CHAP. XXVI.
The danger of infection by these tares assoiled.
Truth.Now if any imagine that the time or date is long, that in the mean season they may do a world of mischief before the world’s end, as by infection, &c.
Lamentable experience hath proved this true of late in Europe, and lamentably true in the slaughter of some hundred thousands of the English.
First, I answer, that as the civil state keeps itself with a civil guard, in case these tares shall attempt aught against the peace and welfare of it let such civil offences be punished; and yet, as tares opposite to Christ’s kingdom, let their worship and consciences be tolerated.[116]
Secondly, the church, or spiritual state, city, or kingdom, hath laws, and orders, and armories,whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, Cant. iv. 4, weapons and ammunition, able to break down the strongest holds, 2 Cor. x. 4, and so to defend itself against the very gates of earth or hell.[117]
Thirdly, the Lord himself knows who are his, and his foundation remaineth sure; his elect or chosen cannot perish nor be finally deceived.[118]
Lastly, the Lord Jesus here, in this parable, lays down two reasons, able to content and satisfy our hearts to bearpatiently this their contradiction and anti-christianity, and to permit or let them alone.
First, lest the good wheat be plucked up and rooted up also out of this field of the world. If such combustions and fightings were as to pluck up all the false professors of the name of Christ, the good wheat also would enjoy little peace, but be in danger to be plucked up and torn out of this world by such bloody storms and tempests.[119]
And, therefore, as God’s people are commanded, Jer. xxix. 7, to pray for the peace of material Babel, wherein they were captivated, and 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2, to pray for all men, and specially [for] kings and governors, that in the peace of the civil state they may have peace: so, contrary to the opinion and practice of most, drunk with the cup of the whore’s fornication, yea, and of God’s own people, fast asleep in anti-christian Delilah’s lap, obedience to the command of Christ to let the tares alone will prove the only means to preserve their civil peace, and that without obedience to this command of Christ, it is impossible (without great transgression against the Lord in carnal policy, which will not long hold out) to preserve the civil peace.
Beside, God’s people, the good wheat, are generally plucked up and persecuted, as well as the vilest idolaters, whether Jews or anti-christians: which the Lord Jesus seems in this parable to foretell.
The great and dreadful harvest.
The second reason noted in the parable, which may satisfy any man from wondering at the patience of God, is this: when the world is ripe in sin, in the sins of anti-christianism (as the Lord spake of the sins of the Amorites, Gen. xv. 16), then those holy and mighty officers andexecutioners, the angels, with their sharp and cutting sickles of eternal vengeance, shall down with them, and bundle them up for the everlasting burnings.[120]
Then shall that man of sin, 2 Thess. ii. [8], be consumed by the breath of the mouth of the Lord Jesus; and all that worship the beast and his picture, and receive his mark into their forehead or their hands,shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment shall ascend up for ever and ever, Rev. xiv. 10, 11.