Category: God’s Abiding Law

Christ frees us from the law, but not the Judicial Punishment

” For 1.) If there be no bodily punishment to be inflicted on false teachers and blasphemers, then must Christ by his blood repeal all those laws in the Old Testament; but the Scripture shows us all our parts of Christian liberty in these places of Scripture, Ti.2:14; Rom. 14:4; I Thess. 1:10; Gal. 3:13; Gal. 1:4; Col. 1:13; I Joh. 4:18; Acts 15:10-11; Heb. 4:14, 16; Heb. 10:19,21,22; Col. 2:15-16; 2 Cor. 3:13, 17, 19; Jam. 4:12; Rom. 14:4; Act. 4:9; Act.5:29; 1 Cor. 7:23; Matt. 23:8,9,10; Matt. 15:9; and elsewhere; in all which places nothing is hinted of the false teachers patent under the seal of the blood of the eternal Covenant, that he is freed from the Magistrates sword, though he destroy millions of souls.”

Samuel Rutherford
A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience etc. — pp. 233-234

Note how careful that Rutherford is in defining liberty of conscience. Rutherford does not allow the catch phrase “liberty of conscience,” to be used as a “get out of jail free card” for every licentious behavior imaginable. Liberty of conscience does exist as the passages above indicate but it can not be invoked in order to overturn the clear teaching of God’s law word serving as a standard for social order and the Magistrate. Liberty of Conscience can not be invoked in order to overturn either the 2nd use of the law of to ignore the third use of the law. I go to ends to point this out because often when you deliberate with the R2Kt lads they are screaming “liberty of conscience,” as a garlic mantra to ward of the Dracula of God’s hated vampire law.

“… Our Adversaries are obliged to give us precept, promise or godly practice, why a moral sin forbidden and severely punished in the Old Testament, should yet remain a Moral sin in the New Testament, and yet not be punishable by men or churches.”

Samuel Rutherford
A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience — pp. 332

“For the blasphemous and seditious Heretics, both Lutherans and others of the Reformed Churches do agree that they may be punished capitally, that is for their blasphemy of sedition; but the Socinian stands out here also, and denies it; alleging that the punishment of false Prophets in the Old Testament was speciali jure but by special law granted to the Israelites, and therefore you must not look (saith the Socinian) into the Old Testament for a rule proceeding against false Prophets and blasphemers: Nor (saith Calvin and Catharinus) can you find in the New Testament any precept for punishment of Thieves, Traitors, Adulterers, Witches, Murderers and the like, and yet they may, or at least some of them be capitally punished: for the Gospel destroys not the just laws of civil policy or Commonwealths.”

Richard Vines — English Puritan
The Authors, Nature, and Danger of Heresy
Laid open in a sermon preached before the honorable house of Commons…March – 1646 – pp. 64

I wonder what the difference would be between the R2K lads when they talk about their “intrusion ethic” making the case law of no effect today and the Socinian lads when they talked about their speciali jure making the case law of no effect during their time?

Whatever difference there actually is, Richard Vines dealt with the Socianians who insisted that the Old Testament case law was not applicable to civil policy.

“There were three laws among the Jews,the Ceremonial, Judicial, and Moral law. I suppose the Judicial Law as to pains of it, was a fence and guard to the Ceremonial and Moral Law. [In the first place] the [Judicial] law doth aim at obedience to it, and in the second place [at] punishment to its disobedience. I conceive the punishment [for infringement] of the Ceremonial law was not [part] of the law itself, but [a fence] of the purity of the Jews and the punishment [for infringement] of the Moral Law was not part of the Moral law, [but a fence to it]. So far as the Judicial [law] was a fence and outwork to the ceremonial law [it] is fallen with the ceremonial law. So far as it was an outwork of the Moral law it stands with the moral law, and that still binds upon men. So [that part] of the Judicial law was a fence to that, is still the duty of the magistrates.”

Thomas Gilbert — 17th Century Puritan
Puritanism And Liberty
Being The Army Debates

Clearly, quite contrary to R2K, the Puritans believed that there were aspects of the Judicial law which were binding upon the magistrates. When the R2K lads scream, concerning the judicial law, “expired … expired … expired,” they are being the novices and are offering up sui generis readings of Reformed Historical theology.

“Though we have clear and full scriptures in the New Testament of the abolishing the ceremonial law, yet we no where read in all the New Testament of the abolishing of the judicial law, so far as it did concern the punishing of sins against the moral law, of which heresy and seducing of souls is one, and a great one. Once God did reveal his will for punishing those sins by such and such punishments. He who will hold that the Christian Magistrate is not bound to inflict such punishments for such sins, is bound to prove that those former laws of God are abolished, and show some Scripture for it.”

George Gillespie — Westminster Divine
Wholesome Severity Reconciled With Christian Liberty

Westminster Divine, Gillespie, would never have tolerated a hermeneutic that insists that case law can be expunged from the Christian conscience by chanting “expired.”