The grave duty of the magistrate was not to be taken lightly nor administered flippantly, nor was executed with exaggerated eschatological expectancy. Prudence and patience should guide the magistrate here, for the good of the church and commonwealth, not personal prejudice or private gain. Taking “care of God’s glory” and the preservation of religion and civil peace is the point. And this by removing “the external impediments of divine Worship or of Ecclesiasticall Peace,” which includes erroneous propagation and false worship. 

A few months ago, Jonathan Leeman debated Brad Littlejohn at Colorado Christian University on “Religious Liberty and the Common Good.” What the confrontation really amounted to was a question of the coercive power of civil authorities in religious matters. It is worth the watch. (The edited remarks from Leeman and Littlejohn were published here at American Reformer.)

In the course of the debate, Leeman fairly dubbed Littlejohn a “First Tabularian.” That is, a proponent of the magistrate’s duty to take note of and enforce the first table of the Decalogue, not merely the second. Littlejohn embraced and defended that decidedly traditional position ably. Leeman, self-professedly representing a Baptist position, nevertheless demurred.

This, it seems to me, is the fundamental divide within American Protestantism on this question. Will it be the Baptist position or the Magisterial one?

Per usual, someone else in our Protestant past has already addressed the question at hand. In this case, multiple persons, but we will take up just one: George Gillespie (1613-1648) who was unarguably conventional within the stream of historic Protestantism on the question at hand but, perhaps, best at expressing it.

The central focus of Gillespie’s Wholesome Severity (1645) was “Whether Christian Judges may lawfully punish Hereticks.” More directly, this introductory inquiry implied a more fundamental question:

The plaine English of the question is this: whether the Christian Magistrate be keeper of both Tables: whether he ought to suppresse his own enemies, but not Gods enemies, and preserve his own ordinances, but not Christ’s Ordinances from violation. Whether the troublers of Israel may be troubled. Whether the wilde boars and beasts of the forest must have leave to break down the hedges of the lord’s vineyard; and whether ravening wolves in sheeps clothing must be permitted to converse freely in the flock of Christ.

Were heresy and schism really to be admitted to society “under the name of tender consciences” like a “pestilence or a Gangrene”? (Published in 1645, Gillespie’s Severity could not here have been referencing Thomas Edwards’ (1599-1647) infamous and massive Gangraena (1646), but the terminological overlap is worth noting— Gillespie was decidedly more gracious in his presentation than Edwards.)

Gillespie’s entire purpose is to “vindicate the lawfull, yea necessary use of the coercive power of the Christian Magistrate in suppressing and punishing hereticks and sectaries.”

Gillespie was self-consciously responding to Baptists, viz., Christopher Blackwood (1604-1670), a Baptist in Ireland, and his Storming of Antichrist in his two Last and Strongest Garrisons (1644), which railed against infant baptism on conscientious grounds; and Roger Williams’ (1603-1683) The Bloody Tenent of Persecution (1644), which needs no introduction; and also, William Walwyn’s (1600-1681) The compassionate Samaritane (1644). (A compatriot of John Lilburne and other undesirables, Walwyn appears to have been as much a rabble rouser as Williams.)

To this end, Gillespie distinguished himself from two alternative views.

First, the opinion of “the Papists.” Their position was that all heretics who, following notice and instruction, “persist in their error, are to be without mercy put to death.” The second view was that of Baptists, viz., that no heretics or sectarians should endure any punishment but should be granted “liberty and toleration.” Gillespie finds both extremes wanting.

The third way, if you will, was Gillespie’s. The magistrate possesses and ought to exercise coercive power in suppressing heresy and schismatics with a level of discrepancy, discrimination, and prudence. That is, according to “the nature and degree of the error, schism, obstinacy, and danger of seducing others” presented by the heresy or blasphemy in view. Gentility in the execution of this duty cannot be neglected. Its application is not wanton or indiscriminate. The goal is not the “building of Zion with bloud.” For “the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men.” Gillespie insisted that it was his “soul’s desire that the secular coercive power may be put forth upon those only who can by no other means be reclaimed, & who can be no longer spared without a visible rupture in the Church, and the manifest danger of seducing and misleading many souls.” Neither should adiaphora be coercively chastised. The grave duty of the magistrate was not to be taken lightly nor administered flippantly, nor was executed with exaggerated eschatological expectancy. Prudence and patience should guide the magistrate here, for the good of the church and commonwealth, not personal prejudice or private gain. Taking “care of God’s glory” and the preservation of religion and civil peace is the point. And this by removing “the external impediments of divine Worship or of Ecclesiasticall Peace,” which includes erroneous propagation and false worship.

This, says Gillespie, was the consensus Protestant opinion expressed by Theodore Beza and John Calvin, Wolfgang Musculus and Heinrich Bullinger, Martin Bucer and Johannes Brenz, and the Helvetic, French, Saxon, and Belgic Confessions. Of course, Gillespie refers to Scripture as well for support, Exodus and Deuteronomy, in particular.

But is the New Testament magistrate bound by the same standard as that of the Old regarding heretics, violators of the first table? Indeed, they are, and Gillespie marshals Johannes Piscator’s commentary on Exodus to demonstrate that the Christian magistrate is “obliged to those things in the Judiciall law which are unchangeable, & common to all Nations: but not to those things which are mutable, or proper to the Jewish Republike,” for these are “laws concerning Morall trespasses.” These are perennial things which include blasphemy and heresy against the very source of the governing power, God himself.

From Scripture, we know that God intended the perpetuation of the moral law imbedded in and undergirding the law of Moses by the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) which vindicated the judicial and moral law against the false traditions of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

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