A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian Politics

Direct. XIX. The substance of faith, and the practice of godliness, must be valued above all opinions, and parties, and worldly interests; and godly men accounted, as they are, (cæteris paribus,) the best members both of church and state. If rulers once knew the difference between a saint and a sensualist, "a vile person would be contemned in their eyes, and they would honour them that fear the Lord," Psal. xv. 4. And if they honoured them as God commandeth them, they would not persecute them; and if the promoting of practical godliness were their design, there were little danger of their oppressing those that must be the instruments of propagating it, if ever it prosper in the world.

Direct. XX. To this end, remember the near and dear relation which every true believer standeth in to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. They are called by God, "His peculiar treasure, – his jewels, – his children, – the members of Christ, – the temples of the Holy Ghost; – God dwelleth in them by love, and Christ by faith, and the Spirit by all his sanctifying gifts."133 If this were well believed, men would more reverence them on God's account, than causelessly to persecute them. "He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of my eye," Zech. ii. 8.

Direct. XXI. Look not so much on men's infirmities, as to overlook or make light of all that is good in them. But look as much at the good as at the evil; and then you will see reason for lenity, as well as for severity; and for love and tenderness, rather than for hatred and persecution; and you will discern that those may be serviceable to the church, in whom blinded malice can see nothing worthy of honour or respect.

Direct. XXII. Estimate and use all lesser matters, as means to spiritual worship and practical holiness. If there be any thing of worth in controversies, and ceremonies, and such other matters of inferior rank, it is as they are a means to the power of godliness, which is their end. And if once they be no otherwise esteemed, they will not be made use of against the interest of godliness, to the silencing of the preachers, and persecuting the professors of it.

Direct. XXIII. Remember that the understanding is not free (save only participative, as it is subject to the will). It acteth of itself per modum naturæ, and is necessitated by its object (further than as it is under the power of the will). A man cannot hold what opinion he would himself, nor be against what he would not have to be true; much less can he believe as another man commandeth him. My understanding is not at my own command; I cannot be of every man's belief that is uppermost. Evidence, and not force, is the natural means to compel the mind; even as goodness, and not force, is the natural means to win men's love. It is as wise a thing to say, Love me, or I will kill thee; as to say, Believe me, or I will kill thee.

Direct. XXIV. Consider that it is essential to religion, to be above the authority of man (unless as they subserve the authority of God). He that worshippeth a God that is subject to any man, must subject his religion to that man. (But this is no religion, because it is no God whom he worshippeth.) But if the God whom I serve be above all men, my religion or service of him must needs be also above the will of men.

Direct. XXV. Consider that an obedient disposition towards God's law, and a tender conscience which feareth in the smallest matter to offend him, is a substantial part of holiness, and of great necessity to salvation. It is part of the excellency of the soul, and therefore to be greatly encouraged by governors. To drive this out of the world, is to drive out godliness, and make men rebels against their Maker. And nothing is more certain, than that the violent imposing of unnecessary, disputable things in the worship of God, doth unavoidably tend either to debauch the conscience, and drive men from their obedience to God, or to destroy them, or undo them in the world: for it is not possible, that all conscionable persons should discern the lawfulness of all such disputable things.

Direct. XXVI. Remember that such violence in doubtful matters, is the way to set up the most debauched atheists, and consequently to undo church and commonwealth. For whatever oaths or subscriptions you require, he that believeth not that there is a God or a devil, a heaven or a hell, will yield to all, and make no more of perjury or a lie, than to eat a bit of bread! If you cast out all ministers that will not swear or subscribe this or that form about things doubtful, you will cast out never an atheist or debauched infidel by it. All that have no conscience, will be kept in; and all that are true to God and their conscience, if they think it is sin which you require of them, will be cast out. And whither this tendeth, you may easily foresee.

