A42758:344
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.
If they among whom the fornicator was, who were puffed up, when they should have sorrowed, and out of the midst of whom, &c. were to judge and excommunicate that incestuous person, then women were to judge and excommunicate him, and not men only. But the latter is absurd, therefore so is the former. My proposition he must either grant, or else say that the incestuous man was not to be put out of the midst of women, and that the Apostle did not forbid women to be commingled with fornicators. My assumption ⟨p. 20⟩is his own, Pag. 24. where he tells us from 1 Cor. 14.34, 35. 1 Tim. 2.12. that women are debarred from liberty or right of voting in public ecclesiastical matters. Then let him see to the conclusion. Another proof of the same point he addeth from 2 Cor. 2.1 where he writeth to these same Corinthians to receive pardon, and comfort the penitent: which I might repel in the same manner. But there is a word in that same Chapter which may clear the thing, Vers. 6. Sufficient to such a man is this punishment (or censure) which was inflicted of m•ny. Which many, if (as he saith in the next page) the Apostle had opposed to himself alone, and not to all, then he said but the half of that which he meant to say. He would have the Corinthians to think it enough that the man had been publicly censured by so many as were in their Presbytery. Now if he had been censured by the whole Church, it had been more fit and emphatical to have said censured by all. But there is another sense which well fitteth the place.2 Heinsius observeth that [Greek or Hebrew] is one thing, [Greek or Hebrew] another thing: the former noting those that exceed in number: the latter those that are chief in dignity, and that therefore the Apostle when he saith [Greek or Hebrew], meaneth the rulers and Elders of that ⟨p. 21⟩Church, so that the reading shall be this, Sufficient to such a man, is this censure inflicted of the chief. In the same sense Pirtor taketh the words: which also he doth illustrate from