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

These words hold forth the Ratification of Christ's grant of the Keys unto a Congregational-Church, with the chiefty of power, under Christ, to manage the same within themselves, for the attainment of the ends of Church-Communion; And that this is spoken to Peter, in the name of such a Church, and, that Christ intended to establish, by this promise, the complete exercise of this power in such a Church, being completed with all it• Officers, is clear from Matth. 18.18. where the same promise is given, by name to such a Church. The words therefore, in sum, hold forth a grant from Christ to his Church of an indispensable power of Church-censures, within themselves: which may be thus evinced. The censure that is established in Heaven cannot be dispensed with, nor reversed by any power on Earth: But the censure, that is administered by a Congregational-Church, is established in Heaven: Therefore it cannot be dispensed withal, nor reversed by any ⟨p. 117⟩power on Earth. The Proposition, a man would think might pass without opposition, but I find this Objection made against it. Obj. The sentence of an inferior Judge or Court proceeding rightly, is established in Heaven; yet we may appeal from it; Why will not the same hold in Church-censures also? Answ. 1. Because the promise of binding in Heaven, is not given by Christ to the censures of Civil Courts: For it is not a Civil, but a Spiritual binding that is here meant. 2. Because there is not par ratio between them. The reason why appeals may be made from the sentence of inferior Civil Courts and Judges, is, because there is a Supreme Court in being, to which the appeal may be brought, and there prosecuted, and thereby determined (as the inferior Courts in Israel stood under the highest Synedrion;) but there is no such Supreme Court ordained by Christ over particular Churches. The Assumption, That the censure that is administered by a Congregational-Church is established in Heaven, is expressly in the Text, as it hath been expounded. True, say some, what a particular Church binds on Earth, clave non errante, is bound in Heaven, but the Church may err in Judgement, therefore