Direct. XXVII. Remember that if by force you do prevail with a man to go against his conscience, you do but make him dissemble and lie. And if hypocrites be not hateful to you, why do you cry out so much against hypocrites (where you cannot prove your accusation)? But if they be so hateful, why do you so eagerly make men hypocrites? Whatever their tongues may say, you can scarce believe yourselves, that prisons or fire will change men's judgments in matters of faith and duty to God.

Direct. XXVIII. Consider not only whether the thing which you impose be sin in itself, but also what it is to him that thinketh it a sin. His own doubting conscience may make that a sin to him, which is no sin to another. "And he that doubteth, (whether such or such a meat be lawful,) is condemned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin," Rom. xiv. 23. And is it like to be damnation to him that doth it against his conscience? And will you drive on any man towards damnation? "Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died," Rom. xiv. 15; 1 Cor. viii. 11.

If it be objected, That then there will be no government, if every man must be left to his own conscience. I answer, That the Holy Ghost did not fear such objectors, when he laid down this doctrine here expressed. 1. It is easy to distinguish between things necessary and things unnecessary. 2. And between great penalties and small. And first, It followeth not that a man must be left to his own conscience in every thing, because he must be so in some things. In things necessary, as it is a sin to do them doubtingly, so it may be a greater sin to leave them undone; (as for a man to maintain his family, or defend his king, or hear the word of God, &c.) He that can say, My conscience is against it, must not be excused from a necessary duty: and he that can say, My conscience bids me do it, must not be excused in a sin. But yet the apostle knew what he said, when he (that was a greater church governor than you) determined the case of mutual forbearance, as in Rom. xiv. and xv. and 1 Cor. viii. Secondly, And he is not wholly left to himself, who is punished with a small penalty for a small offence: for if a man must be still punished more, as long as he obeyeth God and his conscience, before men, an honest man must not be suffered to live. For he will certainly do it to the death.

Direct. XXIX. Remember the wonderful variety of men's apprehensions, which must be supposed in all laws! Men's faces are scarce more various and unlike, than their understandings are: for besides that nature hath diversified intellects as well as faces, the diversity and unlikeness is much increased by variety of educations, company, representations, accidents, cogitations, and many other causes. It is wiser to make laws, that all men shall take the same physic, or eat only the same meat, or that all shoes shall be of a size, and all clothes of the same bigness, upon supposition that all men's health, or appetite, or feet, or bodies, are alike; than to make laws that all men shall agree (or say that they agree) in every opinion, circumstance, or ceremony, in matters of religion.

Direct. XXX. Remember especially, that most christians are ignorant, and of weak understandings, and not able to make use of all the distinctions and subtleties which are needful, to bring them over to your mind in doubtful and unnecessary things. Therefore the laws which will be the means of peace, must suppose this weakness and ignorance of most subjects! And how convenient it is, to say to a poor, ignorant christian, Know this, or profess this or that, which the ablest, godly pastors themselves are not agreed in, or else thou shalt be imprisoned or banished, I leave to equal men to judge.

Direct. XXXI. Human infirmities must be supposed in the best and strongest christians. All have their errors and their faults; divines themselves as well as others. Therefore either some errors and faults must be accounted tolerable, or else no two persons must tolerate one another in the world, but kill on till the strongest only shall survive. "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ," Gal. vi. 1, 2. And if the strong must be borne with themselves, "then they that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please themselves; but every one to please his neighbour for his good to edification; for even Christ pleased not himself," &c. Rom. xv. 1-3. "And him that is weak in the faith we must receive; but not to doubtful disputations," Rom. xiv. 1.

