Secondly, I acknowledge this command, Let them alone, was expressly spoken to the messengers or ministers of the gospel, who have no civil power or authority in their hand, and therefore not to the civil magistrate, king, or governor, to whom it pleased not the Lord Jesus, by himself or by his apostles, to give particular rules or directions concerning their behaviour and carriage in civil magistracy, as they have done expressly concerning the duty of fathers, mothers, children, masters, servants, yea, and of subjects towards magistrates, Ephes. v. and vi.; Colos. iii. and iv. &c.
A twofold state of Christianity the persecuted under the Roman emperors, and the apostate ever since.
I conceive not the reason of this to be, as some weakly have done, because the Lord Jesus would not have any followers of his to hold the place of civil magistracy, but rather that he foresaw, and the Holy Spirit in the apostles foresaw, how few magistrates, either in the first persecuted or apostated state of Christianity, would embrace his yoke. In the persecuted state, magistrates hated the very name of Christ, or Christianity. In the state apostate, some few magistrates, in their persons holy and precious, yet as concerning their places, as they have professed to have been governors or heads of the church, have been so many false heads, and have constituted so many false visible Christs.
Thirdly, I conceive this charge of the Lord Jesus to his messengers, the preachers and proclaimers of his mind, is a sufficient declaration of the mind of the Lord Jesus, if any civil magistrate should make question what were his duty concerning spiritual things.
Christ’s messengers receive a threefold charge in that prohibition of Christ, Let them alone.
The apostles, and in them all that succeed them, being commanded not to pluck up the tares, but let them alone, received from the Lord Jesus a threefold charge.
First, to let them alone, and not to pluck them up by prayer to God for their present temporal destruction.[121]
God’s people not to pray for the present ruin and destruction of idolaters, although their persecutors, but for their peace and salvation.
Jeremy had a commission to plant and build, to pluck up and destroy kingdoms, Jer. i. 10; therefore he is commanded not to pray for that people whom God had a purpose to pluck up, Jer. xiv. 11, and he plucks up the whole nation by prayer, Lament, iii. 66. Thus Elijah brought fire from heaven to consume the captains and the fifties, 2 Kings i. And the apostles desired also so to practise against the Samaritans, Luke ix. 54, but were reproved by the Lord Jesus. For, contrarily, the saints, and servants, and churches of Christ, are to pray for all men, especially for all magistrates, of what sort or religions soever, and to seek the peace of the city, whatever city it be, because in the peace of the place God’s people have peace also, Jer. xxix. 7; 2 Tim. ii., &c.
Secondly, God’s messengers are herein commanded not to prophecy, or denounce, a present destruction or extirpation of all false professors of the name of Christ, which are whole towns, cities, and kingdoms full.[122]