This is track two of A Refutation of Religious Pluralism by John Brown of Haddington. This work is published by Gospel Covenant Publications. Gospel Covenant Publications' website is www.gcpublications.com. They may be reached by email at info at gcpublications.com and by phone at 208-553-5296. 1. Men's pleadings for it do, all of them, necessarily proceed on their adopting such atheistical principles as the following. 1. Men's natural or civil rights to their property, liberty, profits and honors are not originally derived from God and ought to protect them in their most outrageous sinning against Him. 2. Men's consciences have a right and authority underrived from and independent of God. by which it can warrant them to think and speak of, or act towards God, as insolently and blasphemously as they please. 3. That if the law of God be any rule to men, it is not so in respect of any intrinsic meaning affixed to it by him, but merely as it is understood by every man, particularly in that which relates to their behavior towards God. 4. All men being ready to mistake, We ought always to believe that our opponents may have as just a view of the Scriptures as ourselves, and never to condemn them for that which they do not own to be blasphemy, idolatry, or heresy. 5. Magistrates' right and authority to govern others does not originate in God as the Creator, Preserver, and King of nations, but in magistrates themselves or in their subjects, and so may be exercised as they please, particularly in requiring or allowing their subjects to belie or slander, blaspheme or rob God. 6. Magistrates may be moral governors, deputies or lieutenants under God, without having any power of authority relating to religion or His honour. 7. Not the law of God natural or revealed, but the laws of nations ought to be the supreme standard of all civil government. 8. Not the declarative glory of God as the most high over all the earth, but the civil peace and prosperity of nations ought to be the chief end of magistrates in all their acts of government. 9. Men's natural rights of conscience, or their civil rights, or the authority of magistrates, may or ought to empower, warrant, or protect them in gross heresy, blasphemy, idolatry, or other outrageous abuse and injury of God. but can by no means warrant or protect them in calumny, theft, murder, or any other injuries against men. 10. There is no real difference between moral good and evil, at least in things pertaining to God. And so true and false religion are equally calculated to promote the welfare of civil society, and the virtues which render men good, peaceable, useful, and honorable rulers or subjects, and hence heretics, blasphemers, and idolaters may be good subjects. 11. The favor or indignation of God is of no importance to civil society, and therefore magistrates ought to use no means to procure his favor by the encouragement of true religion, or to avert his indignation by the restraint of gross heresy, blasphemy, or idolatry, but only labor to procure the friendship of men. and prevent their injuring the character, property, or bodies of their subjects. That all these propositions are really atheistical is manifest. They all give up with the necessary existence, infinite excellency, and absolute supremacy of God, without any of which he cannot be God at all. That Locke, Hodley, Blackburn, Voltaire, and others advocate for authoritative toleration of false religion found their pleadings on the above propositions is no less evident to every judicious and unbiased observer. Nay, did not modesty forbid I might defy all the world to plead for such toleration without taking all or some of the above or like atheistical propositions for granted. Section 2. The Scriptures plainly represent magistrates' granting of men an unrestrained freedom to profess and practice a false religion as extremely sinful and hurtful. To do so is, in the name of God, to give a liberty to the flesh, of which heresies and idolatry are the manifest and damning works. Galatians 5.13, 19-21, Romans 8.7-8 2. It is not merely to pity and spare, but to encourage such as seek to draw away their subjects from God. Contrary to Deuteronomy 13.9-10, Ephesians 4.14, 2 Timothy 3, 4, 5, and 13, 2 Peter 2, verses 1-3. 3. In so doing, magistrates as political shepherds not only suffer the flock of God, the King of Nations, under their charge to wander or be driven from their fold and pasture, but encourage them in it, contrary to Ezekiel 34, 5-8, Acts 20, verse 30. 4. It marks a heavy judgment of God upon, and an anarchy in a commonwealth, when every man is left without restraint, and does that which is right in his own eyes in matters of religion." Judges 17, 6, Zechariah 11, 9, 16, 2 Chronicles 20, 33, Amos 4, 4 and 5. 5. In granting such liberty, magistrates are not for Christ by whom they rule, Proverbs 8, 15 and 16, But against him, in encouraging and protecting the doctrines and works of the devil, which he came to destroy, John 8, 44, 1 Timothy 4, 2, Revelation 16, 13, and 14, with 1 John 3, 8, and Zechariah 13, verse 2. 6. False religion eats out the true doctrine of Christ and the true piety and virtue which proceed from the faith of it. which are like joints and bands to connect and establish a nation. Isaiah 59, Isaiah 65, 2 Timothy 2, 16 and 17, Galatians 5, 10-12. 7. Heresies produce divisions. 1 Corinthians 11, 18 and 19. Make men wanton, filthy dreamers, despisers and revilers of magistrates. Jude verses 4 and 8, 2 Peter 2, 10-17. They render times perilous, and make men traitors, heady, high-minded, truce-breakers, false accusers, fierce, without natural affection, despisers of those that are good. They produce envy, strifes, evil surmising, and perverse disputing. They spoil Christ's vines. 8. False religion deprives a nation of God's protecting hedge of favorable providence and opens an inlet to the floods of destructive judgments. Exodus 32, 25, Ezekiel 13, 4 and 5, and 22, 30 and 31. 