on earth, which is a person indued with authority universal to govern all Christian men on earth, no more than there is one universal sovereign prince or state on earth, that hath right to govern all mankind. I deny also that the whole clergy of a Christian kingdom or state being assembled, are the representative of that church further than the civil laws permit; or can lawfully assemble themselves, unless by the command or by the leave of the sovereign civil power. I say further, that the denial of this point tendeth in England towards the taking away of the king’s supremacy in causes ecclesiastical. But his Lordship has not here denied any thing of mine, because he has done no more but set down my words. He says further, that this doctrine destroys the authority of all general councils; which I confess. Nor hath any general council at this day in this kingdom the force of a law, nor ever had, but by the authority of the king. _J. D._ Neither is he more orthodox concerning the holy Scriptures: _hitherto_, that is, for the books of Moses, _the power of making the Scripture canonical, was in the civil sovereign_. The like he saith of the Old Testament, made canonical by Esdras. And of the New Testament, that _it was not the apostles which made their own writings canonical, but every convert made them so to himself_: yet with this restriction, that _until the sovereign ruler had prescribed them, they were but counsel and advice, which whether good or bad, he that was counselled might without injustice refuse to observe, and being contrary to the laws established, could not without injustice observe_. He maketh the primitive Christians to have been in a pretty condition. Certainly the gospel was contrary to the laws then established. But most plainly, _The word of the interpreter of the Scripture is the word of God_. And the _same is the interpreter of the Scripture, and the sovereign judge of all doctrines_, that is, the sovereign magistrate, _to whose authority we must stand no less, than to theirs, who at first did commend the Scripture to us for the canon of faith_. Thus if Christian sovereigns, of different communications, do clash one with another, in their interpretation, or misinterpretation of Scripture, as they do daily, then the word of God is contradictory to itself; or that is the word of God in one commonwealth, which is the word of the Devil in another commonwealth. And the same thing may be true, and not true at the same time: which is the peculiar privilege of T. H.