Soul-killers prove, by the grace of Christ, soul-savers.
Lastly, grant a man to be a false teacher, a heretic, a Balaam, a spiritual witch, a wolf, a persecutor, breathing out blasphemies against Christ and slaughters against his followers, as Paul did, Acts ix. 1, I say, these who appear soul-killers to-day, by the grace of Christ may prove, as Paul, soul-savers to-morrow: and saith Paul to Timothy, 1 Tim. iv. [16,] Thou shalt save thyself and them that hear thee: which all must necessarily be prevented, if all that comes within the sense of these soul-killers must, as guilty of blood, be corporally killed and put to death.[198]
CHAP. LXXVI.
Optatus examined.
Peace. Dear Truth, your answers are so satisfactory to Austin’s speech, that if Austin himself were now living, methinks he should be of your mind. I pray descend to Optatus, “who,” saith the answerer, “justifies Macarius for putting some heretics to death, affirming that he had done no more herein than what Moses, Phineas, and Elias had done before him.”
Persecutors leave Christ, and fly to Moses for their practice.
Truth. These are shafts usually drawn from the quiver of the ceremonial and typical state of the national church of the Jews, whose shadowish and figurative state vanished at the appearing of the body and substance, the Sun of righteousness, who set up another kingdom, or church, Heb. xii. [27,] ministry and worship: in which we find no such ordinance, precept, or precedent of killing men by material swords for religion’s sake.
More particularly concerning Moses, I query what commandment, or practice of Moses, either Optatus, or the answerer here intend? Probably that passage of Deut. xiii. [15,] wherein Moses appointed a slaughter, either of a person or a city, that should depart from the God of Israel, with whom that national church was in covenant. And if so, I shall particularly reply to that place in my answer to the reasons hereunder mentioned.[199]
Concerning Phineas’s zealous act: