faithful men, such as believed the foundation, only for a singular superstructure of their own, proceeding perhaps from a good and pious conscience. But on the contrary, all such places as command avoiding such disputes, are written for a lesson to pastors, such as Timothy and Titus were, not to make new articles of faith, by determining every small controversy, which oblige men to a needless burthen of conscience, or provoke them to break the union of the Church. Which lesson the apostles themselves observed well. St. Peter and St. Paul, though their controversy were great, as we may read in _Gal._ ii. 11, yet they did not cast one another out of the Church. Nevertheless, during the apostles’ times, there were other pastors that observed it not; as Diotrephes (_3 John_, 9, &c.) who cast out of the Church such as St. John himself thought fit to be received into it, out of a pride he took in preeminence. So early it was, that vain glory and ambition had found entrance into the Church of Christ. [Sidenote: Of persons liable to excommunication.] That a man be liable to excommunication, there be many conditions requisite; as first, that he be a member of some commonalty, that is to say, of some lawful assembly, that is to say, of some Christian Church, that hath power to judge of the cause for which he is to be excommunicated. For where there is no community, there can be no excommunication; nor where there is no power to judge, can there be any power to give sentence. From hence it followeth, that one Church cannot be excommunicated by another: for either they have equal power to excommunicate each other, in which case excommunication is not discipline, nor an act of authority, but schism, and dissolution of charity; or one is so subordinate to the other, as that they both have but one voice; and then they be but one Church; and the part excommunicated is no more a Church, but a dissolute number of individual persons.