This is track three 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. Objection one. God alone is the lawgiver and lord of men's conscience. Answer 1. God is the only absolute, supreme, and infallible lawgiver. He alone has power to constitute anything a part of religion. But that no more hinders his magistratical vicegerents to make political laws in favors of what he has declared and instituted in religion, Then Christ being head of the church can hinder her subordinate rulers to make ecclesiastical constitutions in favors of the truth in his name. Psalm 82, 1 and 6, Romans 13, 1 through 6, 1 Peter 2, 13 and 14. 2. Neither magistrates nor ministers can make any law which of themselves and as their deeds bind men's conscience. Their authority is not infallibly exercised. It does not reach to the inward actings of conscience. They cannot oblige conscience to these actings, or take any cognizance of them. They cannot free it from any guilt contracted by them, or reward it if it does well, or punish or censure it if it does amiss. Nor are there constitutions, but God's law, the standard by which it shall be judged at the last day. But they make laws or constitutions which, as originating from, subordinating to, and adopted and ratified by the law of God, bind men to obey for conscience sake. Romans 13, 1-4, Matthew 18, 19 3. God's being the only lawgiver of men under the Old Testament as much as now did not hinder Moses, David, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah, Nehemiah, Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldean, Darius the Mede, Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, Persians, or the king of Nineveh to make civil laws in favor of the true religion. Objection 4. If God alone be the lawgiver and lord of the conscience, it necessarily follows that magistrates in conscience, who are his deputies, can have no power to warrant, license, or protect anything forbidden by his law. 2 Corinthians 13, 8, 10. Objection 2. Every man has a natural right to judge for himself what he ought to do or forbear, especially in religion. He is to be fully persuaded in his own mind and to follow the dictates of his own conscience. Even the law of God is a rule to him as he understands it in his own conscience. To force any man to do anything contrary to his conscience is to force him to sin, for whatsoever is not of faith is sin, and to punish him for following the dictates of his conscience is to punish him for doing his duty. Answer 1. Already you have made men's conscience the supreme governor of their actions, exalting it above the Most High God. 2. Every man has a natural right derived from God to judge all things by the law of God and hold fast that which is good. 1 Thessalonians 5.21 He has a right to judge by the law of God what is necessary to be professed and practiced in order to the peace of his conscience and his fellowship with and receiving of favors from God. But that no more hinders magistrates politically to judge what profession and practice are proper for men As members of such a particular commonwealth, or what relative to religion is to be connected with civil encouragements or discouragements, then it hinders church rulers, ecclesiastically, to judge and define what profession or practice is necessary in order to comfortable fellowship with such a particular church. 3. Men's conscience is no lawgiver at all, but a witness of their conduct and a judge which inquires into the meaning of God's law and directs accordingly, and which compares their qualities, profession, and practice with the law of God, and, if faithful, approves or disapproves accordingly. 4. The law of God, not men's conscience, is their supreme and only infallible rule, which binds even conscience itself. Mark 12.30, 1 John 5.3. And whatever men do contrary to it is sinful, let their conscience approve it as much as they will. 1 John 3.4, Leviticus 5, 17-18, Acts 26, 9-10, 1 Timothy 1, 13-16. Whatever proceeds not from the persuasion of a good conscience founded on the word of God is sin. It is a sin for men's conscience to err in dictating anything not perfectly agreeable to the law of God. How absurd to pretend that this sin can render another sin duty, or a duty sinful in itself. If men's conscience in itself or in its directing, persuading, or instigating influence be sustained as the immediate rule of their conduct without respect to the Word of God, then either their conscience must be infallible in its dictates, which it certainly is not in either saints or sinners in this world. Romans 7, 14, 23, Proverbs 28, 26, Jeremiah 17, 9, Romans 8, 7-8, Titus 1, 15. Or, if it be fallible, God must have established for men a fallible and deceitful rule of truth and holiness, and so be the author of confusion in religion, since different consciences dictate different things in it. To make men's conscience their rule in religion would make God the author and commander of wickedness by conscience, requiring the transgression of His own law. It would make Him not only acquit from criminality, but approve as duty the most damnable errors horrid blasphemies, detestable abominations, and cruel barbarities, if but dictated by the consciences of heathens, Mohammedans, that is, Muslims, Papists, and so forth, in their religion. It would make him the author of men's ruin if it were procured by a way which seemed right in their own eyes. It would render it absolutely impossible to convince men of the sinfulness of anything they had done according to the dictates of their be it ever so contrary to the law of God. It would render it improper for men to repent of or mourn over any blasphemy, murder of saints or the like which their deluded conscience had dictated to them, or to ask, receive, or praise God for the pardoning of it, contrary to 1 Timothy 1.13-16, with Acts 26.9-11, Galatians 1.13-14, Philippians 3.6. It would open a wide gap for men's doing whatever they pleased, without being chargeable by, at least any man, for it. If men should be executed for the most horrid blasphemy, or abominable idolatry, high treason, or any other deed dictated by their conscience, they would die martyrs for righteousness' sake. And men ought to believe whatever their conscience dictated to them concerning their state, experience, or duty, however contrary to the testimony of God contained in His Word, contrary to Psalm 31.22 and 116.11, 6. To pretend that the law of God, not in itself, but as understood by men's conscience, is their rule, is absurd. It, in the Popish manner, represents the law of God as destitute of sense and authority in itself, and as deriving it from a creature. It, in the Quakerish manner, makes the light within the rule of men's It exalts every man to an equality with, or rather superiority above God, having power to give regulating sense and authority to his word, according as an erroneous and defiled conscience pleases. It abolishes every real standard of religion, every man's particular apprehensions of the meaning of God's word being his binding rule. The same word of God becomes the standard of Calvinism, Popery, Socinianism, and so forth, as different men understand it. It saps the foundation of all mutual trust and confidence among men, and opens a wide inlet for all manner of villainy and dissimulation. According to it, men's promises, oaths, vows, and covenants, their sworn and subscribed creeds, articles, confessions, formulas, and so forth, bind them, not according to the common meaning of the words, but according to the meaning which their conscience, however seared, biased, or deluded, puts upon them. In fine, It plunges men into the depths of atheism, according to which every man believes and acts what is right in his own eyes. 7. If men's private judgment of their own acts hindered the magistrate's supreme political judgment, no laws could be made in matters of religion or anything else, as some would be readily of a different mind even in the fundamentals of religion and virtue. While some believe that Christ was not true God or true man, or that idols might be worshipped Others would believe that oaths might be lawfully violated, heretical princes assassinated, or women and goods used in common. 