Luke xxii. 66, and Acts xxii. 5, and the whole presbytery.  Let such as are expert in Jewish antiquities and their polity, consider and judge. 3.  Finally, they had their lesser judicatories in their synagogues, or congregational meetings:  for, their synagogues were not only for prayer, and the ministry of the word, in reading and expounding the Scriptures, but also for public censures, correcting of offences, &c., as that phrase seems to import, “And I punished them oft in every synagogue,” Acts xxvi. 11.  His facts and proceedings, it is true, were cruel, unjust, impious.  But why inflicted in every synagogue, rather than in other places, and that by virtue of the high priest’s letters, Acts ix. 1, 2; but there the Jews had judicatories, that inflicted public punishments upon persons ecclesiastically offending?  Besides, we read often in the New Testament of the rulers of the synagogue, as Mark v. 35, 36, 38; Luke viii. 41, and xiii. 14; and of Crispus and Sosthenes the chief rulers of the synagogue, Acts xviii. 8, 17; whence is intimated to us, that these synagogues had their rule and government in themselves; and that this rule was not in one person, but in divers together; for if there were chief rulers, there were also inferiors subordinate unto them:  but this is put out of doubt, in Acts xiii. 15, where after the lecture of the law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them—­synagogue in the singular number, and rulers in the plural.  Thus analogically there should be ecclesiastical rulers and governors in every single congregation, for the well guiding thereof.  But if this satisfy not, add hereunto the material passages in our Saviour’s speech.

2.  Now touching the matter of our Saviour’s discourse, it makes this very clear to us; for by a gradation he leadeth us from admonition private and personal, to admonition before two or three witnesses, and from admonition before two or three witnesses, to the representative body of one church, (as the phrase tell the church must here necessarily be interpreted,) if there the difference can be composed, the offence removed, or the cause ended; rather than unnecessarily render the offence, and so our brother’s shame, more public and notorious.  And that the presbytery or eldership of a particular congregation, vested with power to hear and determine such cases as shall be brought before them, is partly, though not only here intended, seems evident in the words following, which are added for the strengthening and confirming of what went before in ver. 17:  “Verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.  Again, I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.  For where two or three are gathered together in my