In two cases a false religion will not hurt the true church or the state.
Secondly. Although it be true in a church of Christ, that a false religion or worship permitted, will hurt, according to those threats of Christ, Rev. ii., yet in two cases I believe a false religion will not hurt,—which is most like to have been Tertullian’s meaning.
First. A false religion out of the church will not hurt the church, no more than weeds in the wilderness hurt the enclosed garden, or poison hurt the body when it is not touched or taken, yea, and antidotes are received against it.
Secondly. A false religion and worship will not hurt the civil state, in case the worshippers break no civil law: and the answerer elsewhere acknowledgeth, that the civil laws not being broken, civil peace is not broken: and this only is the point in question.[185]
CHAP. LXXI.
The seducing or infecting of others, discussed.
Peace. “Your next author,” saith he,[186] “Jerome, crosseth not the truth, nor advantageth your cause; for we grant what he saith, that heresy must be cut off with the sword of the Spirit: but this hinders not, but that being so cut down, if the heretic will persist in his heresy to the seduction of others, he may be cut off also by the civil sword, to prevent the perdition of others. And that to be Jerome’s meaning, appeareth by his note upon that of the apostle, A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. Therefore,” saith he, “a spark as soon as it appeareth, is to be extinguished, and the leaven to be removed from the rest of the dough; rotten pieces of flesh are to be cut off, and a scabbed beast is to be driven from the sheepfold; lest the whole house, body, mass of dough, and flock, be set on fire with the spark, be putrefied with the rotten flesh, soured with the leaven, perish by the scabbed beast.”
The answerer trusteth not to the sword of the Spirit only, in spiritual causes.
Truth. I answer, first, he granteth to Jerome,[187] that heresy must be cut off with the sword of the Spirit; yet, withal, he maintaineth a cutting off by a second sword, the sword of the magistrate; and conceiveth that Jerome so means, because he quoteth that of the apostle, A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.
Answ. It is no argument to prove that Jerome meant a civil sword, by alleging 1 Cor. v. 6, or Gal. v. 9, which properly and only approve a cutting off by the sword of the Spirit in the church, and the purging out of the leaven in the church, in the cities of Corinth and Galatia.