The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed and Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered, by Roger Williams CHAP. XXVII. CHAP. XXVII. Peace. You have been larger in vindicating this scripture from the violence offered unto it, because, as I said before, it is of such great consequence; as also, because so many excellent hands have not rightly divided it, to the great misguiding of many precious feet, which otherwise might have been turned into the paths of more peaceableness in themselves and towards others. Truth. I shall be briefer in the scriptures following. The charge of Christ Jesus, Let alone the tares, was not spoken to magistrates, ministers of the civil state, but to ministers of the gospel. Peace. Yet before you depart from this, I must crave your patience to satisfy one objection, and that is: These servants to whom the householder answereth, seem to be the ministers or messengers of the gospel, not the magistrates of the civil state, and therefore this charge of the Lord Jesus is not given to magistrates, to let alone false worshippers and idolaters. Again, being spoken by the Lord Jesus to his messengers, it seems to concern hypocrites in the church, as before was spoken, and not false worshippers in the state, or world. Truth. I answer, first, I believe I have sufficiently and abundantly proved, that these tares are not offenders in the civil state. Nor, secondly, hypocrites in the church, when once discovered so to be; and that therefore the Lord Jesus intends a grosser kind of hypocrites, professing the name of churches and Christians in the field of the world, or commonwealth. The civil magistrate not so particularly spoken to as fathers and masters, in the New Testament, and why, Eph. v. 6; Col. iii. 4, &c. Secondly, I acknowledge this command, Let them alone, was expressly spoken to the messengers or ministers of the gospel, who have no civil power or authority in their hand, and therefore not to the civil magistrate, king, or governor, to whom it pleased not the Lord Jesus, by himself or by his apostles, to give particular rules or directions concerning their behaviour and carriage in civil magistracy, as they have done expressly concerning the duty of fathers, mothers, children, masters, servants, yea, and of subjects towards magistrates, Ephes. v. and vi.; Colos. iii. and iv. &c. A twofold state of Christianity the persecuted under the Roman emperors, and the apostate ever since. I conceive not the reason of this to be, as some weakly have done, because the Lord Jesus would not have any followers of his to hold the place of civil magistracy, but rather that he foresaw, and the Holy Spirit in the apostles foresaw, how few magistrates, either in the first persecuted or apostated state of Christianity, would embrace his yoke. In the persecuted state, magistrates hated the very name of Christ, or Christianity. In the state apostate, some few magistrates, in their persons holy and precious, yet as concerning their places, as they have professed to have been governors or heads of the church, have been so many false heads, and have constituted so many false visible Christs. Thirdly, I conceive this charge of the Lord Jesus to his messengers, the preachers and proclaimers of his mind, is a sufficient declaration of the mind of the Lord Jesus, if any civil magistrate should make question what were his duty concerning spiritual things. Christ’s messengers receive a threefold charge in that prohibition of Christ, Let them alone. The apostles, and in them all that succeed them, being commanded not to pluck up the tares, but let them alone, received from the Lord Jesus a threefold charge. First, to let them alone, and not to pluck them up by prayer to God for their present temporal destruction.[121] God’s people not to pray for the present ruin and destruction of idolaters, although their persecutors, but for their peace and salvation. Jeremy had a commission to plant and build, to pluck up and destroy kingdoms, Jer. i. 10; therefore he is commanded not to pray for that people whom God had a purpose to pluck up, Jer. xiv. 11, and he plucks up the whole nation by prayer, Lament, iii. 66. Thus Elijah brought fire from heaven to consume the captains and the fifties, 2 Kings i. And the apostles desired also so to practise against the Samaritans, Luke ix. 54, but were reproved by the Lord Jesus. For, contrarily, the saints, and servants, and churches of Christ, are to pray for all men, especially for all magistrates, of what sort or religions soever, and to seek the peace of the city, whatever city it be, because in the peace of the place God’s people have peace also, Jer. xxix. 7; 2 Tim. ii., &c. Secondly, God’s messengers are herein commanded not to prophecy, or denounce, a present destruction or extirpation of all false professors of the name of Christ, which are whole towns, cities, and kingdoms full.[122] The word of God rightly denounced plucks up kingdoms. Jeremy did thus pluck up kingdoms, in those fearful prophecies he poured forth against all the nations of the world, throughout his chaps. xxiv., xxv., xxvi., &c.; as did also the other prophets in a measure, though none comparably to Jeremy and Ezekiel. Such denunciations of present temporal judgments, are not the messengers of the Lord Jesus to pour forth. It is true, many sore and fearful plagues are poured forth upon the Roman emperors and Roman popes in the Revelation, yet not to their utter extirpation or plucking up until the harvest. God’s ministers are not to provoke magistrates to persecute anti-christians. 1 Pet. ii. 9. 1 Cor. v. Thirdly, I conceive God’s messengers are charged to let them alone, and not pluck them up, by exciting and stirring up civil magistrates, kings, emperors, governors, parliaments, or general courts, or assemblies, to punish and persecute all such persons out of their dominions and territories as worship not the true God, according to the revealed will of God in Christ Jesus. It is true, Elijah thus stirred up Ahab to kill all the priests and prophets of Baal; but that was in that figurative state of the land of Canaan, as I have already and shall further manifest, not to be matched or paralleled by any other state, but the spiritual state or church of Christ in all the world, putting the false prophets and idolaters spiritually to death by the two-edged sword and power of the Lord Jesus, as that church of Israel did corporally.[123] Companying with idolaters, 1 Cor. v., discussed. And therefore saith Paul expressly, 1 Cor. v. 10, we must go out of the world, in case we may not company in civil converse with idolaters, &c. Peace. It may be said, some sorts of sinners are there mentioned, as drunkards, railers, extortioners, who are to be punished by the civil sword—why not idolaters also? for although the subject may lawfully converse, buy and sell, and live with such, yet the civil magistrates shall nevertheless be justly blamed in suffering of them. Lawful converse with idolaters in civil, but not in spiritual things. Truth. I answer, the apostle, in this scripture, speaks not of permission of either, but expressly shows the difference between the church and the world, and the lawfulness of conversation with such persons in civil things, with whom it is not lawful to have converse in spirituals: secretly withal foretelling, that magistrates and people, whole states and kingdoms, should be idolatrous and anti-christian, yet with whom, notwithstanding, the saints and churches of God might lawfully cohabit, and hold civil converse and conversation. Concerning their permission of what they judge idolatrous, I have and shall speak at large. Dangerous and ungrounded zeal. Peace. Oh! how contrary unto this command of the Lord Jesus have such, as have conceived themselves the true messengers of the Lord Jesus, in all ages, not let such professors and prophets alone, whom they have judged tares; but have provoked kings and kingdoms (and some out of good intentions and zeal to God) to prosecute and persecute such even unto death! Amongst whom God’s people, the good wheat, hath also been plucked up, as all ages and histories testify, and too, too oft the world laid upon bloody heaps in civil and intestine desolations on this occasion. All which would be prevented, and the greatest breaches made up in the peace of our own or other countries, were this command of the Lord Jesus obeyed, to wit, to let them alone until the harvest.