party too, that judgment ought not to be rashly or partially passed upon any.  The Jewish polity is only abrogated 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 proportion is that church subject to a provincial or a national assembly; and by the same proportion that one congregation is governed by the particular eldership representing it, by the same proportion are ten or twelve congregations governed by a classical presbytery representing them all.