9. Magistrate's indulgence of a false religion is represented as a kicking at the true religion and an honoring of the corruptors above God. and brings a charge of the wickedness upon the tolerators of it. Hence Eli, the judge of Israel, is represented as kicking at God's sacrifice, honoring his profane sons above God, and making himself fat with God's portion of the sacrifices, because he did not effectually restrain his sons. 1 Samuel 2, 12-16, verses 23 and 25 and 29, Ephesians 5, 7 and 11. And Nehemiah contended with the rulers of Judah for suffering the worship of God to be neglected, and the Sabbath profaned. Nehemiah 13, 10-18. 10. Such indulgence of a false or corrupt religion is represented as tending to make men abhor the true religion and speak evil of it. 1 Samuel 2.17, 2 Peter 2.1-3. 3. The Scriptures represent magistrates as having power to make civil laws relative to the external concerns of religion subordinated to the Law of God, and answerable to their own department. 1. They have in charge the keeping of the whole Law of God, Deuteronomy 17, 19, 1 Kings 2, 3, Joshua 1, 7, 8, 2 Chronicles 23, 11, Job 29, 25, Romans 13, 1-4. It is never hinted that they have no charge with respect to religion, but the contrary, God chose Moses, the magistrate, not Aaron, the high priest, to publish his laws relative to religion. Abijah avers that in maintaining the true worship of God he had kept the charge of the Lord, which Jeroboam, the introducer of a false religion, had not. 2 Chronicles 13, 10 and 11. 2. God promised to the Jews good magistrates in order to root out abusive practices and monuments of false religion. Isaiah 1, 25 and 26. Now if they had power to root these out, they certainly had power to make laws for that effect. 3. They ought to repeal wicked and persecuting laws, and free their subjects from being bound over to punishment by them for their faithful service of God. Psalm 94 20 Isaiah 10 verse 11 Micah 6 16 Hosea 5 11 If they can repeal wicked laws, they must have power to establish what is contrary to them." Daniel 3 and Daniel 6. 4. If magistrates can make laws encouraging the true religion and Church of Christ by annexation of civil favors to the profession or practice of gospel truth, they can also by law annex civil punishment to the contempt of or rebellion against these laws. they being for the terror and punishment of evildoers, as well as for the praise of them that do well." Romans 13, 3 and 4, 1 Peter 2, 13 and 14, Daniel 6, 16, 3, 29, Ezra 1, 1-5, 6, 3-12, and 7, 23-27. 5. By enacting such laws, they neither invade the office of ecclesiastical rulers, who have no power to connect civil rewards or punishments, with anything religious, nor do they transgress any law of God. What then can hinder their having power to make them? 6. If all sorts of men, church members and officers, as well as others, be subject to civil magistrates, they must have power and ought to make civil laws calculated to promote their advantage in all these stations. Romans 13 1-4, 1 Peter 2 13-14, 1 Timothy 2 1-2, 7. Unless magistrates have a power to make good laws relative to the external profession and practice of religion, clergymen, if generally corrupt, will have it in their power, by synodical constitutions or otherwise, to devour and poison their subjects with the seeds of confusion, profaneness, and every evil work, without any possibility of legal restraint. For to allow magistrates to act without law is to introduce tyranny and arbitrary government. But, in magistrates making laws respecting religion, it is necessary that 1. They, first in order, carefully acquaint themselves with the law of God, that they may form all their laws in agreeableness and subordination to it, they having no power against the truth, but for it. Deuteronomy 17, 18-20, Joshua 1, 7-8, Psalm 119, 97-104, 2 Corinthians 13, 8. They ought to consult with faithful ministers of the Church, either as met in synods or otherwise, as it may be expected they know the laws of God relative to religion." Deuteronomy 17, 9-12, Malachi 2, 7, 2 Chronicles 15, 1-15. Thus, in making these laws, Church rulers help magistrates with their direction, while magistrates help them with their civil encouragements. 2 Chronicles 19, 10-11, 3. They ought to require the ministers who are in their dominions faithfully to instruct their subjects in the whole counsel of God contained in His Word, relative to those points of religion about which they intend to make laws that they may thus be prepared, willingly, to receive and obey them. Thus Jehoshaphat first sent teachers and then judges throughout his dominions, 2 Chronicles 17 and 2 Chronicles 19. 4. In all matters of religion, great care ought to be taken to establish the laws with and by the consent of the subjects or their representatives, thus strengthening these laws through their binding men who are willing to obey them, and the rather as the principal end of such laws is lost unless men willingly obey them. 2 Chronicles 15, 9, 13, 20, 21, Jonah 3, 4, 7. 5. In these laws a special regard ought to be shown to persons of a weak and tender conscience. Political shepherds ought never to overdrive their flock, but to carry the lambs in their bosom, and, that the very weakest of their subjects may be qualified to obey their laws, They ought never to establish anything in religion but what is plainly, as well as really, established by God and His law, that so nothing may be contrary to their law, but what is plainly contrary to God's law." Ezekiel 34, 4 Section 4 Though the law of God allows not of magistrates attempting to force man into the faith, profession, or practice of the true religion, or of their punishing anything relative to it, which is not an open and manifest violation of the law of God, and plainly destructive of the welfare of the commonwealth, yet it requires them to restrain, and even seasonably and suitably to punish, blasphemy, idolatry, and like grosser corruptions and insults upon the true religion, when they become openly notorious, and especially if obstinately continued in, to the just offence and hurt of others. Such restraint and punishment are represented in scripture as an eminent service done to God. In which last text, the word rendered take ordinarily signifies an external and forcible taking. Judges 12, 6, 16, 3, and 21. Psalm 139, 9. Exodus 4, 4. Genesis 25, 26. And chapter 22, verse 13. 