People must keep in mind that whenever Government involves itself in wealth redistribution Government is involved in theft as they steal from Peter to give to Paul. As theft is sin, no Biblical Christian can support a Government that involves itself in confiscatory taxation to the end of massive wealth redistribution schemes.

In the words of Leornard Read, Government’s function,

should defend the lives and property of all citizens equally. This means protecting willing exchange and restraining unwilling exchange; suppressing and penalizing fraud, misrepresentation, predatory practice; invoking a common justice under written law; and keeping the records incidental to these functions. Governments legitimate purpose is to codify and then inhibit all destructive actions while leaving all creative and productive actions — including welfare, charity, security, and prosperity — to citizens acting voluntarily, privately, cooperatively, or competitively as they freely choose.”

When the government is in the business of seizing the assets of the citizenry government loses it’s status as legitimate because such a government at that point has gone from that institution which is responsible to insure proper boundaries for a vibrant market to being a institution that exists for its own end and to be enriched in that end with the private property of others. When Government tilts the balances of free exchange by putting its Leviathan thumb on the scales of exchange, Government thieves from some people (those they take from) not only their wealth but also thieves from other people (those they redistribute to) their sense of personal individual responsibility and so their dignity.

So, in embracing the philosophy of limited government I would cut all of those funds that work to keep the citizenry dependent upon the Federal Government as opposed to being dependent upon themselves as they look to God for His provision as they ply the trades, professions, and crafts to which God calls them.

“God has made humans to reflect Him, but if they do not commit themselves to Him, they will not reflect Him but something else in creation. At the core of our beings we are imaging creatures. It is not possible to be neutral on this issue: We either reflect the Creator or something in creation…. All humans have been created to be reflecting beings, and they will reflect whatever they are ultimately committed to, whether the true God or some other object in the created order…. We resemble what we revere, either for ruin or restoration.”

G. K. Beale
We Become What We Worship

“Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me”

God

Idolatry is a odd mechanism.

The above quote is true but it is only half true. The half that it leaves out is the fact that before fallen man can reflect his idols he must first make his idols and the idols he always makes are merely extensions of himself. The idols of fallen man are merely man said loudly. So, here you have fallen man who reifies and objectifies himself as a idol he has cast and then he turns right around and seeks to reflect himself in the very idol he has created. So, at the same time we can say that man is the creator of the idol, but also that the idol is the creator of man. So, in the end all idol worship, however grotesque, humorous, and lamentable, is in reality just varied forms of self worship.

The oddness in idolatry is compounded by the fact that man, the inveterate worshiper, seeks, in his modern installment, to outlaw or confine worship and religion. Modern man says he will outlaw all idols and idolatry and will once for all be done with such superstition. Yet the minute he seeks to cleanse the public square of all the Idols he finds himself enthroning a whore as the “Goddess of Reason,” in the Notre Dame Cathedral. August Comte spent his life seeking to abolish worship and religion and when he was finished he established a new religion and proposed a hierarchy with himself at the top of the food chain and the soul of his deceased mistress as a sort of Queen of Heaven, and not being satisfied with that he created a liturgical humanist calendar by which to mark days and seasons. The humanist eliminates idols and religions and replaces them with himself as the chief idol.

Every people who have refused to bow to God in every age has had their defacto idolatry dejour. The fact that idolatry has been seen universally where ever and when ever the God of the Bible is fore-sworn is indicative that of something intrinsic in human nature. Man will have his idols. There is no turning from God without a turning to an idol. As we have seen in the paragraph above, those who are the most adamantly materialistic are most hopelessly idolatrous. The more materialistic they are and the more they insist they have no gods the more it becomes evident that they are their own gods.

This proclivity towards reflecting our idols starts at a tender age, and is understood by the marketing gods of our times. When I was a child, little girls were given “Barbie dolls” and the hourglass, glamorous Barbie became for girls everywhere a kind of subtle idol through which their playtime formed in them a vision of the woman they were supposed to reflect. In light of the fact that we now have those who are fostering a idolatry where the boys and girls are encouraged to choose their own gender one kind of pines for the days when the subtle Barbie idols reinforced in girls that they were supposed to be female. The idols can always get more twisted.