8. If other men's private judgment be allowed to be their supreme rule and reason of conduct, it will necessarily follow that magistrates' private judgment must be the rule of their conduct, and that they ought to make and execute such laws as they believe in their own heart to be proper, be they as arbitrary and tyrannical as they will. 9. It is not with men's conscience and his judgment in religion, any more than in matters of common honesty, that magistratical authority intermeddles, but with their external words and deeds. It only restrains and punishes such of those as are manifestly contrary to the laws of God and the land, and as they are hurtful to the commonwealth and the public honour of God as King of nations. If all proper means of conviction be used with men who obstinately persist in gross heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry without effect, their mistake does not arise from a conscience regulating duty, but from one stiffened against duty. And it is perhaps sometimes as difficult to convince a hardened thief, robber, or adulterer of his mistake as it is to convince a hardened heretic. Men are punishable not for what their conscience as the deputy of God dictates, but for what they would not have done if they had any proper conscience of duty. 11. If men slothfully and especially willfully refuse to use the means of enlightening their conscience by the word of God, they but add to their crimes both before God and men by pretending conscience. 12. Men's conscience being as much a director in their conduct towards men as in their conduct towards God, its influence must have as much force to keep them from accountableness to men for their theft, murder, calumny, that is, slander, as for their gross heresy, blasphemy and idolatry. Objection 3. To allow magistrates such power of judging and of making and executing laws about religious matters is to render Christians the servants of men, contrary to 1 Corinthians 7.23. Answer. If so, Christ himself rendered his redeemed favorite servants of men under the Old Testament. 2. If so, church rulers being men as well as magistrates, their restraints and censures appointed by Christ himself must as much render Christian servants of men, nay, to comply with the religious orders of families, would make them servants of men. 3. Servilely, that is, slavishly, To comply with the vain fancies, humors, sinful lusts, or laws of men, particularly in religion, is to be the servants of men, in the sense of this text. But to comply with scriptural restraints, censures, or punishments of wickedness is to act as servants of Christ and His Father and Spirit. Objection 4. To restrain men from what they think right in religion, and especially to punish them for it, is contrary to that Christian charity which suffers long and is kind. Envies not, thinks no evil, bears all things, believes all things, and hopes all things. 1 Corinthians 13, 4-7 Contrary to that meekness, mercy, and peaceableness exemplified in Christ and required in Christians. Romans 15, 1 Galatians 6, 1-2 Ephesians 4, 32 2 Timothy 2, 15 James 3, 15 Answer 1. Christian charity rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. It requires that nothing should be done out of malice or envy, or rashly on bare surmises, or without due examination of facts and circumstances, but not that rulers, either of church or state, should overlook every scandal or crime contrary to the law of God. Even the undue delay of censure or punishment encourages men in wickedness, much more with the total overlooking of it." Ecclesiastes 8.11. 2. The texts quoted in the objection are directed to Christians and church rulers. Is, therefore, all their holy zeal and activity in restraining and censuring the corruptors of the Church, according to Christ's command, Revelation 2, Romans 16, 17, Galatians 5, 10, Titus 3, 10, 1 Timothy 1, 20, contrary to Christian charity, meekness, or unmercifulness? Had Moses quite abandoned his unparalleled meekness when he so zealously punished the Hebrew idolaters, Numbers 32, 3, with Exodus 32, 26, or 29? Was Jesus Christ destitute of all meekness and mercy when he appointed the restraints and penalties under the Old Testament, and at least the tremendous censure of excommunication under the New? Was he destitute of all charity, meekness, and mercy in never giving us a hint that these laws are now repealed, as having been cruel and tyrannical? Was he destitute of all charity, meekness, and mercy when the zeal of his Father's house did eat him up, when he repeatedly drove the buyers and sellers from the Temple, John 2, 13-19, Matthew 21.12. Objection 5. Even under the law, Moses tolerated men's divorcing of their wives for slight causes. Much more does the gospel dispensation call for liberty to men. Answer 1. It is blasphemous to pretend that the gospel dispensation allows any more liberty to sin than the legal did. Must the grace of God be turned into lasciviousness? Jude verse 4 Galatians 5.13. To prevent worse circumstances, Moses directed a deliberate and solemn manner of divorce which tended to render divorces less frequent or irregular, but never warranted divorce for slight causes. 3. Perhaps you cannot prove that the perpetual continuance of marriage relation flows as necessarily from the nature of God, as gross heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry are contrary to it. God therefore might sovereignly dispense with the one, though not with the other. 4. This objection is rather calculated to prove that magistrates should license or tolerate murder, adultery, theft, and other sins against the second table of the moral law than that they should tolerate heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry which pertain to the first table. Objection 6. Gamaliel's counsel, refrain from these men and let them alone, for if this work be of men it will come to naught, but if it be of God ye cannot overthrow it, was certainly prudent and Gallio's conduct who cared for no disputes relative to religion, Acts 5, 38 and 39, and 18, 15 and 17. Answer 1. Prove that Gamaliel's speech was inspired as a rule to us in all religious disputes, or that magistrates or others ought to be mere skeptics in religion. 2. That which Gamaliel pled to be let alone was evidently good, calculated to promote the welfare of both church and state, and so ought to have had the utmost encouragement from him and his fellow rulers. 3. Prove, if you can, that the Holy Ghost approves Galileo's carelessness, or that magistrates like him ought to allow parties at the bar to beat one another. Objection 7. Under the Gospel it is promised that men should beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks. and that there should be none to hurt or destroy in God's holy mountain, Isaiah 2.4, Micah 4.3. Answer 1. These texts import that quarrelsome dispositions and injurious slaughter of men should be remarkably restrained by the gospel, but not that magistrates should no more bear the sword or be terrors to and punishers of evildoers, Romans 13.1-6, 1 Peter 2.13-14. They no more import that magistrates should not restrain or seasonably or suitably punish blasphemy and idolatry than that they should not restrain theft or murder. 