Direct. XXXII. The pastors must not be impatient under the abuses which they receive from weak or distempered brethren. We must excel others in patience, and meekness, and forbearance, as much as we do in knowledge, and in other graces. If the nurse or mother will take every word or action of the child, as if it were the injury of an enemy, there will be no preservation of the family in peace! If children cry, or fight, or chide, or make any foul or troublesome work, the mother will not therefore turn them out of doors, or use them like strangers, but remember that it is her place and duty to bear with that weakness which she cannot cure. The proud impatience of the pastors hath frequently brought them into the guilt of persecution, to the alienating of the people's hearts, and the distraction and division of the churches: when poor, distempered persons are offended with them, and it may be revile them, and call them seducers, or antichristian, or superstitious, or what their pride and passion shall suggest: or if some weak ones raise up some erroneous opinions, alas! many pastors have no more wit, or grace, or pity, than presently to be rough with them, and revile them again, and seek to right themselves by ways of force, and club down every error and contention; when they should overcome them by evidence of truth, and by meekness, patience, and love. (Though there be place also for severity, with turbulent, implacable, impenitent heretics.)

Direct. XXXIII. Time of learning and overcoming their mistakes, must be allowed to those that are misinformed. We must not turn those of the lower forms out of Christ's school, because they learn not as much as those of the higher forms in a few weeks or years. The Holy Ghost teacheth those who for the time might have been teachers of others, and yet had need to be taught the first principles, Heb. v. 11, 12. He doth not turn them out of the church for their non-proficiency. And where there is ignorance there will be error.

Direct. XXXIV. Some inconveniences must be expected and tolerated, and no perfect order or concord expected here on earth. It is not good reasoning to say, If we suffer these men, they will cause this or that disorder or inconvenience: but you must also consider whither you must drive it, if you suffer them not; and what will be the consequents. He that will follow his conscience to a prison, will likely follow it to death. And if nothing but death, or prison, or banishment can restrain them from what they take to be their duty, it must be considered how many must be so used; and whether (if they were truly faulty) they deserve so much: and if they do, yet whether the evils of the toleration or of the punishment are like to be the greater. Peace and concord will never be perfect, till knowledge and holiness be perfect.

Direct. XXXV. You may go farther in restraining than in constraining; in forbidding men to preach against approved doctrines or practices of the church, than in forcing them to preach for them, or to subscribe or speak their approbation or assent: if they be not points or practices of great necessity, a man may be fit for the ministry and church communion, who meddleth not with them, but preacheth the wholesome truths of the gospel, and lets them alone. And, because no duty is at all times a duty, a sober man's judgment will allow him to be silent at many an error, when he dare not subscribe to or approve the least. But if here any proud and cruel pastors shall come in with their lesser, selfish incommodities, and say, if they do not approve of what we say and do, they will secretly foment a faction against us; I should answer them, that as good men will foment no faction, so if such proud, impatient, turbulent men, will endure none that subscribe not to all their opinions, or differ from them in a circumstance or a ceremony, they shall raise a greater faction (if they will call it so) against themselves, and make the people look on them as tyrants and not as pastors; and they shall see in the end, when they have bought their wit by dear experience, that they have but torn the church in pieces, by preventing divisions by carnal means, and that they have lost themselves, by being over-zealous for themselves; and that doctrine and love are the instruments of a wise shepherd, that loveth the flock, and understands his work.

Direct. XXXVI. Distinguish between the making of new laws or articles of belief, and the punishing of men for the laws already made. And think not that we must have new laws or canons, every time the old ones are broken; or that any law can be made which can keep itself from being broken. Perverseness in this error hath brought the church to the misery which it endureth. God hath made a universal law sufficient for the universal church, in matters of faith and holy practice; leaving it to men to determine of necessary circumstances which were unfit for a universal law: and if the sufficiency of God's law were acknowledged in men's practices, the churches would have had more peace: but when particular countries have their particular volumes of articles, confessions, liturgies, and I know not what else to be subscribed to, and none must preach that will not say, or write, or swear, That he believeth all this to be true and good, and nothing in it to be against the word of God, this engine racks the limbs of the churches all to pieces. And then what is the pretence for this epidemical calamity? Why no better than this, Every heretic will subscribe to the Scriptures, and take it in his own sense. And what followeth? Must we needs therefore have new laws which heretics will not subscribe to, or which they cannot break? It is the commendation of God's law, as fit to be the means of unity, that all are so easily agreed to it in terms, and therefore would agree in the sense if they understood it. But they will not do so by the laws of men: all or many heretics in the primitive times, would profess assent to the church's creed; no doubt in a corrupt and private sense; but the churches therefore did not make new creeds; till about three hundred years after Christ, they began to put in some particular words to obviate heretics, which Hilary complained of as the cause of all their divisions! And what if heretics will subscribe to all you bid them, and take it in their own corrupted sense? Must you therefore be still making new laws and articles, till you meet with some which they cannot misunderstand, or dare not thus abuse? What if men will misinterpret and break the laws of the land? Must they be made new till none can mis-expound or violate them? Sure there is a wiser way than this: God's word containeth in sufficient expressions, all that is necessary to be subscribed to: require none therefore to subscribe to any more (in matters of faith or holy practice); but if you think any articles need a special interpretation, let the church give her sense of those articles; and if any man preach against that sense, and corrupt the word of God which he hath subscribed, let his fault be proved, and let him be admonished and censured as it deserves: censured, I say, not for not subscribing more than Scripture, but for corrupting the Scriptures to which he hath subscribed, or breaking God's laws which he promised to observe.

