ure of this Power and Authority._

Having viewed what is the rule of this authority, viz. the holy
Scriptures, and what is the fountain of this authority, viz. Jesus
Christ our Mediator; now consider the special kind or peculiar nature of
this authority, which the description lays down in two several
expressions, viz: 1. It is a spiritual power or authority. 2. It is a
derived power, &c.

1. The power or authority of church government is a spiritual power.
Spiritual, not so perfectly and completely as Christ's supreme
government is spiritual, who alone hath absolute and immediate power and
authority over the very spirits and consciences of men; ruling them by
the invisible influence of his Spirit and grace as he pleaseth, John
iii. 8; Rom. viii. 14; Gal. ii. 20: but so purely, properly, and merely
spiritual is this power, that it really, essentially, and specifically
differs, and is contradistinct from that power which is properly civil,
worldly, and political, in the hand of the political magistrate. Now,
that this power of church government is in this sense properly, purely,
merely spiritual: and that by divine right may be evidenced many ways
according to Scripture; forasmuch as the rule, fountain, matter, form,
subject, object, end, and the all of this power, is only spiritual.

1. Spiritual in the rule, revealing and regulating it, viz. not any
principles of state policy, parliament rolls, any human statutes, laws,
ordinances, edicts, decrees, traditions, or precepts of men whatsoever,
according to which cities, provinces, kingdoms, empires, may be happily
governed: but the holy Scriptures, that perfect divine canon, wherein
the Lord Christ hath revealed sufficiently how his own house, his
Church, shall be ruled, 1 Tim. iii. 14, 15; and all his ordinances,
word, sacraments, censures, &c., shall therein be dispensed, 2 Tim. iii.
16, 17. (See chap. IV.) Now this Scripture is divinely breathed, or
inspired of God--holy men writing not according to the fallible will of
man, but the infallible acting of the Holy Ghost, 2 Tim. iii. 16, with 2
Pet. i. 20, 21.

2. Spiritual in the fountain or author of this power, whence it
originally flows; it being derived, not from any magistrate, prince, or
potentate in the world, not from any man on earth, or the will of man;
but only from Jesus Christ our Mediator, himself being the sole or first
receptacle of all power from the Father, Matt. xxviii. 18; John v. 22:
and consequ