Return to Main Page
Site Index

Trouble with drop box click here for help     Printing Instructions for Articles
Back to Index to Gillespie Discussion

Discussion of George Gillespie's Wholesome Severity Reconciled with Christian Liberty
GWS-11 <text> 
Subject: GWS-11 
From: Richard Bacon 
Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 13:35:54 -0500

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Discussion: GWS. Post 11.
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
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[Part II continued.  Point 2 continued, Proof 
from Scripture example]

But, 2., sects and schisms are to be punished 
as well, though not as much as heresy and 
idolatry. There are degrees of faults, and 
accordingly degrees of punishments. 

Augustine wrote an epistle to Bonifacius 
(Tom. 2, Ep. 50) upon this occasion, to show 
that the Donatists had nothing to do with the 
Arians, and so were not to be punished with 
such rigor and severity; yet he advises that 
moderate mulcts [fines] and punishment may 
be laid upon them, and that their bishops or 
ministers may be banished. In his 127th 
epistle, he intercedes most earnestly with the 
proconsul of Africa, that he might not put to 
death the Donatists, but repress them some 
other ways. We have also a Scripture 
example for punishing sectaries who are not 
heretics. It is agreed among interpreters, there 
were in Judah two sorts of high places, some 
on which God was worshipped, others on 
which idols were worshipped; and it is most 
manifest from 2 Chron. 33:17, and from the 
reconciling of 2 Chron. 15:17 with 14:3, 5, 
the one sort was the high place of idolatry, 
the other, the high places of will-worship; yet 
the priests of the latter, as well as the former, 
were punished by Josiah, as Tostatus proves 
from 2 Kings 23. And the text itself is clear, 
for he put to death the priests of Samaria, 
who had sacrificed in the high places of 
idolatry (v. 20), but as for those who 
sacrificed in the high places of will-worship, 
because they sacrificed to the Lord only (as 
the word is [in] 2 Chron. 33:17), therefore 
Josiah did not put them to death, only he 
caused them to go out of all the cities of 
Judah, and to cease from the priest's office, so 
that they durst not come up to the altar of the 
Lord at Jerusalem, only they were permitted 
to eat of the unleavened bread amongst their 
brethren (v. 8-9), which is parallel to that law 
[in] Ezek. 44:10-14, a prophecy concerning 
the Christian Temple, and the times of the 
New Testament, which reaches a blow to 
another silly and short-sighted evasion, used 
both in the Bloody Tenet, and M.S. to A.S. 
that all this coercive power exercised in the 
Old Testament was typical, and therefore not 
imitable now in the New Testament.

Whereunto I further reply, 1. The reason of 
all that coercive severity was moral and 
perpetual, as was shown from Deut. 13:11. 2. 
Next, why did they not prove that it was 
typical? Shall we take their fancy for a 
certainty? They have neither Scripture nor 
interpreters for it. 3. They confound the 
judicial laws of Moses with the ceremonial, 
making judicatories and justice typical no less 
than the ceremonies. 4. They do utterly 
overthrow the investiture of Christian Princes 
and Magistrates with any power at all in 
matters of religion, from the Old Testament. 
So that one may not argue thus: The godly 
Kings of Judah did remove the monuments of 
idolatry and superstition, therefore so should 
the Christian Magistrate do. The most arrant 
[thorough] malignant may answer in the 
words of Mr. Williams (ch. 109), that the 
civil power or State of Israel, so far as it 
attended upon the spiritual, was merely 
figurative. Or in the words of M.S. (p. 51), 
"There are two reasons very considerable 
why the Kings of Judah might be invested by 
God with a larger power in matters of 
religion, than Kings or Magistrates under the 
gospel have any ground or warrant to claim 
from them. First, they were types of Christ" 
(but by the way, how does he prove that Asa, 
Jehu, and Josiah were types of Christ?), 
"which no King under heaven at this day is. 

Secondly, not the people only, but the very 
land over which they ruled were typical." 5. 
The punishment of persons was a part of their 
reformation, as well as the destruction of 
monuments, and why must we follow their 
example in the one, more than the other? If 
we smart under both their diseases, we must 
apply both their remedies, or neither.


Dick Bacon
Poster of the text and keeper of the order.