2. The end of God's appointment of magistrates is the good of their subjects. Romans 13, 4. Now such corruptions in religion impair that good in preventing the spread and success of the gospel. which are so exceedingly calculated to render men virtuous and happy even in this life. 1 Timothy 4.8, 1 Peter 3.11-13, Titus 2.12, and in promoting the herd of men's morals, safety, estate, peace, or liberty. Romans 1.21-32, 16-18, 2 Peter 2.1, 2, 3, 10, 12-13, 16, 18-19, Jude verses 4, 8, 10, 11-13, 16, 18-19, 2 Timothy 4, 3-4, 3, 1-9, 13, 2, 16-17, 1 Timothy 4, 2-5, 6, 3-4. 3. Such restraint and punishment are represented in Scripture as a blessing to be prayed for, 1 Timothy 2, 1-2, 4, and as a blessing for which God ought to be thanked. Ezra 7, 25-28, Revelation 11, 15 and 17. 4. It is promised that such restraint and punishment should be produced by the effusion of the Holy Ghost upon the Christian Church, Zechariah 12, 10, 12 and 14, with 13, 1-6, and that they should tend to the advantage, even of some seducers, who should be brought to account, the inflictors, their real friends, Zechariah 13, 4-6. 5. The scripture represents evil as removed and good, both moral and civil, as obtained by such restraints and punishments. Deuteronomy 17, 2, 5, 7, and 10. 1 Kings 18, 40, and 41. 2 Chronicles 14, 3-5. And wickedness and misery as overflowing a nation when neglected. Ecclesiastes 8.11 Judges 17.4-6.12 1 Samuel 2.12-29 1 Samuel 4 Ezekiel 22.25-26.30-31 6. When the proper judges neglected such restraint and punishment, God raised up some in an extraordinary way to execute it. Thus Elijah, caused to slay the prophets of Baal, 1 Kings 18.40. Jehu caused to slay others of them, 2 Kings 10.5-25. The Jews, under the direction of Jehoiada, slew Matan, the priest of Baal, and Christ himself once and again drove the buyers and sellers out of the temple, John 2.13-19, Matthew 21.12. Why ought not magistrates, who are his vicegerents, as God, to imitate his conduct? Psalm 82, 1 and 6, 2 Chronicles 19, 6, Romans 13, 1-4. 7. The Scripture affords many a proven instances of such restraints or punishment of gross corruptions in religion, as by Jacob, Genesis 35, 24, by the judges in the time and country of Job, Job 31, 26-28, by Moses, Exodus 32, 4, 20, 22, and 29, by the rulers of the 10 tribes Joshua 22 verses 10-34 by Asa 2 Chronicles 15 12-13 and verse 15 by Jehoshaphat 2 Chronicles 19 3-8 by Josiah 2 Chronicles 34 4-33 2 Kings 23 5-20 by Nehemiah Nehemiah 10-20 by Nebuchadnezzar Daniel 3-29 by Artaxerxes, Ezra 7.26, and by the Protestant destroyers of Antichrist, Revelation 17.16. HEADING 5 Decide their power, as men, to try all things by the law of God manifested to them, and their power of Christian discretion, if they are Christians, to judge by the word of God what is for their own spiritual and eternal advantage. Magistrates, as such, have a power of politically judging and determining what and how principles and practices of the true religion are to be connected with political rewards or encouragements, or what ought to be professed and practiced by persons as members of their political society in order to promote the real welfare of it in subordination to the glory of God as King of Nations. 1. If they may enact laws in the matters of God as has been proven, and may judge in what is fundamental in religion, or in that which is contained in express words of scripture, or in matters of the second table of the moral law, then they must have power to judge of that which is plainly deducible from the express words of scripture by necessary consequence, and in those matters of the first table of the moral law, which as much belong to the law of nature as any in the second, have power politically to judge why and how such a religious profession and practice is to be encouraged by the civil authority, and how and why that which is notoriously opposite to the true religion is to be discouraged. 2. Without this political judging of them, magistrates could never determine whether the decisions of ecclesiastical courts ought to be ratified by their civil authority or not. 1 Thessalonians 5.21, Acts 17.11. If, in judging of those things, magistrates improve, that is, use or employ, the word, the spirit, and the faithful ministers of God for their counselors, they bid fair to have a divine sentence in their lips, and not to err in judgment. Deuteronomy 17, 18-20, Psalm 119, 97-105, Proverbs 16, 10, Isaiah 32, 1. If, neglecting to consult these, magistrates give a corrupt sentence, They lie open to the judgment of God, to the restraint and correction of the collective body of the subjects or their representatives, and also to ecclesiastical censure if they be church members. 3. If magistrates be nursing fathers to the Christian Church, Isaiah 49, 23, they ought to prevent her being poisoned with corrupt food, and hence must have a power politically to judge what is corrupt and what is not. 4. If the magistrate be the keeper of the peace of the kingdom, then, if a party in the church, complaining of the gross errors of the other, should form a furious schism, he must have power politically to judge who is in the right or in the wrong, who adhere to the truths established by law and who do not, and to show favor accordingly. 1 Thessalonians 5.21. 