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 instituted; 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 God 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