2. That undoubtedly there are very many things under the command of the Lord, so becoming our duty, and within his promise, so made our privilege, which yet if not performed, or not enjoyed, are not of human cognizance, as faith itself. Yet because the knowledge of the truth is in that rank of things, this also is urged as of weight, by the same learned persons, to the business in hand.
3. Errors, though never so impious, are yet distinguished from peace-disturbing enormities. If opinions in their own nature tend to the disturbance of the public peace, either that public tranquillity is not of God, or God alloweth a penal restraint of those opinions. It is a mistake to affirm, that those who plead for toleration, do allow of punishment for offences against the second table, not against the first.
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The case is the same both in respect of the one, and the other. What offences against the second table are punish- able ? Doubtless not all ; but only such, as by a disorderly eruption, pervert the course of public quiet and society. Yea, none but such fall under human cognizance. The warrant of exercising vindictive power amongst men, is from the reference of offences to their common tranquillity. 'Delicta puniri publice 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 than the other are. Let the evidence be in the things themselves, and * Actum est,' let who will plead for them. Hence
Popish religion, warming in its very bowels a fatal engine against all magistracy amongst us, cannot upon our conces- sions plead for forbearance ; it being a known and received maxim, that the gospel 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 ido- laters (which in the next place is urged), seems not very firm and convincing. The vast distance that is between idolatry, and any errors whatsoever, as merely such, however propa- gated or maintained with obstinacy, much impaireth the strength of this argumentation.
Idolatry is the yielding unto a creature the service and worship due to the Creator. Reinold. de. Idol. lib. 2. cap. 1. sect. 1. * Idololatria est circa omne idolum famulatus et ser- vitus.' Tertul. de Pol. ' the attendance and service of any idol.' * IdololatreB dicuntur qui siraulachriseam servitutem exhi- bent, qua debetur Deo.' August, lib. 1. 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. Triump. lib. 2. cap. 24. Greg, de Valen. de Idol. lib. 1. cap. 1. Suitable to the description of it given by the apostle, Rom. i. 25.
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plainly, that whereunto the sanction under debate was added, as the bond of the law against it (which was the bottom of the commendable proceedings of divers kings of Judah against such), was a voluntary relinquishment of Jehovah revealed 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 common definition of heresy, that it is an error, or errors, in or about the fun- damentals 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 ground of affirming, that those things whose definitions are so extremely different, are also very distant and discrepant in themselves, and therefore con- stitutions for the disposal of things concerning the one, can- not ' eo nomine' conclude the other. Neither is the inference any stronger, than that a man may be hanged for coveting, because he may be so for murdering.
The penal constitutions of the Judaical policy (for so they were, which 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 worship a piece 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 devotion upon a piece of bread, a little before they pre- pare 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 manducant Deum quern adorant, sit anima mea 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