oral
acts of his office should be resolved _ultimate_ on the authority of the
church, not on the Word of God, which, no doubt, is Popery, for so the
warrant of the magistrate's conscience should not be 'thus saith the
Lord,' but 'thus saith the church in their decrees.' 2. The magistrate
and all men have a command to try all things, _ergo_, to try the decrees
of the church, and to retain what is good (1 Thes. v. 21); to try the
spirits even of the church in their decrees (1 John iii. 1). 3. We
behooved [in that case] to lay down this Popish ground that ... the
church cannot erre in their decrees.... Its against Scripture and reason
that magistrates, and by the like reason all others, should obey the
decrees of the church with a blinde faith, without inquiring in the
warrants and grounds of their decrees, which is as good Popery as,
Magistrates and all men are to beleeve as the church beleeveth, with an
implicite faith, so ignorance shall be the mother of devotion. Whoever
impute this to us--who have suffered for nonconformity, and upon this
ground, that synods can erre, refused the ceremonies--are to consult
with their own conscience whether this be not to make us appear
disloyall and odious to magistracy in that which we never thought, far
lesse [presumed] to teache and professe it to the world."[266]

[Sidenote: Gillespie's Opinion.]

Even more notable are the utterances of George Gillespie, when
vindicating against the Erastians of the south that more free government
of the church by its own courts from which they feared so many evils.
"I dare confidently say," he affirms, "that, if comparisons be rightly
made, presbyterial government is the most limited and the least
arbitrary government of any other in the world."[267] And, after
entering into details to make good this affirmation in regard to the
papal and prelatical forms of government, he proceeds to maintain that
Independents "must needs be supposed to exercise a much more unlimited
or arbitrary power than the presbyterial churches do," because they
exempt individual congregations from all control and correction by
superior courts, and because it is "one of their three grand principles
which disclaimeth the binding of themselves for the future unto their
present judgement and practice, and avoucheth the keeping of this
reserve to alter and retract."[268] Some who think that, after all
recent changes, they more truly hold the opinions of Gillespie than we
do,