(f) Concerning synods,[w] the Platform asserts that they are "necessary to the well-being of churches for the establishment of truth and peace therein;" that they are to consist of elders, or ministerial delegates, and also of lay delegates, or "messengers;" that their function is to determine controversies over questions of faith, to debate matters of general interest, to guide and to express judgment upon churches, "rent by discord or lying under open scandal." Synods could be called by the churches, and also by the magistrates through an order to the churches to send their elders and messengers, but they were not to be permanent bodies. On the contrary, unlike the synods of the Presbyterian system, they were to be disbanded when the work of the special session for which they were summoned was finished. Moreover, they were not "to exercise church censure in the way of discipline nor any other act of authority or jurisdiction;" yet their judgments were to be received, "so far as consonant to the word of God," since they were judged to be an ordinance of God appointed in his Word. (g) The Platform's section "Of the Civil Magistrate in matters Ecclesiastical"[x] maintains that magistrates cannot compel subjects to become church-members; that they ought not to meddle with the proper work of officers of the churches, but that they ought to see to it that godliness is upheld, and the decrees of the church obeyed. To accomplish these ends, they should exert all the civil authority intrusted to them, and their foremost duty was to put down blasphemy, idolatry, and heresy. In any question as to what constituted the last, the magistrates assisted by the elders were to decide and to determine the measure of the crime. They were to punish the heretic, not as one who errs in an intellectual judgment, but as a moral leper and for whose evil influence the community was responsible to God. The civil magistrates were also to punish all profaners of the Sabbath, all contemners of the ministry, all disturbers of public worship, and to proceed "against schismatic or obstinately corrupt churches." These seven points summarize the important work of the Cambridge Synod and the Platform wherein it embodied the church usage and fixed the ecclesiastical customs of New England. Concerning its own work, the Synod remarked in conclusion that it "hopes that this will be a proof to the churches beyond the seas that the New England churches are free from heresies and from the character of schism," and that "in the doctrinal part of religion they have agreed entirely with the Reformed churches of England." [36]