"Objection. 13. 'Your principles lead to persecution, and are cruel and unmerciful.'

Answer. The church of Christ never persecuted. If our principles lead to it, they are certainly wrong.

But what is persecution?

Does it consist in executing God's law?

If it does, He must be the author of it.

Does it not rather consist in injuring men in their characters, property, or persons, for their tenacious and steadfast adherence to his divine commandments?

If this is not persecution, then the martyrs have suffered, not for the cause and testimony of Jesus, but for their obstinate rebellion against it.

How does this correspond with the character of those souls whom John saw lying under the altar, "who were slain for the word of God, and for the Testimony which they held!" Rev 6:9.

Whatsoever the law of God commands to be punished, ought to be punished with the penalties therein made and provided; but God has commanded gross heretics, blasphemers, and idolaters, to be punished with certain specific penalties. Therefore, such ought to be punished.

These commands could not belong to the ceremonial law, for then they would have flowed entirely from the arbitrary will of God, and been mere signs between him and Israel. Who would dare to think so of gross heresy, &c.?

Neither could they belong to that part of the judicial law which respected the Jews peculiarly. Who would dare to say that none but the Jews were, or are, under obligation to worship God in purity, or abstain from blaspheming his nature and dignity?

They must, therefore, belong to the moral law, and flow from the moral nature of Jehovah, who has declared he will not give his glory to another, nor his praise to graven images.

Thus we find the first, second, and third precepts of the moral law pointedly prohibiting these things, and requiring the contrary duties. All the precepts and threatenings which are to be found respecting these, scattered up and down the Bible, are only elucidations of those commandments.

I would leave this particular, with proposing one question, which the judicious reader will easily solve. Was Elijah a persecutor when he caused the law of God to be executed upon the prophets of Baal?

- FROM: The Two Sons of Oil; or, the Faithful Witness for Magistracy and Ministry Upon a Scriptural Basis by Samuel B. Wylie (1850 ed., available on SWRB's PURITAN HARD DRIVE with an add index, along with 12,500+ other Covenanter, Puritan and Reformed books, MP3s and videos — click here).

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