Category: God’s Abiding Law

“[W]e ought to pray for kings, and all in authority, that under them we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness, and in honesty, which end cannot be attained unless the civil magistrate bridle and tie up heretics, 1 Tim. 2.2. These words, in all godliness, concern religion, or the first table of the moral law, as the following word, honesty, or civility, hath a respect to the commands of the second table, and the duties which we owe to our neighbour and to one another. For true magistrates are keepers and defenders of both tables of the ten commandments.”

~ David Dickson

‎”The third opinion (of Calvinism) is, that the Magistrate may and ought to exercise his coercive power, in suppressing and punishing Heretics and Sectaries, less or more, according as the nature and degree of the error, schism, obstinacy, and danger of seducing others, doth require. This as it was the judgment of the orthodox Ancients, (vide Optati opera, edit, Albaspin. pag. 204, 215.) so it is followed by our soundest Protestant Writers; most largely by Beza against Bellius and Monfortius, in a peculiar Treatise De Hareticis à Magistratu puniendis. And though Gerhard, Brochmand [de magist. polit. cap. 2. quæst. 3. dub 2.] and other Lutheran Writers, make a controversy where they need not, alleging that the Calvinists (so nicknamed) hold as the Papists do, that all Heretics without distinction are to be put to death: The truth is, they themselves say as much as either Calvin or Beza, or any other whom they take for adversaries in this Question, that is, that Heretics are to be punished by mulcts, imprisonments, banishments, and if they be gross idolaters or blasphemers, and seducers of others, then to be put to death. What is it else that Calvin teacheth, when he distinguisheth three kinds of errors: some to be tolerated with a spirit of meekness, and such as ought not to separate betwixt brethren: others not to be tolerated, but to be suppressed with a certain degree of severity: a third sort so abominable and pestiferous, that they are to be cut off by the highest punishments?”

~ George Gillespie

http://www.covenanter.org/GGillespie/wholesome_severity.html

“It is our duty, as far as lies in our power, immediately to organize human society and all its institutions and organs upon a distinctively Christian basis. Indifference or impartiality here between the law of the kingdom and the law of the world, or of its prince, the devil, is utter treason to the King of Righteousness … The Bible, the great statute-book of the Kingdom, explicitly lays down principles which, when candidly applied, will regulate the action of every human being in all relations. There can be no compromise. The King said, with regard to all descriptions of moral agents in all spheres of activity, “He that is not with me is against me.” If the national life in general is organized upon non-Christian principles, the churches which are embraced within the universal assimilating power of that nation will not long be able to preserve their integrity.”

~ A. A. Hodge

“4.) Distinguish betwixt the moral, and ceremonial, and judicial law; the first concern manners, and the right ordering of godly conversation: and because these things are of perpetual equity and rectitude, the obligation of this law, as to that, is perpetual; and therefore in expounding of it, these two terms, moral, and of perpetual authority, are all one, and to be taken so. 2.) The judicial law is for regulating outward society, and for government, and doth generally (excepting what was peculiar to the people of Israel) agree with moral law; this, as given to them, is not perpetual, their policy being at an end. 3.) The ceremonial law is in ceremonies, types, and shadows, pointing at a Saviour to come; this is also abrogate, the substance being come; But their is this difference, that the judicial law is but mortua, dead; and may, where it is thought fit, with the foregoing caution, be used under the New Testament; but the ceremonial law is mortifera, deadly, and cannot, without falling from grace, Gal. V. 2, 4 be revived.”

James Durham – 1622-1658
Westminster Divine
The Law Unsealed; or, A Practical Exposition Of The Ten Commandments

Note, in Durham’s #2 that what we have here is the basic theonomic explanation of “general equity.” Durham, as a Westminster Divine, would have had no tuck with the idea that the Mosaic judicials were simply to be considered “expired.” This will be seen over the next few days as we continue to post quotes from this Westminster divine on the subject of the application of the OT judicials.

“…And this generall Rule give me leave to assert and commend to your most serious considerations and consciences. That whatsoever Law of God, or Command of His, we find recorded in the Law-booke, in either of the Volumnes of GOD’S Statute, the N.T. or the Old, Remaines obligatory to us, unless we can prove it to be expired, or repealed. So it is with the Statute-Law of this Nation, or any Nation.”

Herbert Palmer – 1601-1647
English Puritan
Sermon before Parliament — August 13, 1644