Part 13 (2/2)

3. The manner also of deacons' vocation or calling unto their office is delineated, viz: 1. They must be chosen by the church; ”Look ye out among you seven men of honest report,” &c., ”and they chose Stephen,”

&c., Acts vi. 3, 5. 2. They must first be proved and tried by the officers of the church, before they may officiate as deacons; ”and let these also first be proved, then let them use the office of a deacon, being blameless,” 1 Tim. iii. 10. 3. They must be appointed by the officers of the church to their office, and set apart with prayer, Acts vi. 3, 6: ”Look ye out men--whom we may appoint over this business--whom they set before the apostles, and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them.”

4. Deacons have by Scripture their work and employment appointed them.

Their work is, _to serve tables_, (hence the name deacon seems derived,) Acts vi. 2, 3. To be an help, no hinderance in the church; called _helps_, 1 Cor. xii. 18.

5. Deacons have a divine approbation and commendation in Scripture, if they execute their office well. ”For they that have used the office of a deacon well, purchase to themselves a good degree, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus,” 1 Tim. iii. 13. Here the well administration of deacons.h.i.+p is commended as producing two good effects to such deacons, viz: 1. _A good degree_, i.e. great honor, dignity, and reputation, both to themselves and to their office; they adorn, grace, and credit their office in the church; not that they purchase to themselves by desert a higher office in the church, that from deacons they should be advanced to be presbyters, as some would interpret this text. 2. _Much boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus._ For nothing makes a man more bold than a good conscience in the upright and faithful discharge of our duties in our callings; innocency and integrity make brave spirits; such with great confidence and boldness serve Christ and the church, being men that may be trusted to the uttermost. Now where G.o.d thus approves or commends the well managing of an office, he also divinely approves and allows the office itself, and the officer that executes the same.[92]

SECTION II.

2. _Of the first receptacle, or subject of the power of church government from Christ, viz. Christ's own officers._

Touching the second, that Jesus Christ our Mediator hath peculiarly intrusted his own officers with the power of church government: take it thus--

Jesus Christ our Mediator did immediately commit the proper, formal, ministerial, or stewardly authority and power for governing of his church to his own church guides as the proper immediate receptacle or first subject thereof.

For explication of this proposition, four things are to be opened.

1. What is meant by proper, formal, ministerial or stewardly authority and power for church government? See this already discussed, Part 2, chapters III., V., and IX., in the beginning of Section 2, so that here there needs no further addition, as to this point.

2. What is meant by church guides? By church guides here understand, negatively, 1. Not the political magistrate. For though he be the _nurse-father_ of the church, Isa. xlix. 23, _the keeper and avenger of both the tables_; and _have an outward care of religion_, and _may exercise a political power about sacred things_, as did Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah, &c., yet hath he no proper, inward, formal power in sacred things, nor is it lawful for him to exercise the same; as Korah, Num. xvi.; King Saul, 1 Sam. xiii. 9-15; Uzzah, 2 Sam.

vi. 6-8, 1 Chron. xiii. 9, 10; and King Uzziah, 2 Chron. xxvi. 16-22, did to the provoking of G.o.d, and to their own destruction. (But see what power is granted, and what denied to the civil magistrate in matters of religion, and why, Part 2, Chap. IX. Sect. 1.) 2. Not any officer of man's mere invention and setting up in the church, whether papal, as cardinals, &c., prelatical, as deans, archdeacons, chancellors, officials, &c., or political, as committees, commissioners, &c. For who can create and inst.i.tute a new kind of offices in the church, but Jesus Christ only, who alone hath the lordly magisterial power as Mediator appropriated to him? Eph. iv. 8, 11; Rom. xii. 5-8; 1 Cor. xii. 28; and therefore how can such acts be sufficiently excused from bold usurpation upon Christ's own prerogative? 3. Nor the deacons themselves, (though officers of Christ's appointment, as was formerly proved;) for their office is not to rule and govern, but _to serve tables_, &c., Acts vi.

2, 3. None of these are the church guides which Christ hath committed his proper power unto. But affirmatively understand all these church guides extraordinary and ordinary, which Christ hath erected in his Church, vesting them with power and authority therein, viz. apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, governments, or ruling elders, mentioned together in Eph. iv. 8, 11; 1 Cor. xii. 28; 1 Tim. v.

17; Rom. xii. 6-8. These are Christ's own church officers, these Christ hath made the immediate receptacle and first subject of the keys, or of ecclesiastical power derived from himself.

3. What is meant by Christ's committing this stewardly power first and immediately to the church guides? _Ans_. There is, 1. A priority and immediateness of the donation of the power of the keys: thus Christ first and immediately gave keys to his own officers, whom Scripture, therefore, calls _the ministers of Christ_, (not of the Church,) 1 Cor.

iv. 1, not first and immediately to the community of the faithful, or Church, and then by the Church secondarily and mediately to the officers, as her subst.i.tutes and delegates, acting for her, and not in virtue of their own power from Christ. 2. A priority and immediateness of designation of particular individual persons to the office of key-bearing, and this is done by the mediate intervening act of the church officers in separating of particular persons to the office which Christ inst.i.tuted; though it is not denied but that the church or company of the faithful may lawfully nominate or elect individual persons to be officers in the congregation, which yet is no act of authority or power.

