A42757:994
Aaron's rod blossoming, or, The divine ordinance of church-government vindicated so as the present…Aarons rod blossoming, or, The divine ordinance of church-government vindicated so as the present…
Aaron's rod blossoming, or, The divine ordinance of church-government vindicated so as the present Erastian controversy concerning the distinction of civill and ecclesiastical government, excommunication, and suspension, is fully debated and discussed, from the holy scripture, from the Jewish and Christian antiquities, from the consent of latter writers, from the true nature and rights of magistracy, and from the groundlessness of the chief objections made against the Presbyterial government in point of a domineering arbitrary unlimited power / by George Gillespie ...Aarons rod blossoming, or, The divine ordinance of church-government vindicated so as the present Erastian controversie concerning the distinction of civill and ecclesiasticall government, excommunication, and suspension, is fully debated and discussed, from the holy scripture, from the Jewish and Christian antiquities, from the consent of latter writers, from the true nature and rights of magistracy, and from the groundlesnesse of the chief objections made against the Presbyteriall government in point of a domineering arbitrary unlimited power / by George Gillespie ...
London: printed by E.G. for Richard Whitaker, 1646
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.
Answ. 1. If Ministers did take upon them to suspend men from the Sacrament upon their own private knowledge of some secret sins whereof those men are guilty: his argument might say somewhat. But the question being of suspension by the Eldership upon the notoriety or proof of the offence, and consistorial formal conviction of the offender, he saith here nothing to that point.
Answ. 1. If Ministers did take upon them to suspend men from the Sacrament upon their owne private knowledge of some secret sinnes whereof those men are guilty: his argument might say somewhat. But the question being of suspension by the Eldership upon the notoreity or proofe of the offence, and consis•oriall formall conviction of the offender, he saith here nothing to that point.
2. What a Minister should do when he certainly knows one of the Congregation (not convict nor notoriously scandalous) to be a Judas, a Traitor, a Devil, I will not now dispute. But surely Mr Prynnes reason why the minister ought to admit such a one, is not rightly applied, *for Christ did then know Judas to be a Traitor and a Devil, but how? not as man, by sight, information, or the like, but as God and as omniscient, that is, he knew Judas by that same knowledge whereby he knows close hypocrites in whom no eye of man hath seen any thing scandalous, but rather good and promising signs; some of this kind no doubt are admitted to the Sacrament both among Presbyterians and Independents, whom Christ knows to be Judases, because he knows what is in man. But now for a Minister to know (not the heart and the reins as Christ doth, but) [Greek or Hebrew] some foul act which a man hath done, and some wicked profession which a man hath made, though in private, and not yet known to the world; this is a very different case from the other, and if Christ had admitted Judas to the Sacrament, knowing him by his divine knowledge to be a Traitor, this could not prove, that a Minister ought to admit a Traitor, whom by his humane knowledge he knows to be such.