To that purpose was it a noble speech of Buchanan, who, lying on his death-bed, sent this item to King James:—“Remember my humble service to his majesty, and tell him that Buchanan is going to a place where few kings come.”
CHAP. LXII.
Truth. Secondly. I observe how inconsiderately—I hope not willingly—he passeth by the reasons and grounds urged by those three princes for their practices; for, as for the bare examples of kings or princes, they are but like shining sands, or gilded rocks, giving no solace to such as make woful shipwreck on them.
King James’s sayings against persecution.
In King James’s speech, he passeth by that golden maxim in divinity, “that God never loves to plant his church by blood.”
Secondly. That civil obedience may be performed from the papists.
Thirdly. In his observation on Rev. xx., that true and certain note of a false church, to wit, persecution: “The wicked are besiegers, the faithful are besieged.”
King Stephen’s, of Poland, speech against persecution.
In King Stephen’s, of Poland, speech, he passeth by the true difference between a civil and a spiritual government: “I am,” said Stephen, “a civil magistrate over the bodies of men, not a spiritual over their souls.”
Now to confound these is Babel; and Jewish it is to seek for Moses, and bring him from his grave (which no man shall find, for God buried him) in setting up a national state or church, in a land of Canaan, which the great Messiah abolished at his coming.