The assemblies of the people thus divided were methodically gathered by trumpets to the congregation: which was, it should seem, of two sorts. For if it were called with one trumpet only, the princes of the tribes and the elders only assembled; but if it were called with two, the whole people gathered themselves to the congregation, for so it is rendered by the English; but in the Greek it is called Ecclesia, or the Church of God, and by the Talmudist the great “Synagogue.” The word Ecclesia was also anciently and properly used for the civil congregations, or assemblies of the people in Athens, Lacedaemon, and Ephesus, where it is so called in Scripture, though it be otherwise rendered by the translators, not much as I conceive to their commendation, seeing by that means they have lost us a good lesson, the apostles borrowing that name for their spiritual congregations, to the end that we might see they intended the government of the church to be democratical or popular, as is also plain in the rest of their constitutions. The church or congregation of the people of Israel assembled in a military manner, and had the result of the commonwealth, or the power of confirming all their laws, though proposed even by God himself; as where they make him king, and where they reject or depose him as civil magistrate, and elect Saul. It is manifest that he gives no such example to a legislator in a popular government as to deny or evade the power of the people, which were a contradiction; but though he deservedly blames the ingratitude of the people in that action, he commands Samuel, being next under himself supreme magistrate, “to hearken to their voice” (for where the suffrage of the people goes for nothing, it is no commonwealth), and comforts him, saying, “They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them.” But to reject him that he should not reign over them, was as civil magistrate to depose him. The power therefore which the people had to depose even God himself as he was civil magistrate, leaves little doubt but that they had power to have rejected any of those laws confirmed by them throughout the Scripture, which, to omit the several parcels, are generally contained under two heads: those that were made by covenant with the people in the land of Moab, and those which were made by covenant with the people in Horeb; which two, I think, amount to the whole body of the Israelitish laws.