That Christ is King alone over conscience is the sum of all true preaching.
This was and is the sum of all true preaching of the gospel, or glad news, viz., that God anointed Jesus to be the sole King and Governor of all the Israel of God in spiritual and soul causes, Ps. ii. 9; Acts ii. 36. Yet this kingly power of His, he resolved not to manage in His own person, but ministerially in the hands of such messengers which he sent forth to preach and baptize, and to such as believed that word they preached, John xvii. And yet here no arrogance, nor impetuousness.
God’s people have seemed the disturbers of civil state.
5. God’s people, in delivering the mind and will of God concerning the kingdoms and civil states where they have lived, have seemed in all show of common sense and rational policy, if men look not higher with the eye of faith, to endanger and overthrow the very civil state, as appeareth by all Jeremiah’s preaching and counsel to king Zedekiah, his princes and people, insomuch that the charge of the princes against Jeremiah was, that he discouraged the army from fighting against the Babylonians, and weakened the land from its own defence; and this charge in the eye of reason, seemed not to be unreasonable, or unrighteous, Jer. xxxvii. and xxxviii.; and yet in Jeremiah no arrogance, nor impetuousness.
God’s word and people the occasion of tumults.
6. Lastly, God’s people, by their preaching, disputing, &c., have been, though not the cause, yet accidentally the occasion of great contentions and divisions, yea, tumults and uproars, in towns and cities where they have lived and come; and yet neither their doctrine nor themselves arrogant nor impetuous, however so charged: for thus the Lord Jesus discovereth men’s false and secure suppositions, Luke xii. 51, Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on the earth? I tell you, nay; but rather division; for from henceforth shall there be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three, the father shall be divided against the son and the son against the father, &c. And thus upon the occasion of the apostles’ preaching the kingdom and worship of God in Christ, were most commonly uproars and tumults wherever they came. For instance, those strange and monstrous uproars at Iconium, at Ephesus, at Jerusalem, Acts xiv. 4; Acts xix. 29, 40; Acts xxi. 30, 31.
CHAP. VIII.
[1 Obj.]
Peace. It will be said, dear Truth, what the Lord Jesus and his messengers taught was truth; but the question is about error.