3. The public decision of doubts or controversies about faith itself, or the true sense of God's word and laws, as obliging the whole church on earth to believe that decision, or not gainsay it, because of the infallibility or governing authority of the deciders, belongeth to none but Jesus Christ; because, as is said, he hath made no universal governor, nor infallible expositor.[272] It belongeth to the lawgiver only to make such a universally obliging exposition of his own laws. 4. True bishops or pastors in their own particular churches are authorized teachers and guides, in expounding the laws and word of Christ; and the people are bound as learners to reverence their teaching, and not contradict it without true cause; yea, and to believe them _fide humana_, in things pertinent to their office: for _oportet discentem credere_. 5. No such pastors are to be absolutely believed, nor in any case of notorious error or heresy, where the word of God is discerned to be against them. 6. For all the people as reasonable creatures, have a judgment of private discerning to judge what they must receive as truth, and to discern their own duty, by the help of the word of God, and of their teachers. 7. The same power of governing judgment lawful synods have over their several flocks, as a pastor over his own, but with greater advantage. 8. The power of judging in many consociate churches, who is to be taken into communion as orthodox, and who to be refused by those churches as heretics, _in specie_, that is, what doctrine they will judge sound or unsound, as it is _judicium discernendi_, belongeth to every one of the council singly: as it is a judgment obliging themselves by contract, (and not of governing each other,) it is in the contracters and consenters; and for peace and order usually in the major vote; but with the limitations before expressed. 9. Every true christian believeth all the essentials of christianity, with a divine faith, and not by a mere human belief of his teachers, though by their help and teaching his faith is generated, and confirmed, and preserved. Therefore no essential article of christianity is left to any obliging decision of any church, but only to a subservient obliging teaching: as whether there be a God, a Christ, a heaven, a hell, an immortality of souls? Whether God be to be believed, loved, feared, obeyed before man? Whether the Scripture be God's word, and true? Whether those that contradict it are to be believed therein? Whether pastors, assemblies, public worship, baptism, sacrament of the Lord's supper, be divine institutions? And the same I may say of any known word of God: no mortals may judge in _partem utramlibet_, but the pastors are only authorized teachers and helpers of the people's faith. (And so they be partly to one another.)