To conclude our answer to this exception, if the benefit of appeals be not as free to us as to the Jews, the yoke of the gospel should be more intolerable than the yoke of the law; the poor afflicted Christian might groan and cry under an unjust and tyrannical eldership, and no ecclesiastical judicatory to relieve him; whereas the poor oppressed Jew might appeal to the Sanhedrin: certainly this is contrary to that prophecy of Christ, Psal. lxxii. 12, 14. _Argum_. III. A third argument to prove the subordination of particular congregations, is taken from the institution of our Saviour Christ, of gradual appeals, Matt, xviii. 17, 18, where our Saviour hath appointed a particular member of a church (if scandalous) to be gradually dealt withal; first to be reproved in private, then to be admonished before two or three witnesses, and last of all to be complained of to the church: whence we thus argue: If Christ hath instituted that the offence of an obstinate brother should be complained of to the church; then much more is it intended that the obstinacy of a great number, suppose of a whole church, should be brought before a higher assembly: but the former is true, therefore the latter. The consequence, wherein the strength of the argument lies, is proved several ways. 1. From the rule of proportion: by what proportion one or two are subject to a particular church, by the same proportion is that church subject to a provincial or a national assembly; and by the same proportion that one congregation is governed by the particular eldership representing it, by the same proportion are ten or twelve congregations governed by a classical presbytery representing them all. 2. From the sufficiency of that remedy that Christ here prescribes for those emergent exigencies under which the Church may lie; since, therefore, offences may as well arise between two persons in the same congregation, Christ hath appointed that particular congregations, as well as members, shall have liberty to complain and appeal to a more general judgment for redress: the salve here prescribed by Christ is equal to the sore; if the sore of scandal may overspread whole churches, as well as particular persons, then certainly the salve of appeals and subordination is here also appointed. If a man be scandalized by the neighbor-church, to whom shall he complain? The church offending must not be both judge and party. 3. From that ecclesiastical communion that is between churches and churches in one and the same province or nation, whereby churches are joined and united together in doctrine and discipline into one body, as well as divers particular persons in a particular congregation; since, therefore, scandals may be committed among them that are in that holy communion one with another, most unworthy of and destructive to that sacred league, certainly those scandals should be redressed by a superior judicatory, as well as offences between brother and brother.