s sound or whole, divers
things are yielded to be lawful to godly magistrates, which are not
ordinarily lawful for them, that so to extraordinary diseases
extraordinary remedies may be applied. So also the magistrate abusing his
power unto tyranny, and making havoc of all, it is lawful to resist him by
some extraordinary ways and means, which are not ordinarily to be allowed.

85. Yet ordinarily, and by common or known law and right in settled
churches, if any man have recourse to the magistrate to complain, that,
through abuse of ecclesiastical discipline, injury is done to him, or if
any sentence of the pastors and elders of the church, whether concerning
faith or discipline, do displease or seem unjust unto the magistrate
himself, it is not for that cause lawful to draw those ecclesiastical
causes to a civil tribunal, or to bring in a kind of political or civil
popedom.

86. What then? Shall it be lawful ordinarily for ministers and elders to
do what they list? Or shall the governors in the churches, glorying in the
law, by their transgression dishonour God? God forbid. For first, if they
shall trespass in anything against the magistrate or municipal laws,
whether by intermeddling in judging of civil causes, or otherwise
disturbing the peace and order of the commonwealth, they are liable to
civil trial and judgments, and it is in the power of the magistrate to
restrain and punish them.

87. Again, it hath been before showed, that to ecclesiastical evils
ecclesiastical remedies are appointed and fitted, for the church is, no
less than the commonwealth, through the grace of God, sufficient to itself
in reference unto her own end, and as in the commonwealth, so in the
church, the error of inferior judgments and assemblies, or their evil
government, is to be corrected by superior judgments and assemblies, and
so still by them of the same order, lest one order be confounded with
another, or one government be intermingled with another government. What
shall now the adversaries of ecclesiastical power object here, which those
who admit not the yoke of the magistrate may not be ready, in like manner,
to transfer against the civil judicatories and government of the
commonwealth, seeing it happeneth sometimes that the commonwealth is no
less ill governed than the church?

88. If any man shall prosecute the argument, and say that yet no remedy is
here showed which may be applied to the injustice or error of a national
synod