4. How hath Christ committed this power of the keys to his church guides, that thereby they become the most proper receptacle thereof?

_Ans_. Thus briefly. All absolute lordly power is in G.o.d originally: all lordly magisterial mediatory power is in Christ dispensatorily: all official, stewardly power is by delegation from Christ only in the church guides[93] ministerially, as the only proper subject thereof that may exercise the same lawfully in Christ's name: yet all power, both magisterial in Christ, and ministerial in Christ's officers, is for the Church of Christ and her edification objectively and finally.

These things thus explained and stated, we come now to the confirmation of the proposition. Consider these arguments:

1. Jesus Christ committed immediately ecclesiastical power and the exercise thereof to his church guides. Thus we may argue:

_Major_. All those that have ecclesiastical power, and the exercise thereof, immediately committed to them from Jesus Christ, are the immediate subject or receptacle of that power.

For what makes any persons the immediate subject of power, but the immediate derivation and commission of power to them from Jesus Christ, who is the fountain of all power?

_Minor_. But the church guides have the ecclesiastical power and the exercise thereof immediately committed to them from Jesus Christ. This may be evinced many ways by Scriptures. 1. It is said expressly, ”Of our authority which the Lord hath given us for your edification,” 2 Cor.

10, 8: by _us_ here we are to understand church guides, for here they are set in opposition to the church members (_for edification_,) not destruction of (you.) Here are edifiers and edified. Now these church guides have authority given them, and that from the Lord, i.e. Christ; here is their commission or power, not from the Church or any creature, but from Christ; hence the apostle calls church guides, ”Your rulers or guides in the Lord,” 1 Thes. v. 12; _in the Lord_, i.e. by the Lord's authority and commission. So that church officers are _rulers in the Lord_, and the churches ruled by them; yea, ruling elders being one sort of church guides, have such an undoubted power of governing in the Church divinely committed to them, that of them it is said, ”G.o.d hath set in the church governments”, 1 Cor. xii. 28, i.e. governors, the abstract being put for the concrete. If _G.o.d have set governors in the Church_, then G.o.d vested those governors with a power of governing, whence they have their name of governments.

2. The keys of the kingdom of heaven, with all their acts, were immediately committed to the church guides, viz. to the apostles and their successors to the end of the world; compare these testimonies, Matt. xvi. 16, 19, and xviii. 18-20; John xx. 21-23; with Matt, xxviii.

18-20: therefore consequently ecclesiastical power was committed immediately unto them as the subject thereof. For, _By the kingdom of heaven_ here we are to understand (according to the full lat.i.tude of the phrase) both the kingdom of grace in this world, and of glory in the world to come; _binding and loosing both in earth and in heaven_, upon the right use of the keys, being here the privileges promised to church guides; and _by kingdom of heaven_--on earth, understand the whole visible Church of Christ in the earth, not only some single congregation. By _keys of the kingdom of heaven_, thus apprehend, Christ promiseth and giveth not the sword _of the kingdom_, any secular power; nor the sceptre _of the kingdom_, any sovereign, lordly, magisterial power over the Church. But the _keys_, &c. i.e. a stewardly, ministerial power, and their acts, _binding and loosing_, i.e. _retaining and remitting sins on earth_, (as in John it is explained;) opening and shutting are proper acts of keys; binding and loosing but metaphorical, viz. a speech borrowed from bonds or chains wherewith men's bodies are bound in prison or in captivity, or from which the body is loosed: we are naturally all under sin, Rom. v. 12, and therefore liable to death, Rom. vi. 23. Now sins are to the soul as bonds and cords, Prov. v. 22.

_The bond of iniquity_, Acts viii. 23; and death with the pains thereof, are as chains, 2 Pet. ii. 4, Jude 6; in h.e.l.l as in a prison, 1 Pet.

iii. 10: the remission or retaining of these sins, is the loosing or the binding of the soul under these cords and chains. So that the keys themselves are not material but metaphorical; a metaphor from stewards in great men's houses, kings' houses, &c., into whose hands the whole trust and ordering of household affairs is committed, who take in and cast out servants, open and shut doors, &c., do all without control of any in the family save the master of the family. Such, in the Hebrew phrase, are said to be _over the house_, Gen. xliii. 18; Isa. xxii. 15; 2 Kings xviii. 18: and the keys of the house are committed to them as a badge of their power. So that when G.o.d threatens to put Shebna out of his office in the king's house, and to place Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, in his room, he saith, ”I will commit thy government into his hand--and the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder,” Isa. xxii. 21, 22, parallel of that phrase, ”and the government shall be upon his shoulder,” Isa. ix. 6. Hence, as key is in the Old Testament used for stewardly power and government, Isa. xxii. 21, 22; (only twice properly, Judges iii. 25; 1 Chron. ix. 27;) so in the New Testament, _key_ is always used, metaphorically, to denote power, and that about ecclesiasticals or spirituals, viz. in Matt. xvi. 19; Luke xi. 52; Rev.

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