CHAP. CXXIII.
Peace.You have, dear Truth, as in a glass, presented the face of old and new Israel, and as in water face answereth to face, so doth the face of typical Israel to the face of the antitype, between whom, and not between Canaan and the civil nations and countries of the worldnow, there is an admirable consent and harmony. But I have heard some say, was not the civil state and judicials of that people precedential?
Whether the civil state of Israel was precedential.
Truth.I have in part, and might farther discover, that from the king and his throne to the very beasts, yea, [to] the excrements of their bodies (as we see in their going to war, Deut. xxiii. 12,) their civils, morals, and naturals were carried on in types; and however I acknowledge that what was simply moral, civil, and natural in Israel’s state, in their constitutions, laws, punishments, may be imitated and followed by the states, countries, cities, and kingdoms of the world: yet who can question the lawfulness of other forms of government, laws, and punishments which differ, since civil constitutions are men’s ordinances (or creation, 2 Pet. ii. 13), unto which God’s people are commanded even for the Lord’s sake to submit themselves, which if they were unlawful they ought not to do?
Peace.Having thus far proceeded in examining whether God hath charged the civil state with the establishing of the spiritual and religious, what conceive you of that next assertion, viz., “It is well known that the remissness of princes in Christendom in matters of religion and worship, devolving the care thereof only to the clergy, and so setting their horns upon the church’s head, hath been the cause of anti-christian invention, usurpation, and corruption in the worship and temple of God.”
The true Christendom.
Truth.It is lamentably come to pass by God’s just permission, Satan’s policy, the people’s sin, the malice of the wicked against Christ, and the corruption of princes and magistrates, that so many inventions, usurpations, and corruptions are risen in the worship and temple of God, throughout that part of the world which is called Christian, and may most properly be called the pope’s Christendom in opposition to Christ Jesus’s true Christian commonweal,or church, the true Christendom; but that this hath arisen from princes’ remissness in not keeping their watch to establish the purity of religion, doctrine, and worship, and to punish, according to Israel’s pattern, all false ministers, by rooting them and their worships out of the world, that, I say, can never be evinced; and the many thousands of glorious souls under the altar whose blood hath been spilt by this position, and the many hundred thousand souls, driven out of their bodies by civil wars, and the many millions of souls forced to hypocrisy and ruin eternal, by enforced uniformities in worship, will to all eternity proclaim the contrary.
Great unfaithfulness in ministers to cast the chiefest burden of judging and establishing true Christianity upon the commonweal or world itself.
Indeed, it shows a most injurious idleness and unfaithfulness in such as profess to be messengers of Christ Jesus, to cast the heaviest weight of their care upon the kings and rulers of the earth, yea, upon the very commonweals, bodies of people, that is, the world itself, who have fundamentally in themselves the root of power, to set up what government and governors they shall agree upon.
Secondly, it shows abundance of carnal diffidence and distrust of the glorious power and gracious presence of the Lord Jesus, who hath given his promise and word to be with such his messengers to the end of the world, Matt. xxviii. 20.
That dog that fears to meet a man in the path, runs on with boldness at his master’s coming and presence at his back.
To govern and judge in civil affairs load enough on the civil magistrate. Magistrates can have no more power than the common consent of the people shall betrust them with.
Thirdly, what imprudence and indiscretion is it in the most common affairs of life, to conceive that emperors, kings, and rulers of the earth, must not only be qualified with political and state abilities to make and execute such civil laws which may concern the common rights, peace, and safety, which is work and business, load and burden enough for the ablest shoulders in the commonweal; butalso furnished with such spiritual and heavenly abilities to govern the spiritual and Christian commonweal, the flock and church of Christ, to pull down, and set up religion, to judge, determine, and punish in spiritual controversies, even to death or banishment. And, beside, that not only the several sorts of civil officers, which the people shall choose and set up, must be so authorized, but that all respective commonweals or bodies of people are charged (much more) by God with this work and business, radically and fundamentally, because all true civil magistrates, have not the least inch of civil power, but what is measured out to them from the free consent of the whole: even as a committee of parliament cannot further act than the power of the house shall arm and enable them.
Thousands of lawful magistrates, who never hear of the true church of God.
Concerning that objection which may arise from the kings of Israel and Judah, who were born members of God’s church, and trained up therein all their days, which thousands of lawful magistrates in the world, possibly born and bred in false worships, pagan or anti-christian, never heard of, and were therein types of the great anointed, the King of Israel, I have spoken sufficiently to such as have an ear to hear: and therefore,
The spiritual and civil sword cannot be managed by one and the same person. The Lord Jesus refused to manage both.
Lastly, so unsuitable is the commixing and entangling of the civil with the spiritual charge and government, that (except it was for subsistence, as we see in Paul and Barnabas working with their own hands) the Lord Jesus, and his apostles, kept themselves to one. If ever any in this world was able to manage both the spiritual and civil, church and commonweal, it was the Lord Jesus, wisdom itself: yea, he was the true heir to the crown of Israel, being the son of David: yet being sought for by the people to be made a king, John vi. [15,] he refused, and would not give a precedent to any king, prince, or ruler, to manage both swords, and to assume the charge of both tables.
Now concerning princes, I desire it may be remembered, who were most injurious and dangerous to Christianity, whether Nero, Domitian, Julian, &c., persecutors: or Constantine, Theodosius, &c., who assumed this power and authority in and over the church in spiritual things. It is confessed by the answerer and others of note, that under these latter, the church, the Christian state, religion, and worship, were most corrupted: under Constantine, Christians fell asleep on the beds of carnal ease and liberty; insomuch that some apply to his times that sleep of the church, Cant. v. 2,I sleep, though mine heart waketh.[225]