Quest. XCII. May a whole church, or the greater part, be excommunicated?

Answ. 1. To excommunicate is by ministerial authority to pronounce the person unmeet for christian communion, as being under the guilt of impenitence in heinous sin; and to charge the church to forbear communion with him, and avoid him, and to bind him over to the bar of God.

2. The pastor of a particular church may pronounce all the church uncapable of christian communion and salvation till they repent, e. g. If they should all be impenitent Arians, Socinians, blasphemers, &c. for he hath authority, and they deserve it. But he hath no church that he is pastor of, whom he can command to avoid them. 3. The neighbour pastors of the churches about them, may, upon full proof, declare to their own churches, that such a neighbour church that is fallen to Arianism, &c. is unmeet for christian communion and to be owned as a church of Christ; and therefore charge their flocks not to own them, nor to have occasional communion with their members when they come among them. For there is authority, and a meet object, and necessity for so doing; and therefore it may be done. 4. But a single pastor of another church may not usurp authority over any neighbour church, to judge them and excommunicate them, where he hath neither call nor full proof, as not having had opportunity to admonish them all, and try their repentance. Therefore the pope’s excommunications are rather to be contemned, than regarded. 5. Yet if many churches turn heretics notoriously, one single neighbour pastor may renounce their communion, and require his flock for to avoid them all. 6. And a pastor may as lawfully excommunicate the major part of his church, by charging the minor part to avoid them, as he may do the minor part; except that accidentally the inconveniences of a division may be so great, as to make it better to forbear; and so it may oft fall out also, if it were the minor part.

2 John 10, 11; 3 John 9, 10; Rev. ii. 5, 16; iii. 5, 6, 15.