As I studied my Church History I used to shake my head in amazement at the idols that previous cultures could create and reflect. How could any people turn the Saints into idols or worship and adore relics as idols? Yet, I find myself living now in a culture that gives that same fawning adoration to the celebrity and the “Star” as Idols, and we have placed our modern demigods in our own version of a liturgical calendar year that includes the Grammys, The Oscars, The Emmys and the Superbowl halftime show as our annual high Holy Feast Days. August Comte just lacked the pizzazz of the entertainer.

Civilizations and cultures past have always had their idols. We have reverted in our idolatry to the fertility cults of old. We worship the phallus and the sex act. Janet Jackson gives us a little breast action on one of our recent High Holy Day celebrations. The year following “Prince” gives us the outline of the penis in his Super Bowl performance. This year we got the “Material girl,” (how appropos that?) giving us the usual bumping and grinding with a little Masonic and Kabbalah symbolism thrown. The devotees of the idols loved it and the gods were pleased with the adoration.

Civilizations, in more refined times past have made heroes of Holy Man, or some have made idols of the Poet-Warrior. Our civilization has as our idol not only the sex crazed Onanist as seen in the barely dressed bumbers, and grinders that we see everywhere, but we also worship as idols the pretenders. We worship the celebrity, the actor, and the entertainer. Of course these people, in what they are worshiped for, are not real and so we worship the illusionists and so we as a people are illusory. Like what we worship there is no content to us, we have no moral gravitas (weightiness), and we are all personality and no character.

And the final insult is that we have brought all of this idolatry into our Churches. The Churches that pack them in specialize in the illusory and are staffed by professional celebrity illusionists. Like the Temple in Jeremiah’s time which was filled with every pagan idol imaginable, the contemporary Church has simply transferred the idolatry of our zeitgeist into the sanctuary. Worship is now showtime and the Pastor is Madonna.

The result of our idols is that we, as a people, when we are not about sex, have about us the same nothingness as a good illusion. We are not real. We are as substantive as mist, as interesting as water, and as boring as multiple reheated leftovers.

And we love it so.

Tim Bayly,

Ron Paul is to national politics what R2K is to the salt and light of the Church. Both Paulites and R2Kites have never seen a battle they want to fight. So instead they come up with sophisticated reasons why Little Round Top is the wrong hill to defend and Colonel Chamberlain’s bayonet charge was over the top. The wrong man led the wrong troops in the wrong charge using the wrong weapons at the wrong time and the wrong location.

This has to be the most asinine thing I’ve read in a very long time. Bayly has found the Nirvana of perfect stupidity where sheer, utter lunacy is of such a high grade and refined variety that one can only weep at the site of purity of perfection. With the paragraph above the Baylys have gone from the stupidity inhabited by mere, though great demigods and have found lodging in the Inn of the sixth ignorance where demigods in stupidity are canonized as Sainted demigods in Stupidity.

But, these days that Inn is adding new wings daily because business is booming.

Ron Paul and Paulites have never seen a battle they want to fight?

Is Bayly unaware of Paul’s constant fight against the Federal Reserve? Has Tim never viewed the clips of Paul arguing with Ben Bernake or Alan Greenspan? What corner of the universe is Tim troglodyting in that he is unaware of Paul’s book, “End The Fed?”

Not only has Paul been fighting a epic battle he is fighting THE EPIC battle. Anybody who pretends to understand politics knows that money is the mother’s milk of politics. Because of the FED all of life and society has become political because it is all driven by large interests groups who are kept afloat, directly or indirectly by the FED. By Paul fighting the Money Interests he is fighting at the root all those battles that the Baylys are fighting at the periphery. Winning the fight against the FED would change EVERYTHING in this country from Abortion to the Homosexual Agenda to Mega-Churches. But the St. Baylys are too stupid to get this and so, in keeping with their approaching sainthood in Stupidity they hurl stupid charges at Paul and the Paulites that they don’t fight against anything.

Ron Paul and Paulites have never seen a battle they want to fight?

What about the Battle against Empire that all those who love Freedom fight? Ron Paul has his faults, to be sure, and I have chronicled them more than once on this site, but to suggest that his ongoing Battle against the Leviathan State has not been a battle just leaves the mundanely moronic with their jaws agape over the perfection of the moronic now dwelling in their midst. The Federal Government is a Behemoth that Paul and the Paulites want to slay and they are fighting to do so. The Federal Government continues to seek to accrue more and more power and sovereignty and Ron Paul has been fighting against that non-Constitutional and non-Biblical idea for decades.

