Six cases wherein God’s people have been bold and zealous, yet not arrogant.
To wipe off, therefore, these foul blurs and aspersions from the fair and beautiful face of the spouse of Jesus, I shall select and propose five or six cases, for which God’s witnesses, in all ages and generations of men, have been charged with arrogance, impetuousness, &c., and yet the God of heaven, and Judge of all men, hath graciously discharged them from such crimes, and maintained and avowed them for his faithful and peaceable servants.
Christ Jesus and his disciples teach publicly a new doctrine, fundamentally different from the religion professed.
First, God’s people have proclaimed, taught, disputed, for divers months together, a new religion and worship, contrary to the worship projected in the town, city, or state where they have lived, or where they have travelled, as did the Lord Jesus himself over all Galilee, and the apostles after Him in all places, both in the synagogues and market-places, as appears Acts xvii. 2, 17; Acts xviii. 4, 8. Yet this is no arrogance nor impetuousness.
God’s servants zealous and bold to the faces of the highest. 1 Kings xviii. 18. Luke xiii. 32. Acts xxiii. 3.
Secondly, God’s servants have been zealous for their Lord and Master, even to the very faces of the highest, and concerning the persons of the highest, so far as they have opposed the truth of God: so Elijah to the face of Ahab, “It is not I, but thou, and thy father’s house, that troublest Israel.” So the Lord Jesus concerning Herod, Go, tell that fox. So Paul, God delivered me from the mouth of the lion; and to Ananias, Thou whited wall; and yet in all this no arrogance, nor impetuousness.
God’s people constantly immoveable to death.
Thirdly, God’s people have been immoveable, constant, and resolved to the death, in refusing to submit to false worships, and in preaching and professing the true worship, contrary to the express command of public authority. So the three famous worthies against the command of Nebuchadnezzar, and the uniform conformity of all nations agreeing upon a false worship, Dan. iii. So the apostles, Acts iv. and v., and so the witnesses of Jesus in all ages, who loved not their lives to the death, Rev. xii., not regarding sweet life nor bitter death, and yet not arrogant, nor impetuous.
God’s people ever maintained Christ Jesus the only Lord and King to the conscience.
Fourthly, God’s people, since the coming of the King of Israel, the Lord Jesus, have openly and constantly professed, that no civil magistrate, no king, nor Cæsar, have any power over the souls or consciences of their subjects, in the matters of God and the crown of Jesus; but the civil magistrates themselves, yea, kings and Cæsars, are bound to subject their own souls to the ministry and church, the power and government of this Lord Jesus, the King of kings. Hence was the charge against the apostles (false in civil, but true in spirituals) that they affirmed that there was another King, one Jesus, Acts xvii. 7. And, indeed, this was the great charge against the Lord Jesus himself, which the Jews laid against him, and for which he suffered death, as appears by the accusation written over his head upon the gallows, John xix. 19, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.