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

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 ⟨p. 207⟩representative thereof, unless it were all the males who came thrice in the year to Jerusalem. The daily offering of Sacrifices was not by a representative Church, but by the Priests: and though there were twelve loaves of Shewbread before the Lord, and the names of the twelve Tribes upon the breastplate, this proveth not a Church representative, but signs representative. 5. The body of the Church is now (as then) necessarily absent from the Consistorial actions of debating and deciding matters of Church government, and of Jurisdiction; and so that which was called the foundation of a representative Church doth still remain.

I will not here dispute whether every sin among the Jewes was either appointed to be punished capitally, or else to bee expiated by sacrifices; but put the case it were so, this proveth that no excommunication or Ecclesiasticall ⟨p. 206⟩