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Discussion of George Gillespie's Wholesome Severity Reconciled with Christian Liberty
GWS-2 <text> 
Subject: GWS-2 
From: Richard Bacon 
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 20:14:57 -0500

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Westminster Forum Discussion: GWS. Post 2.
George Gillespie's Wholesome Severity Reconciled with 
Christian Liberty
The true resolution of a present controversy concerning 
liberty of conscience.
All text for this discussion taken from the edition of this 
work, Copyright (c) Naphtali Press 1996.  Full text 
available at: http://www.naphtali.com/naphtali
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[Intro continued]
Under these fair colors and handsome pretexts do 
sectaries infuse their poison, I mean their pernicious, God 
provoking, truth defacing, Church ruinating, and State 
shaking toleration. The plain English of the question is 
this: whether the Christian Magistrate is keeper of both 
tables: whether he ought to suppress his own enemies, but 
not God's enemies, and preserve his own ordinances, but 
not Christ's ordinances from violation. Whether the 
troublers of Israel may be troubled. Whether the wild 
boars and beasts of the forest must have leave to break 
down the hedges of the Lord's vineyard; and whether 
ravening wolves in sheep's clothing must be permitted to 
converse freely in the flock of Christ. Whether after the 
black devil of idolatry and tyranny is trod under our feet, 
a white devil of heresy and schism, under the name of 
tender consciences, must be admitted to walk up and 
down among us. Whether not only pious and peaceable 
men (whom I shall never consent to persecute), but those 
also who are as a pestilence or a gangrene in the body of 
Christ, men of corrupt minds and turbulent spirits, who 
draw factions after them, make a breach and rent in Israel, 
resist the truth and reformation of religion, spread abroad 
all the ways they can their pernicious errors, and by no 
other means can be reduced; whether those also ought to 
be spared and let alone.

I have endeavored in this following discourse to vindicate 
the lawful, yea necessary use of the coercive power of the 
Christian Magistrate in suppressing and punishing 
heretics and sectaries, according as the degree of their 
offense and of the Church's danger shall require: Which 
when I had done, there came to my hands a book called 
The Storming of Antichrist.#1 Indeed, "The Recruiting of 
Antichrist, and the Storming of Zion" (if so be that I may 
anabaptize an Anabaptist's book). Take one passage for 
instance (p. 25): "And for Papists," he says, "though they 
are least to be borne of all others, because of the 
uncertainty of their keeping faith with heretics, as they 
call us, and because they may be absolved of securements 
that can arise from the just solemn oaths, and because of 
their cruelty against the Protestants in diverse countries 
where they get the upper hand, and because they are 
professed idolaters, yet may they be born with (as I 
suppose with submission to better judgments) in 
Protestant government, in point of religion, because we 
have not command to root out any for conscience," etc. 
Why then, is this to storm Antichrist? Or is it not rather a 
storming "of this party," in the prevailing whereof "God 
will have far more glory than in the Popish and Prelatical 
party," as [he] himself speaks (p. 34). And if he will 
storm, surely some of his ladders are too short. "If any 
one rail against Christ," he says (p. 23), "or deny the 
Scriptures to be his word, or affirm the Epistles to be only 
letters written to particular churches, and no rule for us, 
and so unsettle our faith, this I take may be punished by 
the Magistrate, because all or most nations in the world 
do it." That all the nations in the world do punish for these 
things, I am yet to learn: and those that do, do they not 
also punish men for other ways of unsettling the grounds 
of faith besides these? The declining of some of the 
Epistles as being letters written upon particular occasions, 
and no rule for us, is an error which has been pretensed to 
be no less conscientious than those errors which now he 
will have indulged. Lastly, if he would needs storm, why 
would he not make some new breach? I find no material 
arguments in him for liberty of conscience, but what I 
found before in The Bloody Tenet,#2 The Compassionate 
Samaritan,#3 and M.S. to A.S.,#4 so that my ensuing 
answers to them shall serve his turn. And now reader, 
"Buy the truth, and sell it not." Search for knowledge "as 
for hid treasures." If you read with an unprejudiced mind, 
I dare promise you through God's blessing a satisfied 
mind.

Footnotes:
#1 Christopher Blackwood, The Storming of Antichrist 
(1644).
#2 Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenant of Persecution for 
cause of Conscience, discussed, in A Conference 
betweene Truth and Peace (London, 1644). The Complete 
Writings of Roger Williams, edited by Perry Miller (New 
York: Russell & Russell, 1963).
#3 William Walwyn, The Compassionate Samaritane, 
Unbinding the Conscience (London, 1644/45).
#4 John Goodwin, M.S. to A.S., with a Plea for Liberty of 
Conscience (1644).




Dick Bacon
I'm your moderator, not your mother.