CHAP. CXV.
Peace.By these weights we may try the weight of that commonly received and not questioned opinion, viz., that the civil state and the spiritual, the church and the commonweal, they are like Hippocrates’ twins, they are born together, grow up together, laugh together, weep together, sicken and die together.
Five demonstrative arguments proving the unsoundness of that maxim: the church and the commonwealth are like Hippocrates’ twins.
Truth. A witty, yet a most dangerous fiction of the father of lies, who, hardened in rebellion against God, persuades God’s people to drink down such deadly poison, though he knows the truth of these five particulars, which I shall remind you of:—
Many flourishing states without a true church.
First, many flourishing states in the world have been and are at this day, which hear not of Jesus Christ, and therefore have not the presence and concurrence of a church of Christ with them.
Many of God’s people far off from a true church state, yet fit for civil services.
Secondly, there have been many thousands of God’s people, who in their personal estate and life of grace were awake to God; but in respect of church estate, they knewno other than a church of dead stones, the parish church; or though some light be of late come in through some cranny, yet they seek not after, or least of all are joined to any true church of God, consisting of living and believing stones.
So that by these New English ministers’ principles, not only is the door of calling to magistracy shut against natural and unregenerate men, though excellently fitted for civil offices, but also against the best and ablest servants of God, except they be entered into church estate: so that thousands of God’s own people, excellently qualified, not knowing or not entering into such a church estate, shall not be accounted fit for civil services.
God’s people permitted and favoured by idolaters.
Thirdly, admit that a civil magistrate be neither a member of a true church of Christ, if any be in his dominions, nor in his person fear God, yet may he (possibly) give free permission without molestation, yea, and sometimes encouragement and assistance, to the service and church of God. Thus we find Abraham permitted to build and set up an altar to his God wheresoever he came, amongst the idolatrous nations in the land of Canaan. Thus Cyrus proclaims liberty to all the people of God in his dominions, freely to go up and build the temple of God at Jerusalem, and Artaxerxes after him confirmed it.
Thus the Roman emperors, and governors under them, permitted the church of God, the Jews, in the Lord Christ’s time, their temple and worship, although in civil things they were subject to the Romans.
Christ’s church gathered and governed without the help of an arm of flesh.
Fourthly, the scriptures of truth and the records of time concur in this, that the first churches of Christ Jesus, the lights, patterns, and precedents to all succeeding ages, were gathered and governed without the aid, assistance, or countenance of any civil authority, fromwhich they suffered great persecutions for the name of the Lord Jesus professed amongst them.
The nations, rulers, and kings of the earth, tumultuously rage against the Lord and his anointed, Ps. ii. 1, 2. Yet, ver. 6, it hath pleased the Father to set the Lord Jesus King upon his holy hill of Zion.
Christ Jesus would not be pleased to make use of the civil magistrate to assist him in his spiritual kingdom, nor would he yet be daunted or discouraged in his servants by all their threats and terrors: for love is strong as death, and the coals thereof give a most vehement flame, and are not quenched by all the waters and floods of mightiest opposition, Cant. viii. [6, 7.]
Christ’s true spouse, chaste and faithful to Christ Jesus, in the midst of fears or favours from the world.
Christ’s church is like a chaste and loving wife, in whose heart is fixed her husband’s love, who hath found the tenderness of his love towards her, and hath been made fruitful by him, and therefore seeks she not the smiles, nor fears the frowns, of all the emperors in the world to bring her Christ unto her, or keep him from her.
The ten horns, Rev. xiii. and xvii.
Lastly, we find in the tyrannical usurpations of the Romish anti-christ, the ten horns—which some of good note conceive to be the ten kingdoms into which the Roman empire was quartered and divided—are expressly said, Rev. xvii. 13, to have one mind to give their power and strength unto the beast; yea, ver. 17, their kingdom unto the beast, until the works of God shall be fulfilled. Whence it follows, that all those nations that are gilded over with the name of Christ, have under that mask or vizard (as some executioners and tormenters in the inquisition use to torment) persecuted the Lord Jesus Christ, either with a more open, gross, and bloody, or with a more subtle, secret, and gentle violence.
The great mystery of persecution unfolded. Christian Naboths slaughtered.
Let us cast our eyes about, turn over the records, andexamine the experience of past and present generations, and see if all particular observations amount not to this sum, viz., that the great whore hath committed fornication with the kings of the earth, and made drunk thereof nations with the cup of the wine of her fornications: in which drunkenness and whoredom (as whores use to practise) she hath robbed the kings and nations of their power and strength, and, Jezebel like, having procured the kings’ names and seals, she drinks [herself] drunk, Rev. xvii. [6,] with the blood of Naboth, who, because he dares not part with his rightful inheritance in the land of Canaan, the blessed land of promise and salvation in Christ, as a traitor to the civil state and blasphemer against God, she, under the colour of a day of humiliation in prayer and fasting, stones to death.