St. Bayly continues with his tryst with irrationality,

In fact, watch these men closely and you find the only battle they’re willing to fight is the battle opposing battles. But of course, I use the words ‘battle’ and ‘fight’ quite loosely because both require courage. I don’t write this to demean them, but so readers will see the connection between their techniques, commitments, and character.

They’re the skinny boy in the corner of the schoolyard shouting “Nanny nanny boo-boo” at the real boys over on the baseball diamond trying to catch the ball, swing the bat, hit something, and run. Over in the corner of the playground with his back to the wall is R2K’s favorite cultural icon, Woody Allen, making jokes about how he refuses to play baseball because baseball is a stupid game with stupid rules played by stupid boys. But of course, he did try to play baseball once, and when the ball was flying toward his face, he misjudged where to put his mitt, he took his eye off the ball, and the ball hit him square in the face, and it really really hurt. He’s never forgotten it and now he makes fun of boys who play baseball.

All the boys who play baseball think he’s a coward, but he’s always surrounded by the other boys who got punched in the face with a baseball and decided never to play baseball again. They laugh at his jokes. Then there are the girls who never wanted to play baseball and don’t know a coward when they see one, and they think he’s kinda cute and sweet. They pity him for being an outcast and one day that pity will cause them to allow him to kiss them.

Here’s my modest proposal. Let the R2Kites go out and sidewalk counsel outside the abortuaries and write legislation against assisted suicide and lobby against the pornographers and run for appointment to the county planning commission and enlist in the Marines. You get the idea. Let’s see them do the good works they’re always arguing the church shouldn’t do because it’s not the right person at the right time in the right place with the right weapon. Then, when they’re awarded a Purple Heart for valor in battle, we may listen to them. But as long as they’re over in the corner of the playground making passive aggressive jokes and refusing to put a mitt on, let weaklings and girls pay attention to them.

Conceding that the squirrel Baylys do find a quality acorn occasionally here are two of the problems with the Baylys that explain how they can be right about bashing R2K but wrong about so much else.

1.) The Baylys are walking contradictions. On one hand they rightly rail against R2K but on the other hand they run theonomists and postmillennialists out of their congregations because the theonomists and postmillennialists take issue with amillennialism — the very foundation of the R2K they rail against. So, the Baylys are not systematic in their thinking and it shows (again) in articles like this one.

2.) The Baylys seemingly want the “ring of power.” I don’t want the damned thing. I want it cast into Mt. Doom. I want to see sphere sovereignty and subsidiarity re-established so that the power of the ring is no longer centralized. My issue with R2K is that R2K doesn’t believe that these different spheres can be Biblically governed and R2K believes that the Church, submitting to Scripture, should have no counsel in what these Biblically ordered spheres might look like. The Baylys issue with R2K seems to be that R2K is stopping them from grasping the ring of power. So while the Baylys and I might agree that R2K is horrendous theology, we are disagreeing with R2K for very different reasons. The fact that the Baylys can rail against Ron Paul and compare him to the Escondido boys is indicative of the Baylys discontent that Frodo Paul’s battle is to pull down Mordor on the Potomac. The Baylys don’t want to pull down Mordor on the Potomac, they just want to take it over and occupy it. The Baylys seem to think that all Mordor on the Potomac needs is just the right Captain to guide the ship of state.

Idiots.

The Baylys finish with a perfect pirouette of protracted puerility

Similarly, let Ron Paul stop running for national public office. That’s the wrong battle at the wrong time with the wrong weapons and the wrong man. The man who sits in the Oval Office needs to be a man who knows how to do and say something other than how very deeply he’s convinced that every battle is the wrong battle at the wrong place and wrong time fought by the wrong men with the wrong weapons holding those weapons in the wrong way. I mean, really! How can anyone not see what’s going on with this man?

He’s asked about things like sodomite marriage and murdering babies conceived through rape and the starvation of Terry Schiavo and all he can do is whine about how conflict is so very difficult and if we’d all learn to fight the way he does–ECPs and states rights and all that–the world would be a better place.

What can I say?

This is the kind of tripe you get from manly men who think Peggy Noonan is profound.

