OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY.

Pref. c. iii. 7. p. 182.

The next thing hereunto is, to impute all faults and corruptions,
wherewith the world aboundeth, unto the kind of ecclesiastical
government established.

How readily would this, and indeed all the disputes respecting the
powers and constitution of Church government have been settled, or
perhaps prevented, had there been an insight into the distinct nature
and origin of the National Church and the Church under Christ! [3] To
the ignorance of this, all the fierce contentions between the Puritans
and the Episcopalians under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, all the errors
and exorbitant pretensions of the Church of Scotland, and the heats and
antipathies of our present Dissenters, may be demonstrably traced.

Ib. 9. p. 183.

Pythagoras, by bringing up his scholars in the speculative knowledge
of numbers, made their conceits therein so strong, that when they came
to the contemplation of things natural, they imagined that in every
particular thing they even beheld as it were with their eyes, how the
elements of number gave essence and being to the works of nature: a
thing in reason impossible; which notwithstanding, through their
mis-fashioned pre-conceit, appeared unto them no less certain, than if
nature had written it in the very foreheads of all the creatures of
God.

I am not so conversant with the volumes of Duns Scotus as to be able to