5. If magistrates may restrain and punish evildoers, they may exercise this power over church officers if, in their synods, they make blasphemous or idolatrous decrees which tend to disturb the commonwealth and dishonor God the King of Nations, and hence must politically judge of their conduct by the laws of God and the land. No covenanted subjection to church judicatures, as a member of the church, can deprive them of this political judgment any more than of their right of cognition and discretion as men and Christians. Magistrates' political judgment, how principles or practices are to be connected with civil encouragements or discouragements, is no infallible rule of church courts judging how principles and practices ought to be connected with ecclesiastical encouragements or censures. Nor are the decisions of ecclesiastical courts any infallible rule to direct magistrates. but the law of God is the only infallible and supreme rule to both. Nor is the decision of the one subordinate to that of the other, but both, as well as every man's right to judge for himself according to the law of God what he is to believe and practice in order to his own peace and comfort, and his joyful answering in the final judgment of God, are supreme in their respective departments, subordinated only to the judgment of God himself. But, to argue the matter still more particularly, 1. If magistracy, conscience, and human rights, natural and civil, be all derived from God, as all but atheists must allow, magistrates can have no more power authoritatively to tolerate sin than God Himself can command it. If God, by virtue of the infinite perfection of His nature, has no will, no power authoritatively to proclaim liberty to commit sin, he cannot communicate any such power to the magistrate. Nor can the magistrate account to God for exceeding his power in licensing that which is infinitely injurious to him more than the British king's lion keeper has power, or could be accountable for loosing and hunting out the lions in the tower upon his majesty. If conscience derives all its power from God, it can have no more power to enjoin anything sinful than Lord North has to hire ruffians to assassinate his sovereign. If all human rights be derived from God, the primary and supreme proprietor of all things, it is impossible they can authorize men to contrive or commit anything sinful, or can protect them in it. 2. Men's state in this world is neither separated nor separable from, but closely connected with their eternal state. and magistracy is an ordinance of God appointed by Him for His own glory, and to promote the chief end of mankind in glorifying Him." Romans 13.2, Proverbs 16.4, 1 Corinthians 10.31, 1 Peter 4.11, Romans 12.36. But how, sir, do magistrates promote this end, if they give the same degree of protection, though perhaps not of encouragement, to the soul-ruining and practice-corrupting delusions and abominations of Satan, as they do the eternally saving religion of God and His Christ. If they give the same countenance to them who, to the corruption of men's moral behavior and their eternal damnation, defame Jehovah to them as mere matter, a mere man, a mere creature, a worker of contradiction and nonsense, as they do to those who faithfully proclaim His infinite excellencies and glorious works of redemption, publishes truths and promote the presence and future holiness and happiness of mankind? If God chiefly aimed at the glorifying of himself in the advancement of the kingdom of Christ, how can magistrates who are appointed by him as his vicegerents for promoting his glory on earth be allowed, far less obliged by him, to exert their power as much for protecting or promoting the kingdom of the devil as for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ? Indeed, magistrates are not the deputies of Christ as mediator, but they are of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and all their administrations are, by Him, subjected to Christ as Head over all things to His Church. Proverbs 8, 15, and 16, Matthew 28, 18, Ephesians 1, 22. Why, then, ought they not to concur with God in advancing the kingdom of Christ, especially as this mightily promotes the temporal as well as the eternal welfare of their subjects. Proverbs 14.34, Isaiah 1.19, 3.10, Psalm 1.12, Psalm 127, Psalm 128. 3. Magistrates are expressly represented in Scripture as ministers of God for good to men, rulers deputed by and under Him. Romans 13.4 But how can they be ministers, deputies, or vicegerents of God, without having power to restrain, and, if proper and seasonable, to punish, that which openly affronts and horridly insults him, blasphemously gives him the lie, basely misrepresents him, or devotes the worship due to him to his adversary the devil, or any other crimes which immediately strike against him? If they be God's ministers, They must transact all their magistratical managements in His name. And how can God empower His own ministers as such, and acting in His name, to promote His highest dishonor, licensing, encouraging, and protecting gross heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry, giving as much encouragement to the vilest delusions of Satan as to the New Testament in Jesus' blood? How can they be ministers of God for good to men, without having power to restrain such as, like wolves and murderers, go about corrupting the principles and practices and destroying the souls of his and their subjects? How can they be the ministers of God, the Father of spirits, for good, universal good, to men, who are not brutes but endowed with precious and immortal souls, which are more beneficial in commonwealths than their bodies, without having power to promote the cultivation and welfare of souls as a means of promoting the happiness of that state? How can they be ministers of God for good to men, if they have power only to punish those crimes which strike immediately against their bodies or external property, but no power to punish crimes as they provoke God's wrath against the nation? If they have power to restrain the petty thief, robber, or other less hurtful things, but none to prevent the kindling of God's wrath against the nation, and the debauching of men's consciences and morals, by blasphemy, heresy, idolatry, and so forth, which may quickly do more real mischief to a nation than ten thousand thieves or robbers could do. After God has expressly commanded to punish murderers as destroyers of His image, Genesis 9, 6, have His ministers no power to punish murder as a destruction of His rational creatures or sacrificing them to devils? Psalm 106, 37. If murder ought to be punished as an injury and dishonor to God, Why not also public blasphemy, idolatry, and heresy obstinately continued in? 4. Magistrates are appointed of God for the terror and punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. Romans 13, 3 and 4, 1 Peter 2, 14. And are not, sir, idolaters, blasphemers, profaners of the Sabbath, by teaching of damnable errors or practicing of abominable idolatries on it, evildoers in God's account, as well as revilers of men, thieves, traitors, murderers, and so forth? Are not heresies and idolatries expressly declared by Him, damning works of the flesh, evil deeds, Galatians 5, 14-21, 2 Thessalonians 2, 9-12, Revelation 14, 9-11? Are not heretical teachers declared evil workers, Philippians 3, 2, Titus 1, 10-11? It must therefore necessarily follow that magistrates are appointed by God not to be licensors, protectors and encouragers, but to be terrors to, punishers of them as is suitable and seasonable. 