The power of Congregational churches asserted and vindicated in answer to a treatise of…

2. By Reasons.

1. Because in such a Congregational-Church are all the causes of this power. 1. Efficient; the Institution and Ordinance of Christ, who delegateth this subordinate power, to whom it pleaseth him, by his own appointment. 2. The material cause; visible Believers. 3. The formal cause; Covenanting together to walk in all the Ordinances of Christ, and to submit mutually one to another in the Lord; to be reclaimed, if they err from the rules; or to be censured by the power of the whole, if they be found obstinate.

2. Because there is no former subject of this power, from whence a Congregational-Church might derive it, but it is communicated, by means of the Church, to all that partake of it, and it remaineth in the Church, when others are removed. They choose their own Elders: therefore they had this power virtually in them before they had Elders, and so could not derive it from them. 2. All particular Churches are of equal power within themselves, not one of them subordinate to another. Therefore they derive it not from other particular Churches. 3. Synods, both lesser and larger, are made up of the Elders and Messengers sent from particular Churches, and have their being from them; nor do they send them to them, to borrow any Church-power, but only light from them; as the Church at Antioch did from the Church at Jerusalem, Acts 15. Therefore they derive no Church-power from them. Again, when the Elders of particular Churches are dead, or censured, or rejected by the power of the whole for obstinacy in scandalous evils, the Church still retaineth its power to choose others; as a Corporation hath its full power still, though the Magistrates be dead, or cast ⟨p. 103⟩