Paul’s position on abortion is wrong. Paul’s position on sodomites in the military is horrendous. Paul’s position on illegal immigration is disastrous but what people like the Baylys don’t get is that Paul’s intent to pull the foundations of Mordor on the Potomac down will change the whole landscape as it pertains to these issues. As we have had precious little success on these issues for 50 years with the current landscape it would seem that we would want to leave our insanity of doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results and vote for somebody who wants to give us a change of scenery.

Hat Tip to Darryl Hart for bringing my attention to this Bayly Babble.

“They (Sundry Philanthropists) say that sin«e disinterestedness is the property of every virtuous act, and selfishness is the hateful root of vice, in all other beings, it would be immoral in God, thus to propose Himself as His own supreme end, and to arrogate to Himself the services of all creatures, exhausting their well-being upon Himself. They urge that this would be selfishness more enormous than that of sinful men, just as its claims are more vast. They exclaim that this scheme makes God the great egotist of the universe. On the contrary, they display their own scheme (their Philanthropy) in enviable contrast for its disinterestedness, as making the welfare of our fellow men the chief end.

These cavils against the Christian law assume that it is intrinsically wrong for a being to direct his aims to his own wellbeing. But this is not true. There is a sense in which self-love is lawful, even for a creature; yea, the absence of it may be positive sin. There is another reason why the selfishness of fallen man is criminal: It is because a question of prior right intervenes. Our Creator puts in claims to the fruits of our existence, which are superior to all others; and therefore it is sin to be supremely selfish, because it robs our Maker of that which we received of Him. But God is indebted to none for His existence and powers. He alone is eternal, uncaused, and independent. Obviously then, it is invalid to reason that, because, in a creature, supreme egotism would be an odious crime, therefore it would ‘be a vice in the uncreated God. That regard for one’s own well-being which, even in the creature, may toe a proper subordinate end, may be in the Creator a most righteous supreme end.

But Christianity can defend itself with more positive arguments upon this point. God, being immutable, is ever actuated by the same motives. But when His eternal purpose of creation and providence subsisted in His mind, “before He had made the highest part of the dust of the earth,” or laid the foundations of the heavens, He must have been self-moved thereto; for the irrefragable reason, that nothing else existed besides Himself, to be a motive. Is it said that creatures, the future recipients of His beneficence, were present in thought, and were the motives of His purpose? The reply is at hand, that they existed as yet, only in His purpose; which purpose was the expression of His own subjective desire and impulse alone, seeing nothing but Himself existed. Hence the very purpose to create creatures to be the recipients of His bounty, was simply the result of self-gratification, because the perfections of nature thereby indulged were infinitely benignant. But whatever was God’s motive in the earliest eternity, is His motive still; for He is without “variableness, or shadow of turning.” When it is remembered that we are creatures, it is easily concluded, that our highest duty is to God. He is the author of our existence, our powers, our happiness, and supporter of our nature. He is our proprietor, in a sense so high that all other forms of ownership almost vanish away, when set beside God’s. He is, moreover, by His own perfections, the properest object of all reverence, homage, and suitable service. So that, manifestly, it is the highest virtue in the creature, that he should offer to God the supreme tribute of his being and service. But if it is obligatory on the creature to offer this, it cannot be wrong in God to accept it.

Hence, we repeat, God’s most proper ultimate end, in all His creation ‘and government, is the gratification of His own adorable perfections in His acting. And the creature’s highest duty is not chiefly to seek his own good, or that »f his fellow creatures; but the glory of God. He is the center, in.’whom originated all beings, and to whom all should tend. His will and glory is the keystone of the whole moral order of the universe. As it was the gratification of His infinite activity which originated all creature existences, with all their powers of doing and enjoying, so it is His self-prompted desire to diffuse His infinite beneficence, which-is the spring of all the well-being in the universe. And here is the conclusive answer to the cavil which we have been discussing: How can it be selfishness in God to make the gratification of His own nature His supreme law, where that nature is infinitely unselfish and benevolent? In this light, the objection is seen to be of a piece with that wretched philosophizing which argues, that, because the loving mother, the sympathizing benefactor, are actuated by their own subjective impulse, in succoring the objects of their kindness, and find pleasure in the act, therefore it is not disinterested. Common sense, as true philosophy, replies: aye, but is not the pleasure itself a pleasure in disinterestedness? What higher definition of a disinterested nature can be given, than to say that its most instinctive pleasure is in doing good?

