Independent Churches do not have the Authority for Greater Excommunication

Table of Contents

Outline Part I - Of the Communion of the Visible Catholic Church 7 Evidences of it

Part II - The Presbyterian Interpretation of Matt 18:15-20

Appendix - “A Complete Power of Excommunication: How in a Congregation and how not’

The Latin phrases were kindly translated by Bobby Phillips.

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Outline

Part I

Of the Communion of the Visible Catholic Church

Introduction 2)

1. Christ gave ministerial power to the apostles as representatives of the 5 officers of the visible catholic Church (Jn. 20:21-23)

2. Christ gave ministerial power and officers to the visible catholic Church, 6 not to a specific congregation (Eph. 4:11-13)

3. The whole visible catholic Church is one body (Song 6:4-9; Gal. 4:26) 8

4. Christ has given the ministry and ordinances to that Church which He 2 intends to perfect and bring to a unity of faith (Eph. 4:11-13), namely, the visible catholic Church

5. Christ gives gifts primarily to the whole of his Church and only secondarily 10 to particular saints or congregations

6. The ‘Spouse,’ ‘Body,’ Sheep,’ etc. that Christ gives gifts to is the visible 12 catholic Church, not a single congregation

7. A church member is excommunicated out of the visible catholic Church, and 13 hence he was previously a member of the visible catholic Church. Therefore, the visible catholic Church has the power of excommunication.

Objection 1 - The visible catholic Church cannot meet together ordinarily and = 17 constantly; therefore the Keys cannot be given to them.

Objection 2 - If the presbytery derives its power from the visible catholic 19 Church, then the presbytery must consult with them in order to excommunicate; but this is impossible.

Objection 3 - If a congregation does not have an entire church government 26 because it is an incomplete part of a presbytery, then neither does a presbytery have an entire church government as it is an incomplete part of the visible catholic Church.

Part II

The Presbyterian Interpretation of Matt 18:15-20

Introduction 32

Objection 1 - Two or three persons (Mt. 18:19) cannot represent the universal 33 visible Church

Objection 2 - But the civil magistrate has similar disciplinary powers 34

Objection 3 - A universal council of the visible Church in Mt. 18:17 is not 35 practical

Objection 4 - Then a universal council of the whole world would be necessary 35

Objection 5 - Refusing communion to scandalous churches is as effective as 36 authoritatively excommunicating them

Objection 6 - Christ makes three steps in discipline; presbyterians make four

Objection 7 - The church is the worshipping House of God; a presbyterial assembly is not a worshipping House of God

Objection 8 - The word ‘church’ is never used in the N.T. for a presbytery, and is at most used of the representative local session

Objection 9 - The church in Mt. 18 inflicts the highest penalty and it is ratified in heaven. There is no reason to appeal to a higher court because the congregation can err, because all other higher courts can err as well.

Objection 10 - Presbyterians grant that a single congregation on an island has the power of excommunication

Objection 11 - If the church be representative, then it has power from they people it represents

Objection 12 - The congregation is in order the first church, and the delinquent is to be excommunicated by them.

Objection 13 - If a congregation may admonish and rebuke, then they may excommunicate

Objection 14 - Elders cannot judge except in the presence of the people, and there is no warrant in the Word otherwise

Objection 15 - Some divines argue that the representative congregational church is the pattern for higher assemblies, and thus has the power of excommunication.

Objection 16 - 1 Cor. 14:23 says that the congregational church is ‘the whole church.’ James 5:14, “Call for the elders of the church’ cannot refer to a presbytery.

Objection 17 - Mt. 18 is about an offending brother, not an offending church.

Objection 18 - There are no church censures in Mt. 18 as it pertains to private persons, a private offense and not a public church scandal

Appendix: “A Complete Power of Excommunication: How in a Congregation and how not’

oF

Part I

Of the Communion of the Visible Catholic Church

Jesus Christ has now under the New Testament a visible catholic! Church on earth.2 And to this universal visible Church principally and primarily has the Lord given a ministry and all his ordinances of Word and sacrament, and to the ministry and guides of this visible catholic Church has the Lord committed the Keys, as to the first subject.$ He has given his ordinances and the power of the Keys for the object and end [design] of the visible catholic Church, including also the invisible Church. The ministry and ordinances are not given to this or that [particular] congregation which meets ordinarily in one place, principally because:

1. The Lord Jesus gave this ministerial power to the universal guides of the catholic Church, the apostles, as they did represent the presbytery of the whole visible catholic Church: “As my Father sent Me, so send I you. And when He had thus said, He breathed on them, and said, “receive the Holy Ghost. Whosoever’s sins you remit, they are remitted; and whosoever’s sins you retain, they are retained.”” (Jn. 20:21-23) The apostles here received the Keys in the name of the whole catholic, ministerial guides.

