_Minor_. But the church guides have the ecclesiastical power and the exercise thereof immediately committed to them from Jesus Christ. This may be evinced many ways by Scriptures. 1. It is said expressly, "Of our authority which the Lord hath given us for your edification," 2 Cor. 10, 8: by _us_ here we are to understand church guides, for here they are set in opposition to the church members (_for edification_,) not destruction of (you.) Here are edifiers and edified. Now these church guides have authority given them, and that from the Lord, i.e. Christ; here is their commission or power, not from the Church or any creature, but from Christ; hence the apostle calls church guides, "Your rulers or guides in the Lord," 1 Thes. v. 12; _in the Lord_, i.e. by the Lord's authority and commission. So that church officers are _rulers in the Lord_, and the churches ruled by them; yea, ruling elders being one sort of church guides, have such an undoubted power of governing in the Church divinely committed to them, that of them it is said, "God hath set in the church governments", 1 Cor. xii. 28, i.e. governors, the abstract being put for the concrete. If _God have set governors in the Church_, then God vested those governors with a power of governing, whence they have their name of governments. 2. The keys of the kingdom of heaven, with all their acts, were immediately committed to the church guides, viz. to the apostles and their successors to the end of the world; compare these testimonies, Matt. xvi. 16, 19, and xviii. 18-20; John xx. 21-23; with Matt, xxviii. 18-20: therefore consequently ecclesiastical power was committed immediately unto them as the subject thereof. For, _By the kingdom of heaven_ here we are to understand (according to the full latitude of the phrase) both the kingdom of grace in this world, and of glory in the world to come; _binding and loosing both in earth and in heaven_, upon the right use of the keys, being here the privileges promised to church guides; and _by kingdom of heaven_--on earth, understand the whole visible Church of Christ in the earth, not only some single congregation. By _keys of the kingdom of heaven_, thus apprehend, Christ promiseth and giveth not the sword _of the kingdom_, any secular power; nor the sceptre _of the kingdom_, any sovereign, lordly, magisterial power over the Church. But the _keys_, &c. i.e. a stewardly, ministerial power, and their acts, _binding and loosing_, i.e. _retaining and remitting sins on earth_, (as in John it is explained;) opening and shutting are proper acts of keys; binding and loosing but metaphorical, viz. a speech borrowed from bonds or chains wherewith men's bodies are bound in prison or in captivity, or from which the body is loosed: we are naturally all under sin, Rom. v. 12, and therefore liable to death, Rom. vi. 23. Now sins are to the soul as bonds and cords, Prov. v. 22. _The bond of iniquity_, Acts viii. 23; and death with the pains thereof,