CHAP. X.
Peace.Now the last distinction is this: “Persecution for conscience is either for a rightly informed conscience, or a blind and erroneous conscience.”
Answ. Persecutors oppress both true and erroneous consciences.
Truth.Indeed, both these consciences are persecuted; but lamentably blind and erroneous will those consciences shortly appear to be, which out of zeal for God, as is pretended, have persecuted either. And heavy is the doom of those blind guides and idol shepherds, whose right eyeGod’s finger of jealousy hath put out, who flattering the ten horns, or worldly powers, persuade them what excellent and faithful service they perform to God, in persecuting both these consciences; either hanging up a rightly informed conscience, and therein the Lord Jesus himself, between two malefactors, or else killing the erroneous and the blind, like Saul, out of zeal to the Israel of God, the poor Gibeonites, whom it pleased God to permit to live; and yet that hostility and cruelty used against them, as the repeated judgment year after year upon the whole land after told them, could not be pardoned until the death of the persecutor, Saul [and] his sons, had appeased the Lord’s displeasure, 2 Sam. xxi.