supper, 1 Cor. xi. 17, &c.  In these and all such divine discommendings of the churches for their corruptions, all succeeding churches are strongly forbidden the like corruptions:  God’s dispraises are divine prohibitions.  Thus good church elders are commended in this notion, that they are elders ruling well, 1 Tim. v. 17; therefore, that elders in the church should rule, and rule well, is by this commendation of divine right.

2.  By promising and threatening.  What promise did God ever make to any act or performance, which was not a duty? or what threatening against any act which was not a sin?  He promises to them that forsake all for Christ, a “hundred-fold now in this time, and in the world to come eternal life,” Mark x. 29, 30; therefore it is our duty to forsake all for Christ.  He promised to ratify in heaven his disciples’ sentences of building or loosing on earth; and to be with them whensoever two or three of them were met together for that end, Matt. xvi. 19, and xviii. 18-20, and John xx. 23.  Therefore binding and loosing, remitting and retaining of sins, and meeting together for that end, belong to them by divine right.  He promised to be with them that baptize, preach, remit, and retain sins in his name, &c., always, to the end of the world, John xx. 23; with Matt, xxviii. 18-20, which promise shows, that these works and employments belong to all succeeding ministers to the world’s end, as well as to the apostles by divine right.  On the contrary, the Lord threatens Ephesus for decay of first love, Rev. ii. 4, 5; Pergamus, for holding false doctrine, Rev. ii. 14, 15; Thyatira, for tolerating of Jezebel and her false teaching, &c., Rev. ii. 21, 21, 23; and Laodicea, for lukewarmness, Rev. iii. 15, 16.  Therefore, all these were their sins, and we are bound, even by this divine threatening, to avoid the like by a divine warrant.

3.  By remunerating or rewarding; whether he reward with blessings or with judgments.  With blessings God rewarded the Hebrew midwives, because they preserved the male children of Israel, contrary to Pharaoh’s bloody command; God made them houses, Exod. i. 17, 20, 21.  He will have the elders that rule well counted worthy of double honor, &c.; i.e. rewarded with a bountiful, plentiful maintenance, 1 Tim. v. 17.  Therefore, their ruling in the church is of divine right, for which God appoints such a good reward.  Contrariwise, with judgments God rewarded king Saul, for offering a burnt-offering himself, 1 Sam. xiii. 12-14; Uzzah, for touching the ark, though it was ready to fall, 2 Sam. vi. 6, 7; and king Uzziah, for going into the temple to burn incense, 2 Chron. xxvi. 16.  None of these being priests, yet presuming to meddle with the priest’s office.  A rule for all persons, being not church officers, yea, though they be princes or supreme magistrates, that they are hereby warned by the divine law, not to usurp church authority or offices to themselves.  God rewarded the Corinthians with the judgments of weakness, sickness, and death, for unworthy receiving of the Lord’s supper, 1 Cor. xi. 30.  So that this is a divine warning for all after churches against unworthy communicating.