in regard of what was in it of particular right, not
of common right: so far as there was in their laws either a typicalness
proper to their church, or a peculiarness of respect to their state in
that land of promise given unto them. Whatsoever was in their laws of
moral concernment or general equity, is still obliging; whatsoever the
Jewish Church had not as Jewish, but as it was a political church, or an
ecclesiastical republic, (among which is the subordination of
ecclesiastical courts to be reckoned,) doth belong to the Christian
Church: that all judgments were to be determined by an high-priest, was
typical of Christ's supremacy in judicature; but that there were gradual
judicatories for the ease of an oppressed or grieved party, there can be
no ceremony or type in this. This was not learned by Moses in the
pattern of the Mount, but was taught by the light of nature to Jethro,
Exod. xviii. 22, and by him given in advice to Moses. This did not
belong unto the peculiar dispensation of the Jews, but unto the good
order of the church.

To conclude our answer to this exception, if the benefit of appeals be
not as free to us as to the Jews, the yoke of the gospel should be more
intolerable than the yoke of the law; the poor afflicted Christian might
groan and cry under an unjust and tyrannical eldership, and no
ecclesiastical judicatory to relieve him; whereas the poor oppressed Jew
might appeal to the Sanhedrin: certainly this is contrary to that
prophecy of Christ, Psal. lxxii. 12, 14.

_Argum_. III. A third argument to prove the subordination of particular
congregations, is taken from the institution of our Saviour Christ, of
gradual appeals, Matt, xviii. 17, 18, where our Saviour hath appointed a
particular member of a church (if scandalous) to be gradually dealt
withal; first to be reproved in private, then to be admonished before
two or three witnesses, and last of all to be complained of to the
church: whence we thus argue:

If Christ hath instituted that the offence of an obstinate brother
should be complained of to the church; then much more is it intended
that the obstinacy of a great number, suppose of a whole church, should
be brought before a higher assembly: but the former is true, therefore
the latter. The consequence, wherein the strength of the argument lies,
is proved several ways.

1. From the rule of proportion: by what proportion one or two are
subject to a particular church, by the same proporti