The second reason noted in the parable, which may satisfy any man from wondering at the patience of God, is this: when the world is ripe in sin, in the sins of anti-christianism (as the Lord spake of the sins of the Amorites, Gen. xv. 16), then those holy and mighty officers and executioners, the angels, with their sharp and cutting sickles of eternal vengeance, shall down with them, and bundle them up for the everlasting burnings.[120]
Then shall that man of sin, 2 Thess. ii. [8], be consumed by the breath of the mouth of the Lord Jesus; and all that worship the beast and his picture, and receive his mark into their forehead or their hands, shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment shall ascend up for ever and ever, Rev. xiv. 10, 11.
CHAP. XXVII.
Peace. You have been larger in vindicating this scripture from the violence offered unto it, because, as I said before, it is of such great consequence; as also, because so many excellent hands have not rightly divided it, to the great misguiding of many precious feet, which otherwise might have been turned into the paths of more peaceableness in themselves and towards others.
Truth. I shall be briefer in the scriptures following.
The charge of Christ Jesus, Let alone the tares, was not spoken to magistrates, ministers of the civil state, but to ministers of the gospel.
Peace. Yet before you depart from this, I must crave your patience to satisfy one objection, and that is: These servants to whom the householder answereth, seem to be the ministers or messengers of the gospel, not the magistrates of the civil state, and therefore this charge of the Lord Jesus is not given to magistrates, to let alone false worshippers and idolaters.
Again, being spoken by the Lord Jesus to his messengers, it seems to concern hypocrites in the church, as before was spoken, and not false worshippers in the state, or world.
Truth. I answer, first, I believe I have sufficiently and abundantly proved, that these tares are not offenders in the civil state. Nor, secondly, hypocrites in the church, when once discovered so to be; and that therefore the Lord Jesus intends a grosser kind of hypocrites, professing the name of churches and Christians in the field of the world, or commonwealth.
The civil magistrate not so particularly spoken to as fathers and masters, in the New Testament, and why, Eph. v. 6; Col. iii. 4, &c.