A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian PoliticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian Politics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
emperors and kings! and how many by more orthodox princes in their
particular distastes! And yet how far hath the pretended vicar of
Christ outdone them all! How many hundred thousands of the Albigenses,
Waldenses, and Bohemians, hath the papal rage consumed! Two hundred
thousand the Irish murdered in a little space, to outgo the thirty or
forty thousand which the French massacre made an end of! The
sacrifices offered by their fury in the flames, in the Marian
persecution here in England, were nothing to what one day hath done in
other parts. What volumes can contain the particular histories of
them? What a shambles was their inquisition in the Low Countries! And
what is the employment of it still? So that a doubting man would be
inclined to think, that papal Rome is the murderous Babylon, that doth
but consider, "How drunken she is with the blood of the saints, and
the martyrs of Jesus; and that the blood of saints will be found in
her, in her day of trial," Rev. xvii. 6; xviii. 24. If we should look
over all the rest of the world, and reckon up the torments and murders
of the innocent, (in Japan, and most parts of the world, wherever
Christianity came,) it may increase your wonder, that devils and men
are still so like. Yea, though there be as loud a testimony in human
nature against this bloodiness, as almost any sin whatsoever; and
though the names of persecutors always stink to following generations,
how proudly soever they carried it for a time; and though one would
think a persecutor should need no cure but his own pride, that his
name may not be left as Pilate's in the creed, to be odious in the
mouths of the ages that come after him; yet for all this, so deep is
the enmity, so potent is the devil, so blinding a thing is sin, and
interest, and passion, that still one generation of persecutors doth
succeed the others; and they kill the present saints, while they
honour the dead ones, and build them monuments, and say, "If we had
lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers
with them in the prophets' blood." Read well Matt. xxiii. 29, to the
end. What a sea of righteous blood hath malignity and persecuting zeal
drawn out!
4. Another cause of murder is, rash and unrighteous judgment; when
judges are ignorant, or partial, or perverted by passion, or
prejudice, or respect of persons: but though many an innocent hath
suffered this way, I hope among christians, this is one of the rarest
causes.
5. Another way of murder is by oppression and uncharitableness; when
the poor are kept destitute of necessaries to preserve their lives:
though few of them die directly of famine, yet thousands of them die
of those sicknesses which they contract by unwholesome food. And all
those are guilty of their death, either that cause it by oppression,
or that relieve them not when they are able and obliged to it, James
v. 1-5.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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