subject: Roger Williams And The Donatists Refuted By George Gillespie [print this page] http://www.puritandownloads.com http://www.puritandownloads.com
George Gillespie Refutes Roger Williams, the Donatists and Sectarianism
(The original spelling from the 1644 edition of Gillespie's "Wholesome Severity Reconciled with Christian Liberty" has been retained.)
Sects and Schismes are to be punished as well, though not as much as Heresy and Idolatry. There are degrees of faults, and accordingly degrees of punishments, Augustine wrote an Epistle to Bonifacius upon this occasion, to shew that the Donatists had nothing to doe with the Arrians, and so were not to be punished with such rigour and severity; yet he adviseth that moderate mulcts and punishments may be laid upon them, & that their Bishops or Ministers may be banished. In his 127 Epist. he intercedeth most earnestly with the proconsul of Africk, that he might not put to death the Donatists, but represse them some other ways. We have also a scripture example for punishing Sectaries who are not Hereticks. It is agreed among interpreters, there were in Iudah two sorts of high places, some on which God was worshipped, others on which idols were worshipped, & it is most manifest from 2 Chro.33.17. and from the reconciling of 2 Chro.15.17. with ch.14.3.5 the one sort was the high places of Idolatry, the other, the high places of wil-worship; yet the Priests of the latter, as well as of the former, were punished by Josiah, as Tostatus proveth from 2 Kings 23. and the text it self is clear, for he put to death the Priests of Samaria, who had sacrificed in the high places of Idolatry, vers.20. but as for those who sacrificed in the high places of wil-worship, because they sacrificed to the Lord only (as the word is, 2 Chron.33.17.) therefore Josiah did not put them to death, only he caused them to goe out of all the Cities of Judah, and to cease from the Priests office, so that they durst not come up to the Altar of the Lord at Jerusalem, only they were permitted to eat of the unleavened bread among their brethren, ver.8,9. which is parallel to that law, Ezek.44:10,11,12,13,14. a prophecy concerning the Christian Temple, and the times of the New Testament, which reacheth a blow to another silly and short-sighted evasion, used both in the Bloudy Tenent, and in M.S. to A.S. that all this coercive power exercised in the Old Testament was typicall, & therefore not imitable now in the New Testament. Whereunto I further reply, 1. The reason of all that coercive severity was morall and perpetuall, as was shewed before from Deut.13.11. Next, why did they not prove that it was typicall? shall we take their fancy for a certainty? They have neither Scripture nor Interpreters for it. 3. They confound the Judiciall lawes of Moses with the Ceremoniall, making the Judicatories and Justice typicall no lesse then the Ceremonies. 4. They doe utterly overthrow the investiture of Christian Princes and Magistrates with any power at all in matters of Religion, from the Old Testament. So that one may not argue thus: The godly Kings of Judah did remove the monuments of Idolatry and Superstition, therefore so should the Christian Magistrate doe. The most arrant malignant may answer in the word of Mr. Williams, chap.109. that the Civill power or State of Israel, so farre as it attended upon the spirituall, was meerly figurative: Or in the words of M.S. pag.51. There are two reasons very considerable why the Kings of Judah might be invested by God with a larger power in matters of religion, then Kings or Magistrates under the Gospel have any ground or warrant to claime from them. First, they were types of Christ (but by the way how doth he prove that Asa, Jehu, and Josiah were types of Christ?) which no King under heaven at this day is. Secondly, not the people onely, but the very land over which they ruled were typicall. 5. The punishment of persons was a part of their reformation, as well as the destruction of monuments, and why must we follow their example in the one, more then the other? If we smart under both their diseases, we must apply both their remedies, or neither.
Excerpted from: "Wholesome Severity Reconciled with Christian Liberty" by George Gillespie, pp. 11-12 (a SWRB rare bound photocopy [1644], reprinted 1996).
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