A37205:198
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.
For, 1. Those Assemblies are too seldom, and cannot sit together long enough to remove the many offences that fall out frequently in Churches.
2. Non can they Excommunicate a Church, nor any Officer or Member of a particular Chuch by warrant from Christ.
3. Classes, and Synods, and general Councils may be under just offences, as well as Churches; and who shall censure them?
4. This Plaster hinders the healing of the Sores of Churches. For,1 if a Delinquent, disliking the Churches proceeding, appeals from the sentence of the Church to the Classis, and, for the same reason, from the sentence of the Classis to a Provincial Synod, then, to a National Synod, then to an Ecumenical Council, which may not assemble in an Age; while the Appeal depends, he shall stand as uncensured. For this is the Law of Appeals. Now, how can that heal which is cross to the prescription of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only wise Physician? He saith, Tell the Church; and if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an Heathen & Publican. But he who appeals from the Church, doth not hear the Church. Therefore he that so doth, deserves to be cut off, by the sentence of Christ, which this Tradition of Appeals from Churches, in re propriâ, to Superior Ecclesiastical Judicatories, contradicteth, and so, maketh the Commandment of Christ void, and of none effect. It remaineth therefore, that the Church of a particular Congregation is the highest Tribunal under Christ, in such things as are proper to it self.