render the offence, and so our brother's shame, more public and
notorious. And that the presbytery or eldership of a particular
congregation, vested with power to hear and determine such cases as
shall be brought before them, is partly, though not only here intended,
seems evident in the words following, which are added for the
strengthening and confirming of what went before in ver. 17: "Verily, I
say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven. Again, I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth
as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of
my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," Matt. xviii.
18-20. In which passages these things are to be noted: 1. That this
church to which the complaint is to be made, is invested with power of
_binding_ and _loosing_, and that so authoritatively that what by this
church shall be bound or loosed on earth shall also be bound or loosed
in heaven, according to Christ's promise. 2. That these acts of
_binding_ or _loosing_, may be the acts but of two or three, and
therefore consequently of the eldership of a particular congregation;
for where such a juridical act was dispatched by a classical presbytery,
it is said to be done of _many_, 2 Cor. ii. 6, because that in such
greater presbyteries there are always more than _two or three_. And
though some do pretend, that the faults here spoken of by our Saviour in
this place, were injuries, not scandals; and that the church here
mentioned was not any ecclesiastical consistory, or court, but the civil
Sanhedrin, a court of civil judicature; and yet most absurdly they
interpret the binding and loosing here spoken of, to be doctrinal and
declarative; not juridical and authoritative; as if the doctrinal
binding and loosing were in the power of the civil Sanhedrin:[107] yet
all these are but vain, groundless pretences and subterfuges, without