The Divine Right of Church Government: Wherein it is proved that the Presbyterian government, by preaching and ruling elders, in sessional, Presbyterial and synodical assemblies, may lay the only lawful claim to a divine right, according to the Holy Scriptures
Religion
The Divine Right of Church Government: Wherein it is proved that the Presbyterian government, by preaching and ruling elders, in sessional, Presbyterial and synodical assemblies, may lay the only lawful claim to a divine right, according to the Holy Scriptures
Presbyterian Church -- Government
1, 2: they are _over you in the Lord_,
1 Thess. v. 12: and in his name they exercise their jurisdiction, 1 Cor.
v. 4, 5. 5. If the last appeal in matters purely ecclesiastical be not
to the civil power, then there is no subordination; but the last appeal
properly so taken is not to the magistrate. This appears from these
considerations: 1. Nothing is appealable to the magistrate but what is
under the power of the sword; but admonition, excommunication, &c., are
not under the power of the sword: they are neither matters of dominion
nor coercion. 2. If it were so, then it follows that the having of the
sword gives a man a power to the keys. 3. Then it follows that the
officers of the kingdom of heaven are to be judged as such by the
officers of the kingdom of this world as such, and then there is no
difference between the things of Cæsar and the things of God. 4. The
church of Antioch sent to Jerusalem, Acts xv. 2, and the synod there,
without the magistrate, came together, ver. 6; and determined the
controversy, ver. 28, 29. And we read, "The spirits of the prophets are
subject to the prophets," 1 Cor. xiv. 32; not to the civil power as
prophets. So we must seek knowledge at the priest's lips, not at the
civil magistrate's, Mal. ii. 7. And we read, that the people came to the
priests in hard controversies, but never that the priests went to the
civil power, Deut. xvii. 8-10. 5. It makes the magistrate Christ's
vicar, and so Christ to have a visible head on earth, and so to be an
ecclesiastico-civil pope, and consequently there should be as many
visible heads of Christ's Church as there are magistrates. 6. These
powers are both immediate; one from God the Father, as _Creator_, Rom.
xiii. 1, 2; the other from Jesus Christ, as _Mediator_, Matt. xxviii.
18. Now lay all these together, and there cannot be a subordination of
powers; and therefore there must be a real distinction.
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, as may plainly appear by this ensuing parallel:
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