in the church of Scotland."(1331)

The second rule which was offered in that sermon was this: "Let all
precepts, held out as divine institutions, have clear scriptures," &c.;
"Let the Scripture speak expressly," saith he. I answer: The Scripture
speaks in that manner which seemed fittest to the wisdom of God; that is,
so as it must cost us much searching of the Scripture, as men search for a
hid treasure, before we find out what is the good, and acceptable, and
perfect will of God concerning the government of his church. Will any
divine in the world deny that it is a divine truth which, by necessary
consequence, is drawn from Scripture, as well as that which, in express
words and syllables, is written in Scripture? Are not divers articles of
our profession,--for instance, the baptism of infants,--necessarily and
certainly proved from Scripture, although it makes no express mention
thereof in words and syllables? But let us hear what he hath said
concerning some scriptures (for he names but two of them) upon which the
acts of spiritual or ecclesiastical government have been grounded. "That
place, 1 Cor. v., takes not hold (saith he) on my conscience for
excommunication, and I admire that Matt. xviii. so should upon any." It is
strange that he should superciliously pass them over without respect to so
great a cloud of witnesses in all the reformed churches, or without so
much as offering any answer at all to the arguments which so many learned
and godly divines of old and of late have drawn from these places for
excommunication; which, if he had done, he should not want a reply. In the
meantime, he intermixeth a politic consideration into this debate of
divine right. "I could never yet see (saith he) how two co-ordinate
governments, exempt from superiority and inferiority, can be in one
state." I suppose he hath seen the co-ordinate governments of a general
and of an admiral; or, if we shall come lower, the government of parents
over their children, and masters over their servants, though it fall often
out, that he who is subject to one man as his master, is subject to
another man as his father. In one ship there may be two co-ordinate
governments, the captain governing the soldiers, the master governing the
mariners. In these and such like cases you have two co-ordinate
governments, when the one governor is not subordinate to the other. There
is more subordination in the ministers and other church-officers towards
the civ