A42758:224
An assertion of the government of the Church of Scotland in the points of…
An assertion of the government of the Church of Scotland in the points of ruling-elders and of the authority of presbyteries and synods with a postscript in answer to a treatise lately published against presbyterial government.An assertion of the government of the Church of Scotland in the points of ruling-elders and of the authority of presbyteries and synods with a postscript in answer to a treatise lately published against presbyteriall government.
Edinburgh: printed for James Bryson, 1641Edinburgh: printed for Iames Bryson, 1641
Part 2 › Chapter 2: Of the independencies of the Elderships of particular Congregations.
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.
5. Add unto these a distinction betwixt a Congregation, lying alone in an Island, Province, or Nation, and a Congregation bordering with sister Churches. If either there be but one Congregation in a Kingdom or Province, or if there be many far distant one from another, so that their Pastors and Elders cannot ordinarily meet together, then may a particular Congregation do many things by it self alone, which it ought not to do, where there are adjacent neighbouring Congregations, together with which, it may, and should have a common Presbytery.
5. Adde unto these a distinction betwixt a Congregation, lying alone in an Iland, Province, or Nation, and a Congregation bordering with sister Churches. If either there be but one Congregation in a Kingdome or Province, or if there be many farre distant one from another, so that their Pastors and Elders cannot ordinarily meete together, then may a particular Congregation doe many things by it selfe alone, which it ought not to doe, where there are adjacent neighbouring Congregations, together with which, it may, and should have a common Presbytery.
6. Let us put a difference betwixt the subordination of one Congregation to another, or of ore Eldership to another, and the subordination of any Congregation, and of ⟨p. 127⟩the Eldership thereof to a superior, Presbytery or Synod made out of many Congregations, as one provincial Synod is not subject to another Provincial Synod, yet all the Provincial Synods in the Nation are subject […] the National Synod, so it is also with the ordinary consistories, one particular Eldership is not subject to another, yet all the particular Elderships within the bounds of the common Presbytery are subject to the same. So that there is a vast difference betwixt this subordination which we maintain, and the subordination of all the Parishes in a Diocese to the Prelate and his Cathedral. Where Douname doth object that all the Parishes of Geneva are Hierarchically subject to the Presbytery in the city, Parker denieth this, nisi quis &c. unlesse saith he,