5. The power which magistrates have as ministers of God for good to men ought to be so exercised as most effectually conduces to make all their subjects live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty and make all men come to the saving knowledge of the truth." 1 Timothy 2, 1-2, 4 But how, sir, can their authoritative allowing or protecting of men in ungodliness, blasphemy and idolatry promote such an end? Has not God Himself testified that heresies as well as blasphemy and idolatry, as a canker, eat out the doctrine which is according to godliness and increase unto more and more ungodliness? and make men worse and worse, till they be monstrously wicked." 2 Timothy 2, 16-17, 4, 3-4, 3, 1-9, 13, 2 Thessalonians 2, 3-12, 1 Timothy 4, 1-3, 6, 3-4, 2 Peter 2, 1-3, 10-20, Romans 1, 21-32. If magistrates protect and encourage obstinate seducers in blaspheming God, reproaching his son as a mere creature, or as an imposter, or in furiously rending his well-compacted body to church, or in corrupting the principles and morals, and ruining the souls of neighbors, children, or servants, how can such as are truly serious and ardently zealous for God fail to have their righteous souls vexed from day to day with the damnable doctrines and filthy conversation of these wicked? Psalm 119, 136, 139, 158, 69, verse 9, 2 Peter 2, 8. To truly zealous saints, a den of thieves is not a more grievous neighbor than a synagogue of Satan. 6. All magistrates ruling over men must be just, ruling in the fear of the Lord. 2 Samuel 23, 3. But how can they be just if they dispose of that protection or encouragement to that which dishonours and provokes God to the highest, saps the foundation of all true virtue, and natively produces the most ruinous practices, which is due to that doctrine, worship, and practice which is according to godliness, and promotes glory, honour, immortality, eternal life. How can they rule in the fear of God if, in their magistratical administrations, they show no regard to that religion, by which his declarative glory is advanced, but instead thereof license, protect, and encourage that which infinitely dishonors and offends him. 7. The fourth commandment, the obligation of which is certainly moral and perpetually binding on magistrates as well as on heads of families, commands them to cause the weekly Sabbath to be sanctified by all within their gates, that is, all their subjects. Jeremiah 17, 20-25. And to this a proven example of Nehemiah corresponds, Nehemiah 13, 15-22. Now, if magistrates cannot answer to God for encouraging or protecting their subjects in their civil business, which is of itself lawful and useful on the Sabbath, how will they account to Him for protecting and encouraging men in teaching blasphemous errors or practicing abominable idolatries on that day? How can this commandment bind them to restrain what is in itself lawful and useful, and yet bind them not to restrain, but allow, encourage, and protect that which is in itself infinitely dishonorable to God, their superior, and ruinous to his and their subjects in both temporal and eternal interests? Or dare you pretend that the observance of the weekly Sabbath depends one whit less on revelation than the doctrine of the Trinity of persons in the Godhead does? 8. If magistrates have power on proper occasions to appoint religious fasts as means of turning away God's wrath and of procuring or obtaining His blessings to their commonwealth, as is certain yourself and perhaps every advocate for authoritative toleration acknowledge, Jonah 3, 6-10, 1 Samuel 7, 6 and 9, 2 Chronicles 20, 3-15, Ezra 8, 21-23, Nehemiah 9-1, Jeremiah 36, 6, and 22, they cannot but have power to establish that religion and only that religion which answers to those ends, and to restrain that damnable heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry which provokes God's wrath against His subjects. To command their subjects to mourn over the grounds of His anger and supplicate His favor, while at the same time they encouraged and protected them in gross heresy, public blasphemy and idolatry, than which nothing more can provoke his indignation, would be fearful dissimulation with the Most High." Psalm 66, 18, Ezekiel 14, 3-8. If magistrates have power to appoint a Christian fast and to punish the public contemporaries of it, that is, despisers, or of their authority in appointing it, how can they but have power to establish the true Christian religion and to punish, if seasonable, the public and insolent contemptors and corrupters of it, and despisers of their authority in establishing it? Dare you pretend that the upright profession and practice of the Christian religion is less calculated to promote the happiness of a nation in subordination to the honour of God than an occasional fast? Or that a Christian fast can be observed without entering into the very marrow of the doctrine of revelation? Or that magistrates ought merely to require the day to be observed in fasting leaving the manner and object of worship wholly to the choice of their subjects, recommending the worship of devils as much as that of Jehovah, and supposing the one as able and ready to avert calamities and bestow necessary blessings as the other? If you pretend that God reward Ahab or the Ninevites for worshipping their idols, you must prove that God is so far from being highly displeased with idolatry as himself often declares, Deuteronomy 32, 16-17, 21-26, Judges 2, 14, 2 Kings 17, 10-18, Psalm 106, 19-40, Jeremiah 48, 7, 35, 50, verse 38, and so forth, that he is ready to accept and reward the worship of idols, devils, bulls, dogs, cats, saints, leeks, onions, consecrated wafers, and so