John Owen · 29 of 157
Of toleration; and the duty of the magistrate about religion. · Part 5
2dly. Now, for those that stand at a greater distance from the publicly owned and declared truths, — such as before we spake of, — the orderly way of dealing with such is, in the first place, to bring them off from the error of the way which they have embraced; and until that be done, all thoughts of drawing in their assent to that from which at such a distance they stand is vain and bootless. Now, what course is to be taken for the effecting of this? Spiritual ways of healing are known to all, — let them be used; and in case they prove fruitless, for aught that yet I can perceive, the persons of men so erring must be left in the state and condition we described under the second head.
And now, to drive on this business any farther by way of contest, I will not. My intention at the beginning was only positively to assert, and to give in briefly, the scriptural and rational bottoms and proofs of those assertions; wherein I have gone aside, to pull or thrust a line of debate, I have against my own purpose, — I hope it will be pardoned; though I am heartily desirous any thing which passeth my pen may be brought to the test, and myself reduced where I have gone amiss. Yet my spirit faints within me to think of that way of handling things in controversy which some men, by reciprocation of answers and replies, have wound themselves into. Bolsec, and Staphylus, and Stapleton, seem to live again, and much gall from beneath to be poured into men’s ink. O the deep wounds the gospel hath received by the mutual keen invectives of learned men! I hope the Lord will preserve me from being engaged with any man of such a frame of spirit. What hath been asserted may easily be cast up in a few positions; — the intelligent reader will quickly discern what is aimed at, and what I have stood to avow.
If what is proposed be not satisfactory, I humbly offer to the honourable Parliament, that a certain number of learned men, who are differently minded as to this business of toleration, which almost every where is spoken against, may be desired and required to a fair debate of the matter in difference before their own assembly; that so, if it be possible, some light may be given to the determination of this thing, of so great concernment in the judgments of all men, both on the one side and on the other; that so they may “try all things, and hold fast that which is good.”
Corol. 1. That magistrates have nothing to do in matters of religion, as some unadvisedly affirm, is exceedingly wide from the truth of the thing itself.
Corol. 2. Corporeal punishments for simple error were found out to help to build the tower of Babel.
Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.
