_Answ._ Alas! many and great. 1. They tend to dethrone Christ from his sovereignty, and legislative prerogative. 2. And to advance man, blind and sinful man, into his place. 3. And thereby to debase religion, making it but a human or a mixed thing (and it can be no more noble than its author is). 4. And thereby they debase also the church of God, and the government of it, while they make it to be but a human policy, and not divine. 5. They tend to depose God from his authority in men's consciences, and to level or join him there but with man. 6. They tend to men's doubtfulness and uncertainty of their religion; seeing man is fallible, and so may his constitutions be. 7. They tend to drive out all true religion from the world, while man that is so bad is the maker of it; and it may be suspected to be bad, that is made by so bad an author. 8. And it taketh off the fear of God, and his judgment: for it is man that must be feared, so far as man is the maker of the law. And it destroyeth the consolation of believers, which consisteth in the hopes of a reward from God; for he that serveth man, must be rewarded by man; and though they do not exclude God, but join him with themselves, yet this mixture debaseth and destroyeth religion, as the mixture of God and mammon in men's love, and as mixed and debased metals do the sovereign's coin. 9. It hardeneth infidels and hindereth their conversion; for they will reverence no more of our religion than we can prove to be divine: and when they find one part of it to be human, they suspect the rest to be so too, and contemn it all; even as protestants do popery, for the abundance of human trinkets and toys with which we see them exercise and delude their silly followers. 10. It is the great engine of dividing all the churches, and breeding and feeding contentions in the christian world. 11. And because men that will command, will be obeyed, and they that are absolutely subjected to God, will obey none against him, whatever it cost them, (as Dan. iii.; vi.; Heb. xi.; Luke xiv. 26, 33; Matt. v. 10-12,) therefore it hath proved the occasion of bloody persecutions in the churches, by which professed christians draw the guilt of christian blood upon themselves. 12. And hereby it hath dolefully hindered the gospel, while the persecutors have silenced many worthy, conscionable preachers of it. 13. And by this it hath quenched charity in the hearts of both sides, and taught the sufferers and the afflicters to be equally bitter in censuring if not detesting one another. 14. And the infidels seeing these dissensions and bitter passions among christians, deride, and scorn, and hate them all.[385] 15. Yea, such causes as these in the Latin and Greek churches have engaged not only emperors and princes against their own subjects, so that chronicles and books of martyrs perpetuate their dishonour, as Pilate's name is in the creed; but also have set them in bloody wars among themselves. These have been the fruits, and this is the tendency of usurping Christ's prerogative over his religion and worship in his church.
And the greatness of the sin appeareth in these aggravations. 1. It is a mark of pitiful ignorance and pride when dust shall thus (like Nebuchadnezzar) exalt itself against God, to its certain infamy and abasement.
2. It showeth that men little know themselves, that think themselves fit to be the makers of a religion for so many others: and that they have base thoughts of all other men, while they think them unfit to worship God any other way, than that of their making; and think that they will all so far deny God as to take up a religion that is made by man.
3. It shows that they are much void of love to others, that can thus use them on so small occasion.
4. And it showeth how little true sense or reverence of christian religion they have themselves who can thus debase it, and equal their own inventions with it.
5. And it leaveth men utterly unexcusable, that will not take warning by so many hundred years' experiences of most of the churches through the world? Even when we see the yet continued divisions of the eastern and western churches, and all about a human religion (in the parts most contended about); when they read of the rivers of blood that have been shed in Piedmont, France, Germany, Belgia, Poland, Ireland, and the flames in England, and many other nations, and all for the human parts of men's religion? He that will yet go on and take no warning, may go read the eighteenth and nineteenth of the Revelation, and see what joy will be in heaven and earth, when God shall do justice upon such.
But remember that I speak all this of no other, than those expressly here described.
[385] Rom. xiv. xv.
Quest. CXXXV. _What are the mischiefs of men's error on the other extreme, who pretend that Scripture is a rule where it is not, and deny the foresaid lawful things, on pretence that Scripture is a perfect rule (say some, for all things)?_