licta puniri publico interest." Where punishment is the debt, " Bonum
totius" is the creditor to exact it. And this is allowed as to the
offences against the first table. If any of them in their own nature
(not some men's apprehensions) are disturbances of public peace, they
also are punishable. Only, let not this be measured by disputable
consequences, no more tlian the other are. Let the evidence be in
the things themselves, and "Actum est," let who will plead for them.
Hence, —
' Seoa " Solomn Testimony ajjainst Toleration and the Present Procoedinn^s of Sectaries and tlieir Abettors in Kn^rland, in reference to l{elij,Mon and Crovern- ment," &c., — a document sanctioned by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Jan. 16, 1649, and published in the course of the same year. — Ed.
OF TOLERATION. 1G5
Popish religion, warming in its very bowels a fatal engine against all magistracy amongst us, cannot upon our concessions plead for for- bearance ; it being a known and received maxim, that the gosjDel of Christ clashes against no righteous ordinance of man.
And let this be spoken to the third argument of the fore -named reverend persons, from the analogy of delinquencies against the first and second table.
4. The plea for the punishment of erring persons from the penal constitution under the Old Testament against idolaters (which in the next place is urged), seems not very firm and con\incing. The vast distance that is between idolatry and any errors whatsoever, as merely such, however propagated or maintained with obstinacy, much im- paireth the strength of this argumentation.
Idolatry is the yielding unto a creature the service and Avorship due to the Creator, Rainold. de Idol., lib. ii. cap. 1, sect. 1. " Idololatria est circa omne idohim famulatus et servitus," Tertul. de Pol. ; — " The attendance and service of any idol." " Idololatrae dicuntur qui simu- lacris eam servitutem exhibent, quse debetur Deo," August., lib. i. de Trinit. cap. 6 ; — " They are idolaters who give that service to idols which is due unto God." To render glory to the creature as to God is idolatry, say the Papists, Bell., de Eccles. Triumph., lib. ii. cap. 24 ; Greg, de Valen. de Idol., lib. i. cap. 1 ;■ — suitable to the description of it given by the apostle, Rom. i. 25 : plainly, that whereunto the sanc- tion under debate was added, as the bond of the law against it (which was the bottom of the commendable proceedings of divei's kings of Judah against such), was a voluntary relinquishment of Jehovah re- vealed unto them, to give the honour due unto him to dunghill idols. Now, though error and ignorance ofttimes lie at the bottom of this abomination, yet error, properly so called, and which under the name of heresy is opposed, is sufficiently differenced therefrom. That com- mon definition of heresy, — that it is an error, or errors, in or about the fundamentals of religion, maintained with stubbornness and pertinacy after conviction (for the main received by most Protestant divines), — will be no way suited unto that which was before given of idolatry, and is as commonly received, being indeed much more clear ; as shall be afterward declared. That this latter is proper and suitable to those scriptural descriptions which we have of heresy, I dare not assert; but being received by them who urge the punishment thereof, it may be a sufficient gTound of affirming that those things whose definitions are so extremely different are also very distant and discrepant in themselves ; and therefore constitutions for tlie disposal of things con- cerning the one cannot " eo nomine" include the other. Neither is the inference any stronger, than that a man may be hanged for coveting, because he may be so for murdering.
ion OF TOLERATION.
The penal constitutions of the Judaical poHty (for so they were, wliich yet I urge not) concerning idolaters, must be stretched beyond their limits, if you intend to inwrap heretics within their verge. If heretics be also idolaters, as the Papists (the poor Indians who Avor- ship a i^iece of red cloth, the Egyptians who adored the deities which grew in their own gardens, being not more besotted with this abomi- nation than they who prostrate their souls unto, and lavish their de- votion upon, a piece of bread, a little before they prepare it for the draught, — so casting the stumbling-block of their iniquities before the faces of poor Heathens and Jews, causing Averroes to breathe out his soul in this expression of that scandal, " Quoniam Christiani mandu- cant Deum quern adorant, sit anima niea cum Philosophis ! ) I say, then, the case seems to me to have received so considerable an altera- tion, that the plea of forbearance is extremely weakened as to my present apprehension. However, for the present I remove such from this debate.
5. The like to this also may be said concerning blasphemy, the law whereof is likewise commonly urged in this cause. The establishment for the punishment of a blasphemer is in Lev. xxiv. 1 6. Given it was upon the occasion of the blaspheming and cursing of the son of an Eg}']D- tian, upon his striving and contending with an Israelite. Being probably, in his own apprehension, wronged by his adversary, he fell to reviling his God. The word here used to express his sin, is npj, signifying also to pierce, and is twice so rendered, — Isa. xxxvi. 6; Hab. iii. 14. Desperate expressions, piercing the honour and glory of the Most High willingly and wilfully, were doubtless his death-deserving crime. It is the same word that Balak used to Balaam, when he would have persuaded him to a deliberate cursing and pouring out of impre- cations on the people of God, Numb, xxiii. 13, 14. A resolved piercing of the name and glory of God, with cursed reproaches, is the crime here sentenced to death. The schoolmen tell us, that to complete blasphemy, the perverse affection of the heart, in detestation of the goodness of God, joined with the reproaches of his name, is required.^ Which, how remote it is from eiTor of any sort (I mean within the compass of them whereof we speak), being a pure misapprehension of the understanduig, embraced (though falsely) for the honour of God, I suppose is easily conceived ; and so, consequently, that the argument for the death of a person erring, because he came off no easier of old who blas})hemed, is " a baculo ad angidum."