2. The restraint or punishment we plead for, being God's institution, cannot hurt but profit men, making many fear and avoid such horrible wickedness. Deuteronomy 17.10. Nay, sometimes do much good to the restrained and punished persons. Zechariah 13.6. 3. If heretics, blasphemers, and idolaters be as mischievous persons as above described from the oracles of God, the restraint of them is a necessary means to secure the peace of nations and churches. If such scorners be cast out, contention, strife, and reproach are repressed. Proverbs 22.10. Objection 8. Our Savior commands His servants to let the tares grow with the wheat. Matthew 13.29.30. 1. He rather represents that till the last judgment the righteous should never be fully separated from the wicked. 2. If it were a command, it is given to church rulers rather than to magistrates, and so might, with more apparent propriety, be pled in favors of ecclesiastical toleration of heretics, idolaters, and blasphemers. 3. If these tares mean only hypocrites, who have a visible appearance of holiness or innocency, We plead that neither magistrates nor ministers ought to attempt plucking them up. If they mean all the children of the devil, as verse 38, your objection ought honestly to plead that no crimes of theft, murder, and so forth manifesting them to be such ought to be restrained or punished. Objection 9. By rebuking his disciples who would have commanded fire from heaven to consume those Samaritans who refused him lodging in his way to Jerusalem, and by his declaring that he came not to destroy men's lives but to save them, Luke 9, 51-56, our benevolent Saviour plainly intimated that under the Gospel magistrates ought to lay no restraint on heresy, blasphemy, or idolatry. Answer 1. As the Samaritans did not live under magistrates or laws which established a true religion, it is not fled that even their gross heresy, blasphemy, or idolatry, however notorious and obstinate, could have been regularly punishable by men. 2. They were in this matter guilty of no heresy, blasphemy, or idolatry, or of attempting to seduce or disturb Christ or his disciples, but merely of not giving lodging to a mean-like Jew, of whose messiahship they had but little, if any, information or proof. 3. Though the Samaritans had been guilty of gross heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry, publicly and obstinately professed and practiced, contrary to the civil laws of the country, and been regularly punishable, Christ's disciples, being no magistrates in that place, had no right to call them to account. 4. The disciples never sought to have the contempt shown to themselves in their master punished by the civil law, but by the miraculous vengeance of God. Without any warrant from God, and to gratify their own proud, passionate, and revengeful They would have required him to work a miracle for the destruction of these poor, ignorant Samaritans. So if you will drag in this text, it ought to be to prove that neither God nor ministers ought to restrain heretics, blasphemers, or idolaters. 5. While Christ was in His debased state, obeying and suffering for the salvation of mankind, it would have been extremely improper for God, visibly, to punish every slight put upon Him. But his coming to save men with an everlasting salvation can no more infer that he came to protect criminals from just punishment by men than that he came to save obstinate unbelievers from hell. He came to save men's lives by saving them from their sins, not by protecting and warranting them in a public and obstinate commission of them. There is no hint in Scripture that he who was manifested to destroy the works of the devil came to procure men a liberty of conscience or a magistratical license or protection in public and gross heresy, blasphemy and idolatry, more than in theft, murder, adultery. It would be highly blasphemous to suppose it. Objection 10. Christ requires us not to judge others, to judge nothing before the time. Matthew 7.1, 1 Corinthians 4.5. We ought to believe our own opinions in religion to be as probably erroneous as those of our And if they do not acknowledge themselves heretics, blasphemers, or idolaters, we ought never to hold them such, or plead for their being restrained as such. Answer 1. We must never rashly or uncharitably judge others, or judge their hearts and intentions, which God alone knows. But that will no more infer that magistrates ought to give no judgment about religious matters, than that magistrates and ministers should judge of nothing at all respecting either God or men. but encourage every person to live as his inclinations direct him. 2. Is there indeed no certainty in religion? If men ought to be complete skeptics in it, why not as well downright atheists? 3. If men's own acknowledgements be sustained as the standard of our judgment concerning them, what rare work must ensue? None ought to be held blasphemers, heretics, or idolaters till they have become penitent convicts. None ought to be held thieves, murderers, columniators, etc., till they acknowledge themselves such. All impenitent criminals must thus escape every degree of infamy, restraint, or punishment. Objection 11. Men ought to be persuaded, not forced, into faith and holiness. It is vain to attempt rooting out corruptions, especially in religion, out of men's outward behavior, unless they be first rooted out of their hearts. Answer. It requires no small share of ignorance, impudence, and fraud to insinuate that the many thousands of Protestant advocates for the magistrate's power to restrain gross heresy, blasphemy, or idolatry plead for the forcing of men to faith and holiness when they so harmoniously plead for the contrary. 2. None ought to be forced into the faith and profession of the true religion, as has been repeatedly declared, but all proper methods taken to render their compliance judicious and voluntary. Yet that will not infer that no man ought to be restrained from, or even suitably and seasonably punished for, open and gross heresy, blasphemy, or idolatry, which, while they publicly oppose, insult, and undermine the true religion, produce terrible immoralities and disorders in churches and nations, and draw upon them the ruinous vengeance of God. And far less will it infer that magistrates, as vicegerents of God, ought, in His name and authority, to license a false religion, and promise men protection and encouragement in it. No magistrate has power to force me to esteem, love, delight in, sympathize with, maintain, or even commend my neighbor. But he has power to refuse me a warrant to columniate, rob, or murder him, and even to restrain or punish me for so doing. It would be absurd to attempt forcing of the British Jacobites to believe and solemnly profess that King George, not the pretender, is rightful sovereign of this But would it therefore be absurd to restrain and punish them for publicly and insolently reviling him as a usurper, or seducing their fellow subjects to dethrone him, or for taking arms against him, or paying his just revenues to the pretender? 