More than a century earlier, Matthew Henry lamented that “church-power and church-censures are often abused.”14 He argued that God’s Word forbids pastors who exhibit “tyranny and abuse of power . . . [Because] so hard is it for vain men, even good men, to have such authority, and not to be puffed up with it, and do more hurt than good with it, that our Lord Jesus saw fit wholly to banish it out of his church.”15
