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.
(2.) A man may be baptized by a general unfixed minister, who is not the pastor of any particular church:[273] and he may be baptized in solitude, where there is no particular church. The eunuch, Acts viii. was not baptized into any particular church.
(3.) Baptism doth but make us christians, but a man may be a christian who is no member of any particular church.
(4.) Otherwise baptism should oblige us necessarily to a man, and be a covenant between the baptized and the pastor and church into which he is baptized: but it is only our covenant with Christ.
(5.) We may frequently change our particular church relation, without being baptized again. But we never change our relation to the church which we are baptized into, unless by apostasy.
2. Yet the same person at the same time that he is baptized may be entered into the universal church, and into a particular; and ordinarily it ought to be so where it can be had.
3. And the covenant which we make in baptism with Christ, doth oblige us to obey him, and consequently to use his instituted means, and so to hear his ministers, and hold due communion with his churches.
4. But this doth no more enter us into a particular church, than into a particular family. For we as well oblige ourselves to obey him in family relations as in church relations.
5. When the baptized therefore is at once entered into the universal and particular church, it is done by a double consent to the double relation. By baptism he professeth his consent to be a member of Christ and his universal church; and additionally he consenteth to be guided by that particular pastor in that particular church; which is another covenant or consent.
[273] Matt. xxviii. 19, 20.
Quest. XXXIII. _Whether infants should be baptized, I have answered long ago in a treatise on that subject. Also what infants should be baptized? and who have right to sacraments? and whether hypocrites are univocally or equivocally christians and church members? I have resolved in my "Disput. of Right to Sacraments."_
Quest. XXXIV. _Whether an unbaptized person who yet maketh a public profession of christianity, be a member of the visible church? And so of the infants of believers unbaptized._