If our brethren’s grounds stand good: In this the apostles must stand in the person and room of a single society of believers united by a church-covenant in one parish

1 [That is, universal.]

* I speak not now of that part of the catholic Church now triumphing in glory or of that part which only is a Church of elected saints and are not yet formally a professing Church but only such in the predestination of God.

3 [That is, the principal seat of authority.]

church. So a parish church* must be the only successors of the apostles; but this no Word of God can warrant. Nor is the eldership of a single congregation that which the apostles here represented, except you say to this eldership (as to the first subject), is this message of sending committed (as the Father sent Christ), and to this eldership within one congregation is the ministerial power of pardoning and retaining sins given.

For I ask: From whence or from whose hands do the eldership of a congregation receive the Keys? From Jesus Christ, say they. But this is no answer; the ministry according to its institution is no doubt only from Jesus Christ, the Head of the Body, the Church. But I ask now of an ordinary church-calling, and I demand from whose hands (under Jesus Christ) has this particular eldership received ministerial power. They cannot say from themselves, for they do not make themselves ministers. They will not say from a college of presbyters® of many congregations, for they are flatly against all such presbyteries. And that which they say indeed, the eldership of a congregation, has their ministerial power from the people. Well then, the apostles, when they received the Keys, they did represent the people; but what people? Not the people of a classical presbytery, of a province, of a nation, of the whole redeemed Church, [say they,] but of one single congregation. How this shall be made out of the text or out of one Word of God, I see not.

2. Christ ascending on high, and “giving some to be apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints’ (not of Ephesus, far less of one single congregation only) “for the work of the ministry’ (in general) ‘for the edifying of the Body of Christ:’ (not a congregational body only) ‘Till we all meet in the unity of the faith, and of the

4 [That is, the church of a neighborhood district, or, a local congregation. ] 5 [‘Presbyter’ is Greek for the office of elder.]

knowledge, of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’ [Eph. 4:11-13] Consider, I pray you:

1. That Christ’s intention in giving a ministry is not for a congregation of forty or sixty, or a hundred persons, as if He intended to impawn [pledge as security] all power in that congregational body. But He intended the edifying of his catholic Body, and the ‘coming of all to the unity of the faith.’ A congregation of sixty cannot be ‘all saints,’ and this power is clearly given to that body which the Lord is ‘to make a perfect man, according to the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ;’ this is a mystical man, and the catholic Body of Jesus Christ. Call it a congregation and you wrest the scripture and vilify the noble and large end [design] for which Christ has given a ministry.

Ask to what end and to what first and principal subject [to give a natural analogy,] has the Lord given reason and a faculty of discoursing. Is it to Peter, to John, etc. as to the first subject, and for them as for their good? No, no, it is for and to the race of mankind. The case is just so here: “God has placed some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers...’ (1 Cor. 12:28) Is the meaning thus: God has placed apostles in the body of a single congregation? Where do you read that? I believe apostles have the visible catholic Church for their parish.

And is it a congregational body wherein God has placed such a variety of members as apostles, prophets, teachers, works of miracles, gifts of healing, helps, governments, etc.? So Rom. 12:5, ‘So we being many are one body in Christ, and every one members of another.” Hence he reckons out diverse offices in this body. Now this is not one congregation only, but that one

Body of Christ whereof Christ is Head; this is the catholic Church.

2. What ministerial power our brethren affirm to be given to a congregation. They say it is given to them under the notion of a flock of redeemed ones of the Spouse and Body of Christ. They cite for this Acts 20:28; Col. 1:18; Eph. 1:22, and under the notion of the City of God, the Kingdom, House and Building of Christ. But so they come to our hand, for this reduplication [reiteration] or notion of a flock of redeemed ones, of the Body and Spouse of Christ, of the City, Kingdom, House, Building, agree first to the catholic church (as is clear: Col. 1:8; Eph. 5:25,26; 1 Tim. 3:15; Eph. 2:19-22) and secondarily only to a congregation as it is a part of this universal flock.

3. The whole visible catholic Church is made one ministerial body, “beautiful as Tirzah, comely as the city of Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners,’ (Cant. 6:4) by reason of its order of discipline. And it is there called an organic body, having eyes, hair, teeth temples, locks (verses 6-8) and having particular churches under her, “sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins without number.’ Yet is it said, ‘My Dove, my undefiled is but one, she is the only one of her mother.’ (verse 9) Henry Ainsworth, who here may be more than a witness, says “this one Church is the daughter of Jerusalem who is above and ‘the mother of us all.’”7 [Gal. 4:26] John Cotton,’ a witness not inferior, says on this place: ‘The true catholic

Church of Christ is the mother of all reformed daughters.’