3. It is certain that Christ, who has power over the hearts of all men, curbed the external corruptions of the Jewish buyers and sellers in the temples, without first casting the corruptions out of their hearts. And, pray, would you have all thieves, robbers, murderers, and so forth, to have full liberty in their courses, till their wickedness can be got rooted out of their heart? Such is the reasonableness and the glory of divine truths, that if they be but freely, clearly, and distinctly preached, their native luster will render them victorious over every error and corruption in religion, however boldly published or craftily vanished. What a singular advantage has it been to Britain! that deists have had full freedom to make their attacks upon the Christian religion, and so to occasion so many glorious defenses of it. Answer 1. Did not God under the Old Testament know the conquering power of His truth as well as you do? Did not Christ know it when He drove the buyers and sellers from the temple? 2. Did the inexpressibly amiable and edifying conduct of Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life, render Him the universal, the fixed darling of the Jewish nation? among whom he went about doing good, you dare not pretend it. And yet it is certain that examples do more effect than instructions. 3. You must not only with Pelagians deny original sin, but effectually disprove it before your objection can have any sense in it. Footnote, Pelagians were a heretical group named after Pelagius, A.D. 354 to A.D. 420 or 440. that taught that original sin did not taint human nature, and that man's will is still capable of choosing that which pleases God apart from efficacious grace. Returning to the text, while men are so blinded by Satan and their own lusts, and so full of enmity against God, they cannot be but much more disposed to receive and practice error than to discern, embrace, and practice gospel truths, however clearly and faithfully preached. 1 Corinthians 2.14 Romans 8, 7, and 8, 1 Corinthians 4, 3, and 4, Isaiah 53, 1, and chapters 6, 9, and 10. 4. The common experience of everyone who attempts to instruct children and servants in the truths of God, even when they are young and their minds most unbiased, irrefutably demonstrates that almost anything is more readily embraced than the plain truths of the Gospel. and that earnest prayers, serious admonitions, external encouragements, and Christian nurture have all enough, and too often more than enough, of work to make men learn them. 5. If professed Christians, by encouraging others in gross error and wickedness, provoke God to give up themselves to strong delusions that they may believe lies, will the native luster of divine truths then enlighten and captivate them? Far, very far from it. 2 Timothy 3.13, and 4.3.4. 6. If we do evil in licensing, encouraging, or protecting the free propagation of gross errors, that good refutations may thereby be occasioned, our damnation is just. Romans 3.8. 7. Few of those boasted glorious defenders of Christianity are real and thorough friends to the gospel of Christ, but often proceed upon the Arminian and sometimes the Sicilian scheme the last of which is as bad, if not worse, than heathenism itself. And it is certain that tens, if not hundreds, have been seduced by deistical publications for every one that has been converted from deism by almost all these defenses of the Christian religion. Objection 13. Christ has appointed for His Church rulers of her own who govern her in every duty of religion. Answer. This can no more prove that magistrates ought to make and execute no laws respecting the duties required by the first table of the moral law, than it will prove that they ought to make no laws respecting duties of the second table, since church rulers are as much authorized by God to govern in the one as in the other. Let magistrates and church rulers be allowed to govern their distinct departments in their different manner, in the very same things, and nothing but harmony, order, and advantage will ensue. Magistrates, as well as church rulers, are divinely denominated rulers, watchmen, shepherds, and therefore ought politically to direct, govern, and feed their subjects as members of the commonwealth by making and executing wholesome laws relative to both tables of God's law, while ministers ecclesiastically feed them as members of the visible church by preaching the gospel, administering the sacraments, and exercising church government and discipline. 1 Timothy 2, 1-2, 4, Romans 13, 1-6, 2 Chronicles 13, 10-11, 2 Chronicles 17, 2 Chronicles 19, Nehemiah 13, 10-17, Ezekiel 34, 9-10. Objection 14. The Church has sufficient power in herself to obtain every end necessary to her own welfare. That cannot be an ordinance of Jesus Christ which needs any sovereign assistance to gain its proper end. Answer 1. The church has as sufficient power to gain her ends with respect to the duties of the second table as to gain her ends in what respects the first table. Will it therefore follow that magistrates ought to make no laws respecting murder, unchastity, theft, calumny, etc.? 2. Public transgressions of the first table of the moral law injure the state as well as they do the church. The State, which also has a power in itself sufficient to gain all its ends, necessary to promote its own welfare, ought therefore to restrain or punish such transgressions as crimes injurious to itself, while the Church restrains and censures them as scandals defiling and hurtful to herself. 3. If soundness in the faith, purity in worship, holiness in practice, and beautiful order in the Church be an excellent means of promoting the happiness of that nation where the Church has her residence, magistrates ought to promote those things out of a regard to the prosperity of their state in subordination to the honour of God. 4. However complete the intrinsic power of the Church be, it is manifest that it can be exercised to more advantage if parents, masters, and magistrates regularly exert their power in promoting the true religion in their different departments. It is no less certain that after the Church has done her utmost, by conference, injunction, and censure, some turbulent heretics or blasphemers may do as much, if not more, hurt to her than before, unless magistrates restrain or punish them. Objection 15. For almost three hundred years after Christ, the truths of the Gospel gloriously prevailed against errors and corruptions, without any care of magistrates to restrain or punish the erroneous. Answer. It was proper that the Christian religion should be spread in the world, not only without the countenance of the civil magistrate, but also in opposition to his severe laws and bloody persecutions, that it might the more abundantly appear to be of God. 2. In that period it prevailed notwithstanding the most furious opposition and the cruel persecution and murder of millions of its adherents, as well as without magistratical assistance. Will you therefore plead that peace and freedom in preaching the gospel ought to be hated and avoided, and furious persecution coveted and prayed for? 3. In that period the miraculous powers which attested the doctrines of Christ did more than balance the want of magistratical helpfulness to the truth. Hebrews 2, 4. 4. In that period the hardships to which Christians were exposed deterred such naughty persons from entering the church as might have plagued her with their blasphemies and heresies. 5. And nevertheless, even then, blasphemers and heretics did no small hurt to the Church. 