An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

Secondly, The Scripture doth use the word Church for a visible company of persons professing faith in Christ, and then it hath several acceptions. For sometimes it is used for the general Company of believers, Act. 8. 3. Thus Paul is said to persecute the Church. Or else more particularly, and for a Church at such a ⟨p. 51⟩place, as the Church at Jerusalem, the Church at Corinth. Again, the word Church is sometimes used more strictly, for the People only, as distinct from Pastors. Thus the Epistles of John are directed, To the Angels of the seven Churches. Thus the Elders are exhorted, Act. 20. 28. To feed the Church of God, over which they were set. And in this sense the Remonstrants speak confidently, That the word Church is most commonly used, and that never, or very seldom, it comprehends the Officers also. But this is not so, for Mat. 18. Tell the Church, by the Church must needs be meant Officers at least with the Church, for they are said to bind and lose, which power is given to Officers only. It's true, they, and so Grotius, by Church understand a multitude, or more, in opposition to those two or three witnesses, that were required before: But the Context may easily be improved to overthrow that 1 Cor. 12. 28. God is there said to set in his Church, some Pastors, and Teachers, that is, as part, but the chief part of the Church. Even as the Stars are set in the firmament, but as parts of the Heavens, though the more noble and fulgent parts. Again, when the Apostle here writeth to the Church of Corinth, he must needs comprehend the Officers as well as the People, because he writeth about such duties, wherein the Officers were interested, as the censuring of the incestuous person; he speaks also of Prophets, which were extraordinary Officers in that Church, and they are blamed for male-administration about the Sacrament of the Lords-Supper. So that although Grotius thinketh that abuse was, because they had no constituted Officers, yet it's plain they had some, because they had the administration of the Sacraments.

Secondly, The Scripture doth use the word Church for a visible company of persons professing faith in Christ, and then it hath several acceptions. For sometimes it is used for the general Company of believers,