Part 2 — Chapter 9: The Fifth Argument, Taken from Geometrical Proportion

As is the proportion of 3 to 9, so is the proportion of 9 to 27, of 21 to 81, etc. This rule of geometrical proportion affords us a fifth argument for the point in hand. If we should grant the government of the Church to be popular, then by what proportion one or two are subject to a whole congregation, by the same proportion is that congregation subject to a provincial or a national congregation. I mean, if all the congregations in a province or a nation were assembled into one collective body (as all the males of the Jews did assemble three times in the year at Jerusalem, and as in the days of the Judges, the whole congregation of the children of Israel was assembled together in Mizpeh, as one man, from Dan even to Beersheba, four hundred thousand men, to try the cause of the Levite, and to resolve what to do there-anent, which meeting of the nation, was ordered by tribes, the tribes by families, the families by persons) in that case any one particular congregation behoved to be subject to the general congregation, by the same reason whereby one man is subject to the particular congregation, whereof he is a member, because the whole is greater than a part, and the body more than a member. Now the same rule holds in the representatives of Churches, whether we compare them with the collectives, or among themselves. If we compare the representatives with the collectives, then as one congregation is governed by the particular eldership representing the same, by the like proportion are 14 or 16 congregations governed by a classical Presbytery representing them all: by the same proportion are all the congregations in a province subject to a provincial Synod: by the same ought all the congregations in a nation to be subject to a national Assembly, all of them being either mediately or immediately represented in the same; for as Parker says well, many Churches are combined into one, in the very same manner, as many members are combined into one Church.

If we compare the representatives among themselves, then by what proportion a particular eldership representing only one congregation is less in power and authority than a classical Presbytery which represents many congregations, by the same proportion is a classical Presbytery less in power and authority than a provincial Synod, and it less in authority than a national Synod. So that the authority of Presbyteries whether parochial or classical being once granted, this shall by the rule of proportion infer the authority of Synods. I know that Synods are not ordinary courts, as Presbyteries are; but this and other differences between them I pass: the argument holds for the point of authority, that Synods when they are, have authority over all the Churches in a province or a nation, even as Presbyteries have over the congregations within their bounds.