Thus, as God’s own most suitable end is the satisfaction of His own excellent perfections; so the creature’s chief end is to glorify aod enjoy Him. This benevolent God has, of course, given the duties of benevolence to man a large place in the law which he has enacted for men; but even in our freest acts of beneficence to our fellows, we are required to have a reference supremely to Him whose creatures they are. Love to our neighbor is to be a corollary from love to our God. We are chiefly to seek His glory in their good, as in our own; and these are always in complete harmony. Hence it follows that whenever man makes his own, or his fellows’ good his chief end, he necessarily comes short of that good; and the only way to gain it, is to seek the higher end. Nor is there a paradox, when we thus say, that in order that man may truly attain his own well-being, he must truly prefer something else to it. Is it not a parallel, and an admitted truth, to say, that it is only when the virtuous man prefers some better end than applause, in his actions, that they are truly virtuous and deserving of applause? An instructive instance of this great law of our well-being is found by every one in common life. Who has not experienced this: that the days and the efforts which have been especially devoted to our own enjoyment, have usually disappointed us of enjoyment, while the days, which we devote primarily to duty, are thickly strewn with wayside flowers of unexpected pleasure?

Christian philanthropy’derives its efficiency, no less than its purity, from this, that it all flows from the Christian’s love of his God. He is an object, who never disappoints us, who never changes nor forgets; who never shows Himself forgetful or neglectful of our affectionate service; who never disgusts our efforts by unworthiness; and who has pledged the most generous reward to every true act of humanity. But if we make man our chief end, he usually shews himself, soon, unworthy to be our end. He alienates our love; he disgusts us by the follies and crimes which cruelly counteract our efforts for his good; he renders us indignant by his ingratitude. Such an idol as this can never animate us with a devotion, which will rise to the pure and enduring self-sacrifice of Christian charity. Hence, if for no worse reason, worldly philanthropy is ever feeble, unsteady, evanescent.

R. L. Dabney
Vol. IV — Secular Discussions
The Crimes of Philanthropy — pp. 60-63

The beauty of this includes the idea that God is not only God’s highest good but in the self-giving of God in the Trinitarian communion we also see that God serves as our vision of the most selfless being of all. In the eternal intra-Trinitarian communion each member of the Trinity seeks to selflessly pursue the glory of each of the other member’s of the Trinity. The Fathers resolved to glorify the Son and the Son likewise sought to glorify the Father. The Spirit was sent by the Father and Son to glorify the Son as He glorifies the Father and in accomplishing His work the Spirit glorifies Father and Son who in turn Glorify the Spirit by giving Him as the Church’s inheritance. We see in all of this that God while God is the highest good in all that He pursues, He also is, at the same time, the most self-giving in all that He pursues.

However, in all of this God’s ultimate aim is never the creature. To be sure, the good of God towards the creature (particularly the Elect) is the residue of God’s pursuit in all He does but man always remains God’s penultimate aim and never His ultimate aim. God is eternally satisfied in Himself, and does all He does for His own Glory. Because this is true fallen man has great hope and is called to delight only in what God delights in.

Failure to accept this reasoning is a failure of the modern Church. The modern church fails, in this regard, first of all because we seldom speak about these matters and the reluctance to speak about these matters leaves the stubborn selfishness of man in place. Secondly, as the stubborn selfishness of man is left in place the consequence is that men create whole theologies out of the idea that man is God’s highest good. Man develops systems of thought where Jesus died for men before He died to glorify the Father, and by such “theology,” the good is made the enemy of the best. From here these kinds of theology end up developing the Christian understanding of God’s chief end as one where God exists in order to glorify man and fully enjoy him forever. When this kind of “theology” is given its head it results in man being ensconced as deity and with man viewing God as the great vending machine in the sky, who exists only to give man whatever man wants. God thus is reduced to being the servant of man and anthropology becomes theology. Such “theology,” may be seen in the simple statement, “God loves you and as a wonderful plan for your life,” when perhaps it should be at least understood by people who make such statements that, “God loves God and has ordained a wonderful plan to glorify Himself.”

It may be the case that of all the troubles that roils the modern Church today, the foundational problem is that God’s people, never mind those outside the Church, no longer have this high vision of God. And with this low vision the putatively “saved” man is turned into a even uglier creature then the unsaved man since the putatively “saved” has baptized his self-centeredness and called it Holy.

