ry delivering to Satan (the phrase most controverted by
Erastus and his followers) of excommunication, and the not eating with the
scandalous (ver 9-11) he takes also to import excommunication. He thinks
also that ministers shall labour to little purpose except they have a
power of government. Bullinger is most plain for excommunication, as a
spiritual censure ordained by Christ, and so he understands Matt. xviv.
17.

Aretius holds(1341) that God was the author of excommunication in the Old
Testament, and Christ in the New. And now are these three Mr Coleman's
way? Or doth not his doctrine flatly contradict theirs? Peradventure he
will say, Yet there is no excommunication in the church of Zurich, where
those divines lived, nor any suspension of scandalous sinners from the
sacrament. I answer, This cannot infringe what I hold, that the example of
the best reformed churches maketh for us and against him; for, 1. The book
written by Lavater, another of the Zurich divines, _de Ritibus et
Institutis Ecclesioe Tigurinoe_, tells us of divers things in that church
which will make the brother easily to acknowledge that it is not the best
reformed church, such as festival days, cap. 8, that upon the Lord's days,
before the third bell, it is published and made known to the people, if
there be any houses, fields, or lands, to be sold, cap. 9. They have no
fasts indicted, cap. 9, nor psalms sung in the church, cap. 10.
Responsories in their Litany at the sacrament, the deacon upon the right
hand saith one thing, the deacon upon the left hand saith another thing,
the pastor a third thing, cap. 13. 2. Yet the church of Zurich hath some
corrective church government besides that which is civil or temporal, for
the same book, cap. 23, tells us, that in their synods, any minister who
is found scandalous or profane in his life, is censured with deposition
from his office, _ab oficio deponitur_. Then follows, _finita censura,
singuli decani, &c._ Here is a synodical censure, which I find also in
Wolphius,(1342) a professor of Zurich, and the book before cited, cap.
24,(1343) tells us of some corrective power committed to pastors and
elders, which elders are distinguished from the magistrates. 3. The Zurich
divines themselves looked upon excommunication as that which was wanting
through the injury of the times; the thing having been so horribly abused
in Popery, and the present licentiousness abounding among people, did
hinder the erecting of