Thirdly, their end is the ditch, that bottomless pit of everlasting separation from the holy and sweet presence of the Father of lights, goodness, and mercy itself—endless, easeless, in extremity, universality, and eternity of torments; which most direful and lamentable downfall, should strike a holy fear and trembling into all that see the pit whither these blind Pharisees are tumbling, and cause us to strive, so far as hope may be, by the spiritual eye-salve of the word of God, to heal and cure them of this their soul-destroying blindness.
Fourthly, of those that fall into this dreadful ditch, both leader and followers, how deplorable in more especial manner is the leader’s case, upon whose neck the followers tumble—the ruin, not only of his own soul, being horrible, but also the ruin of the followers’ souls eternally galling and tormenting.
Peace. Some will say, these things are indeed full of horror; yet such is the state of all sinners, and of many malefactors, whom yet the state is bound to punish, and sometimes by death itself.
Truth. I answer, the civil magistrate beareth not the sword in vain, but to cut off civil offences, yea, and the offenders too in case. But what is this to a blind Pharisee, resisting the doctrine of Christ, who haply may be as good a subject, and as peaceable and profitable to the civil state as any: and for his spiritual offence against the Lord Jesus, in denying him to be the true Christ, he suffereth the vengeance of a dreadful judgment, both present and eternal, as before.[128]
CHAP. XXXIII.
Peace. Yea: but it is said that the blind Pharisees, misguiding the subjects of a civil state, greatly sin against a civil state, and therefore justly suffer civil punishments; for shall the civil magistrate take care of outsides only, to wit, of the bodies of men, and not of souls, in labouring to procure their everlasting welfare?
Soul-killing the chiefest murder. No magistrate can execute true justice in killing soul for soul but Christ Jesus, who by typical death in the law typed out spiritual in the gospel.
Truth. I answer, It is a truth: the mischief of a blind Pharisee’s blind guidance is greater than if he acted treasons, murders, &c.; and the loss of one soul by his seduction, is a greater mischief than if he blew up parliaments, and cut the throats of kings or emperors, so precious is that invaluable jewel of a soul above all the present lives and bodies of all the men in the world! And therefore I affirm, that justice, calling for eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, calls also soul for soul; which the blind-guiding, seducing Pharisee, shall truly pay in that dreadful ditch, which the Lord Jesus speaks of. But this sentence against him, the Lord Jesus only pronounceth in his church, his spiritual judicature, and executes this sentence in part at present, and hereafter to all eternity. Such a sentence no civil judge can pass, such a death no civil sword can inflict.[129]
A great mistake in most to conceive that dead men, that is, souls dead in sin, may be infected by false doctrine.
I answer, secondly, Dead men cannot be infected. The civil state, the world, being in a natural state, dead in sin, whatever be the state-religion unto which persons are forced, it is impossible it should be infected. Indeed the living, the believing, the church and spiritual state, that and that only is capable of infection; for whose help we shall presently see what preservatives and remedies the Lord Jesus hath appointed.