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

TO the Church built by Christ upon this Rock, he hath promised and given this great privilege, that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.] [Greek or Hebrew], in the Scripture, signifieth, not Hell, but the state of the dead, or the Grave, [Greek or Hebrew] are enemies vanquished by Christ for his Church, 1 Cor. 15.26, 55. and shall be cast into the lake of fire, Rev. 20.14. [Greek or Hebrew] are the gates of Death, in Job. 38.17. Psal. 107.18. and the gates of the Grave, Isa. 38.10. i. e. the power of Death and the Grave, which seizeth on them, as a Serjeant, Psal. 116.3. The sum is; Let the Church be brought to the lowest, that it seems to be dead, ⟨p. 60⟩as those two Witnesses, Rev. 11.8, 9. and buried, as Christ's natural body was, for a time; yet neither Death, nor the Grave shall prevail against it. Yet we must not limit the sense of these words, only to the power of Death and the Grave, but it must be extended to all Satan's plots and assaults against the Church, against which if Christ did not help them, Death and the Grave would prevail against them, to their eternal destruction. We conclude therefore, that, in this Text, by the gates of Hell, are meant, all the machinations of Satan, and temptations whatsoever, whereby he laboureth to hinder the building of Christs Church, to draw those from Christ, who are built upon him. The prevailing of them signifies their effectual working unto the attainment of those ends. The sum is, a promise that the Devil, with all his policies and powers, shall neither hinder the building of Christs Church, nor cause the Church thus built to apostatize from Christ. And that this is the true sense and meaning of the words, whatsoever Socinians, or Arminians say to the contrary, may thus be evinced: 1. Because the thing promised, is the disabling of what ever opposeth the building of the Church upon this Rock,