and the very national assembly itself, though not properly subordinate,
yet is it to be responsible to the supreme political magistracy in all
their proceedings so far as subjects and members of the commonwealth.

III. How can they tyrannize over any? Or in what respects? Not over
their estates: for they claim no secular power at all over men's
estates, by fines, penalties, forfeitures, or confiscations. Not over
their bodies, for they inflict no corporal punishment, by banishment,
imprisonment, branding, slitting, cropping, striking, whipping,
dismembering, or killing. Not over their souls; for, them they desire by
this government to gain, Matth. xviii. 15; to edify, 2 Cor. x. 8, and
xiii. 10; and to save, 1 Cor. v. 5. Only this government ought to be
impartial and severe against sin, that the flesh may be destroyed, 1
Cor. v. 5. It is only destructive to corruption, which is deadly and
destructive to the soul. Thus the imputation itself of arbitrary conduct
and tyranny to the presbyterial government is unjust and groundless.

II. The pretended ground of this aspersion is false and frivolous. The
presbyters of the Assembly of Divines, and others (_Diotrephes_-like,
affecting pre-eminence) have desired an unlimited power, according to
their own prudence and judgment, in keeping men from the ordinances in
cases of scandal not enumerated. _Ans_. 1. The presbyters of the
Assembly and others, are so far from the domineering humor of
Diotrephes, that they could gladly and heartily have quitted all
intermeddling in church government, if Jesus Christ had not by office
engaged them thereto; only to have dispensed the word and sacraments
would have procured them less hatred, and more case. 2. They desired
liberty to keep from the ordinances, not only persons guilty of the
scandals enumerated, but of all such like scandals, (and to judge which
are those scandals, not according to their minds unlimitedly, but