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. XXXIII. CHAP. XXXIII. Peace. Yea: but it is said that the blind Pharisees, misguiding the subjects of a civil state, greatly sin against a civil state, and therefore justly suffer civil punishments; for shall the civil magistrate take care of outsides only, to wit, of the bodies of men, and not of souls, in labouring to procure their everlasting welfare? Soul-killing the chiefest murder. No magistrate can execute true justice in killing soul for soul but Christ Jesus, who by typical death in the law typed out spiritual in the gospel. Truth. I answer, It is a truth: the mischief of a blind Pharisee’s blind guidance is greater than if he acted treasons, murders, &c.; and the loss of one soul by his seduction, is a greater mischief than if he blew up parliaments, and cut the throats of kings or emperors, so precious is that invaluable jewel of a soul above all the present lives and bodies of all the men in the world! And therefore I affirm, that justice, calling for eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, calls also soul for soul; which the blind-guiding, seducing Pharisee, shall truly pay in that dreadful ditch, which the Lord Jesus speaks of. But this sentence against him, the Lord Jesus only pronounceth in his church, his spiritual judicature, and executes this sentence in part at present, and hereafter to all eternity. Such a sentence no civil judge can pass, such a death no civil sword can inflict.[129] A great mistake in most to conceive that dead men, that is, souls dead in sin, may be infected by false doctrine. I answer, secondly, Dead men cannot be infected. The civil state, the world, being in a natural state, dead in sin, whatever be the state-religion unto which persons are forced, it is impossible it should be infected. Indeed the living, the believing, the church and spiritual state, that and that only is capable of infection; for whose help we shall presently see what preservatives and remedies the Lord Jesus hath appointed. All natural men being dead in sin, yet none die everlastingly but such as are thereunto ordained. Moreover, as we see in a common plague or infection the names are taken how many are to die, and not one more shall be struck than the destroying angel hath the names of:[130] so here, whatever be the soul-infection breathed out from the lying lips of a plague-sick Pharisee, yet the names are taken, not one elect or chosen of God shall perish. God’s sheep are safe in his eternal hand and counsel, and he that knows his material, knows also his mystical stars, their numbers, and calls them every one by name. None fall into the ditch on the blind Pharisee’s back but such as were ordained to that condemnation, both guide and followers, 1 Pet. ii. 8; Jude 4. The vessels of wrath shall break and split, and only they, to the praise of God’s eternal justice, Rom. ix. 22.