A37205:152
The power of Congregational churches asserted and vindicated in answer to a treatise of…
The power of Congregational churches asserted and vindicated in answer to a treatise of Mr. J. Paget entitled The defence of church-government exercised in classes and synods / by John Davenport.The power of Congregational churches asserted and vindicated in answer to a treatise of Mr. J. Paget intituled The defence of church-government exercised in classes and synods / by John Davenport.
London: printed for Rich. Chiswell and to be sold by John Usher of Boston, 1672
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
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⟩out. The same holds in Churches in Islands, by their own confession, when they cannot have the help of Synods. Thus we prove Fire to be the first subject of heat, because, if it be in other things, as in Water, or Wood; it is there by the means of Fire, and, when they are removed, yet still it remains in Fire. The like reason holds in this, as you see, to prove such a Church, as this of which we speak, to be the first subject of Church-Power, or of the Keys.
3. Because all the acts done immediately by the Church, in opening and shutting, in binding and loosing, flow from this power of the Keys given them by Christ, and hold it forth.
3. Because all the acts done immediatly by the Church, in opening and shutting, in binding and loosing, flow from this power of the Keys given them by Christ, and hold it forth.