forth, if men be sincere in it. Rare doctrine is this for a Presbyterian clergyman of this enlightened age. 9. If every parent or master ought for the welfare of his family, in subordination to the honor of the God of all families, to establish the true religion in it, Genesis 18.19, Joshua 24.15, to remove idols out of it, Genesis 35.2-4, and to refuse seducing heretics allodging in it, 2 John 10 and 11, and if, according to this injunction and those approved examples, he ought to extrude or drive out a seducer who had entered, or even a member of the family who obstinately endeavored to corrupt the rest with damnable error, blasphemy, or idolatry, in order to prevent the infection of the family and hinder the destructive wrath of God from falling on them, why must not magistrates who are God's ministers for good be allowed power and authority to establish and promote the true Christian religion in their large political families, and to repress or exclude notorious murderers of souls and kindlers of the wrath of God. The relation of a parent or master is no more spiritual than that of a magistrate, makes no man either member or officer of Christ's mystical body any more than magistracy does. And I dare defy all the tolerance on earth to point out one thing relative to religion, competent to masters and parents as such, but magistrates may do what is similar, or to prove that the true knowledge, faith, profession, and practice of revealed religion is one whit less necessary and useful in commonwealths than in families. 10. If the power of ecclesiastical rulers extends to all the civil transactions of church members, all the magistratical and military managements of kings or emperors not accepted, insofar as they are regulated by the law of Christ, and are immediately connected with his honour and the good of his church, there is equal reason that the power of magistrates should extend to religious matters, insofar as they are connected with the welfare of the state, in subordination to the honour of God as king of nations. No reason can be assigned why the vicegerents of God should, as such, act as atheists, regardless of religion, any more than the messengers of Christ. Nor, till it be proven that God the King of Nations is more inclined to damnable heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry than Christ the head of the Church, can it be possible to prove that magistrates have one whit more power authoritatively to license, encourage, or promise them protection than Church rulers have. Though as the Church is a select holy society, called out of the world which lies in wickedness, founded on and having all her adult members instructed by the revelation of Christ, the same degree of forbearance to censure in the Church as to punish in the State is by no means proper. 11. Unless true and false religion be equally calculated to render men good subjects or magistrates, and to promote the peace and prosperity of commonwealths, in subordination to the honor of God as King of Nations, they can never deserve or lawfully enjoy equal encouragement, protection, or liberty. But the true religion exalts a nation, Proverbs 14, 34, renders it quiet and prosperous, 2 Chronicles 14, 1-7. It teaches men to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly, Titus 2, 11-12. The fruits produced by it are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law." Galatians 5, 22 and 23. Whereas gross heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry debauch men's conscience, make it seared with a hot iron. 1st Timothy 4, 2. Make their affections vile, and their mind and sense reprobate. Romans 1, 26 and 28. They render men, filled with all deceivableness of unrighteousness, believers and speakers of lies and hypocrisy, giving heed to the damnable doctrines of devils, proud doting about questions and strife of words, whereof comes envy, strife, railing, evil surmising, perverse disputing of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth. 2 Thessalonians 2, 10-12, 1 Timothy 4, 1-3, 6, 3-4 They render times perilous and men covetous, boasters, proud, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers, and extirpators, that is, destroyers, of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, hypocritical, dissemblers, villainous, corruptors of families, haters and resistors of sound doctrine, reprobate concerning the faith, and waxing worse and worse, who will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts heap up to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and turn away their ears from the truth to fables." 2 Timothy 3, 1-8, 13, 4, 3, 4. They, as a canker, eat out the principles, profession, and practice of piety and virtue, and increase unto more ungodliness. 2 Timothy 2, 16, 17. They make men self-destroyers, their pernicious ways much followed, the way of truths reproached, and dispose them through covetousness with feigned words to make damnable merchandise of souls. They render men horribly unchaste, presumptuous, self-willed, despisers and revilers of magistrates and church rulers, beguilers of unstable souls, exercised in covetous practices, cursed children, speakers of great swelling words of vanity, Pretenders to liberty, but real slaves of corruption, 2 Peter 2, 1-3, 10-19. They render men ungodly, turners of the grace of God into lasciviousness, filthy dreamers who defile the flesh, despise dominions, and speak evil of dignities, blasphemers and columniators, that is, slanderers, of those things which they know not, who go in the unnatural and maliciously murderous way of Cain, run greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perish in the rebellious gainsaying of Choré, and are luxurious, unprofitable, raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever, men of ungodly deeds and hard speeches, murmurers, complainers, walkers after their own lusts, whose mouth speaks great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage. sensual and separating mockers who walk after their ungodly lusts. Jude, verses 4, 8, 10-13, 15-16, 18-19. They render persons and societies full of abominations and filthiness of fornication, a mystery of iniquity, and