Chapter 70

A CONFUTATION OF THAT WHICH MR COLEMAN HATH SAID AGAINST CHURCH GOVERNMENT; SHOWING ALSO THAT HIS LAST REPLY IS NOT MORE, BUT LESS SATISFACTORY THAN THE FORMER, AND FOR THE MOST PART IS BUT A TERGIVERSATION AND FLEEING FROM ARGUMENTS BROUGHT AGAINST HIM, AND FROM MAKING GOOD HIS OWN ASSERTIONS AND ARGUMENTS CONCERNING THE DISTINCTION OF CIVIL AND CHURCH GOVERNMENT.

The reverend brother said in his sermon, “I could never yet see how two coordinate governments, exempt from superiority and inferiority, can be in one state.” To overthrow this general thesis, I brought some instances to the contrary; such as the governments of a general and an admiral, of a master and a father, of a captain and a master in a ship. He being thus put to his vindication, replieth, “The Commissioner acknowledgeth he did not apply them to the Assembly (I said the General Assembly) and Parliament; yet that was the controversy in hand,” _Male Dicis_, p. 5. But, by his favour, that was not the controversy; for he was not speaking particularly against the distinction of the government of the General Assembly and of the government of the Parliament (neither had he one syllable to that purpose), but generally against the distinction of church government and civil government, and particularly against excommunication; in all which he excluded presbyteries as well as General Assemblies. Wherefore he doth now recede not only from defending his thesis, but from applying it against the power of presbyteries. And so far we are agreed.

2. I having confuted his argument grounded on Psal. xxxiii. 15; Prov.