6 This argument hinges on the assumption that the book of Canticles is an allegory of Christ and the Church. This was the predominant view of the puritan era and of the Westminster Assembly, so much so, that they thought it appropriate to proof-text doctrine from this interpretation of the Song. See the proof-texts for WCF 10.1, 17.3, 18.4 and LC 81, 175.

7 Henry Ainsworth, Annotations on Song of Solomon, ch. 6 [Ainsworth (1571-1622) was one of the fathers of separatistic Independency. Rutherford is quoting their writers against them.]

8 John Cotton, Commentary on Song of Solomon, ch. 6 [John Cotton (1585-1652) was an influential, non-separatistic Independent in New England. Rutherford again is quoting their writers against them.]

That argument that our brethren use to prove a particular church to be visible because of external communion (not in one house, for that is accidental to visibility; one congregation may meet in three caves of the earth in time of persecution and yet remain one congregation), holds good in this catholic Church made up of so many organs, as a congregation is formed by:

1. The ministry of the Word begetting daughter churches to God, as they say a congregation is [so formed]. Nor is it enough to say that Jerusalem is not one by external government and order of discipline because they cannot meet together to exercise discipline. But she is one invisibly, because she has ‘one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one Spirit, one hope of glory.’ For the text says that they have one and the same organs, teeth, eyes, hair, temples, locks. They are one Jerusalem, one compact city, one terrible army by the sword of discipline.

2. We do not say that they must have one visible, actual government in external order in order to make them one visible Church. For when, in a congregation of sixty persons, there be thirty absent through sickness in the business of a lawful calling, they are yet one church visible though in one meeting you cannot see them all with one cast of your eye. And when the church of Jerusalem (exceeding in number ten thousand) did meet in part ‘from house to house’, that is in sundry houses, yet “continuing in the same doctrine of the apostles, and in fellowship and in breaking of bread, and in prayer,’ (Acts 2:32,46) our brethren will say, they are one ‘church.’ And therefore the power of discipline and the exercise of the Word, seals, and discipline in parts is sufficient to make one visible catholic Church.

4. To that ‘church’ has Christ given (as to the first church) the ordinances and ministry, by which ordinances and ministry He principally intends to perfect, to gather, and to bring to the unity of faith [that “church’] in a perfect Body, because the wisdom of Christ has not given his ministry and ordinances to the catholic Church intending principally to save them except He give them a power in that ministry to the first subject, which, being put forth in acts, may compass that end. But Jesus Christ principally intends by these ordinances and ministry to perfect to gather, to bring to the unity of faith in a perfect body, the whole catholic visible Church, and secondarily only this or that particular congregation. Therefore, Christ has given to the whole catholic Church, as to the first Church, the ordinances and ministry. And so in this catholic ministry He has given the

Keys to this visible catholic Church as to the first church.

5. I prove it thus: Whenever Christ gives gifts to a whole, He gives it to the whole by order of nature, [logically] before He gives it to the parts of that whole, as is clear by induction. He [God] gives Christ a gift to the whole Church by order of nature, first to the world (John 3:16), then to this or that believer of the world. So He gives redemption and grace by order of nature first to his Church in general (Eph. 5:25). Christ dies first for his Church (not this or that single company, or particular person), first for His sheep (that is, the whole flock, Jn. 10:11), then for this or that company or this or that straying sheep. He came to seek and save first the lost (Luke 19:10), then this or that lost man. He died first to gather together in one, not one man only, yea not the nation of the Jews only, but to gather together in one all the children of God which were scattered abroad (Jn. 11:25). And He is a propitiation by order of nature first for the sins of the whole world (1 Jn. 2:1), and then secondarily for our sins. So has He given the gifts of apostles, prophets, and teachers first to and for the saints in common and in general, and not for this or that [particular] saint or for this company of saints at Ephesus.

I prove now that particular congregations are parts of the great visible Church: They are visible parts of a presbytery or a circuit of congregations within the local bounds of a presbytery. I make good [this point] thus:

Those who have one common necessary object of external government in Church affairs, those are a whole visible community gifted with power from Christ to rule in that common and necessary object of government. And this and that portion of this whole community must be parts of that whole. But those congregations within the local bounds of the circuit of a presbytery have one common necessary object of external government in Church affairs. Therefore, those congregations in such a circuit must be parts of this whole.

