Diocesan Synods never intermeddled in matters of faith. Their business was confined to points of mere discipline, and their chief care was to make proper regulations for inforcing the practise of that discipline, and to provide for the due observance of the Canons within their district. Offences against these were also within their cognisance, and whatever else was under the jurisdiction of the Bp. in his single capacity, came also before him when at the head of these Synods; which may be composed either of all incumbents in his Diocese, or of the Chapter of the Cathedral, the Archdeacons, Rural Deans, and two Proctors chosen by the Clergy of each Deanery. And if in the interval of these Synods a Bp. was obliged to consult with the Chapter of his Church, and the Rural Deans of his Diocese before he gave judgment in any cause, and to use them as his co-assessors in hearing it, this would add much to the dignity and effect of such sentence, and would probably reconcile abundance to Episcopary, that are at present disaffected to that kind of government. There was in the last Sitting Convocation in 1713/4 a proposal made and an intention formed of reviving the institution of Rural Deans, and it would probably have taken place in the next, had there not happened a change of government which has ever since put an end to the Sitting of Convocations. But were that old institution revived, and such a method of episcopal and synodical jurisdiction settled, it might easily be so adjusted, as to reform abundance of shameful practices in the spiritual Courts to prevent any false doctrines either heretical or Roman from being instilled into the people. For whilst there is so short and easy a method of calling those who reach them to an accompt before their brethren of the Clergy in their own neighbourhood, scarce anybody will dare to attempt such an innocation, when he must expect a censure to be immediately passed upon him by his Bp. not alone, but assisted by a venerable Council of Rural Deans recommended for their merit by the body of the Clergy, and antecedent to his crime approved of and constituted by their Diocesan. There was at the same time another proposal made of reviving also the charge of Suffragan Bps. as anciently used in the Church of England, or as at last regulated in the reign of Henry, and continued to that of Q. Elizabeth. And as some Dioceses in England are too large, they might be very useful for the due exercise of discipline, as well as for reforming the corruptions and lessening the power of Spiritual Courts.