A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian PoliticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian Politics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
[106] Ungebantur reges non per dominum, sed qui cæteris crudeliores
existerent, et paulo post ab unctoribus non pro veri examinatione,
trucidabantar, aliis electis trucioribus. Gildas de exc. Brit.
[107] Rom. xiv.; xv. 1; Gal. vi. 1-4; James iii. 15-17; Tit. iii. 2.
[108] Luke xx. 18; Matt. xxi. 42, 44; Acts iv. 11; 1 Pet. ii. 7, 8;
Zech. xii. 3.
[109] Read the lives of all the philosophers, orators, and famous men
of Greece or Rome, and try whether the christians or they were more
for monarchy. Arcesilaus regum neminem magnopere coluit: quamobrem
legatione ad Antigonum fungens pro patria, nihil obtinuit. Hesich. in
Arces. It is one of Thales's sayings in Laert. Quid difficile? Regem
vidisse tyrannum senem. Chrysippus videtur aspernator regum modice
fuisse. Quod cum tam multa scripserit (libros 705.) nulli unquam regi
quicquam adscripserit. Seneca saith (Traged. de Here. fur.)
perilously, Victima haud ulla amplior potest, magisque opima mactari
Jovi, Quam rex iniquus. Cicero pro Milon. Non se obstrinxit scelere
siquis tyrannum occidat, quamvis familiarem. Et 5. Tusc. Nulla nobis
cum tyrannis societas est, neque est contra naturam spoliare eum quem
honestum est necare. Plura habet similia.
[110] See Bilson of Subject, p. 525, 526. Proving from Chrysostom,
Hilary, Origen, that pastors may use no force or terror, but only
persuasion, to recover their wandering sheep. Bilson, ibid. p. 541.
Parliaments have been kept by the king and his barons, the clergy
wholly excluded, and yet their acts and statutes good: and when the
bishops were present, their voices from the Conquest to this day were
never negative. By God's law you have nothing to do with making laws
for kingdoms and commonwealths: you may teach, you may not command:
persuasion is your part, compulsion is the prince's, &c. Thus Bishop
Bilson. So p. 358.
[111] 1 Pet. ii. 16; Gal. v. 13; 2 Pet. ii. 19; Gal. iv. 26;
2 Cor. iii. 17.
[112] Having spoken of this controversy, in my "Life of Faith," as an
easy thing, in which I thought we were really agreed, while we seemed
to differ, which I called a pitiful case, some brethren (who say
nothing against the truth of what I said) are offended at me as
speaking too confidently, and calling that so easy which Bishop
Sanderson and so many others did make a greater matter of; I retract
the words, if they be unsuitable either to the matter or the readers:
but as to the matter and the truth of the words, I desire the reader
but to consider how easy a case Mr. P. maketh of it, Eccl. Pol. and
how heinous a matter he maketh of our supposed dissent: and if after
all this it shall appear, that the nonconformists do not at all
differ from Hooker, Bilson, and the generality of the conformists in
this point, let him that is willing to be represented as odious and
intolerable to rulers and to mankind, for that in which we do not
differ, proceed to backbite me for saying that it is a pitiful case;
and pretending that we are agreed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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