The major is evident: for how can the magistrate, as a magistrate, receive such a power as is really and essentially distinct and different from magistracy? Were not that to make the magistratical power both really the same with itself, and yet really and essentially different from itself? A flat contradiction. The minor may be clearly evinced many ways: as, 1st, From the real and formal distinction between the two societies, viz. the Church and commonwealth, wherein ecclesiastical and political power are peculiarly seated. 2d. From the co-ordination of the power ecclesiastical and political, in reference to one another. 3d. From the different causes of these two powers, viz. efficient, material, formal, and final; in all which they are truly distinguished from one another. 1st. From the real and formal distinction between the two societies, viz. church and commonwealth: for, 1. The society of the Church is only Christ's, and not the civil magistrate's: it is his _house_, his _spouse_, his _body_, &c., and Christ hath no vicar[33] under him. 2. The officers ecclesiastical are Christ's officers, not the magistrate's, 1 Cor. iv. 1: _Christ gave_ them, Eph. iv. 8, 10, 11: _God set them in the Church_, 1 Cor. xii. 28. 3. These ecclesiastical officers are both elected and ordained by the Church, without commission from the civil magistrate, by virtue of Christ's ordinance, and in his name. Thus the apostles appointed officers: _Whom we may appoint_, Acts vi. 3, 4. The power of ordination and mission is in the hands of Christ's officers; compare Acts xiv. 23; 1 Tim. iv. 14, with Acts xiii. 1-4: and this is confessed by the parliament to be an ordinance of Jesus Christ, in their ordinance for ordaining of preaching presbyters. 4. The Church, and the several presbyteries ecclesiastical, meet not as civil judicatories, for civil acts of government, as making civil statutes, inflicting civil punishments, &c., but as spiritual assemblies, for spiritual acts of government and discipline: as preaching, baptizing, receiving the Lord's supper, prayer, admonition of the disorderly, &c. 5. What gross absurdities would follow, should not these two societies, viz. church and commonwealth, be acknowledged to be really and essentially distinct from one another! For then, 1. There can be no commonwealth where there is not a Church; but this is contrary to all experience. Heathens have commonwealths, yet no Church. 2. Then there may be church officers elected where there is no church, seeing there are magistrates where there is no church. 3. Then those magistrates, where there is no church, are no magistrates; but that is repugnant to Scripture, which accounts heathen rulers the servants of God, Isa. xlv. 1; Jer. xxv. 9: and calls them kings, Exod. vi. 13; Isa. xxxi. 35. And further, if there be no magistrates where there is no church, then the church is the formal constituting cause of magistrates. 4. Then the commonwealth, as