Gillespie Against Theonomy

43. Yet the civil power and the ecclesiastical ought not by any means to be confounded and mixed together: both powers are indeed from God, and ordained for his glory and both to be guided by his word, and both are comprehended under the precept, Honor your father and your mother: so that men ought to obey both civil magistrates and ecclesiastical governments in the Lord. To both powers their proper dignity is to be maintained and preserved in force: to be also is some way entrust the keeping of both tales of the law; also both the one and the other do exercise some jurisdiction , and give the sentence of judgment in an external court or judicatory. But these and other things of like sort, in which they agree notwithstanding; yet by marvelous vast differences are they distinquished the one from the other, and the rights of both remain distinct, and that eight manner of ways which it shall not be amiss here to add, that unto each of these administrations its own set bounds may be the better contained.
44. First of all they are differenced the one from the other in respect of the very foundation and the institution: for the political or civil power is grounded upon the law of nature itself, and for that cause it is common to infidels with Christians. The power ecclesiastical depends immediately upon the positive law of Christ alone, that belongs to the universal dominion of God the creator over all nations but until this the special and economical kingdom of Christ the Mediator, which exercises in the church alone, and which is not of this world.
45. The second difference is the object, or matter about which: the power politic or civil is occupied about the outward man, and civil or earthly things, about war, peace, conservation of justice, and good order in the commonwealth; also about the outward business or external things of the church, which are indeed necessary to the church, or profitable as touching the outward man, yet not properly and purely spiritual, for they do not reach into the soul, but only the external state and condition of the ministers and members of the church.[spelling and vocabulary modernized]
George Gillespie | A Form For Church Government and Ordination of Ministers, Contained in CXI Propositions (London, 1647), 19–20. Here is an even more contemporary version of a portion of this work.


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