Rev. xiii. 13. Fire from heaven. What the fire from heaven is which the false prophet bringeth down.
It is indeed the ignorance and blind zeal of the second beast, the false prophet, Rev. xiii. 13, to persuade the civil powers of the earth to persecute the saints, that is, to bring fiery judgments upon men in a judicial way, and to pronounce that such judgments of imprisonment, banishment, death, proceed from God’s righteous vengeance upon such heretics. So dealt divers bishops in France, and England too in Queen Mary’s days, with the saints of God at their putting to death, declaiming against them in their sermons to the people, and proclaiming that these persecutions, even unto death, were God’s just judgments from heaven upon these heretics.
CHAP. XXXVIII.
2 Tim. ii. 25, 26, examined.
Peace. Doubtless such fiery spirits, as the Lord Jesus said, are not of God. I pray, speak to the second place out of Timothy, 2 Epist. ii. 25, 26.
Truth. I acknowledge this instruction, to be meek and patient, &c., is properly an instruction to the ministers of the gospel. Yet divers arguments from hence will truly and fairly be collected, to manifest and evince how far the civil magistrate ought to be from dealing with the civil sword in spiritual cases.
And first, by the way I desire to ask, what were these unconverted Christians in Crete, which the answerer compareth with the Samaritans, whom Titus, saith he, as an evangelist, was to seek to convert; and whether the Lord Jesus have any such disciples and followers, who yet are visibly in an unconverted state? Oh! that it may please the Father of mercies, the Father of lights, to awaken and open the eyes of all that fear before him, that they may see whether this be the language of Canaan, or the language of Ashdod.
A quære what the answerer means by his unconverted Christian in Crete.
What is an unconverted Christian, but in truth an unconverted convert? that is in English, one unturned turned; unholy holy; disciples, or followers of Jesus, not following of him: in a word, that is, Christians, or anointed by Christ, anti-christians, not anointed with the Spirit of Jesus Christ.[135]
The original of Christians.