“To the petulant and persistent secessionists, why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better . . . . Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources”

William T. Sherman
Quoting Fellman biography,
On Southerners

“You must understand that this war is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it is in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest… I do not want suggestions as to how we can disable the economy and the machinery of war; what I want are suggestions as to how we can roast the German refugees on their escape from Breslau.”

Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill, Emrys Hughes, Winston Churchill – His Career in War and Peace, p. 145; quoted as per: Adrian Preissinger, Von Sachsenhausen bis Buchenwald, p. 23.

Quoted in: Juan Maler, Die Unvollendete, p. 27

“The greatest organized wrongs which the civilized world has seen perpetrated in modern times, upon the well-being of mankind, have been committed under the amiable name of humanity. No despotic government now avows the ruthless purpose of self-aggrandizement and of the gratification of hatred and the lust of power; but its pretense is always the good of society, and the welfare of the governed.”

R. L. Dabney
The Crimes of Philanthropy
Vol. IV — Secular Discussions — pg. 53

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.”

C. S. Lewis
God In The Dock

When any politician or bureaucrat promises that they are going to do something in order to help the citizenry at that moment the citizenry should remember all the past promises of politicians in history in order to lend help. The Bolsheviks promised to help the proletariat and 50 million dead proletariat members later they never did receive that help. The Black Republicans promised to help the black man and 150 years later some have argued that the average black man’s situation in 1862 was better than the average black man’s situation in 2012. Mao and the Communists promised to help China. 100 million dead Chinese don’t think too much of the help they received. Margaret Sanger, and her political water carriers, promised to help women and tens of millions of dead baby women later this doesn’t look much like help. In point of fact, it might be considered a good rule of thumb that whenever a politicians promises a program of “help,” the best action possible would be to vote against that “help,” if one values their lives.

The Roosevelt administration promised it was going to do good with the NRA but what happened instead was the federal government increased both the length and depth of the Great Depression. The Truman administration promised to help America by seizing ownership of American Steel companies in 1952 with the result that Truman almost had a National uprising on his hands because of his unconstitutional actions. Eisenhower promised good in operation keelhaul and millions of German POW’s died. Kennedy promised good to the anti-Castro Cubans and left them dying on the beech. Johnson promised good in the war against poverty, and poverty increased. Nixon promised good in price and wage controls and prices went up while wages remained stagnant. The Bush administration said it was going to do good with the “No Child Left Behind” Act and the result has been more children even more stupid then they were before children were left behind. The record could be piled up ad-nauseaum. The current administration in these united States says it is trying to help the American worker and the result is that the American worker can’t find work and does find that the creeping inflation is making him wish that he would quit being helped. The current administration said it was doing good by supporting the “Arab Spring,” in Muslim countries only to find that the Arab Spring, being taken over by the most extreme Muslim groups is in reality a “Arab Pestilence.” And now the Government wants to do good by providing contraceptives which I am confident will result in the “good” of mass sterilization.

Our Founding document understood all this and that is why it was a negative document restricting the “good” that Government could do by limiting it to very precise delegated and enumerated powers. The ratifiers of the Constitution understood that the best thing a Government could do was not do good beyond what it was specifically ordained to do.

We must cease looking to the Federal Government for good and strengthen ourselves, our families, our churches and our communities so that these subsidiary mediating institutions can once again be a means of how the God of the Bible does good to us. If the Federal Government continues to do good to us we will soon perish as a people.

Although the institutions and examples of the Old Testament, of the duty of magistrates in the things and about the worship of God, are not; in their whole latitude and extent, to be drawn into rules that should be obligatory to all magistrates now, under the administration of the gospel,-and that because the magistrate was “custos, vindex, et administrator legis judicialis, et politiae Mosaicae,” from which, as most think, we are freed-,- yet, doubtless, there is something moral in those institutions, which, being unclothed of their Judaical form, is still binding to all in the like kind, as to some analogy and proportion. Subduct from those administrations what was proper to, and lies upon the account of, the church and nation of the Jews, and what remains upon the general notion of a church and nation must be everlastingly binding

John Owen
Works (London: Banner of Truth, 1967), VIII, 394
The Latin phrase means, “guardian, vindicator, and manager of the judicial law, and of the constitution of Moses.”