mother of harlots and abominations in the earth, drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus. fighters against him who is the Lord of Lords, and pretendedly conscientious murderers of his ministers and people. Revelation 17, 3-6, and verse 14, John 16, 2. In fine, that is, finally, they introduce unnatural lusts of the flesh and tend to fill men with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, debates, deceit, malignity, and make them whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, who, contrary to their own inward convictions, commit the most abominable crimes and have pleasure in them that do the like." Romans 1, 21-23. These, sir, if God does know and speak truth, are the native fruits of heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry. These, the good subjects who are infected with them, if providence permit them to reduce their principles to practice, how then is it for the safety of nations or the honor of God as King of nations to have them authoritatively tolerated in His name? 12. Though God never in Scripture commands that any lesser mistakes in religion or a simple neglect of religious duties should be punished, Yet he commands magistrates, suitable and seasonably, to punish, even unto death, idolaters, particularly seducers to it." Deuteronomy 12, 2-15, 17, 2-7, Exodus 22, 20. Blasphemers, Leviticus 24, 15-16. Insolent profaners of the Sabbath, Numbers 15, 30-36. Where in all the New Testament is there a single hint of the repeal of such laws any more than of those concerning murder? Genesis 9, 6, Numbers 35, 30-31. Where is a single hint that Christ's Incarnation, His death for sin and to save men, abolished these laws and procured for magistrates a right and power in the name of God to license, encourage, and protect heretics, blasphemers, and idolaters who openly and obstinately labor to offend God and destroy and damn men. 13. God in Scripture frequently approves of magistrates requiring their subjects to worship the true God in a right manner, and of their suppressing and punishing idolatry. As Abraham, Genesis 18, 19, Jacob, Genesis 35, 2-4, the judges in the land of Uz, Job 31, 26-28, Moses 32 20 and 27 Joshua Joshua 24 14 through 15 Asa 2nd Chronicles 14 through 5 and 15 verses 13 and 16 Jehoshaphat 2nd Chronicles 17 2nd Chronicles 19 Jehoiada 2nd Chronicles 23 16 through 19 Hezekiah 2nd Kings 18 verses 4 through 5 2nd Chronicles 29 through 31 Manasseh, 2nd Chronicles 33, 15-16, Josiah, 2nd Chronicles 34 and 35, 2nd Kings 22 and 23, Nehemiah, Nehemiah 13, Jehu, 2nd Kings 10, 24-30, and Marks with infamy, magistrates allowing of their subjects to worship the true God in the high places, 1st Kings 15-14, 22-43, 2nd Kings 12-3, 14-4, 15, 4, and 35. 2 Chronicles 33, 17. The scripture never hints that those magistrates acted as church officers or merely typical persons in their reformation work. Nay, 14, even heathen magistrates, whom you cannot pretend to have been ecclesiastical rulers, have, with his approbation, made laws to promote the honor of the true God, and against the contemners of him, as Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra 7, 13-26, which God, in mercy, put into his heart, verse 27, Cyrus and Darius, Persians, Ezra 1, 1-5 and 6, 1-14, Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean, Daniel 3, 28 and 29, and Darius the Mede, Daniel 6, 26. 15. God promised it as a blessing of the gospel church. that magistrates should exercise their power in favors of her revealed religion. And in opposition to false teachers and their abominable delusions, Isaiah 49, 23, kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens thy nursing mothers. Isaiah 60, verses 3, 10, and 16. Kings shall come to the brightness of thy rising. Kings shall minister unto thee. Thou shalt suck the breast of kings. Psalm 72, 10-11. Kings shall bring presents, shall offer gifts, All kings shall fall down before him, all nations shall serve him. Psalm 2, 8, 10-12 I will give thee, O Christ, the heathen for thine inheritance. Be wise now therefore, ye kings. Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear. Kiss ye the Son, manifesting your cordial subjection to him. Zechariah 13, 2-3 I will cut off the names of idols out of the land. and I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to go out of the land. When any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live, for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord, and shalt thrust him through when he prophesieth. Revelation 17.16 The ten horns shall hate the whore, and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. Revelation 21.24 The kings of the earth shall bring their glory and honor unto the gospel church. Revelation 11 15 The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. 16 Even the law of nature plainly requires that magistrates maintain and promote the honor of that God who gave them all their power and authority, that God who is the original and supreme proprietor and sovereign of nations and societies, and the all-sufficient source of all their happiness. that they govern their subjects not as they were dogs or swine having nothing but their bodies to care for, but as men endowed with rational and immortal souls. That as righteousness exalts a nation, and sin is the reproach of any people, they should exercise their whole power and authority as is best calculated to make all their subjects behave most agreeably to the law and declarative glory of God, and most usefully to each other. It plainly teaches that if God graciously grant us a supernatural revelation, directive of our faith, profession and practice, we ought thankfully to receive, believe, profess and obey it. That, if magistrates ought to restrain and punish gross immoralities, they ought to restrain that error or worship which, being a manifestly damning work of the flesh, natively leads men into such immoralities. and that if heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry hinder the progress of virtue, or the increase of good men, who are the principal support and blessings of a society, Isaiah 6.13, 65.8, Genesis 18.26, and 28-32, they ought to be restrained. If heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry be established or authoritatively tolerated, eminently and notoriously provoke God to punish nations with sword, famine, pestilence, poverty, decay of trade, desolation, captivity, or the like, as they have often done even among heathens. Common sense requires that every magistrate, from regard to the welfare of his subjects, ought to restrain them as far as his circumstances can prudently permit, instead of giving them as much liberty, encouragement, or protection as he gives to the religion of Jesus Christ, which has the promises of this life and of that which is to come." Titus 3, 8 and 14, Proverbs 14, 34. 