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

Now the word independently must be added to the assumption of the first argument, else it cannot conclude what he affirms and we deny: for there is no question but particular Churches may exercise in and among them selves all Gods ordinances in those cases and with those distinctions which I have spoken of before, part 2. chap. 2. This being cleared I deny the assumption in all these three arguments. I expected proof for it, but he hath given none, except that it cannot for shame be denied. I had thought it rather a shameful thing for a writer to trouble his Reader with arguments which he cannot make good.¹ But what saith he to the professors of Leiden who hold the institution of Synods not to be humane, but divine, wch they prove from Mat. 18. & Act. 15. Nay what is more ordinary in Protestant writers then the applying of those words, Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, unto Synods and Councils; and hence they condemn the popish Councils, in so much that Bellarmin, Salmeron, and other Jesuits have in this contradicted all our writers, telling us (as ⟨p. 34⟩these men do) that our Saviour meaneth not of Councils in these words. Moreover that commandment whereby we stand obliged to follow the example both of the Jewish Church in the Old Testament, and of the Apostolical Churches in the New Testament, in such things as they had not for any special reason which doth not concern us, is transgressed by the withdrawing of Congregations from subjection unto Synods. Of which things I have said enough before. It is now but a poor begging of that which is in question, to object that the government of Presbyteries and Synods hath no warrant from the Word of God.

Now the word independantly must be added to the assumption of the first argument, else it cannot conclude what he affirmes and we deny: for there is no question but particular Churches may exercise in and among them selves all Gods ordinances in those cases and with those distinctions which I have spoken of before, part 2. chap. 2. This being cleared I deny the assumption in all these three arguments. I expected proofe for it, but he hath given none, except that it cannot for shame be denied. I had thought it rather a shamefull thing for a writer to trouble his Reader with arguments which he cannot make good.