[4.] There are a sort of persons termed in Scripture araxroi, 1 Thess. V. 14; dyopaToi. Acts xvii. 5; cirorroi, 2 Thess. iii. 2; avyrroraTt.- roi, 1 Tim. i. 9, and the like, — disorderly, vagabond, wandering, in-e- gular persons, fixed to no calling, abiding in no place, taking no care of their families ; that, under a pretence of teachmg the truth, without mission, without call, without wan-ant, uncommanded, imdcsired, do go up and down, from place to j^lace, creeping into houses, S:c. Now, that such ways as these, and persons in these ways, may be judicially
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iuqukecl into, I no way doubt. The story is famous of Sesostris, king of Egypt, who made a law, that all the subjects of his kingdom should once a-year give an account of their way and manner of living, and if any one were found to spend his time idly, he was certainly punished ; and the laws of most nations have provided that their people shall not be wanderers, and whosoever hath not a place of abode and em- ployment is by them a punishable vagabond. And in this, by much experience of the ways, walking, and converse of such persons, I am exceedingly confirmed in. I did as yet never observe any other issue upon such undertakings, but scandal to religion, and trouble to men in their civil relations.
[5.] When men, by the practice of any vice or sin, draw others to a pretended religion ; or, by pretence of religion, draw men to any vice or known sin, let them be twice punished, — for their real vice, and pre- tended religion. The truth is, I have been taught exceedingly to disbelieve all the strange imputations of wickedness and uncleanness that are imposed upon many, to be either the end or the medium of the practice of that communion in religion which they do profess and embrace. I remember that, when I was a })oy, all those stories were told me of Brownists and Puritans which afterward I found to have been long before the forgeries of Pagans, and imposed on the primi- tive Christians. I dare boldly say, I have heard stories of them a hundred times, holding out that very thing, and those deeds of dark- ness, which Minutius Felix holds out in the tongue of an infidel con- cerning the Christians of those days ; but yet, because sundry vene- rable persons, to whom antiquity hath given sanctuary from being arraigned on the point of false testimony, have left it upon record of sundry heretics in their days, — as the Gnostics and others,— that they were conjoined into " societates tessera pollutionis," and some assert that the like iniquities are not wholly buried, I made the supposi- tion, and hope that, if they depose themselves from common sense and reason, the magistrate will never exalt them to the privilege and exemption of religion.
In these, and such like cases as these, when men shall break forth into disturbance of common order and enormities against the light of nature, beyond all positive command of any pretended religion what- soever, that the magistrate ought to set hedges of thorns in their ways, sharpened according to their several delinquencies, I suppose no man not abhorred of common sense can once hesitate or doubt. And I am the more inclined to assert a restraint to all such as these, because it may be established to the height without the least preju- dice unto the truth, though persons erring should enjoy the place of authority.
3. That which now remaineth in this head to be considered, is
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concerning persons maintaining and upholding any great and perni- cious errors, but in such ways as are not, by any of the former disor- ders, to bo brouglit under the cognizance of the civil magistrate, but good, honest, allowable, and peaceal>]e in themselves; not at all to be questioned, but in reference to the things that are carried on in and by those ways, — as communication by discourse and private preach- ing, and the like.
Now, concerning these, it is generally affirmed, that persons main- taining any error in or against any fundamental article of faith or religion, and that with obstinacy or pertinacy after conviction, ought to be proceeded against by the authority of the civil m.agistrate, whether unto death or banishment, imprisonment or confiscation of goods.
(1.) Now unto this — supposing what I have written heretofore concerning the incompetency of all and the non-constitution of any judge in this case, with the answers given at the beginning of this treatise to most of the i")laces produced usually for the affirmative — I shall briefly give in my thoughts; reserving the consideration of press- ing conformity to the next head to be handled. And, —
[1.] That I cannot but obsei"ve, that, in the question itself, there are sundry things gratis assumed; as, —
1st. That it is known and confessed what articles in religion are fundamental, and this also to the magistrate; when no one thing among Christians is more questionable, most accounting them so (be they what they will) wherein they differ from others. So that, one way or other, all dissenters shall be hooked in, dkectly or indirectly, to clash upon fundamentals. In this Papists are secure, who make the church's propositions sufficient to make an article fundamental.