17. If, sir, as you pretend, magistrates ought to tolerate heresy, idolatry and blasphemy, then a power and office derived from God ought to be employed and executed in encouraging the most shocking dishonors and outrage against him. The authority of God placed in and exercised by magistrates ought to be set in opposition to his own immediate authority manifested in his word. They, as ministers of God for good to men, ought to license and encourage his enemies to deny, pervert, and revile his truths contained in his oracles and confirmed by the blood of his Son, and to introduce the most accursed and damnable errors into their place in his church, ought to give the devil and his agents as much countenance and assistance in driving men to hell as they give to Jesus Christ and his faithful servants in leading them to heaven. ought to give a company of wizards as much countenance and protection in worshipping the devil and his angels as a society of precious saints worshipping the Lord and his Christ in the beauty of holiness. In short, authoritative toleration of heresy, blasphemy, or idolatry are solemn proclamations issued forth by the deputies of God in his name, bearing that Satan and his emissaries have full liberty granted them to cast forth their floods of error and every abomination that proceeds from it. for the dishonour of God and the temporal and eternal destruction of men. Nor, for aught I know, have they ever neglected to improve their opportunity, as the issues, or outcomes, of the tolerations granted by Cromwell, King James VII, and Queen Anne in part manifest. How absurd, then, after all the amazing deliverances from it which God has mercifully bestowed upon us, after all that our fathers have suffered from it, after all our public and solemn engagements to God or to men against it, and when the very accession of our sovereign King George and his family to the British throne and their establishment depends on the nation's detestation of potpourri, and when the tremendous destruction of its votaries and its devotees draws nigh Revelation 14, Revelation 16, and Revelation 18, 4-8, for our rulers to grant any authoritative toleration of a pretended religion that tramples on our Bibles, which God has inspired and requires us to search as the means of our eternal salvation, 2 Timothy 3, 15-17, 2 Peter 1, 19-21, Isaiah 8, 20, John 5, 39, Acts 17, 11, Colossians 3, 16, and blasphemes these oracles of God as imperfect, obscure, destitute of any fixed meaning or conscience-finding authority, till they receive it from the Pope or his councils, and as infinitely dangerous to the temporal, spiritual, and eternal interests of men, if perused without a pontifical license." Daniel 7.25, 11.36, 2 Thessalonians 2.4, 2 Timothy 4.4. A religion which overthrows the whole mediation of our Redeemer, confining his mediatorial work to his manhood, and making saints, angels, crosses, images, and so forth, mediators of satisfaction, intercession, or saving influence, along with him, and the Pope and his clergy, infallible prophets, sin-expiating priests, and kingly dispensers of spiritual privileges, and formers of laws and offices in the Church." Daniel 2, 36-39, 725, Revelation 17, 14. a blasphemous religion, which in the most daring manner reproaches and misrepresents God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and what belongs to Him, and ascribes His excellencies and prerogatives to creatures, Daniel 7, 25, 11, 36-38, 2 Thessalonians 2, 4, Revelation 13, 1, 5-6, 17, verse 3, a religion wholly given to superstition, mingling multitudes of heathenish and other human or devilish ceremonies with every part of his worship. Daniel 7.25, 2 Timothy 4.4 with Matthew 28.20, Deuteronomy 12.32. A religion full of abominable idolatries, giving to multitudes of saints and angels, images, relics, and consecrated wafers, that worship and glory which is due to God alone. Daniel 11.38-39, 2 Thessalonians 4.4, Revelation 9, 20-21, 13, 3-4, 14, 9-11. A religion pregnant with the most shocking villainies, pretended miracles, dispensing with or commuting the most solemn engagements, indulgence of equivocation and mental reservation and oaths, and inculcating breach of faith with heretics, if for the advantage of the Romish Church, and which, by holding multitudes of sins to be venial, by the sale of pardons and indulgences, by prohibiting clergymen and devotees to marry, and by licensing of stews, that is brothels, promotes the most horrible debauchery. Daniel 11, 36-39, 2 Thessalonians 2, 3, 7, 9-12, 1 Timothy 4, 1-3, 2 Timothy 3, 1-6, 8-13, Revelation 9, 21, 11-8, 13, 13-14, 16, 13-14, 17, 2-3, and verse 5, and 18, verse 2. A bloody religion in the propagation and maintenance of which about 60 millions of mankind, many of them saints, have been murdered in the most cruel and inhuman forms. Daniel 7, 25, Revelation 8, 13, 9, 11 and 21, 11, 2 and 7, 13, 2 and 7, 17, 6, 18, 24, 16, verse 2, a religion, the cordial and preserving profession and practice of which God has declared inevitably damning, 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 3 and verses 9-12, Revelation 9, 11, 17, 11, 14, 9-11, 19, verse 20, and 20, verse 10. You've reached the end of track 2 of A Refutation of Religious Pluralism by John Brown of Haddington. This work is published by Gospel Covenant Publications. Gospel Covenant Publications website is www.gcpublications.com. They may be reached by email at info at gcpublications.com and by phone 208-553-5296. Please continue listening at Track 3.