8. Whether a settled, private church member may not at once continue his very formal relation to the pastor of that church, and yet be of the same order with him in another church, as their pastor, at the same time, (as he may in case of necessity continue his apprenticeship or civil service,) is a case that I will not determine. But he that denieth it, must prove his opinion (or affirmation of its unlawfulness) by sufficient evidence from Scripture or nature; which is hard.
Quest. XXXI. Who hath the power of making church canons?
This is sufficiently resolved before. 1. The magistrate only hath the power of making such canons or laws for church matters as shall be enforced by the sword.
2. Every pastor hath power to make canons for his own congregation; that is, to determine what hour or at what place they shall meet; what translation of Scripture, or version of Psalms, shall be used in his church; what chapter shall be read; what psalm shall be sung, &c.: except the magistrate contradict him, and determine it otherwise, in such points as are not proper to the ministerial office.
3. Councils or assemblies of pastors have the power of making such canons for many churches, as shall be laws to the people, and agreements to themselves.
4. None have power to make church laws or canons about any thing, save, (1.) To put God's own laws in execution. (2.) To determine to that end, of such circumstances as God hath left undetermined in his word.
5. Canon-making under pretence of order and concord, hath done a great deal of mischief to the churches; whilst clergymen have grown up from agreements, to tyrannical usurpations and impositions, and from concord about needful accidents of worship, to frame new worship ordinances, and to force them on all others: but especially, (1.) By encroaching on the power of kings, and telling them that they are bound in conscience to put all their canons into execution by force. (2.) And by laying the union of the churches and the communion of christians upon things needless and doubtful, yea, and at last on many sinful things; whereby the churches have been most effectually divided, and the christian world set together by the ears; and schisms, yea, and wars have been raised: and these maladies cannot possibly be healed, till the tormenting, tearing engines be broken and cast away, and the voluminous canons of numerous councils (which themselves also are matter of undeterminable controversy) be turned into the primitive simplicity; and a few necessary things made the terms of concord. Doubtless if every pastor were left wholly to himself for the ordering of worship circumstances and accidents in his own church, without any common canons, save the Scriptures, and the laws of the land, there would have been much less division, than that is, which these numerous canons of all the councils, obtruded on the church, have made.
Quest. XXXII. Doth baptism as such enter the baptized into the universal church, or into a particular church, or both? And is baptism the particular church covenant as such?
Answ. 1. Baptism as such doth enter us into the universal church, and into it alone; and is no particular church covenant, but the solemnizing of the great christian covenant of grace, between God, and a believer and his seed.
For, (1.) There is not essentially any mention of a particular church in it.