gives a limitation of the power, as in the case of the ruling elder, who is limited to ruling as contradistinct to laboring in the word and doctrine, 1 Tim. v. 17.) Now what gross absurdities ensue hereupon!  For, 1.  Then the weak as well as the strong, the ignorant as well as the intelligent, the children as well as the parents, yea, and the very women as well as the men, may preach, dispense seals, ordain, admonish, excommunicate, absolve authoritatively; (for they are all equally members of the body, one as well as another, and therefore, as such, have all alike equal share in the keys and exercise thereof:) viz. they that are not gifted for these offices, shall discharge these offices; they that are not called nor sent of God to officiate, (for God sends not all,) shall yet officiate in the name of Christ without calling or sending, contrary to Rom. x., Heb. v. 4.  They that want the common use of reason and discretion (as children) shall have power to join in the highest acts of order and jurisdiction:  yea, they that are expressly prohibited speaking in the churches, as the women, 1 Cor. xiv., 1 Tim. ii., shall yet have the keys of the kingdom of heaven hung at their girdles. 2.  Then the Church shall be the steward of Christ, and dispenser of the mysteries of God authoritatively and properly.  But if the whole Church be the dispenser of the mysteries of God, what shall be the object of this dispensation?  Not the Church, for according to this opinion she is the first subject dispensing; therefore it must be something distinct from the Church, unto which the Church dispenseth; what shall this be? shall it be another collateral church? then particular churches collateral may take pastoral care one of another reciprocally, and the same churches be both over and under one another; or shall it be those that are without all churches? then the ordinances of the gospel, and the dispensation of them, were not principally bestowed upon the Church and body of Christ for the good thereof, (which is directly repugnant to the Scriptures, Eph. iv. 8, 11-13;) but rather for them that are without.  How shall the men, who maintain the principle’s of the Independents, clearly help themselves out of these perplexing absurdities?

3.  Hereby the body of the people (as Mr. Bayly well observes in his Dissuasive, chap. ix. page 187) will be extremely unfitted for, and unwarrantably taken off from the several duties that lie upon them in point of conscience to discharge in their general and particular callings, in spiritual and secular matters, on the Lord’s days and on their own days.  For, if the ecclesiastical power be in all the people, then all the people are judges, and at least have a negative voice in all church matters.  They cannot judge in any cause prudently and conscientiously, till they have complete knowledge and information of both the substantials and circumstantials of all those cases that are brought before them; they must not