Scripture and the gospel, according to conscience, is not to do evil; if we thereof ought not to be afraid, he ought not by his judging to give cause: causes therefore of religion are not here meant. "For he beareth not the sword in vain." Yes, altogether in vain, if it smite he knows not what; if that for heresy, which not the church itself, much less he, can determine absolutely to be so; if truth for error, being himself so often fallible, he bears the sword not in vain only, but unjustly and to do evil. "Be subject not only for wrath, but for conscience sake." How for conscience sake, against conscience? By all these reasons it appears plainly, that the apostle in this place gives no judgment or coercive power to magistrates, neither to those then, nor these now, in matters of religion; and exhorts us no otherwise than he exhorted those Romans.

It hath now twice befallen me to assert, through God's assistance, this most wrested and vexed place of Scripture; heretofore against Salmasius, and regal tyranny over the state; now against Erastus, and state tyranny over the church. If from such uncertain, or rather such improbable, grounds as these, they endue magistracy with spiritual judgment, they may as well invest him in the same spiritual kind with power of utmost punishment, excommunication; and then turn spiritual into corporal, as no worse authors did than Chrysostom, Jerome, and Austin, whom Erasmus and others in their notes on the New Testament have cited, to interpret that cutting off which St. Paul wished to them who had brought back the Galatians to circumcision, no less than the amercement of their whole virility: and Grotius adds, that this concising punishment of circumcisers became a penal law thereupon among the Visigoths: a dangerous example of beginning in the spirit to end so in the flesh; whereas that cutting off much likelier seems meant a cutting off from the church, not unusually so termed in Scripture, and a zealous imprecation, not a command. But I have mentioned this passage to show how absurd they often prove, who have not learned to distinguish rightly between civil power and ecclesiastical. How many persecutions then, imprisonments, banishments, penalties, and stripes; how much bloodshed have the forcers of conscience to answer for, and protestants rather than papists! For the papist, judging by his principles, punishes them who believe not as the church believes, though against the Scripture; but the protestant, teaching every one to believe the Scripture, though against the church, counts heretical, and persecutes against his own principles, them who in any particular so believe as he in general teaches them; them who most honour and believe divine Scripture, but not against it any human interpretation though universal; them who interpret Scripture only to themselves, which by his own position, none but they to themselves can interpret them who use the Scripture no otherwise by his own doctrine to their edification, than he himself uses it to their punishing; and so whom his doctrine acknowledges a true believer, his discipline persecutes as a heretic. The papist exacts our belief as to the church due above Scripture; and by the church, which is the whole people of God, understands the pope, the general councils, prelatical only, and the surnamed fathers: but the forcing protestant, though he deny such belief to any church whatsoever, yet takes it to himself and his teachers, of far less authority than to be called the church, and above Scripture believed: which renders his practice both contrary to his belief, and far worse than that belief, which he condemns in the papist. By all which, well considered, the more he professes to be a true protestant, the more he hath to answer for his persecuting than a papist. No protestant therefore, of what sect soever, following Scripture only, which is the common sect wherein they all agree, and the granted

rule of every man's conscience to himself, ought by the common doctrine of protestants, to be forced or molested for religion.

But as for popery and idolatry, why they also may not hence plead to be tolerated, I have much less to say. Their religion the more considered, the less can be acknowledged a religion; but a Roman principality rather, endeavouring to keep up her old universal dominion under a new name, and mere shadow of a catholic religion; being indeed more rightly named a catholic heresy against the Scripture, supported mainly by a civil, and except in Rome, by a foreign, power: justly therefore to be suspected, not tolerated by the magistrate of another country. Besides, of an implicit faith which they profess, the conscience also becomes implicit, and so by voluntary servitude to man's law, forfeits her Christian liberty. Who then can plead for such a conscience, as being implicitly enthralled to man instead of God, almost becomes no conscience, as the will not free, becomes no will? Nevertheless, if they ought not to be tolerated, it is for just reason of state, more than of religion; which they who force, though professing to be protestants, deserve as little to be tolerated themselves, being no less guilty of popery, in the most popish point. Lastly, for idolatry, who knows it not to be evidently against all Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, and therefore a true heresy, or rather an impiety, wherein a right conscience can have nought to do; and the works thereof so manifest, that a magistrate can hardly err in prohibiting and quite removing at least the public and scandalous use thereof?

