Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici: The Divine Right of Church Government

A Pastoral Work on Church Government.

According to many historians this well written and well reasoned work was the Westminster Assembly’s defense of presbyterianism. Part 1 of Jus Divinum establishes the nature of a divine right and the different ways to determine whether something has a divine right according to the Scriptures. Part 2 takes up what form of church government is established by Scripture to be of divine right. The book espouses jus divinum presbyterianism. The Southern Presbyterian Thomas Smyth called this book “a work of admirable and overpowering argument.” In The Church of Christ , James Bannerman said this “work contains an extremely able, thorough, and satisfactory discussion of most of the points relating to the nature of Church government as a Divine institution, and to the power or authority of the Church, its seat and exercise.” Church sessions would profit much from studying this work together.

In 1646 the often tense relationship between the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly of Divines, which had been summoned to advise Parliament on reforming the Church of England, came to a boiling point. When the House of Commons made it clear by an ordinance that a creature of Parliament would decide cases of suspension from the Lord’s Supper, the Assembly protested that this was “contrary to that Way of Government which Christ hath appointed in His Church, in that it giveth a Power to judge of the Fitness of Persons to come to the Sacrament unto such as our Lord Christ hath not given that Power unto.” The Commons charged the Assembly with breach of privilege and ordered that they answer nine questions about what the Scriptures mandate regarding church government, and then published the questions in an attempt to discredit the Assembly. Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici has long been considered the embodiment of the defensive reply of the presbyterian majority and in some respect the whole Assembly of Divines of what the Scriptures teach about church government. The present volume presents a critical text of this work based on the three period editions of 1646, 1647, and 1654. The briefer but extremely helpful Part 1 describes how to determine whether something is of divine right, while the longer Part 2 describes the details of that system of government found to be of divine right in the Word of God.