6. If God had not reckoned the magistratical countenance a real blessing to His Church, He had never promised it, as in the texts above quoted. Objection 16. It is horrid cruelty and unchristian persecution to restrain or punish men for believing, teaching, and worshipping according to the dictates of their own conscience, as charity obliges us to believe is the case with heretics, blasphemers, and idolaters. It is altogether diabolical, the very worst part of popery, and that which peculiarly supports the whole anti-christian scheme. Men ought to follow the dictates even of an erring conscience. Answer 1. Where is your proof, from either scripture or reason, that an erring conscience binds men to believe, teach, or practice gross heresy, blasphemy, or idolatry any more than their promises or vows to do evil bind to performance? Or that it can bind them to theft, murder, adultery, calumny, or the like? If we have an erring conscience, our immediate duty is to get rid of that error by the illumination of God's Word as being sinful in itself, especially if procured through sloth or wickedness, it will hinder our right performance of duty, but can never make sin lawful. If, sir, you can believe that an erring conscience can outdo the almighty power of God in making heresy, blasphemy, or idolatry innocent things, you may quickly believe that a Romish priest can outdo his maker in making a god and then eating him in the mystery of transubstantiation. 2. Even when conscience is perfectly clear, pure, and unbiased, it is wholly subordinated and subjected to the authority of God's law. How can the entrance of sinful error into it exalt it above His law, and make such a god of it as can stamp its wicked dictates into uncontrollable laws in opposition to the mandates of Jehovah Himself? This will not only prove that Adam and Eve became gods by the entrance of sin, but go far to justify popes and devils in the whole of their conduct. 3. If the devil, who deceives the world, get into men's conscience by his strong delusions? Has God allotted him that as a quiet city of refuge, from which no means ought to be used to dislodge him, and from which he may use the whole man unrestrained in his service, in sacrificing children to Moloch, murdering saints, blaspheming God, and so forth? 4. Where is your proof that I ought to believe that the man who has access to the Bible acts according to the dictates of his conscience in gross heresy, blasphemy, or idolatry, any more than he acts according to them in murder, treason, theft, unchastity, and so forth. Men have labored and suffered as much in courses of the latter kind as in those of the former, and died as impenitently as at last. 5. If pretense of conscience, and more than pretense in favors of sin, we can never be certain of, be a sufficient ground for magistrates licensing, encouraging, and protecting men in contradicting and blaspheming God, or robbing him of his worship to bestow it on devils, or in robbing his church of his oracles or ordinances in murdering the souls of men and sowing the seeds of confusion in every evil work, why ought it not to warrant their licensing, encouraging, and protecting them in high treason, calumny, theft, robbery, murder? It is hoped you who are so generous in allowing men, if they can but pretend conscience for it, to abuse and rob Jehovah, will be as ready to allow them equal freedom if they can but pretend conscience in abusing and injuring yourself. If God's giving up men to strong delusions that they may believe lies, warrant magistrates to encourage or protect them in spreading gross heresy or in open blasphemy and idolatry, Why ought not His giving them up to vile affections, to their own hearts' lusts, equally, to warrant their encouraging and protecting of them in open whoredom, bestiality, incense, robbery, and so forth? Men can as little conquer their lusts and cleanse their hearts as they can rectify the errors of their conscience. 6. It is infallibly certain that God Himself, under the Old Testament, appointed magistrates to restrain and punish men for blasphemy and idolatry, let their conscience dictate them as strongly as it pleased. Had men in these early ages no conscience to govern them? Or did God then, like the old-fashioned Protestants, not understand human liberty and the rights of men's conscience? Did He indeed then so far mistake His way as to appoint what is so cruel and diabolical, what is the very worst part of potpourri, and the principal support of that abominable system? Or has God, or the nature of sin, cruelty, and tyranny been changed? How shocking the thought! Objection 17. As men's natural and civil rights nowise depend upon their being Orthodox Christians, magistrates ought to protect them in these privileges, be their opinions and worship what they will, nay, to give them legal security for their protection of them in these opinions and worship, that they may not be exposed to the caprices of particular magistrates. Answer 1. The Christian liberty which Christ purchased is not a liberty to commit sin, but a spiritual freedom from it. Galatians 5, 1 and 13, Luke 1, 74 and 75, Hebrews 12, 28 and 29. Christ came not to save men's lives from restraint or punishment required by His own law, in order that they, by spreading gross heresy, blasphemy and idolatry, might ruin nations and damn men's souls. 2. You might have foreborn to demand legal or authoritative licenses for men to blaspheme God, worship devils in His stead, and so forth, till you had proven Satan to be the absolute proprietor and governor of this world, and the primary grantor of all civil and natural rights to men, or proven that God, who is infinitely holy, just, and good, has or can give men natural or civil rights protecting them in public blasphemy, idolatry, or the like, any more than rights protecting them in incest, robbery, murder, or that magistrates, as his ministers, ought, in his name and authority, to grant men such rights. If God has so frequently turned men out of their civil property and life for their idolatry and blasphemy, Isaiah 10, 14, 37, 46, 47, Jeremiah 48, 51, Ezekiel 35, how absurd to require magistrates who are His ministers for good to men to execute their office which is His ordinance, Romans 13, 1-6, in encouraging and protecting men, in openly and insolently contradicting, blaspheming, rebelling against, and robbing him, ought the Sheriff and Justices of Peace in Britain, as the King's ministers for good to the nation, to have executed their office in protecting the arch-rebels in 1715 and 1745, in the undisturbed enjoyment of all their civil rights, Or to have given them new legal securities in order to enable them, more boldly and successfully, to carry on their treacherous and murderous rebellion against His Majesty? Or ought they, by proclamation, to warrant all the subjects in their respective counties to revile, rob, and take arms against our King and Parliament, and promise them protection in so doing, but always prohibiting them to injure their fellow subjects? Objection 18. Magistrates ought not to rule their subjects by the Bible, but by the civil laws of the nation, according to which they are admitted to their power by their subjects, from whom all their power originates. Answer 1. That magistrates' power originates from their subjects is a notion plainly atheistical. It originates in God Himself, Romans 13, 1 and 2, Romans 11, 36, Psalm 75, 7, Daniel 2, 21. If magistrates must regulate their government by no other law than that which they or their subjects have established for themselves or one another, they must act as atheists independent of God, in the execution of an office wholly derived from Him, and for every act of which they must be accountable to Him. If the useful laws of one nation may be adopted into the civil law of another, why may not the will of God, the Supreme Governor of nations, declared in His laws of nature and revelation, be also adopted into it? Are God's laws more dishonorable or dangerous, more unfit to be adopted into our civil law than those of our sinful neighbors? Is the Scotch law the worse, that many of God's statutes prescribed in His Word have been adopted into it, nay, that all the leading doctrines of Christianity contained in our two confessions of faith and catechisms have been adopted into it, and the confessions themselves expressly engrossed into acts of Parliament? Indeed, if nations adopt nothing of the manifested will of God into their civil law, it will contain nothing but useless trifles. Will these be fit for directing the administrations of ministers of God for good to men, or for securing and promoting the important welfare of any nation under heaven? 