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The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed and Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered cover

The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed and Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered

Chapter 113: CHAP. CIV.
By Roger Williams
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About This Book

The work mounts a sustained argument against using civil power to enforce religious conformity, grounding its case in scriptural interpretation and practical reasoning. It critiques claims that magistrates should punish religious dissent, examines and replies to a contemporary minister's published letter, and offers addresses aimed at lawmakers and general readers. Interleaving theological exegesis, legal and moral reasoning, and polemical rejoinders, the text advocates freedom of conscience and the separation of church authority from state coercion, while outlining a defense of toleration as consistent with Christian principles.

CHAP. CIV.

Peace. You have taken great pains to show the irreconcilableness of those their two assertions, viz., First, there is now no ministry, as they say, but what is mediate from the church; and yet, secondly, Christ Jesus sends preachers forth by his supreme power to gather the church. I now wait to hear, how, as they say, “the magistrate may send forth by his power subordinate to gather churches, enforcing the people to hear,” &c.

The civil magistrate not betrusted with gathering of churches.

Truth. If there be a ministry sent forth by Christ’s supreme power, and a ministry sent forth by the magistrate’s subordinate power, to gather churches—I ask, what is the difference between these two? Is there any gathering of churches but by that commission, Matt. xxviii. Teach and baptize? And is the civil magistrate entrusted with a power from Christ, as his deputy, to give this commission, and so to send out ministers to preach and baptize?

If the magistrate, then much more the people of the world, from whom the magistrates receive their power.

As there is nothing in the Testament of Christ concerning such a delegation or assignment of such power of Christ to the civil magistrate: so I also ask, since in every free state civil magistrates have no power but what the peoples of those states, lands, and countries betrust them with, whether or no, by this means, it must not follow, that Christ Jesus hath left with the peoples and nations of the world his spiritual kingly power to grant commissions, and send out ministers to themselves, to preach, convert, and baptize themselves? How inevitably this follows upon their conclusion of power in magistrates to send, &c., and what unchristian and unreasonable consequences must flow from hence, let all consider in the fear of God.

Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xvii.) a figure of Christ Jesus in his church, not of the civil magistrate in the state.

Jehoshaphat’s sending forth the Levites to teach in Judah, &c., as they allege it not, so elsewhere it shall more fully appear to be a type and figure of Christ Jesus, the only king of his church, providing for the feeding of his church and people by his true Christian priests and Levites, viz., the ministry which in the gospel he hath appointed.