The major [proposition] I take from our brethren, who therefore make a particular congregation to be one in respect of ordinary meetings in partaking of the Word, seals, and to transect matters of jurisdiction amongst themselves. But this agrees to many congregations within one circuit, for they meet occasionally one with another in hearing the Word and receiving the seals. And for the assumption I prove it thus: All those congregations have these particulars of external government in Church affairs, which they cannot transact within their own congregations, but do ex aequo [from equality]? belong to them all, as:

1. That they do not give offense one to another, that one church do not hold the doctrine of Balaam to the offense and scandal of other churches.

° [Latin phrases were kindly translated by Bobby Phillips. ]

2. That one congregation make not acts and canons against the Word of God, and against the acts of another congregation agreeable to the

Word of God.

3. That one church admonish, rebuke, comfort and ‘provoke another to love and to good works’ in such and such points.

Now, though a congregation make acts and constitutions for governing this or that member of the community, yet they do not, nor cannot, make acts that oblige the community and the church as the Church. The church, as being a part of the Church, is to be regulated by the whole. And if there be things that ex aequo concern all, and do not concern one particular church more than another: one particular congregation cannot govern in these. And by the like reason particular churches, classical presbyteries, and provincial and National Churches, are parts of the whole catholic visible Church.

6. Because Christ has not given the power of ministry, ordinances and jurisdiction to the single congregation as to the first subject upon the ground that our brethren speak: [which ground is] because the single congregation [they say] is that Spouse to which Christ is referred as a Husband and that Body to which He carries the relation of a Head, communicating life to all the members: Eph. 1:22; Col. 1:18. Nor is it [the congregation] that adequate number of ransomed persons, of ‘sheep, of ‘lost ones, of “fellow-citizens, of “spiritual stones,’ etc. to the which Christ does carry that adequate and complete relation of a Savior, of a good Shepherd, of a Seeker of lost ones, of a King and Governor, of the chief cornerstone.

Therefore that visible Church (for whose salvation Christ has given the ministerial power) must be the larger visible Church, just as the God of nature has given to the whole race of sheep a power to seek their own food, and, because of their simplicity, a power to be ordered and led by the shepherd; and secondarily this power is given to this or that flock feeding on Mt. Carmel or elsewhere. So has the God of grace given a power to the whole visible catholic flock to submit themselves in the Lord to other guides, and He has given to the whole company of shepherds (as to the first subject) the power of the Keys; and secondarily the power is given to this or that visible church and company of pastors.

7. When any scandalous person is delivered to Satan, he is cast out of the whole catholic Church. Therefore, he was before his ejection a member of the whole catholic Church, for he cannot be cast out who was never within. And when he is excommunicated, his sins are bound; as in heaven, so on earth. That is, not only in that tract of ground where a handful of a little independent congregation (as they say) of ten, twenty or a hundred do ordinarily feed, but in all the visible world where God has a Church. And all, both within the little congregation where he is and without, are to repute him ‘as a heathen and a publican.’

It is true some of our Brethren say that he is excommunicated only out of that congregation whereof he is a member antecedently because Christ has given the power of excommunication only to the congregated church (1 Cor. 5:4) when they are met “together to deliver to Satan.” And they must do it in collegio, in consessu, coram tota ecclesia,!° before and in presence of the congregational church, which is to give their consent and as it has a certain power of interest in the business. But he is cast out and excommunicated to all other churches only by consequence and by virtue of the communion of churches.

*° (“in council, in assembly, before the entire church”]

I answer the plain contrary:

1. He is antecedently"™ and formally delivered to Satan by the power of the catholic visible Church which is put forth in exercises and in act before that church whereof he is a nearest member. Even as the left hand does cut off a finger of the right hand which otherwise would infect the whole body. Now it is not the left hand only that cuts off the contagious and infectious finger, but the whole man. Deliberate reason and the will consents that it should be done for the preservation of the whole man. The left hand is a mere instrument and the loss of the finger is a loss from the whole body. The finger is not cut off the right hand antecedently by that intrinsic power only in the right hand, but [by the] intrinsic [power] in the whole body. It is true that the contagion may otherwise creep through and infect the right hand and right arm first, and therefore incision is made upon the right hand. So if the eldership of a congregation deliver to Satan, it is not done by the power that is only intrinsic in that congregation, but by the intrinsic power in the whole universal Church who shall keep communion with him.

