many scandals as are enumerate in the ordinance (which
power is a part of that which he calls _corrective_), he that is against
this power in elderships is both against the prudence and against the
ordinance of Parliament. The assumption I prove from his _Re-examination_,
p. 14, where, after his denial of the power to those whom we think church
officers, being charged with advising the Parliament to take church
government _wholly_ into their own hands, his answer was, "If you mean the
corrective power, I do so."

And now, after all this, I must tell the reverend brother that he might
have saved himself much labour had he, in his sermon to the Parliament,
declared himself (as now he doth) that he was only against the _jus
divinum_, but not against their settling of the thing in a parliamentary
and prudential way. Did I not, in my very first examination of his sermon,
p. 32, remove this stumbling block?

And, withal, seeing he professeth to deny the _jus divinum_ of a church
government differing from magistracy, why doth he hold, p. 19, that the
Independents are not so much interested against his principles as the
Presbyterians? Did he imagine that the Independents are not so much for
the _jus divinum_ of a church government and church censures as the
Presbyterians? But, saith he, "The Independents' church power seems to me
to be but doctrinal." But is their excommunication doctrinal? and do they
not hold excommunication to be _jure divino_? Either he had little skill
in being persuaded, or some others had great skill in persuading him that
the Independents' church power is but doctrinal, and that they are not so
much interested against the Erastian principles as the Presbyterians are;
as if, forsooth, the ordinance of excommunication (the thing which the
Erastian way mainly opposeth) and a church government distinct from
magistracy, were not common to them both.

Lastly, If the reverend brother deny the institution of church censures,
but assent to the prudence, why doth he allege the Zurich divines to be so
much for him? _Male Dicis_, p. 23; for it was upon prudential grounds, and
because of the difficulty and (as they conceived) impossibility of the
thing, that they were against it, still acknowledging the scriptural
warrants for excommunication, as I shall show, yea, have showed already;
so that, if Mr Coleman will follow them, he must rather say, "I assent to
an institution; I deny a prudence."