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Discussion of George Gillespie's Wholesome Severity Reconciled with Christian Liberty
GWS-15 <text> 
Subject: GWS-15 
From: Chris Coldwell 
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 21:10:13 -0500

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Discussion: GWS. Post 15.
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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[Part III continued. Objections, from parable of the tares continued

But I proceed to a second answer. If by tares I should suppose only to be
meant idolaters, heretics, and false worshippers (which is a gloss contrary
to the text, as I have demonstrated), yet their argument will not conclude
their forbearing or sparing of such, except only in such cases, and so far
as the true worshippers of God cannot be certainly and infallibly diagnosed
from the false worshippers, as the wheat from the tares: as Jehu would not
destroy the worshippers of Baal, till he was sure that none of the servants
of the Lord were among them (2 Kings 10:23). The reason why the tares are
not to be plucked up, is, lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up
also the wheat with them (v. 29). Now when a man is sure that he plucks up
nothing but tares, or rather thorns, without the least danger to the wheat,
how does the parable strike against his so doing? If M.S. will not believe
me, let him believe himself (p. 50), "For my part," he says, "when the
civil Magistrate shall be far enough out of this danger of fighting against
God, I have nothing to say against his fighting with superstition, heresy,
schism," etc.
Thirdly, what if I shape yet another answer to the argument out of Mr.
Williams' own words? [In] chap. 27, "I acknowledge," he says, "this command
(Let them alone) was expressly spoken to the messengers or ministers of the
gospel, who have not civil power or authority in their hand, and therefore
not to the civil Magistrate, King, or Governor." Now therefore what a
blockish argument it is, to reason from this parable against the coercive
power of the magistrate in matters of religion? If there must be a
forbearance of any severity, we must forbear Church censures and
excommunications, a way of rooting out the tares, which Mr. Williams
himself justifies as much as we do.
Fourthly, and if the utter extirpation and plucking up of heretics by
capital punishments, should be understood to be forbidden in the parable
(as it is not), yet the stopping of their mouths, the dissipating and
suppressing of them, some other coercive way, is not forbidden, as
Chrysostom notes upon the place, whom Euthymius and Theophylactus do follow
in this, allowing of coercive, though not capital punishments.
Fifthly, Calvin, Beza, and our best interpreters, take the scope and intent
of that parable, not to be against the immoderate severity of Magistrates,
but against the immoderate zeal of those who imagine to have the Church rid
of all scandalous and wicked persons, as wheat without tares, corn without
chaff, a flock of sheep without goats, which has been the fancy of
Novatians, Donatists, and Anabaptists. The parable therefore intimates unto
us (as Bucerus upon the place expounds it) that when the Magistrate has
done all his duty in exercising his coercive power, yet to the world's end
there will be in the Church a mixture of good and bad. So that it is the
universal and perfect purging of the Church, which is put off to the last
judgment, not the punishment of particular persons. Neither do the servants
in the parables ask whether they should pluck up this or that visible tare,
but whether they should go and make the whole field rid of them; which
field is the general visible Church sowed with the seed of the gospel; and
so much for that argument.

Sincerely,
Chris Coldwell
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