240 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. tains,that whatever relates to the church of Christ, must be deduced from scripture. " We deny no authority to the king in matters ecclesiastical," says he, "but only that which Jesus Christ, the only head of the church, hath directly and precisely appropriated unto himself, and bath denied to communicate to any creature or creatures in the world. We hold that Christ alone is the doctor or teacher of the church in matters of religion ; and that the word of Christ, which he hath given to his church, is of absolute perfection, containing all parts of true religion, both for substance and ceremony, and a perfect direction inall eccle- siastical matters whatsoever, unto which it is not lawful for any man or angel to add, or from which to detract". Mr. John Paget of Amsterdam, who was well acquainted with him, gives the following account of his views ofchurch government : " When he camefrom Leyden, where he and Mr. Jacob had, sojourned together for some time, he pro- fessed at his first coming to Amsterdam, that the use of synods was for counsel and advice only, but had noautho- rity to give a definitive sentence. After much conference with him, when he had more seriously and maturely con- sidered this question, he plainly changedhis opinion, as he professed, not only to me, but to others : so that some of Mr. Jacob's opinion wereoffended at him, and expostulated not only with him, but also with me, for having occasioned the alteration of his judgment. I had the means of under- standing his mind aright, and better than those who pervert his meaning, since he was not only a member of the same church, but a member of the same family, and lived with use under the same roof; where we had daily conversation of these things, even at the time when Mr. Jacob published his unsound writing upon this question. He was afterwards a member of the same eldership, and, by office, sat with us daily to hear and judge the causes of our church, and so became a member of our classical combination; yet did he never testify against the undue power of the classis, or com- plain that we were not e free people, though the classis exercised the sameauthority then as it doth now. He was also for a time the scribe of our consistory, and the acts of our eldership and church were recorded by his own hand."+ Mr. Thomas Parker, another excellent puritan, of whom a memoir will be given, was his son. Troughton's Apology, p. 89, 60. Edit. 1681. 1- Paget's Defence, p. 105,
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