From the riddance of these objections, I proceed yet to another reason why it is unlawful for the civil magistrate to use force in matters of religion; which is, because to judge in those things, though we should grant him able, which is proved he is not, yet as a civil magistrate he hath no right. Christ hath a government of his own, sufficient of itself to all his ends and purposes in governing his church, but much different from that of the civil magistrate; and the difference in this very thing principally consists, that it governs not by outward force; and that for two reasons. First, Because it deals only with the inward man and his actions, which are all spiritual, and to outward force not liable. 2dly, To show us the divine excellence of his spiritual kingdom, able, without worldly force, to subdue all the powers and kingdoms of this world, which are upheld by outward force only. That the inward man is nothing else but the inward part of man, his understanding and his will; and that his actions thence proceeding, yet not simply thence, but from the work of divine grace upon them, are the whole matter of religion under the gospel, will appear plainly by considering what that religion is; whence we shall perceive yet more plainly that it cannot be forced. What evangelic religion is, is told in two words, Faith and Charity, or Belief and Practice. That both these flow, either, the one from the understanding, the other from the will, or both jointly from both; once indeed naturally free, but now only as they are regenerate and wrought on by divine grace, is in part evident to common sense and principles unquestioned, the rest by Scripture: concerning our belief, Matt. xvi. 17, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." Concerning our practice, as it is religious, and not merely civil, Gal. v. 22, 23, and other places, declare it to be the fruit of the spirit only. Nay, our whole practical duty in religion is contained in charity, or the love of God and our neighbour, no way to be forced, yet the fulfilling of the whole law; that is to say, our whole practice in religion. If then both our belief and practice, which comprehend our whole religion, flow from faculties of the inward man, free and unconstrainable of them

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selves by nature, and our practice not only from faculties endued with freedom, but from love and charity besides, incapable of force, and all these things by trangression lost, but renewed and regenerated in us by the power and gift of God alone; how can such religion as this admit of force from man, or force be any way applied to such religion, especially under the free offer of grace in the gospel, but it must forthwith frustrate and make of no effect, both the religion and the gospel? And that to compel outward profession, which they will say perhaps ought to be compelled, though inward religion cannot, is to compel hypocrisy, not to advance religion, shall yet, though of itself clear enough, be ere the conclusion further manifest. 'I'he other reason why Christ rejects outward force in the government of his church, is, as I said before, to show us the divine excellence of his spiritual kingdom, able without worldly force to subdue all the powers and kingdoms of this world, which are upheld by outward force only: by which to uphold religion otherwise than to defend the religious from outward violence, is no service to Christ or his kingdom, but rather a disparagement, and degrades it from a divine and spiritual kingdom, to a kingdom of this world which he denies it to be, because it needs not force to confirm it: John xviii. 36. "If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews." This proves the kingdom of Christ not governed by outward force, as being none of this world, whose kingdoms are maintained all by force only and yet disproves not that a Christian commonwealth may defend itself against outward force, in the cause of religion as well as in any other: though Christ himself coming purposely to die for us, would not be so defended. 1 Cor. i. 27, "God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty." Then surely he hath not chosen the force of this world to subdue conscience, and conscientious men, who in this world are counted weakest; but rather conscience, as being weakest, to subdue and regulate force, his adversary, not his aid or instrument in governing the church: 2 Cor. x. 3, 4, 5, 6, "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ and having in a readiness to avenge all disobedience." It is evident by the first and second verses of this chapter, and the apostle here speaks of that spiritual power by which Christ governs his church, how allsufficient it is, how powerful to reach the conscience, and the inward man with whom it chiefly deals, and whom no power else can deal with. In comparison of which, as it is here thus magnificently described, how uneffectual and weak is outward force with all her boisterous tools, to the shame of those Christians, and especially those churchmen, who to the exercising of church-discipline, never cease calling on the civil magistrate to interpose his fleshly force? An argument that all true ministerial and spiritual power is dead within them; who think the gospel, which both began and spread over the whole world for above three hundred years, under heathen and persecuting emperors, cannot stand or continue, supported by the same divine presence and protection, to the world's end, much easier under the defensive favour only of a Christian magistrate, unless it be enacted and settled, as they call it, by the state, a statute or state religion; and understand not that the church itself cannot, much less the state, settle or impose one tittle of religion upon our obedience implicit, but can only recommend or propound it to our free and conscientious examination: unless they mean

to set the state higher than the church in religion, and with a gross contradiction give to the state in their settling petition that command of our implicit belief, which they deny in their settled confession both to the state and to the church. Let them cease then to importune and interrupt the magistrate from attending to his own charge in civil and moral things, the settling of things just, things honest, the defence of things religious, settled by the churches within themselves; and the repressing of their contraries, determinable by the common light of nature; which is not to constrain or to repress religion probable by Scripture, but the violaters and persecutors thereof of all which things he hath enough and more than enough to do, left yet undone; for which the land groans, and justice goes to wrack the while. Let him also forbear force where he hath no right to judge, for the conscience is not his province, lest a worst wo arrive him, for worse offending than was denounced by our Saviour, Matt. xxiii. 23, against the Pharisees: Ye have forced the conscience, which was not to be forced; but judgment and mercy ye have not executed: this ye should have done, and the other let alone. And since it is the counsel and set purpose of God in the gospel, by spiritual means which are counted weak, to overcome all power which resists him; let them not go about to do that by worldly strength, which he hath decreed to do by those means which the world counts weakness, lest they be again obnoxious to that saying, which in another place is also written of the Pharisees, Luke vii. 30, "That they frustrated the counsel of God." The main plea is, and urged with much vehemence to their imitation, that the kings of Judah, as I touched before, and especially Josiah, both judged and used force in religion: 2 Chron. xxxiv. 33, "He made all that were present in Israel to serve the Lord their God:" an argument, if it be well weighed, worse than that used by the false prophet Shemaia to the high priest, that in imitation of Jehoiada, he ought to put Jeremiah in the stocks, Jer. xxix. 24, 26, &c. for which he received his due denouncement from God. But to this besides I return a threefold answer:

