A42758:333
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
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.
But I proceed with him to the second head,1 concerning excommunication, and Church censures by the Elders, with the peoples privity and consent. This he proveth by three arguments.2 1. Because Paul saith, These who sin, rebuke publicly, that others also may fear a brave argument indeed. This charge is not given to ruling Elders; and if it had, it can neither prove the suffrage of the people, nor their hearing of the suffrage of the Elders, but only the execution of the sentence of the Elders, in the presence and audience of the congregation. 2. He argueth from these words,3 Tell the Church, where he would make it appear, that by the Church is not meant the Senate of Elders excluding the people;4 yea he saith, that in this circumstance now in consideration, it comes nearer the truth to expound the Church to be the Bishop, since neither Bishops nor their Court-keepers, do exclude the people from their consistories. Sure I am, in Scotland, (let others speak for themselves) The Bishops in their visitations, high Commissions, ⟨p. 10⟩Privy-conferences at Synod• (in which they passed their decrees) did exclude both the people, and the most part of the ministers. He thinks it a course unheard of either among Jews, Gentiles, or Christians, before this last age, that public judgements should be privately exercised, and without the peoples privity. This (if at all to the point) must be understood, not of the final execution, but of the judicial sentence or decree. What then shall we think that the Senators at Rome or the Areopagites at Athens, did never conclude or degree any thing, concerning a public judgement, except in the audience and presence of the people. The Judges in Israel did sit in the gates of of the City, that all persons both poor and rich, great and small might have access unto them with their complaints, and that the sentence of judgement, might be the more notorious & exemplary▪ being given forth and promulgate in the gates: This proveth not that the Judges did debate, voice, and conclude all matters in the public audience of the people.