lenity, which also is imputed to the much condemned sufferers of Scotland at this time, for their testimonies against toleration and liberty of conscience: let us hear what Knox says, 'whatsoever God required of the civil magistrate in Israel or Judah, concerning the observation of true religion during the time of the law, the same doth he require of lawful magistrates, professing Christ Jesus, in the time of the gospel: and cites a large testimony out of Augustine to this purpose.' And afterward objecting to himself the practice of the apostles, who did not punish the idolatrous Gentiles; he answers, 'That the Gentiles, being never avowed to be God's people before, had never received his law, and therefore were not to be punished according to the rigour of it, to which they were never subject, being strangers from the common-wealth of Israel; but if any think, after the Gentiles were received in the number of Abraham's children, and so made one people with the Jews believing; then they were not bound to the same obedience of Israel's covenant, the same seems to make Christ inferior to Moses, and contrary to the law of his heavenly Father; for if the contempt and transgression of Moses' law was worthy of death, what judge we the contempt of Christ's ordinance to be? And if Christ be not come to dissolve, but to fulfil the law of his heavenly Father, shall the liberty of his gospel be an occasion that the special glory of his Father be trodden under foot, and regarded of no man? God forbid: and therefore I fear not to affirm, that the Gentiles be bound by the same covenant that God made with his people Israel, in these words--"Beware that thou make not any covenant with the inhabitants of the land, but thou shalt destroy their altars," &c. When, therefore, the Lord putteth the sword in the hand of a people, they are no less bound to purge their cities and countries from idolatry, than were the Israelites, what time they received the possession of the land of Canaan.'