3. If all civil authority to make laws, resident as either in subjects or magistrates, be necessarily derived from God, as former and King of nations, if magistrates be ordained of God to be ministers of God for good to men, to be for terror and punishment, and revengers of evil-doers, and a praise of them that do well, and to be obeyed for conscience' sake, for the Lord's sake, Romans 13, 1-6, 1 Peter 2, 13 and 14, common sense loudly demands that neither their will nor that of their subjects, but the manifested will of God, their independent and infinitely high superior, should be the supreme rule and standard of all their administrations. and that no civil law should or can bind either magistrates or their subjects, but insofar as it is agreeable and subordinated to the laws of God. Objection 19. Magistracy being an office not founded in revelation but in the law of nature, the whole execution of it ought to be regulated by that law of nature, not by the will of God revealed in Scripture. Answer 1. I thank you for so quickly overturning your preceding objection and adopting the divine law of nature instead of your civil law as the supreme standard of magistratical administration. 2. According to your objection, parents, masters, children and servants must regulate their performance of relative duties merely by the law of nature, without taking the smallest assistance from the directions of the Holy Ghost in Scripture. No parents or masters must instruct their children or servants in the knowledge of the doctrines, promises, laws, worship, or virtue required in the Bible, as these relations depend no more on revelation than magistracy does. I defy you to prove they do. In performing the duty of our natural or civil relations, we must act like mere deists, ignorant of or pouring contempt on the inspired oracles of the great God our Savior. What hurt have the laws of revelation done to such relative duties that they must be thus infamously excluded from being any part of a rule of them? 3. No man can truly obey the law of nature without heartily embracing and cheerfully improving whatever revelations God is pleased to bestow on him, as such revelations proceed from the same divine authority as the law of nature, and must be a noted means of promoting true and proper obedience to it. To exclude divine revelation when granted, from regulating our performance of relative duties, must therefore not only amount to an heathenish contempt of the scriptures, but to an atheistical contempt of the law of nature, which necessarily requires us to adopt divine revelation for our supreme rule, whenever it is graciously granted to us. Objection 20. Many of the above-mentioned instances of magistrates' care about religion, and their restraint and punishment of idolaters, blasphemers, and false prophets, related merely to the Jewish theocracy which was typical, and therefore not now to be copied. Answer 1. Many of the above-mentioned instances, particularly those respecting heathens, or contained in the promises to the Gospel Church, have not the least appearance of being typical, Nay, I defy you to prove that the instances of Jewish rulers were merely typical. 2. These typical magistrates of the Jewish nation also exercised laws relative to murder, theft, unchastity, treason, and other matters of the second table of the moral law. Ought, therefore, no magistrates now to do so? The laws respecting duties of the second table pertained as much to the Jewish theocracy as those relating to the first. Must, therefore, the Christian magistrate, for fear of copying the Jewish theocracy, meddle with no morality at all? 3. Must everything that was once typical be now, under the gospel, excluded from regulating authority? Must all the excellent patterns of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, Aaron, Samuel, David, and other Hebrew saints be rejected as typical and useless? Must all the laws directing to elect men, fearing God and hating covetousness, to be magistrates, or directing them to judge justly, impartially, and prudently, and to punish murderers, adulterers, thieves, robbers, and so forth, be discarded as typical? Must the weekly Sabbath, public fasts, and thanksgivings be laid aside as typical, a mere sign between God and the Israelites? Must the Ten Commandments and all the explications of them in the Old Testament be discarded, as published in a typical manner, and to a typical people, and used as the principal part of their rule of government in the Jewish theocracy? 4. As the Jewish church was a real church, and not merely typical, so their state was a real commonwealth or kingdom, and not merely typical. Whatever therefore pertained to it as a real commonwealth is imitable, that is, capable of imitation, in any other. 5. The Jewish church and state were as really distinct as the church and state are now, though I did not say precisely in the same manner. First, they differed in respect of regulating laws. The ceremonial law directed the Jewish church. The judicial directed the affairs of their state. Second, they differed in their respective acts. The Jews worshipped God, offered sacrifices, and received sacraments not as members of that state, but as members of that church. They punished evildoers by fines, imprisonment, banishment, burning, stoning, and hanging, and fought with enemies, and so forth, not as a church, but as a state. 3. They differed in respect of controversies. To the church pertained the matters of the Lord, and a judging of leprosies, and between statutes and judgments. To the state belonged the matters of the King, and to judge between blood and blood. 2 Chronicles 19, 10 and 11, Deuteronomy 17, 8. 4. They differed in respect of officers. The priests were the only stated officers in the church, and prophets a kind of occasional ones. Elders, judges, and kings were governors in the state. The priest might not take the civil sword out of the hand of the magistrates, nor the magistrates offer sacrifices, burn incense, or otherwise execute the priest's office. 5. They differed in respect of continuance. When the Jewish civil power was taken away by the Romans, The constitution of their church remained in the days of our Savior's debasement, and even now the Jews pretend to be a church, but not to be a state." Footnote, Israel was not a political state at the time Mr. Brown penned these words. The political state of Israel was, however, established in 1948. Return to the text. Sixth, they differed in respective variation. The constitution of their church remained much the same under Moses, Joshua, the judges, the kings, and after the captivity, but the form of the state underwent great alterations. 