An assertion of the government of the Church of Scotland in the points of…

Answ. 1. To set aside the sacrifices, & other ceremonial worship performed at Jerusalem, the Synagogues among the Jews had Gods moral worship ordinarily therein, as Prayer, and the reading & expounding of the Scriptures. 2. Whatsoever the Synagogues had, or whatsoever they wanted of the worship of God, they had an Ecclesiastical Consistory, and a certain order of Church government: else how shall we understand the excommunication, or casting out of the Synagogue, the Rulers of the Synagogue, and the chief Ruler of the Synagogue? (of which things we have before spoken.)

Answ. 1. To set aside the sacrifices, & other ceremonial worship performed at Jerusalem, the Synagogues among the Jewes had Gods morall worship ordinarily therein, as Prayer, and the reading & expounding of the Scriptures. 2. Whatsoever the Synagogues had, or whatsoever they wanted of the worship of God, they had an Ecclesiasticall Consistory, and a certaine order of Church government: else how shall we understand the excommunication, or casting out of the Synagogue, the Rulers of the Synagogue, and the chiefe Ruler of the Synagogue? (of which things we have before spoken.)

I will not here dispute whether every sin among the Jews was either appointed to be punished capitally, or else to be expiated by sacrifices; but put the case it were so, this proveth that no excommunication or Ecclesiastical ⟨p. 206⟩censure was not then necessary: for beside the detriment of the Common-wealth by the violation of the Law, which was punishable by death; and beside the [Greek or Hebrew] and guiltiness before God, the expiation whereof by the death of Christ was prefigured in the sacrifices, there was a third thing in public sins, which was punishable by spiritual censures, and that was the scandal of the Church, which could not be taken away by the oblations of the delinquent, but rather made worse thereby, even as now a public offender doth not take away, but rather increase the scandal of the Church by his joining in the acts of Gods worship, so long as there is no Ecclesiastical censure imposed upon him; neither yet (to speak properly) was the scandal of public offences punishable by bodily punishments, but the Church being a political body had her own Laws, and her own censures, no less then the Common-wealth. 3. As the Synagogues were particular Churches politically, so all of them collectively were one National Church politically, governed by one supreme Ecclesiastical Sanhedrin, which is the representative we meant of in our Argument. 4. But if we take the National Church of the Jews metaphysically, there was no