A37205:178
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.
Reas. 2 From the Analogy and agreement that is between the Spiritual power of a Congregational Church of Christ, and the civil power of the most free and perfect Cities, which Thucydides saith have three privileges, viz. to use, 1. Their own Laws. 2. Magistrates. 3. Judgments, (whence he calls every such City, [Greek or Hebrew]) other Cities were not accounted entire and perfect Cities of themselves, but less worthy Members of those great and perfect Cities,1 under whose Jurisdiction they were. The summa potestas of those great and perfect Cities, is that, cujus actus alterius juri non subsunt, ita ut alterius voluntatis humanae arbitrio irriti possunt reddi. Now every particular Church of Christ, being completed with its Officers, is a most perfect and free City, the City of God, Psal. 48.1. The City of the great King, ⟨p. 124⟩ver. 2. the visible Kingdom of the blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, 1 Tim. 6.15. and therefore it must necessarily have sufficient and complete power within it self to manage the Keys, without dependence on Classes, &c. in its own concernments. Yet herein is a difference between such perfect Cities and the Churches of Christ, That such Cities may part with their Liberty, in some cases,2 as being overmatched by a Potent Enemy. In this case, the Collatives yielded up themselves, and their City and Liberties to Tarquinius Priscus King of the Romans; or when they are in extreme danger by an Enemy, whom they would not have to rule over them, and cannot defend themselves by any other means, which was the case of Campani distressed by the Samnites, which forced them to yield up themselves, and all they had, with all their Liberties, unto the Romans; which when they had done, they were said to be facti alienae potestatis. Yet it was presupposed that they had power in themselves thus to do, as appears by that question, Estne populus Collatinus in suâ potestate? But Churches have not power to alienate from themselves their Church-Liberties, which Christ hath purchased ⟨p. 125⟩