1. That eldership [of the congregation] cuts him off as the instrument or hand of the catholic Church, and the incision (as it were) is performed there in that meeting (I will not say [that it is a meeting] of the whole congregation, that is to be proved) because the contagion shall come first upon these with whom the delinquent is to keep the nearest fellowship. And that excommunication be performed in a meeting, I grant. The place 1 Cor. 5:4 says so much.

But that it is a meeting of the congregation with favor of the learned, cannot be proved cogently. Though I think excommunication when

1 [That is, by a preceding, authoritative principle. ]

it is actually performed should be done before the congregation, that is but for the edification and nearest and most immediate practice of that congregation (for the contagion is nearest to them). But the reason why the presence of the congregation (whereof the delinquent is a member) is requisite, is not because this congregation has the sole intrinsic power in herself and because she formally and antecedently excommunicates, and the rest of the churches only do so consequently and by virtue of a communion. For the sister churches are to debar this excommunicated person from their communion with Christ in the seals of the Covenant, and that by an intrinsic authoritative Church power. Whereas if he were not excommunicated, they should have received him to a communion with them in the seals, and that by an intrinsic authoritative Church power. For one man cannot receive another to the seals of the Covenant with him because no one man has a Church authority. If therefore the church as the Church is consociated by an intrinsic Church-power: [if this church] should have admitted him [to fellowship] if he had not been excommunicated, it is evident that he was a member not only of the congregation out of which he is excommunicated, but also of the whole consociated congregations.

2. The man’s sins are bound on earth antecedently to all the consociated churches. He is now equally incapable of Church fellowship in all the consociated churches, as in that congregation whereof he is a member. All without and within that congregation are to hold him for no visible saint: not to eat or drink with him. He is now to all the visible churches, in regard of visible communion, no member of that body whereof Jesus Christ is Head, no part of that City, of that Building whereof Christ is the Lord and chief

Cornerstone. And he is to the sister churches in their authoritative church-estimation (so to speak) and in relation to their power of jurisdiction, in the very same case as a member of Satan. He is in relation to the authoritative power of jurisdiction of that congregation whereof he was a nearest member just as the finger cut off is alike separated from the body; yea the whole body as from the hand.

And it is a wonder to me that Christ gives an intrinsic power to a congregation of twenty believers to cut off a member for the preservation of that little company of the Lord’s flock and that He has denied that intrinsic power to the whole which is no less in danger to be infected, seeing Christ principally intends in the giving of a ministry to the whole Church especially the gathering of the whole body, ‘To the full and perfect stature of the age of Christ, in the unity of faith,” (Eph. 4:11) yet He intends the salvation and preservation of the whole from infection more than the salvation of a part of this whole Body.

That is, as you would say, the God of nature has given an intrinsic power to five hundred in a city to set guides over themselves and to rule themselves by wholesome laws, but He has denied that power to the whole city consisting of ten thousand. And He has given to the right hand an intrinsic power to consent that a finger in the right hand infected with a gangrene be cut off, but He has denied this intrinsic power to the whole man. I beseech you, does the God of nature in conferring this power to the right arm intend the preservation of the right arm only (and its wellbeing) and not rather the preservation of the whole body? So, does not Christ intend that the whole consociated churches shall be preserved from infection and not that particular congregation only? Then if Christ’s means be congruously fitted for his own end, He must have given an intrinsic power to many consociated churches to cast out a contagious lump. Otherwise the consociated churches are to exercise the punishment of avoiding the excommunicated person as a heathen, which flows from a power which is no way in them. What conscience is here?

2. What if the congregation cast the man out, clave errante [with an errant key] and undeservedly? Shall they consequently as sister churches in a brutish fraternity execute a sentence of an intrinsic power in another church, and not any of them or their guides have any power to discern whether the censure be justly or unjustly inflicted? This our brethren condemn in their own congregation because the reputing of the ejected man as a heathen is a matter of practice that concerns the conscience of every one of the congregation, therefore must all the congregation give their powers and consent, yea do more than consent (say some), even exercise jurisdiction (or a power not different from it).

Some things are objected against this [presbyterian] way:

Objection 1: The power of the Keys cannot be given to the catholic representative

Church or catholic presbytery as to the first subject, to be an ordinary and constant means of edification, if the exercise thereof in an ordinary and constant way is impossible. But the exercise of this ministerial power given to the catholic visible presbytery, as to the first subject, in an ordinary and constant way, is impossible. Therefore, such a power is not given to the catholic representative Church as to the first subject, to be an ordinary and constant means of edification. The proposition is clear: it is incongruous to the wisdom of Jesus Christ that He should give that to be a means which possibly cannot attain the end. The assumption is just as evident: for the catholic visible presbytery cannot meet in an ordinary and constant way.