The power they exercise, is such as Christ has given to his own people, to the end of the world, in the persons of his disciples, viz. To oversee, exhort, reprove, and, after long suffering and waiting upon the disobedient and refractory, to disown them, as any longer of their communion, or that they will stand charged with the behaviour of such transgressors, or their conversation, until they repent. The subject matter about which this authority, in any of the foregoing branches of it, is exercised, is, first, in relation to common and general practice. And, secondly, about those things that more strictly refer to their own character and profession, and which distinguish them from all other professors of Christianity; avoiding two extremes upon which many split, viz. persecution and libertinism, that is, a coercive power to whip people into the temple; that such as will not conform, though against faith and conscience, shall be punished in their persons or estates; or leaving all loose and at large, as to practice; and so unaccountable to all but God and the magistrate. To which hurtful extreme, nothing has more contributed than the abuse of church power, by such as suffer their passion and private interests to prevail with them, to carry it to outward force and corporal punishment: a practice they have been taught to dislike, by their extreme sufferings, as well as their known principle for a universal liberty of conscience. On the other hand, they equally dislike an independency in society:--an unaccountableness, in practice and conversation, to the rules and terms of their own communion, and to those that are the members of it. They distinguish between imposing any practice that immediately regards faith or worship, which is never to be done or suffered, or submitted unto; and requiring Christian compliance with those methods that only respect church-business in its more civil part and concern; and that regard the discreet and orderly maintenance of the character of the society as a sober and religious community. In short, what is for the promotion of holiness and charity, that men may practise what they profess, live up to their own principles, and not be at liberty to give the lie to their own profession without rebuke, is their use and limit of church power. They compel none to them, but oblige those that are of them to walk suitably, or they are denied by them: that is all the mark they set upon them, and the power they exercise, or judge a Christian society can exercise, upon those that are members of it.