Thesis 42: The judicial laws, some of them being hedges and fences to safeguard both moral and ceremonial precepts, their binding power was therefore mixed and various, for those which did safeguard any moral law, (which is perpetual,) whether by just punishments or otherwise, do still morally bind all nations; … and hence God would have all nations preserve their fences forever, as he would have that law preserved forever which these safeguard. . . . As, on the contrary, the morals abiding, why should not their judicials and fences remain? The learned generally doubt not to affirm that Moses’ judicials bind all nations, so far forth as they contain any moral equity in them, which moral equity doth appear not only in respect of the end of the law, when it is ordered for common and universal good, but chiefly in respect of the law which they safeguard and fence, which if it be moral, it is most just and equal, that either the same or like judicial fence (according to some fit proportion) should preserve it still, because it is but just and equal that a moral and universal law should be universally preserved…

Thomas Shepard, The Morality of the Sabbath, in Works (Boston: Doctrinal Tract and Book Society, 1853), III, 53f.

I.) Library

http://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2012/01/first-principles.html

http://www.npiamerica.org/media/reports/TheFounders.pdf

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/church-339789-one-catholic.html

http://www.berith.org/essays/cal/cal02.html

http://cambriawillnotyield.blogspot.com/2012/02/against-regicide-peace-with-liberals.html

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290842/libertine-police-state-george-weigel

http://www.reformed.org/ethics/index.html?mainframe=/ethics/Jordan_judicial_laws_Moses.html

http://ricochet.com/main-feed/American-Catholicism-s-Pact-With-the-Devil

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/europe-in-the-rearview-mirror/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204136404577211280758375336.html

http://www.amren.com/ar/2001/07/

http://www.waylanderskeep.com/2011/07/the-new-faith-by-joseph-pomeroy-widney/

II.) Audio

http://chalcedon.edu/research/audio/?query=RR195A1.mp3

http://chalcedon.edu/research/audio/?query=RR195A2.mp3

http://chalcedon.edu/research/audio/?query=RR195B3.mp3

III.) Video — YouTube

Nor do I find a warrant for Magistrates to compel any to profession of truth, Psal. 110. His people a willing people. To Order what men shall believe, is to exercise Dominion over men’s Consciences: It is One thing to cause the people to attend the means, and another to make them believe the truth, the first they must do, but not the second: Faith is God’s gift. It is one thing to hinder Idolatry and blasphemy spreading, another thing to make people renounce an opinion, and embrace the truth. [...]

They may Command and Order the people to come and attend upon the Ministry of the Word, as the means instituted by Christ for their instruction to salvation. It is one thing to order them what they shall believe, another thing to order them to wait upon the means. All grant the civil Magistrate may call public Assemblies, to hear their Proclamations, and Statutes, &c. read: if they may call a whole Town to hear a Law, then much more may they call them to hear God’s Laws.

Stephen Marshall, The power of the magistrate in matters of religion, vindicated. The extent of his power determined. In a sermon preached before parliament on a monthly fast day (London, 1657), pp 5, 7-8.

“For it is a thing more certain that whatsoever God required of the civil magistrate in Israel or Judah concerning the observation of true religion during the time of the Law, the same doth he require of lawful magistrates professing Christ Jesus in the time of the Gospel, as the Holy Ghost hath taught us by the mouth of David, saying (Psalm 2): ‘Be learned, you that judge the earth, kiss the Son, lest that the Lord wax angry and that ye perish from the way.’ This admonition did not extend to the judges under the Law only, but doth also include such as be promoted to honours in the time of the Gospel, when Christ Jesus doth reign and fight in His spiritual kingdom, whose enemies in that Psalm be most sharply taxed, their fury expressed and vanity mocked. And then are kings and judges, who think themselves free from all law and obedience, commanded to repent their former blind rage, and judges are charged to be learned. And last are all commanded to serve the Eternal in fear, to rejoice before Him in trembling, to kiss the Son, that is, to give unto Him most humble obedience. Whereof it is evident that the rulers, magistrates and judges now in Christ’s kingdom are no less bound to obedience unto God than were those under the Law.”

John Knox, The appellation of John Knox from the cruel and most injust sentence pronounced against him by the false bishops and clergy of Scotland, with his supplication and exhortation to the nobility, estates and commonality of the same realm (Geneva, 1558) in idem, On rebellion, ed. R. A. Mason (Cambridge, 1994), pp 91-2.