judicatories in their synagogues, or congregational meetings: for, their
synagogues were not only for prayer, and the ministry of the word, in
reading and expounding the Scriptures, but also for public censures,
correcting of offences, &c., as that phrase seems to import, "And I
punished them oft in every synagogue," Acts xxvi. 11. His facts and
proceedings, it is true, were cruel, unjust, impious. But why inflicted
_in every synagogue_, rather than in other places, and that by virtue of
the _high priest's letters_, Acts ix. 1, 2; but there the Jews had
judicatories, that inflicted public punishments upon persons
ecclesiastically offending? Besides, we read often in the New Testament
of the _rulers of the synagogue_, as Mark v. 35, 36, 38; Luke viii. 41,
and xiii. 14; and of Crispus and Sosthenes the chief _rulers of the
synagogue_, Acts xviii. 8, 17; whence is intimated to us, that these
synagogues had their rule and government in themselves; and that this
rule was not in one person, but in divers together; for if there were
chief rulers, there were also inferiors subordinate unto them: but this
is put out of doubt, in Acts xiii. 15, where after the lecture of the
law and the prophets, _the rulers of the synagogue sent unto
them_--_synagogue_ in the singular number, and rulers in the plural.
Thus analogically there should be ecclesiastical rulers and governors in
every single congregation, for the well guiding thereof. But if this
satisfy not, add hereunto the material passages in our Saviour's speech.

2. Now touching the matter of our Saviour's discourse, it makes this
very clear to us; for by a gradation he leadeth us from admonition
private and personal, to admonition before two or three witnesses, and
from admonition before two or three witnesses, to the representative
body of one church, (as the phrase _tell the church_ must here
necessarily be interpreted,) if there the difference can be composed,
the offence removed, or the cause ended; rather than unnecessarily