David King on Christ assigning a form of church polity

[Reformed Covenanter]

... That Christ should assign his church no form of government, is, I submit, a position highly improbable in itself. The church must have some constitution; and on many grounds it appears of great and manifest importance that he should be its Legislator.

(1.) He is the Prince of Peace, and he promised peace to his people. But how could the societies of his worshippers be peacefully organised if the mode of organization were optional, and left to be determined by their own fallible and conflicting judgments? Under such conditions discord would be inevitable. It is true that strifes about church government have actually arisen, and that no extent of privilege secures an imperfect discipleship against their occurrence. But the conflicts which result from the neglect of a standard are always more or less restrained, even while they last, by that standard; and they admit of eventual and satisfactory settlement. Whereas differences accruing from want of a standard have no moderating element, and furnish no means either of prevention or of cure. Therefore they must yield unavoidable and interminable troubles. ...

For more, see David King on Christ assigning a form of church polity.

 

[Pergamum]

Matthew 18 sounds pretty Congregational to me.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

Matthew 18 sounds pretty Congregational to me.

You do not need to be a Congregationalist to recognise that the local congregation should give their consent to disciplinary cases. And, of course, Matthew 18 is not the only thing in the Bible that addresses the question of church government.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

I see that there is an earlier thread about the above-cited book.