CHAP. CXXIV.
Peace.Yea; but some will say, this was not through their assuming of this power, but the ill-managing of it.
Truth.Yet are they commonly brought as the great precedents for all succeeding princes and rulers in after ages: and in this very controversy, their practices are brought as precedential to establish persecution for conscience.
Who force the consciences of others, yet are not willing to be forced themselves.
Secondly, those emperors and other princes and magistrates acted in religion according to their consciences’ persuasion, and beyond the light and persuasion of conscience can no man living walk in any fear of God. Hence have they forced their subjects to uniformity and conformity unto their own consciences, whatever they were, though not willing to have been forced themselves in the matters of God and conscience.
Constantine and others wanted not so much affection as information of conscience.
Thirdly, had not the light of their eye of conscience, and the consciences also of their teachers, been darkened, they could not have been condemned for want of heavenly affection, rare devotion, wonderful care and diligence, propounding to themselves the best patterns of the kings of Judah, David, Solomon, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Josiah, Hezekiah. But here they lost the path, and themselves, in persuading themselves to be the parallels and antitypes to those figurative and typical princes: whence they conceived themselves bound to make their cities, kingdoms, empires, new holy lands of Canaan, and themselves governors and judges in spiritual causes, compelling all consciences to Christ, and persecuting the contrary with fire and sword.
Sad consequences of charging the civil powers with the care of spirituals.
Upon these roots, how was, how is it possible, but that such bitter fruits should grow of corruption of Christianity, persecution of such godly who happily see more of Christ than such rulers themselves: their dominions and jurisdictions being overwhelmed with enforced dissimulation and hypocrisy, and (where power of resistance) with flames of civil combustion: as at this very day, he that runs may read and tremble at?
Peace.They add further, that the princes of Christendom setting their horns upon the church’s head, have been the cause of anti-christian inventions, &c.
Civil rulers giving and lending their horns or authority to bishops, both dangerous to the truth of Christ. The spiritual power of the Lord Jesus compared in scripture to the incomparable horn of the rhinoceros.
Truth.If they mean that the princes of Europe, giving their power and authority to the seven-headed and ten-horned beast of Rome, have been the cause, &c., I confess it to be one concurring cause: yet withal it must be remembered, that even before such princes set their horns, or authority, upon the beast’s head, even when they did, as I may say, but lend their horns to the bishops, even then rose up many anti-christian abominations. And though I confess there is but small difference, in somerespects, between the setting their horns upon the priests’ heads, whereby they are enabled immediately to push and gore whoever cross their doctrine and practice, and the lending of their horns, that is, pushing and goring such themselves, as are declared by their bishops and priests to be heretical, as was and is practised in some countries before and since the pope rose: yet I confidently affirm, that neither the Lord Jesus nor his first ordained ministers and churches (gathered by such ministers), did ever wear, or crave the help of such horns in spiritual and Christian affairs. The spiritual power of the Lord Jesus in the hands of his true ministers and churches, according to Balaam’s prophecy, Num. xxiii., is the horn of that unicorn, or rhinoceros, Ps. xcii. [10,] which is the strongest horn in the world: in comparison of which the strongest horns of the bulls of Bashan break as sticks and reeds. History tells us how that unicorn, or one-horned beast the rhinoceros, took up a bull like a tennis ball, in the theatre at Rome, before the emperor, according to that record of the poet:[226]
Quantus erat cornu cui pila taurus erat!
Quantus erat cornu cui pila taurus erat!
Quantus erat cornu cui pila taurus erat!
Quantus erat cornu cui pila taurus erat!
Unto this spiritual power of the Lord Jesus, the souls and thoughts of the highest kings and emperors must [be] subject, Matt. xvi. and xviii., 1 Cor. v. and x.