7. They differed in respect of members. Proselytes of the covenant were complete members of the Jewish church, but had not the same dignities of marriages allowed them in the state as the natural Israelites, nor had the proselytes of the gate any church privileges, though they had some civil ones. 8. They were governed by different courts. The church had her courts of the synagogue, and her ecclesiastical Sanhedrin. The state had her courts of the gate, and so forth, and her civil Sanhedrin. Though often some Levites were judges in both, as our ruling elders in the church may at the same time be civil judges, Exodus 24.1, Deuteronomy 17.8-12, 1 Chronicles 33.4, 26, 30, and 32. 2 Chronicles 19, 8, 10, and 11. Jeremiah 26, 8-11, verse 16. Chapter 18, verse 18. With Deuteronomy 17, 10-12. Ezekiel 7, 26. 2 Kings 6, 32. Zechariah 7, 1-3. Psalm 107, 32. Ezekiel 13, 9. Matthew 2, 4. 16, 21. 21, 23. 26, 57, and 59. 27, 1 and 12, Luke 22, 66, Acts 4, 5. Some Jewish rabbins expressly distinguished between their judges and their church elders in the same places. 9. They differed in their censure of offenders. In the church, offenders were suspended from sacred fellowship by a casting out of the synagogue or a cutting off from God's people or congregation. John 9, 22, 12, 42, Exodus 12, 15 and 19, Numbers 19, 13, and 20. Leviticus 22, 3. With Genesis 4, 14. Leviticus 7, 20-21. With Leviticus 5, 2. 1 Corinthians 5, 6-8, and 13. With Exodus 12, 15, and 19. Genesis 17, 14. With Acts 3, 23. Psalm 1, 5. Genesis 25, 17. In the state, they were cut off by death or outlawry. A footnote says, the act of being put out of the protection of the law by process regularly sued out against a person who shows contempt in refusing to become agreeable to the court having jurisdiction. 10. Profane and scandalous persons were excluded from the Jewish Temple service and Passover while they retained their civil rights in the state. Ezekiel 44, 7 and 9. Deuteronomy 23, 18. Jeremiah 7, 9-11. Ezekiel 23, 38 and 39. 2 Chronicles 23.19 with 1 Corinthians 5.11, Psalm 118.19-20, 15.1-5, 24.3-4, 50.16-20, Ezekiel 26.22-26, Ezra 10.8, 16-17, and 6.21. The footnote says, See Gillespie's Aaron's Rod Blossoming, Part 1, and Lusden's Philologus Hebraeo Mixtus, pages 338 and 339. Answer 6 to the objection. There was no such difference between the Jewish magistracy, especially after their rejection of the theocracy under Samuel, 1 Samuel 8, 5, 7, and 19, 12, 12, 17, and 19, and the magistracy in Christian countries, as it is often pretended. Brown then lists 14 points proving this. 1. The Jewish magistracy was an ordinance of God, Exodus 18, Numbers 11, Deuteronomy 1, 17, and 16, 18-19. Magistracy is still an ordinance of God, to be submitted to for the Lord's sake, Romans 13, 1-6, 1 Peter 2, 14. 2. Notwithstanding God's appointment of particular persons to be their kings, the Hebrew nation had the power of electing and admitting them to their office. 1 Samuel 10, 1 Samuel 11, 1 Samuel 16, 2 Samuel 2, verse 4, and 5, verse 3, 1 Chronicles 12. Our magistrates are powers ordained of God, Romans 13, 1-6, and yet an ordinance of men, 1 Peter 2.13. 3. God himself was the supreme governor of the Hebrew nation, Deuteronomy 12.32, Hosea 13.10. God is still the king of nations, most high, king of the whole earth, Jeremiah 10.7, Psalm 83.18, and 47.7. 4. The Israelites were God's peculiar kingdom, 1 Samuel 12.12, Hosea 13.10. Nations which generally profess the Christian religion are the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, Revelation 11.15. 5. The Jewish magistrates were deputies and vicegerents of God the Sovereign King, 1 Chronicles 29, 23, 2 Chronicles 9, 6 and 7, Psalm 82, 1 and 6. Magistrates are still powers ordained of God, ministers of God for good, to whom we must be subject for conscience' sake, for the Lord's sake, Romans 13, 1-6, 1 Peter 2, 13. By Christ King still reign, and princes decree justice, even all the judges of the earth. Proverbs 8, 15, and 16, with Ephesians 1, 22. 6. The manifested will of God was the proper statute book of the Jewish civil law, Deuteronomy 27. The will of God manifested in the law of nature, or revelation, is the supreme standard of all civil laws in the world, in which every human constitution ought to be founded, and by which the whole binding force of it is circumscribed, Acts 4.19, 5.29, Psalm 2, 10-12. and hence human laws become an ordinance of God. Romans 13, 2. 7. The judicial laws of the Hebrew nation regulated that which pertained to their kings, judges, warriors, fields, houses, injuries, crimes, punishments, mortgages, marriages, and so forth. Exodus 21-23, Deuteronomy 18, Deuteronomy 20, Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, Numbers 36-38, and so forth. Our civil laws regulate the same things. 8. Among the Jews, notorious disobedience to the declared will of God was held rebellion against Him, the King of Nations, and to be condignly punished, that is, appropriately or fitly punished, as it tended to the good of the State. Hebrews 2.2 and 10.28. Notorious disobedience to the manifested will of God ought to still be held as rebellion against Him as King of Nations, and to be condignly punished As tends to the welfare of the state, magistrates still being set up by God to be terrors, revengers, and punishers of evildoers, and bound not to bear the sword in vain." Romans 13, 1-5, 1 Peter 2, 13 and 14. Nor has it been yet proven that our magistrates, who have the Scriptures, ought to pay less real regard to them in the stating of crimes than the Jewish rulers did. 9. The Jewish magistrates were appointed to promote the welfare of the Church. in order to promote the welfare of the state, in subordination to the honor of God, the King of the nations. Magistrates are still bound to do the same, as they have opportunity. Isaiah 49, 23, 60, 3, 10, 16, Revelation 17, 16, 21, 24, 26, Romans 13, 1-6, 1 Peter 2, 13, 14, 1 Timothy 2, 1-4. The Jewish church and state, as has been just now proven, were really distinct from, and independent of each other, having different laws, officers, courts, privileges, penalties, and so forth. The Christian church and the civil state of Christians are no less distinct and independent of each other. 11. Nevertheless, the purity of the Jewish church contributed much to the welfare of their state, and the right management of their state to the prosperity of their church. and bad management in the one always tended to the hurt of the other. Deuteronomy 28-32, Leviticus 26, Judges 1-13, 1 Samuel 2-2 Chronicles 36, Isaiah 1-Malachi 4, Isaiah 119-20, 3-10-11. And still righteousness exalts a nation, and sin is the reproach and ruin of any people. Proverbs 14-34. God never commanded the Jewish magistrates to force their true religion upon their heathen neighbors, Philistines, Moabites, Ammonites, or Syrians, whom they conquered, or to put them to death for their idolatry. Nor has he ever commanded magistrates who have embraced the true Christian religion to force men by fire or sword, or any like punishments, to embrace and profess it, or to inflict the same punishments upon blasphemers or idolaters in unenlightened countries, which they may do upon such as obstinately rebel against and apostatize from the truth amidst plentiful means of conviction and establishment in it. 13. Never did God that I know of require the Jewish magistrates to punish any of their subjects for lesser faults, however open or manifest, or to punish them for the simple neglect of duties strictly religious, or to annex sentences of outlawry and of death to ecclesiastical cutting off by excommunication from the Church. Nor can I find that he has enjoined any such thing upon the Christian magistrate. 