any creature, but from Christ; hence the apostle calls church guides, “Your rulers or guides in the Lord,” 1 Thes. v. 12; in the Lord, i.e. by the Lord’s authority and commission.  So that church officers are rulers in the Lord, and the churches ruled by them; yea, ruling elders being one sort of church guides, have such an undoubted power of governing in the Church divinely committed to them, that of them it is said, “God hath set in the church governments”, 1 Cor. xii. 28, i.e. governors, the abstract being put for the concrete.  If God have set governors in the Church, then God vested those governors with a power of governing, whence they have their name of governments.

2.  The keys of the kingdom of heaven, with all their acts, were immediately committed to the church guides, viz. to the apostles and their successors to the end of the world; compare these testimonies, Matt. xvi. 16, 19, and xviii. 18-20; John xx. 21-23; with Matt, xxviii. 18-20:  therefore consequently ecclesiastical power was committed immediately unto them as the subject thereof.  For, By the kingdom of heaven here we are to understand (according to the full latitude of the phrase) both the kingdom of grace in this world, and of glory in the world to come; binding and loosing both in earth and in heaven, upon the right use of the keys, being here the privileges promised to church guides; and by kingdom of heaven—­on earth, understand the whole visible Church of Christ in the earth, not only some single congregation.  By keys of the kingdom of heaven, thus apprehend, Christ promiseth and giveth not the sword of the kingdom, any secular power; nor the sceptre of the kingdom, any sovereign, lordly, magisterial power over the Church.  But the keys, &c. i.e. a stewardly, ministerial power, and their acts, binding and loosing, i.e. retaining and remitting sins on earth, (as in John it is explained;) opening and shutting are proper acts of keys; binding and loosing but metaphorical, viz. a speech borrowed from bonds or chains wherewith men’s bodies are bound in prison or in captivity, or from which the body is loosed:  we are naturally all under sin, Rom. v. 12, and therefore liable to death, Rom. vi. 23.  Now sins are to the soul as bonds and cords, Prov. v. 22. The bond of iniquity, Acts viii. 23; and death with the pains thereof, are as chains, 2 Pet. ii. 4, Jude 6; in hell as in a prison, 1 Pet. iii. 10:  the remission or retaining of these sins, is the loosing or the binding of the soul under these cords and chains.  So that the keys themselves are not material but metaphorical; a metaphor from stewards in great men’s houses, kings’ houses, &c., into whose hands the whole trust and ordering of household affairs is committed, who take in and cast out servants, open and shut doors, &c., do all without control of any in the family save the