Direct. XXXVII. The good of men, and not their ruin, must be intended in all the discipline of the church: or the good of the church, when we have but little hope of theirs. If this were done, it would easily be perceived, that persecution is an unlikely means to do good by.

Direct. XXXVIII. Neither unlimited liberty in matters of religion must be allowed, nor unnecessary force and rigour used, but tolerable differences and parties must be tolerated, and intolerable ones by the wisest means suppressed. And to this end, by the counsel of the most prudent, peaceable divines, the tolerable and the intolerable must be statedly distinguished! And those that are only tolerated must be under a law for their toleration, prescribing them their terms of good behaviour; and those that are approved, must moreover have the countenance and maintenance of the magistrate: and if this were done, 1. The advantage of the said encouragement from governors, 2. With the regulation of the toleration, and the magistrates' careful government of the tolerated, would prevent both persecution, and most of the divisions and calamities of the church. Thus did the ancient christian emperors and bishops: (and was their experience nothing?) The Novatians (as good and orthodox men) were allowed their own churches and bishops even in Constantinople, at the emperor's nose. Especially if it be made the work of some justices, 1. To judge of persons to be tolerated, and grant them patents, 2. And to overrule them and punish them when they deserve it: no other way would avoid so many inconveniences.

Direct. XXXIX. The things intolerable are these two: 1. (Not the believing, but) the preaching and propagating of principles contrary to the essentials of godliness or christianity, or government, justice, charity, or peace. 2. The turbulent, unpeaceable management of those opinions which in themselves are tolerable. If any would preach against the articles of the creed, the petitions of the Lord's prayer, or any of the ten commandments, he is not to be suffered; and if any that are orthodox do in their separated meetings, make it their business to revile at others, and destroy men's charity, or to stir men up to rebellion or sedition, or contempt of magistracy; none of this should be endured.

As for those libertines that under the name of liberty of conscience do plead for a liberty of such vicious practices, and in order thereto would prove that the magistrate hath nothing to do in matters of religion, I have preached and wrote so much against them, whilst that error reigned, and I find it so unseasonable now the constitution of things looks another way, that I will not weary myself and the reader with so unnecessary a task as to confute them. Only I shall say, that Rom. xiii. telleth us that rulers are a terror to them that do evil; and that heretics and turbulent firebrands do evil; therefore rulers should be a terror to them; and that if all things are to be done to the glory of God, and his interest is to be set highest in the world, then magistrates and government are for the same end; and if no action which we do, is of so base a nature, as ultimately to be terminated in the concernments of the flesh, much less is government so vile a thing, when rulers are in Scripture called gods, as being the officers of God.

