enabled the Church of Scotland to maintain a
stricter and more efficient discipline than any other established church
has ventured to aim at.

[Sidenote: Nature and Ends of Discipline.]

The nature and ends of this discipline are pretty fully explained in the
introductory chapters of the Book of Common Order, in the Book of
Discipline, and the Order of Excommunication and Public Repentance. "As
no citie, towne, house, or family," it is affirmed in the first of
these treatises, "can maintaine their estate and prosper without policy
and governance, even so the Church of God, which requireth more purely
to be governed than any citie or family, cannot without spirituall
policy and ecclesiastical discipline continue, increase, and
flourish;[205] and as the Word of God is the life and soule of this
church, so this godly order and discipline is, as it were, sinews in the
body, which knit and joine the members together with decent order and
comelinesse; it is a bridle to stay the wicked from their mischiefs, it
is a spurre to pricke forward such as be slow and negligent; yea, and
for all men it is the father's rod, ever in a readiness to chastise
gently the faults committed, and to cause them afterward to live in more
godly feare and reverence."[206] Three causes are assigned why such
discipline should be retained and practised in the church--viz., that
evil men may not be numbered among God's children, that the good may not
be infected by association with the ungodly, and that the individual
taken under discipline may be made ashamed of his fault, and so may be
induced to repent and amend. This is said to be the object even of
excommunication--the highest censure the church can inflict on an
offending brother--that he, being brought to a due sense of his sin and
misery, may be saved in the day of the Lord. It is expressly provided
that, in regard to this last and highest censure, nothing is to be
attempted without the determination of the whole church--_i.e._, of the
ordinary members of the church--and they are affectionately reminded
that it is their duty to take good heed "that they seeme not more ready
to expell from the congregation than to receave againe those, in whom
they perceave worthy fruits of repentance to appeare," and "that all
punishments, corrections, censures, and admonitions stretch no farther
than God's Word with mercy may lawfully beare."[207]

[Sidenote: Order of Excommunication.]

The Order of Excommu