cast a mist before them. 2. Who can justly challenge the reformed
presbyterial churches for arbitrary proceedings in matters of church
government, practised in some of them for above these fourscore years?
Or where are their accusers? 3. Why should the presbyterial
government, to be erected in England, be prejudged as arbitrary, before
the government be put in execution? When arbitrary conduct appears, let
the adversaries complain. 4. If any arbitrary conduct hath been
discovered in any reformed church, or shall fall out in ours, it is or
shall be more justly reputed the infirmity and fault of the governors,
than of the government itself.

II. What probability or possibility of tyranny in the presbyterial
government? For, 1. Who should tyrannize, what persons, what ruling
assemblies? Not the ministers; for, hitherto they have given no just
cause of any suspicion, since this government was in hand: and they are
counterpoised in all assemblies with a plurality of ruling elders, it
being already studiously[3] provided that there be always two ruling
elders to one minister: if there be still two to one, how should they
tyrannize if they would? Neither ministers nor ruling elders are likely
to tyrannize, if due care be taken by them, whom it doth concern, to
elect, place, and appoint, conscientious, prudent, and gracious
ministers and ruling elders over all congregations. Nor yet the ruling
assemblies, lesser or greater; for in the presbyterial government all
lesser ruling assemblies (though now at first, perhaps, some of them
consisting of more weak and less experienced members) are subordinate to
the greater authoritatively; and persons aggrieved by any
mal-administrations have liberty to appeal from inferior to superior:
and the very national assembly itself, though not properly subordinate,
yet is it to be responsible to the supreme political magistracy in all
their proceedings so far as subjects and members of the commonwealth.

III. How can they tyrannize over any? Or in what respects? Not over
their estates: for they claim no secular power at all over men's
estates, by fines, penalties, forfeitures, or confiscations. Not over
their bodies, for they inflict no corporal punishment, by banishment,
imprisonment, branding, slitting, cropping, striking, whipping,
dismembering, or killing. Not over their souls; for, them they desire by
this government to gain, Matth. xviii. 15; to edify, 2 Cor. x. 8, and
xiii. 10; and to