For explication of this proposition, four things are to be opened.

1. What is meant by proper, formal, ministerial or stewardly authority
and power for church government? See this already discussed, Part 2,
chapters III., V., and IX., in the beginning of Section 2, so that here
there needs no further addition, as to this point.

2. What is meant by church guides? By church guides here understand,
negatively, 1. Not the political magistrate. For though he be the
_nurse-father_ of the church, Isa. xlix. 23, _the keeper and avenger of
both the tables_; and _have an outward care of religion_, and _may
exercise a political power about sacred things_, as did Asa,
Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah, &c., yet hath he no proper, inward,
formal power in sacred things, nor is it lawful for him to exercise the
same; as Korah, Num. xvi.; King Saul, 1 Sam. xiii. 9-15; Uzzah, 2 Sam.
vi. 6-8, 1 Chron. xiii. 9, 10; and King Uzziah, 2 Chron. xxvi. 16-22,
did to the provoking of God, and to their own destruction. (But see what
power is granted, and what denied to the civil magistrate in matters of
religion, and why, Part 2, Chap. IX. Sect. 1.) 2. Not any officer of
man's mere invention and setting up in the church, whether papal, as
cardinals, &c., prelatical, as deans, archdeacons, chancellors,
officials, &c., or political, as committees, commissioners, &c. For who
can create and institute a new kind of offices in the church, but Jesus
Christ only, who alone hath the lordly magisterial power as Mediator
appropriated to him? Eph. iv. 8, 11; Rom. xii. 5-8; 1 Cor. xii. 28; and
therefore how can such acts be sufficiently excused from bold usurpation
upon Christ's own prerogative? 3. Nor the deacons themselves, (though
officers of Christ's appointment, as was formerly proved;) for their
office is not to rule and govern, but _to serve tables_, &c., Acts vi.