A Hind Let Loose: Or, An Historical Representation of the Testimonies of the Church of Scotland for the Interest of Christ. With the True State Thereof in All Its PeriodsShields, Alexander
History
A Hind Let Loose: Or, An Historical Representation of the Testimonies of the Church of Scotland for the Interest of Christ. With the True State Thereof in All Its Periods
Shields, Alexander
Church of Scotland -- Controversial literature; Church of Scotland -- History; Covenanters; Scotland -- Church history
There is his work, for this cause pay you tribute also. There is his
wages and maintainance. He is called so in that transaction with
Rehoboam; the old men advised him to be a servant unto the people, then
they should be his servants, 1 Kings xii. 7. There was a conditional
bargain proposed: as to be a servant, or tutor, or guardian upon trust,
always implies conditions and accountableness to them that entrust them.
3. It must needs be so, otherwise great absurdities would follow. Here
would be a voluntary contracted relation, obliging us to relative
duties, to a man that owed none correlative to us, and yet one whom we
set over us. It were strange, if there were no condition here; and no
other voluntarily suscepted relations can be without this, as between
man and wife, master and servant, &c. This would give him the disposal
of us and ours, as if both we and what we have were his own, as a man's
goods are, against which he does not sin whatever he doth with them. So
this would make a king that could not sin against us; being no ways
obliged to us, for he can no otherwise be obliged to us, but upon
covenant conditions; he may be obliged and bound in duty to God
otherwise, but he cannot be bound to us otherwise: and if he be not
bound, then he may do what he will, he can do no wrong to us to whom he
is noways bound. This also is point blank against the law of God, which
is the second way to prove it, by the light of revelation or scripture.
1. In the very directions about making and setting up of kings, the Lord
shews what conditions shall be required of them, Deut. xvii. 15. &c. and
in all directions for obeying them, the qualifications they should have
are rehearsed, as Rom. xii. 3, 4. Therefore none are to be set up but on
these conditions, and none are to be obeyed but such as have these
qualifications. 2. In his promises of the succession of kings, he
secures their continuation only conditionally, to establish the kingdom,
if they be constant to do his commandments and judgments, 1 Chron.
xxviii. 7. There shall not fail a man to sit upon the throne, yet so
that they take heed to their way to walk in God's law, as David did, 2
Chron. vi. 16.
Now he was not otherwise to perform these promises, but by the action
and suffrage of the people setting him up, (which he had appointed to be
the way of calling kings to thrones,) if therefore the Lord's promise be
conditional, the people's actions also behoved to be suspended upon the
same conditions. 3. We have many express covenants between rulers and
subjects in scripture. Jephthah was fetched from the land of Tob, and
made the head of the Gileadites by an explicit mutual stipulation,
wherein the Lord was invocated as a witness, Judg. xi. 6, 8, 9, 10, 11.
So all the elders of Israel came to make David king; and king David made
a league with them in Hebron before the Lord, and then they anointed him
over Israel, 2 Sam. v. 3. he made there a covenant with them before the
Lord, 1 Chron. xi. 3.
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