CHAP. XCIX.
Peace. Again, say they, the magistrate should send him first to the church to heal his conscience.
Like mother like daughter.
Truth. Is not this as the prophet speaks [Ezek. xvi. 44,] like mother like daughter? So the mother of whoredoms, the church of Rome, teacheth and practiseth with all her heretics: first let the holy church convince them, and then deliver them to the secular power to receive the punishment of heretics.
Conscience not so easily healed and cured.
Peace. Methinks also they approach near that popish tenent, ex opere operato: for their exhortations and admonitions must necessarily be so operative and prevalent, that if the heretic repent not, he now sins against his conscience: not remembering that peradventure, 2 Tim. ii. [25,] If peradventure, God will give them repentance; and how strong delusions are, and believing of lies, and how hard it is to be undeceived, especially in spirituals!
Truth. And as it may so prove, when a heretic indeed is brought to this college of physicians to have his conscience healed, and one heretic is to cure another. So also when any of Christ’s witnesses, supposed heretics, are brought before them, how doth the Lord Jesus suffer whippings and stabs, when his name, and truths, and witnesses, and ordinances, are all profaned and blasphemed.
Wounding instead of healing of consciences.
Besides, suppose a man to be a heretic, and yet suppose him brought as the magistrate’s prisoner, though to a true church, to heal his conscience: what promise of presence and blessing hath the Lord Jesus made to his church and spouse in such a way? and how common is it for heretics either to be desperately hardened by such cruel courses (yet pretending soul-healing), or else through fear and terror to practise gross hypocrisy, even against their consciences. So that these chirurgeons and physicians pretending to heal consciences by such a course, wound them deeper, and declare themselves chirurgeons and physicians of no value.
Peace. But what think you of the proviso added to their proposition, viz., “Provided the church be able and willing?”