First, That the state of religion under the gospel is far differing from what it was under the law; then was the state of rigour, childhood, bondage, and works, to all which force was not unbefitting; now is the state of grace, manhood, freedom, and faith, to all which belongs willingness and reason, not force the law was then written on tables of stone, and to be performed according to the letter, willingly or unwillingly; the gospel, our new covenant, upon the heart of every believer, to be interpreted only by the sense of charity and inward persuasion: the law had no distinct government or governors of church and commonwealth, but the priests and Levites judged in all causes, not ecclesiastical only, but civil, Deut. xvii. 8, &c. which under the gospel is forbidden to all church-ministers, as a thing which Christ their master in his ministry disclaimed, Luke xii. 14, as a thing beneath them, 1 Cor. vi. 4, and by many other statutes, as to them who have a peculiar and far differing government of their own. If not, why different the governors? Why not church-ministers in state-affairs, as well as stateministers in church-affairs? If church and state shall be made one flesh again as under the law, let it be withal considered, that God, who then joined them, hath now severed them; that which, he so ordaining, was then a lawful conjunction, to such on either side as join again what he hath severed would be nothing now but their own presumptuous fornication. Secondly, the kings of Judah, and those magistrates under the law, might have recourse, as I said before, to divine inspiration; which our magistrates under the gospel have not, more than to the same spirit, which those whom VOL. II. M 2

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they force have ofttimes in greater measure than themselves: and so, instead of forcing the Christian, they force the Holy Ghost; and, against that wise forewarning of Gamaliel, fight against God."

Thirdly, those kings and magistrates used force in such things only as were undoubtedly known and forbidden in the law of Moses, idolatry and direct apostacy from that national and strict enjoined worship of God; whereof the corporal punishment was by himself expressly set down: but magistrates under the gospel, our free, elective, and rational worship, are most commonly busiest to force those things which in the gospel are either left free, nay, sometimes abolished when by them compelled, or else controverted equally by writers on both sides, and sometimes with odds on that side which is against them. By which means they either punish that which they ought to favour and protect, or that with corporal punishment, and of their own inventing, which not they, but the church, had received command to chastise with a spiritual rod only. Yet some are so eager in their zeal of forcing, that they refuse not to descend at length to the utmost shift of that parabolical proof, Luke xiv. 16, &c. " Compel them to come in:" therefore magistrates may compel in religion. As if a parable were to be strained through every word or phrase, and not expounded by the general scope thereof; which is no other here than the earnest expression of God's displeasure on those recusant Jews, and his purpose to prefer the Gentiles on any terms before them; expressed here by the word compel. But how compels he? Doubtless no other way than he draws, without which no man can come to him, John vi. 44, and that is by the inward persuasive motions of his spirit, and by his ministers; not by the outward compulsions of a magistrate or his officers. The true people of Christ, as is foretold, Psalm cx. 3, "are a willing people in the day of his power;" then much more now when he rules all things by outward weakness, that both his inward power and their sincerity may the more appear. "God loveth a cheerful giver:" then certainly is not pleased with an uncheerful worshipper: as the very words declare of his evangelical invitations, Isa. lv. 1, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come." John vii. 37, "If any man thirsteth." Rev. iii. 18, "I counsel thee." And xxii. 17, "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." And in that grand commission of preaching, to invite all nations, Mark xvi. 16, as the reward of them who come, so the penalty of them who come not, is only spiritual. But they bring now some reason with their force, which must not pass unanswered, that the church of Thyatira was blamed, Rev. ii. 20, for suffering the false "prophetess to teach and to seduce." I answer, That seducement is to be hindered by fit and proper means ordained in church-discipline, by instant and powerful demonstration to the contrary; by opposing truth to error, no unequal match; truth the strong, to error the weak, though sly and shifting. Force is no honest confutation, but uneffectual, and for the most part unsuccessful, ofttimes fatal to them who use it: sound doctrine, diligently and duly taught, is of herself both sufficient, and of herself (if some secret judgment of God hinder not) always prevalent against seducers. This the Thyatirians had neglected, suffering, against churchdiscipline, that woman to teach and seduce among them; civil force they had not then in their power, being the Christian part only of that city, and then especially under one of those ten great persecutions, whereof this the second was raised by Domitian: force therefore in these matters could not be required of them who were under force themselves.

I have shown, that the civil power hath neither right, nor can do right, by forcing religious things: I will now show the wrong it doth, by violating