CHAP. XL.
But it hath been thought, or said, Shall oppositions against the truth escape unpunished? will they not prove mischievous? &c.
The misery of opposites against the truth.
Truth.I answer, as before, concerning the blind guides, in case there be no civil offence committed, the magistrates, and all men that by the mercy of God to themselves discern the misery of such opposites, have cause to lament and bewail that fearful condition wherein such are entangled: to wit, in the snares and chains of Satan, with which they are so invincibly caught and held, that no power in heaven or earth but the right hand of the Lord, in the meek and gentle dispensing of the word of truth, can release and quit them.
A difference between the true and false Christ and Christians.
Those many false Christs, of whom the Lord Jesusforewarns, Matt. xxiv. 5, 11, have suitably their false bodies, faith, spirit, baptism, as the Lord Jesus hath his true body, faith, spirit, &c., Ephes. iv. 5; correspondent also are their weapons, and the success, issue, or operation of them. A carnal weapon or sword of steel may produce a carnal repentance, a show, an outside, a uniformity, through a state or kingdom; but it hath pleased the Father to exalt the Lord Jesus onlyto be a Prince, armed with power and means sufficientto give repentance to Israel, Acts v. 31.
The worship of unbelieving, unregenerate persons.
Accordingly, an unbelieving soul being dead in sin, although he be changed from one worship to another, like a dead man shifted into several changes of apparel, cannot please God, Heb. xi. 6. And consequently, whatever such an unbelieving and unregenerate person acts in worship or religion, it is but sin, Rom. xiv. [23.] Preaching [is] sin, praying, though without beads or book, sin; breaking of bread, or Lord’s supper, sin; yea, as odious as the oblation of swine’s blood, a dog’s neck, or killing of a man, Isa. lxvi. [3.]
But faith is that gift which proceeds alone from the Father of lights, Phil. i. 29, and till he please to make his light arise and open the eyes of blind sinners, their souls shall lie fast asleep—and the faster, in that a sword of steel compels them to a worship in hypocrisy—in the dungeons of spiritual darkness and Satan’s slavery.
The danger and mischief of a civil sword in soul matters, which makes the civil magistrates deeply guilty of all those evils which he aims to suppress. That cannot be a true religion which needs carnal weapons to uphold it. Persecutors beget a persuasion of their cruelty in the hearts of the persecuted. Antoninus Pius’s golden act.
Peace.I add, that a civil sword, as woeful experience in all ages hath proved, is so far from bringing, or helping forward an opposite in religion to repentance, that magistrates sin grievously against the work of God, and blood of souls, by such proceedings. Because as commonly the sufferings of false and anti-christian teachers harden their followers, who being blind are by this means occasioned to tumble into the ditch of hell after their blind leaders, with more inflamed zeal of lying confidence: so, secondly,violence and a sword of steel, beget such an impression in the sufferers, that certainly they conclude, that indeed that religion cannot be true which needs such instruments of violence to uphold it; so that persecutors are far from [a] soft and gentle commiseration of the blindness of others.[139]To this purpose it pleased the Father of spirits, of old, to constrain the emperor of Rome, Antoninus Pius, to write to all the governors of his provinces to forbear to persecute the Christians; because such dealing must needs be so far from converting the Christians from their way, that it rather begat in their minds an opinion of their cruelties, &c.[140]