Fourthly. Yet so far as Balaam’s teachers, or Jezebel, did seduce the members of the church in Pergamos or Thyatira, to the worship of the idolaters in Pergamos or Thyatira, which will appear to be the case—I say, so far I may well and properly answer, as himself answered before those scriptures, brought from Luke ix. and 2 Tim. ii., to prove patience and permission to men opposite, viz., “these scriptures,” saith he, “are directions to ministers of the gospel;” and in the end of that passage he adds, “Much less do they speak at all to civil magistrates.”[166]
Christ’s ministers and churches, have power sufficient from Christ to suppress Balaam and Jezebel seducing to false worship.
Fifthly. Either these churches and the angels thereof had power to suppress these doctrines of Balaam, and to suppress Jezebel from teaching, or they had not:—
That they had not cannot be affirmed, for Christ’s authority is in the hands of his ministers and churches, Matt. xvi. and xviii., and 1 Cor. v.
If they had power, as must be granted, then, I conclude, sufficient power to suppress such persons, whoever they were, that maintained Balaam’s doctrine in the church at Pergamos—although the very magistrates themselves of the city of Pergamos (if Christians): and to have suppressed Jezebel from teaching and seducing in the church, had she been lady, queen, or empress, if there were no more but teaching without hostility. And if so, all power and authority of magistrates and governors of Pergamos and Thyatira, and all submitting or appealing to them in such cases, must needs fall, as none of Christ’s appointment.
The Christian world hath swallowed up Christianity.
Lastly. From this perverse wresting of what is writ to the church and the officers thereof, as if it were written to the civil state and officers thereof, all may see how, since the apostasy of anti-christ, the Christian world (so called) hath swallowed up Christianity; how the church and civil state, that is, the church and the world, are now become one flock of Jesus Christ; Christ’s sheep, and the pastors or shepherds of them, all one with the several unconverted, wild, or tame beasts and cattle of the world, and the civil and earthly governors of them: the Christian church, or kingdom of the saints, that stone cut out of the mountain without hands, Dan. ii. 45, now made all one with the mountain, or civil state, the Roman empire, from whence it is cut or taken: Christ’s lilies, garden, and love, all one with the thorns, the daughters, and wilderness of the world, out of which the spouse or church of Christ is called; and amongst whom, in civil things, for a while here below, she must necessarily be mingled and have converse, unless she will go out of the world, before Christ Jesus, her Lord and husband, send for her home into the heavens, 1 Cor. v. 10.[167]
CHAP. LVIII.
The second head of reasons against such persecution, viz., the profession of famous princes, King James, Stephen of Poland, and King of Bohemia.