To the extent possible under law, the Text Creation Partnership has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above, according to the terms of the CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). This waiver does not extend to any page images or other supplementary files associated with this work, which may be protected by copyright or other license restrictions. Please go to http://www.textcreationpartnership.org/ for more information.
We wrote heretofore, that the Elders have the reyns of government cōmitted to them: now we are taught that the governmēt of the church is not Aristocratical, yea the people as Kings have the power &c.
I answer; we differ not from our former profession, but they de∣ceiv the reader, by turning government into power, which we in our publik profession heretofore distinguished, and so doo still: giving the government of the whole Church, and all the actions of it, un∣to
the officers: the power to the whole body; and so to the officers with the people, as joyntly Kings and Preists: of which things we have spoken before. We never held the Church to be a mere Aris∣tocratie, as they speak, intending that the cratos or power should be in the hands of a few: neyther shal these men ever prove it. And in the book which they cite, † in the very same place (though they dis∣semble it,) we shew the Church (not the Elders onely) to have Christs power to judge al within the same; and that the keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven are committed to the whole Church, as the Protestants have heretofore testified against the Papists. That these men doo but feign contradiction, and would blind the reader, by confounding the Churches power and goverment, as one.
Coūterp. pag. 177.
Coūterp. pag. 177.
1. Cor. 5.4 12, 13.