The Commonwealth of Israel consisted of the Senate, the
people, and the magistracy.

The people by their first division, which was genealogical,
were contained under their thirteen tribes, houses, or families;
whereof the first-born in each was prince of his tribe, and had
the leading of it: the tribe of Levi only, being set apart to
serve at the altar, had no other prince but the high-priest. In
their second division they were divided locally by their
agrarian, or the distribution of the land of Canaan to them by
lot, the tithe of all remaining to Levi; whence, according to
their local division, the tribes are reckoned but twelve.

The assemblies of the people thus divided were methodically
gathered by trumpets to the congregation: which was, it should
seem, of two sorts. For if it were called with one trumpet only,
the princes of the tribes and the elders only assembled; but if
it were called with two, the whole people gathered themselves to
the congregation, for so it is rendered by the English; but in
the Greek it is called Ecclesia, or the Church of God, and by the
Talmudist the great "Synagogue." The word Ecclesia was also
anciently and properly used for the civil congregations, or
assemblies of the people in Athens, Lacedaemon, and Ephesus,
where it is so called in Scripture, though it be otherwise
rendered by the translators, not much as I conceive to their
commendation, seeing by that means they have lost us a good
lesson, the apostles borrowing that name for their spiritual
congregations, to the end that we might see they intended the
government of the church to be democratical or popular, as is
also plain in the rest of their constitutions.