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. XXXVII. CHAP. XXXVII. Truth. This perplexed and ravelled answer, wherein so many things and so doubtful are wrapt up and entangled together, I shall take in pieces. The answerer when he should speak to toleration in the state, runs to punishments in the church, which none can deny. First, concerning that of the Lord Jesus rebuking his disciples for their rash and ignorant bloody zeal (Luke ix.), desiring corporal destruction upon the Samaritans for refusing the Lord Jesus, &c., the answerer affirmeth, that hindereth not the ministers of the gospel to proceed in a church way against scandalous offenders; which is not here questioned, but maintained to be the holy will of the Lord, and a sufficient censure and punishment, if no civil offence against the civil state be committed. Secondly, saith he, “Much less doth this speak at all to the civil magistrate.” Where I observe, that he implies that beside the censure of the Lord Jesus, in the hands of his spiritual governors, for any spiritual evil in life or doctrine, the civil magistrate is also to inflict corporal punishment upon the contrary-minded:[134] whereas, If the civil magistrate be a Christian, he is bound to be like Christ in saving, not destroying men’s bodies. First, if the civil magistrate be a Christian, a disciple, or follower of the meek Lamb of God, he is bound to be far from destroying the bodies of men for refusing to receive the Lord Jesus Christ: for otherwise he should not know, according to this speech of the Lord Jesus, what spirit he was of, yea, and to be ignorant of the sweet end of the coming of the Son of man, which was not to destroy the bodies of men, but to save both bodies and souls, vers. 55, 56. The civil magistrate bound not to inflict, nor to suffer any other to inflict, violence, stripes, or any other corporal punishment, for evil against Christ. Secondly, if the civil magistrate being a Christian, gifted, prophesy in the church, 1 Cor. xiv. 1—although the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they in their own persons hold forth, shall be refused—yet they are here forbidden to call for fire from heaven, that is, to procure or inflict any corporal judgment, upon such offenders, remembering the end of the Lord Jesus’ coming [was] not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. Lastly, this also concerns the conscience of the civil magistrate. As he is bound to preserve the civil peace and quiet of the place and people under him, he is bound to suffer no man to break the civil peace, by laying hands of violence upon any, though as vile as the Samaritans, for not receiving of the Lord Jesus Christ. Rev. xiii. 13. Fire from heaven. What the fire from heaven is which the false prophet bringeth down. It is indeed the ignorance and blind zeal of the second beast, the false prophet, Rev. xiii. 13, to persuade the civil powers of the earth to persecute the saints, that is, to bring fiery judgments upon men in a judicial way, and to pronounce that such judgments of imprisonment, banishment, death, proceed from God’s righteous vengeance upon such heretics. So dealt divers bishops in France, and England too in Queen Mary’s days, with the saints of God at their putting to death, declaiming against them in their sermons to the people, and proclaiming that these persecutions, even unto death, were God’s just judgments from heaven upon these heretics.