Series 3 > Register of the consultations of the ministers of Edinburgh and some other brethren of the ministry > Volume 1

86 THE REGISTER OF CONSULTATIONS
gone about without respect unto persons, by a legall and
orderlie procedure ; and that no Companie of Ministers
or others be esteemed or acknowledged to be a Presbytrie
or other Kirk judicature, who have not been owned as
such a judicature, and authorized by their respective
superior judicatures ; and that if any few Ministers or
others who are not authorized in maner forsaid, take upon
them the authoritie and judication of a Kirk-judicature,
and do exercise any acts of Government in calling or
deposeing Ministers, or inflicting any other censures, that
they be not countenanced nor any of their actings owned
as deeds of a lawfull judicature.
6. That all members of this Kirk, Minister and people,
submitt themselves in matters Ecclesiastick to their
Presbyteries and Synods respective (as being sett to
have rule over them in the Lord), wherewith alwayes
is to be understood that if any do find themselves justlie
greeved with any determination of an inferior judicature,
they may have recourse, by appealls in an orderlie way
according to the rules of this Kirk, for recognition and
redress of their greevances.
7. That Ecclesiastick censures which shall be pronounced
by the judicatures of the Kirk against any members of
the Kirk, Ministers, or others for Scandals, be not imped
nor stopped, nor any persons so censured, disobeying,
contemning or opposeing the discipline or government of
the Kirk, be countenanced or encouraged in their dis¬
obedience, contempt or opposition. And whereas some
men are bussie to suggest that the judicatures of the Kirk
being such for the most part as stands for the authoritie
and constitution of the two late General Assemblies, do
exercise oppression over these that dissents from them,
and that, if they had liberty to exercise their full power,
they would undoubtedly crush the other part, by casting
out many godly Ministers, holding out of the Ministrie
able and godly expectants, and censureing all others
differing from them, it is no thing else but an unjust slander,
as evidentlie appears both by the Act of the General
Assemblie at Edinburgh 1652, 2 August, Session 18,