CHAP. CXX.[224]
Peace.Dear Truth, you have shown me a little draught of Zion’s sorrows, her children tearing out their mother’s bowels. Oh! when will He that stablisheth, comforteth, and builds up Zion, look down from heaven, and have mercy on her? &c.
Truth.The vision yet doth tarry, saith Habakkuk, but will most surely come; and therefore the patient and believing must wait for it.
Seven reasons, proving that the kings of Israel and Judah cannot have any other but a spiritual antitype. Civil types and figures must needs be answered by spiritual antitypes.
But to your last proposition, whether the kings of Israel and Judah were not types of civil magistrates? Now, I suppose, by what hath been already spoken, these things will be evident:—
First. That those former types of the land, of the people, of their worships, were types and figures of a spiritual land, spiritual people, and spiritual worship under Christ. Therefore, consequently, their saviours, redeemers, deliverers, judges, kings, must also have their spiritual antitypes, and so consequently not civil but spiritual governors and rulers, lest the very essential nature of types, figures, and shadows be overthrown.
Civil compulsion was proper in the national church of the Jews, but most improper in the Christian, which is not national.
Secondly. Although the magistrate by a civil sword might well compel that national church to the external exercise of their national worship: yet it is not possible, according to the rule of the New Testament, to compel whole nations to true repentance and regeneration, without which (so far as may be discerned true) the worship and holy name of God is profaned and blasphemed.
An arm of flesh and sword of steel cannot reach to cut the darkness of the mind, the hardness and unbelief of the heart, and kindly operate upon the soul’s affections to forsakea long-continued father’s worship, and to embrace a new, though the best and truest. This work performs alone that sword out of the mouth of Christ, with two edges, Rev. i. and iii.
Neither Christ Jesus nor his messengers have made the civil magistrate Israel’s antitype, but the contrary.
Thirdly. We have not one tittle, in the New Testament of Christ Jesus, concerning such a parallel, neither from himself nor from his ministers, with whom he conversed forty days after his resurrection, instructing them in the matters of his kingdom, Acts i. 3.
Neither find we any such commission or direction given to the civil magistrate to this purpose, nor to the saints for their submission in matters spiritual, but the contrary, Acts iv. and v.; 1 Cor. vii. 23; Col. ii. 18.
Civil magistracy essentially civil, and the same in all parts of the world.
Fourthly. We have formerly viewed the very matter and essence of a civil magistrate, and find it the same in all parts of the world, wherever people live upon the face of the earth, agreeing together in towns, cities, provinces, kingdoms:—I say the same essentially civil, both from, 1. The rise and fountain whence it springs, to wit, the people’s choice and free consent. 2. The object of it, viz., the commonweal, or safety of such a people in their bodies and goods, as the authors of this model have themselves confessed.
Christianity adds not to the nature of a civil commonweal, nor doth want of Christianity diminish it.
This civil nature of the magistrate we have proved to receive no addition of power from the magistrate being a Christian, no more than it receives diminution from his not being a Christian, even as the commonweal is a true commonweal, although it have not heard of Christianity; and Christianity professed in it, as in Pergamos, Ephesus, &c., makes it never no more a commonweal; and Christianity taken away, and the candlestick removed, makes it nevertheless a commonweal.
Rom. xiii. evidently proves the civil work and wages of the civil magistrate.
Fifthly. The Spirit of God expressly relates the work of the civil magistrate under the gospel, Rom. xiii.,expressly mentioning, as the magistrates’ object, the duties of the second table, concerning the bodies and goods of the subject.
2. The reward or wages which people owe for such a work, to wit, not the contribution of the church for any spiritual work, but tribute, toll, custom, which are wages payable by all sorts of men, natives and foreigners, who enjoy the same benefit of public peace and commerce in the nation.
Most strange, yet most true consequences from the civil magistrates now being the antitype of the kings of Israel and Judah.
Sixthly. Since civil magistrates, whether kings or parliaments, states, and governors, can receive no more in justice than what the people give: and are, therefore, but the eyes, and hands, and instruments of the people, simply considered, without respect to this or that religion; it must inevitably follow, as formerly I have touched, that if magistrates have received their power from the people, then the greatest number of the people of every land has received from Christ Jesus a power to establish, correct, reform his saints and servants, his wife and spouse, the church: and she that by the express word of the Lord, Ps. cxlix. 8, binds kings in chains, and nobles in links of iron, must herself be subject to the changeable pleasures of the people of the world, which lies in wickedness, 1 John v. 19, even in matters of heavenly and spiritual nature.
Hence, therefore, in all controversies concerning the church, ministry and worship, the last appeal must come to the bar of the people or commonweal, where all may personally meet, as in some commonweals of small number, or in greater by their representatives.
If no religion but that which the commonweal approves, then no Christ, no God, but at the pleasure of this world, 2 John 9.
Hence, then, no person esteemed a believer, and added to the church:—
No officer chosen and ordained:—
No person cast forth and excommunicated, but as thecommonweal and people please; and in conclusion, no church of Christ in this land or world, and consequently no visible Christ the head of it. Yea, yet higher, consequently no God in the world worshipped according to the institutions of Christ Jesus—except the several peoples of the nations of the world shall give allowance.
Peace.Dear Truth, oh! whither have our forefathers and teachers led us? Higher than to God himself, by these doctrines driven out of the world, you cannot rise: and yet so high must the inevitable and undeniable consequences of these their doctrines reach, if men walk by their own common principles.
The true antitype of the kings of Israel and Judah.
Truth.I may therefore here seasonably add a seventh, which is a necessary consequence of all the former arguments, and an argument itself: viz., we find expressly a spiritual power of Christ Jesus in the hands of his saints, ministers, and churches, to be the true antitype of those former figures in all the prophecies concerning Christ’s spiritual power, Isa. ix., Dan. vii., Mich. iv., &c., compared with Luke i. 32, Acts ii. 30, 1 Cor. v., Matt. xviii., Mark xiii. 34, &c.