Again, I demand, who shall here sit [to] judge, whether the magistrate command any other substance or ceremony but what is Christ’s?
By their former conclusions, every soul must judge what the magistrate commandeth, and is not bound, even in indifferent things, to the magistrates’ law, further than his own soul, conscience, and judgment ascends to the reason of it. Here, the magistrate must make laws for that substance and ceremony which Christ appointed. But yet he must not do this with his eyes open, but blindfold and hoodwinked; for if he judge that to be the religion of Christ, and such to be the order therein, which their consciences judge otherwise, and assent not to, they profess they must submit only to Christ’s laws, and therefore they are not bound to obey him.
[Sidenote: Civil powers abused as a guard about the bed of spiritual whoredoms.]
Oh! what is this but to make use of the civil powers and governors of the world, as a guard about the spiritual bed of soul-whoredoms, in which the kings of the earth commit spiritual fornication with the great whore, Rev. xvii. 2,—as a guard, while the inhabitants of the earth are drinking themselves drunk with the wine of her fornication?
But oh! what terrifyings, what allurings are in Jeremy’s curse and blessing! Jer. xvii. [5.] _Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, that maketh flesh his arm_,—too, too common in spiritual matters—_and whose heart departeth from Jehovah: he shall be as a heath in the wilderness_—even in the spiritual and mystical wilderness—_and shall not see when comfort comes, but shall abide in drought in the wilderness, in a barren land_, &c.
_Peace._ Oh! what mysteries are these to flesh and blood! how hard for flesh to forsake the arm thereof! But pass on, dear Truth, to their proof propounded, Ezra vii. 23, wherein Artaxerxes confirmed by law whatever was commanded by the God of heaven.
_Truth._ In this scripture I mind, first, the people of God captivated under the dominion and government of the kings of Babel and Persia.
Secondly. Artaxerxes’s favour to these captives,
3. Of exempting of some of them from common charges.
Fourthly. The ground that carries him on to all this.
Fifthly. Ezra praising of God for putting this into the heart of the king.