14. Among the Jews, some things partaking of both a civil and religious nature did, in these different respects, fall under the government of both Church and State. Even circumcision itself was a national badge as well as a religious seal of God's covenants. Among Christians, public fasts and thanksgivings, calling of synods, and so forth, do, in different respects, fall under the power of both Church and State. Pretend, therefore, no more, that there is a total difference between the case of our magistrates and that of the Jewish recorded in Scripture. Objection 21. To allow magistrates the power of judging, making, and executing laws about religion, and of punishing men for erroneous opinions, or for disturbing the peace and order of the Church, as in our Confession of Faith and Second Book of Discipline, altogether confounds the kingdoms of Christ with kingdoms of this world, contrary to John 18.36. Answer 1. Sir, have you in an honest and orderly manner renounced these confessions of faith, as plainly and publicly as you solemnly avowed, if not also subscribed a steadfast adherence to the Westminster One at your ordination? Dare you, one day, call God, angels, and men to witness that you sincerely avow that confession of faith to be the confession of your faith, and that you sincerely believe the whole doctrine contained in it to be founded on the word of God, and will constantly adhere to and maintain the same all the days of your life, and the next slight reproach, revile, and attempt to confuse an important article of it. We see the wickedness of such conduct excellently exposed in Walker's vindication of the discipline and constitutions of the Church of Scotland. 2. Have you suffered as much for a zealous maintenance of the intrinsic power of the Church, and of Christ's sole headship over her as his spiritual kingdom, as the compilers and cordial adherers to that confession have done? If not, modesty as well as equity might have restrained your revilings. 3. Suppose that, contrary to my judgment, I should allow that magistrates as such have not that power relative to religious matters mentioned in our Confessions and solemnly avowed in our Covenants. Yet being Christians, they are bound as such to execute their civil offices in that manner which most effectually promotes the honor and kingdom of Christ, even as parents or masters who are Christians are bound to exercise their power in their families as may best maintain and propagate the knowledge, faith, and obedience of the gospel. Every other character or office which a Christian has must be subordinated to his character as a Christian. 1 Peter 4.11, Colossians 3.17, Ephesians 5.21-33, 6.1-9, Colossians 3.18-25, 4.1, 1 Timothy 2.1-3, Titus 2.1-10, 3.2, 1 Peter 2, 11-20, 3, 1-7, and Romans 13. 4. If, to prevent confounding of the kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of this world, magistrates who are heads of large political families must be excluded from all that care about religion which is allotted to them in our confession of faith, heads of families must, for the same reason, be excluded from establishing the gospel worship of God in their houses and from instructing their children or servants in the truths of divine revelation, at least from requiring them to attend such instructions in worship. You pretend there is a difference, but, sir, I insist on your stating it precisely and proving it from Scripture and reason, that headship over families is a more spiritual relation than headship over multitudes of families, or that magistrates cannot without sin do what is similar to everything which parents and masters as such are commanded to do. 5. If, to prevent confounding of the Church with the State, magistrates must exercise no care about religion, must punish no publicly obstinate heretic, blasphemer, idolater, profaner of the Sabbath, or reviler of the Oracles and Ordinances of Christ, as a criminal against the welfare of the State, then Church courts must censure, as scandals against the welfare of the Church, no theft, murder, robbery, treason, unlawful war, perversion of civil judgment, or the like, as these pertain to the kingdoms of this world. 6. Though the powers of civil and ecclesiastical government be coordinate, each standing on its proper basis, and the right exercise of church power contributing mightily to the welfare of the state, and of civil power to the advancement of the church, yet they are not collateral, inseparable from, or dependent upon each other, but are altogether distinct from, and different in many respects. Civil and ecclesiastical power differ in their foundation. Magistracy is founded on God's universal dominion over all nations. and hence the law of nature is the immediate supreme rule of its administrations, and the scriptures become the rule of them only as introduced by the law of nature, requiring magistrates as well as others to believe and obey whatever revelation duly attested God is pleased to grant them, or by magistrates subjecting their consciences as followers of Christ to the scriptures as their only rule to direct them how to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. But ecclesiastical power is founded in the economical or mediatorial headship of Jesus Christ over all His Church as His spiritual kingdom. And hence the immediate standard for regulating the exercise of it is that revelation which God has given to and by Him in His Word. And the laws of nature have a regulating force in the Church by virtue of the general precepts of Scripture as 1 Corinthians 14.26, 40, 6.12, 16.14, Philippians 4.8 and Matthew 7.12. 2. Civil and ecclesiastical power differ in their immediate object. Magistratical power immediately relates only to things external, pertaining to the outward man. Even when exercised about sacred things, it has that which is external for its immediate object. It removes external hindrances of spiritual exercises and provides external opportunities and accommodations for the performance of them. If magistrates call a synod, they do not properly call it as a court of Christ or as ministers of Christ, but as a meeting of subjects whose joint deliberations are calculated to promote the honor of God the King of Nations and the happiness of their country by the right government of the Church. If a magistrate command persons to compare, that is, to appear in court, before a church court to be judged or to bear witness, he commands them not as spiritual members of Christ's mystical body, but as his own and Jehovah's subjects, to take their trial or attest the truth before proper arbitrators of their cause, that God may be honoured, and through keeping of order in the Church, the welfare of the city or nation may be advanced and confirmed. If he punishes insolent contemporaries of the authority and censures of the Church, he punishes them not as scandalous persons, but as criminals, insulters of that true religion which the civil law has established, and contemners of those judicatories which it has authorized, and to which themselves have solemnly engaged all due subjection, and thus as treacherous disturbers of the good order and peace in his kingdom, and tramplers on the laws of the most high sovereign of the nation. But church power has that which is spiritual for its only proper object. It properly deals with men's consciences and heart, and with their outward man only in order to affect those in the way of conviction, reformation, comfort, and so forth. It considers the persons with whom it deals not as mere men or as members of a civil society, but as members of the spiritual and mystical body of Christ in the visible form of it. You've reached the end of track three 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, area code 208-553-5296. Please continue listening at Track 4.