Direct. XL. Remember death, and live together as men that are near dying, and must live together in another world. The foolish expectation of prosperity and long life, is it which setteth men together by the ears. When Ridley and Hooper were both in prison, and preparing for the flames, their contentions were soon ended, and Ridley repented of his persecuting way. If the persecutors and persecuted were shut up together in one house that hath the plague, in the time of this lamentable contagion, it is two to one but they would be reconciled. When men see that they are going into another world, it takes off the edge of their bitterness and violence; and the apprehensions of the righteous judgment of God, doth awe them into a patience and forbearance with each other. Can you persecute that man on earth, with whom you look to dwell in heaven? (But to restrain a man from damning souls, by heresy or turbulency, or any such course, my conscience would not forbid it me if I were dying.)

Direct. XLI. Let the proud themselves, who will regard no higher motives, remember how fame and history will represent them to posterity when they are dead. There is no man that desireth his name should stink and be odious to future generations: there is nothing that an ambitious man desireth more, than a great surviving name. And will you knowingly and wilfully then expose it to perpetual contempt and hatred? Read over what history you please, and find out the name of one persecutor if you can, that is not now a word of ignominy, and doth not rot, as God hath threatened! If you say, that it is only in the esteem of such as I, or the persecuted party; neither your opinion shall be judge nor mine; but the opinion and language of historians, and of the wisest men, who are the masters of fame. Certainly that report of holy Scripture and history which hath prevailed, will still prevail; and while there are wise, and good, and merciful men in the world, the names and manners of the foolish, and wicked, and cruel will be odious, as they continue at this day.

I have wrote these directions to discharge my duty, for those that are willing to escape the guilt of so desperate a sin; but not with any expectation at all, that it should do much good with any considerable number of persecutors; for they will not read such things as these; and God seldom giveth professed christians over to this sin, till they have very grievously blinded their minds, and hardened their hearts, and by malignity and obstinacy are prepared for his sorest judgments; and I know that whoever will live godly in Christ Jesus (it is not said, "who professeth to believe in Christ Jesus," but, "to live godly") shall suffer persecution, and that the cross must still be the passage to the crown.134

CHAPTER XII.

DIRECTIONS AGAINST SCANDAL AS GIVEN

Scandal being a murdering of souls, is a violation of the general law of charity, and of the sixth commandment in particular. In handling this subject, I shall, 1. Show you what is true scandal given to another. 2. What things go under the name of scandal, which are not it, but are falsely so named. 3. What are the particular ways and sorts of scandal. 4. The greatness of this sin. 5. Directions to avoid it.

Scandal what it is.

I. I shall not need to stand upon the etymology of the word scandal; whether it come from σκάζω, claudico, as Erasmus thought, or from σκάμβον, curvum, &c. Martinius, Stephanus, Lyserus, &c. have sufficiently done it, whither I refer you. As for the sense of the word, it is past doubt, that the ordinary use of it in Scripture is for a stumblingblock for a man to fall upon, or a trap to insnare a man; and in the Old Testament it is often used for a stumbling-stone, on which a man may fall into any corporal calamity, or a snare to hurt or ruin a man in the world; (as Exod. x. 7; 1 Sam. xviii. 21; xxv. 31; Psal. cxix. 165; Ezek. vii. 19, Sept.) But in the New Testament, (which speaketh more of spiritual hurts,) it is taken for a stumblingblock or temptation, by which a man is in danger of falling into sin, or spiritual loss, or ruin, or dislike of godliness, or any way to be turned from God, or hindered in a religious, holy way; (and if sometimes it be taken for grieving or troubling, it is as it hereby thus hindereth or insnareth;) so that to scandalize, is sometimes taken for the doing of a blameless action, from which another unjustly taketh occasion to fall, or sin, or be perverted: but when it signifieth a sin, (as we take it in this place,) then to scandalize is, by something unlawful of itself, or at least unnecessary, which may occasion the spiritual hurt or ruin of another. 1. The matter is either something that is simply sinful, (and then it is a double sin,) or something indifferent or unnecessary, and then it is simply the sin of scandal. 2. It must be that which may occasion another's fall, I say, occasion; for no man can forcibly cause another man to sin, but only occasion it, or tempt him to it, as a moral cause.