And therefore I conclude, it was in one respect that the Lord Jesus said, Let them alone; because it was no ordinance for any disciple of Jesus to prosecute the Pharisees at Cæsar’s bar.
The punishment of blind Pharisees, though let alone, yet is greater than any corporal punishment in the world, in four respects.
Beside, let it be seriously considered by such as plead for present corporal punishments, as conceiving that such sinners, though they break not civil peace, should not escape unpunished—I say, let it be considered, though for the present their punishment is deferred, yet the punishment inflicted on them will be found to amount to a higher pitch than any corporal punishment in the world beside, and that in these four respects:—
CHAP. XXXII.
The eye of the soul struck out, is worse than for both right and left eye of the body to be struck out ten thousand times.
First, by just judgment from God, false teachers are stark blind. God’s sword hath struck out the right eye of their mind and spiritual understanding, ten thousand times a greater punishment than if the magistrate should command both the right and left eye of their bodies to be bored or plucked out; and that in so many fearful respects if the blindness of the soul and of the body were a little compared together—whether we look at that want of guidance, or the want of joy and pleasure, which the light of the eye affordeth; or whether we look at the damage, shame, deformity, and danger, which blindness brings to the outward man; and much more true in the want of the former, and misery of the latter, in spiritual and soul blindness to all eternity.
Some souls incurable, whom not only corporal, but spiritual physic can nothing avail.
Secondly, how fearful is that wound that no balm in Gilead can cure! How dreadful is that blindness which for ever to all eye-salve is incurable! For if persons be wilfully and desperately obstinate, after light shining forth, Let them alone, saith the Lord. So spake the Lord once of Ephraim: Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone, Hos. iv. 17. What more lamentable condition, than when the Lord hath given a poor sinner over as a hopeless patient, incurable, which we are wont to account a sorer affliction, than if a man were torn and racked, &c.
And this I speak, not that I conceive that all whom the Lord Jesus commands his servants to pass from and let alone, to permit and tolerate, when it is in their power corporally to molest them, I say, that all are thus incurable; yet that sometimes that word is spoken by Christ Jesus to his servants to be patient, for neither can corporal or spiritual balm or physic ever heal or cure them.
The bottomless pit, or ditch, into which the spiritually blind fall.