CHAP. CVI.
Peace.Please you now, dear Truth, to discuss the scriptures from the Old Testament, Neh. xiii., and 2 Chron. xxxi.
The national church of the Jews might well be forced to a settled maintenance of their priests, but not so the Christian church.
Truth.God gave unto that national church of the Jews that excellent land of Canaan, and therein houses furnished, orchards, gardens, vineyards, olive-yards, fields, wells, &c.; they might well, in this settled abundance, and the promised continuation and increase of it, afford a large temporal supply to their priests and Levites, even to the tenth of all they did possess.
God’s people are now, in the gospel, brought into a spiritual land of Canaan, flowing with spiritual milk and honey, and they abound with spiritual and heavenly comforts, though in a poor and persecuted condition; therefore an enforced settled maintenance is not suitable to the gospel, as it was to the ministry of priests and Levites in the law.
Secondly, in the change of the church estate, there was also a change of the priesthood and of the law, Heb. vii. [12.] Nor did the Lord Jesus appoint that in his church, and for the maintenance of his ministry, the civil sword of the magistrate; but that the spiritual sword of the ministry should alone compel.
The civil sword of the national church of the Jews, could not type out a civil but a spiritual sword of the Christian church.
3. Therefore the compulsion used under Hezekiah and Nehemiah, was by the civil and corporal sword, a type (in that typical state) not of another material and corporal, but of a heavenly and spiritual, even the sword of the Spirit, with which Christ fighteth, Rev. ii. [12.] which is exceeding sharp, entering in between the soul and spirit, Heb. iv. [12.] and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ Jesus. He that submits not atthe shaking of this sword, is cut off by it; and he that despiseth this sword, all the power in the world cannot make him a true worshipper, or by his purse a maintainer of God’s worship.
No man should be bound to worship, nor maintain a worship, against his own consent.
Lastly, if any man professing to be a minister of Christ Jesus, shall bring men before the magistrate, as the practice hath been, both in Old and New England,[216]for not paying him his wages or his due: I ask, if the voluntary consent of the party hath not obliged him, how can either the officers of the parish, church, or of the civil state, compel this or that man to pay so much, more or less, to maintain such a worship or ministry? I ask further, if the determining what is each man’s due to pay, why may they not determine the tenth and more, as some desired (others opposing) in New England, and force men not only to maintenance, but to a Jewish maintenance?
Peace.Yea; but, say they, is not the labourer worthy of his hire?
Christ’s labourers worthy of their hire, but from them that hire them.
Truth.Yes, from them that hire him, from the church, to whom he laboureth or ministereth, not from the civil state: no more than the minister of the civil state is worthy of his hire from the church, but from the civil state: in which I grant the persons in the church ought to be assistant in their civil respects.
Peace.What maintenance, say they, shall the ministry of the gospel have?
What maintenance Christ hath appointed his ministers in the gospel.
Truth.We find two ways of maintenance for the ministryof the gospel proposed for our direction in the New Testament.
First, the free and willing contribution of the saints, according to 1 Cor. xvi., Luke viii. 3, &c., upon which both the Lord Jesus, and his ministers lived.
Secondly, the diligent work and labour of their own hands, as Paul tells the Thessalonians, and that in two cases:
1. Either in the inabilities and necessities of the church.
2. Or for the greater advantage of Christ’s truth. As when Paul saw it would more advantage the name of Christ, he denies himself, and falls to work amongst the Corinthians and Thessalonians.
Let none call these cases extraordinary: for if persecution be the portion of Christ’s sheep, and the business or work of Christ must be dearer to us than our right eye or lives, such as will follow Paul, and follow the Lord Jesus, must not think much at, but rejoice in, poverties, necessities, hunger, cold, nakedness, &c. The stewards of Christ Jesus must be like their Lord, and abhor to steal as the evil steward, pretending that he shamed to beg, but peremptorily dig he could not.