CHAP. LXXXII.
Truth.What hast thou there?
A strange model of a church and commonweal, after the Mosaical and Jewish pattern.
Peace.Here is a combination of thine own children against thy very life and mine: here is a model, framed by many able, learned, and godly hands, of such a church and commonweal as wakens Moses from his unknown grave, and denies Jesus yet to have seen the earth.
Truth.Begin, sweet Peace, read and propound. My hand shall not be tired with holding the balances of the sanctuary: do thou put in, and I shall weigh as in the presence of Him whose pure eyes cannot behold iniquity.
Matt. xvi. 19, with John xx. 23, Rom. xiii. 1, Matt. x. 18, Tit. iii. 1, Acts xv. 20, Isa. xlix. 23, Gal. iii. 28.
Peace.Thus, then, speaks the preface or entrance: “Seeing God hath given a distinct power to church and commonweal, the one spiritual (called the power of the keys), the other civil (called the power of the sword), and hath made the members of both societies subject to both authorities, so that every soul in the church is subjectto the higher powers in the commonweal, and every member of the commonweal, being a member of the church, is subject to the laws of Christ’s kingdom, and in him to the censures of the church:—the question is, how the civil state and the church may dispense their several governments without infringement and impeachment of the power and honour of the one or of the other, and what bounds and limits the Lord hath set between both the administrations.”
Christ’s power in his church confessed to be above all magistrates’ in spiritual things.
Truth.From that conclusion, dear Peace, that “every member of the commonweal, being a member of the church, is subject to the laws of Christ’s kingdom, and in Him to the censures of the church:”—I observe, that they grant the church of Christ in spiritual causes to be superior and over the highest magistrates in the world, if members of the church.
Hence therefore I infer, may she refuse to receive, and may also cast forth any, yea, even the highest, if obstinate in sin, out of her spiritual society.
Hence, in this spiritual society, that soul who hath most of Christ, most of his Spirit, is most (spiritually) honourable, according to the scriptures quoted, Acts xv. 20; Isa. xlix. 23; Gal. iii. 28.
And if so, how can this stand with their common tenent that the civil magistrate must keep the first table: set up, reform the church: and be judge and governor in all ecclesiastical as well as civil causes?[205]
Isa. xlix. 23, lamentably wrested.
Secondly, I observe the lamentable wresting of this one scripture, Isa. xlix. 23. Sometimes this scripture mustprove the power of the civil magistrates, kings, and governors over the church in spiritual causes, &c. Yet here this scripture is produced to prove kings and magistrates (in spiritual causes) to be censured and corrected by the same church. It is true in several respects, he that is a governor may be a subject; but in one and the same spiritual respect to judge and to be judged, to sit on the bench and stand at the bar of Christ Jesus, is as impossible as to reconcile the east and west together.