hearts, as they can rectify the errors of their con fcience.

6. It is infallibly certain, that God himself, under the Old Teftament appointed magiftrates to reftrain and punish men for blafphemy and idolatry, let their confcience dictate them as ftrongly as it pleafed,- -Had men in thefe early ages no confcience to govern them? Or did God then, like the old fashioned Proteftants, not understand human liberty and the rights of men's confcience ?Did he indeed then fo far mistake his way, as to appoint what is fo cruel and diabolical; what is the very worst part of Popery, and the principal fupport of that abominable fyftem? Or hath God, or the nature of fin, cruelty and tyranny, been changed? How shocking the thought!

OBJECT. XVII. "As men's natural and civit rights nowife depend upon their being orthodox Chriftians, magiftrates ought to protect them in thefe privileges, be their opinions and worship what they will; nay, to give them legal fecurity for their protection of them, in thefe opinions and worship, that they may not be exposed to the caprices of par ticular magiftrates."

ANSW. 1. The Christian liberty, which Christ purchased, is not a liberty to commit fin, but a fpiritual freedom from it, Gal. v. 1, 13. Luke i. 74, 75. Heb. xii. 28, 29. Chrift came not to fave men's lives from restraint or punishment required by his own law, in order that they, by fpreading grofs herefy, blafphemy, and idolatry, might ruin nations and damn men's fouls.

2. You might have forborne to demand legal or quthoritative licenfes for men to blafpheme God, worfhip devils in his ftead, &c. till you had proven Satan to be the abfolute proprietor and governor of this world, and the primary granter of all civil

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and natural rights to men;-or proven, that God,, who is infinitely holy, juft and good, hath, or can, give men natural or civil rights protecting them in public blafphemy, idolatry, or the like, any more than rights protecting them in inceft, robbery, murder; or that magiftrates, as his minifters ought, in his name and authority, to grant men fuch rights.

3. If God hath fo frequently turned men out of their civil property and life for their idolatry and blafphemy, Ifa. x. xiv. xxxvii. xlvi. xlvii. Jer. xlviii. li. Ezek. xxxv.-how abfurd to require magiftrates, who are his minifters for good to men, to execute their office, which is his ordinance, Rom. xiii. 16. in encouraging and protecting men, in openly and infolently contradicting, blafpheming, rebelling against, and robbing him?-Ought the Sheriff and Juftices of peace in Britian, as the king's minifters for good to the nation,, to have executed their office in protecting the arch rebels in 1715, and 1745, in the undisturbed enjoyment of all their civil rights, or to have given them new legal fecurities, in order to enable them, more, boldly and fuccefsfully to carry on their treacherous and murderous rebellion against his Majefty? Or ought they, by proclamation, to warLant all the fubjects in their respective counties to revile, rob, and take arms againft our king and Parlia ment, and promise them protection in fo doing, but always prohibiting them to injure their fellow fubjects? OBJECT. XVIII. "Magiftrates ought not to rule their fubjects by the Bible, but by the civil laws of the nation, according to which they are admitted to their power, by their fubjects, from whom all their power originates."

ANSW. 1. That magiftrates' power originates from their fubjects is a notion plainly atheistical. It originates in God himfelf, Rom. xiii. 1, 2. Rom. xi. 36. Pfalm. lxxv. 7. Dan. ii. 21.

2. If magiftrates muft regulate their government by no other law than that which they or their fub-. jects have established for themselves or one another; they must act as atheists independent of God, in the execution of an office wholly derived from him, and for every act of which they must be accountable to him. If the useful laws of one nation, may be adopted into the civil law of another, Why may not the will of God, the fupreme governor of nations, declared in his laws of nature and revelation, be alfo adopted into it? Are God's laws more difhonourable or dangerous,more unfit to be adopted into our civil law, than thofe of our finful neighbours? Is the Scotch law the worfe, that many of God's ftatutes, prescribed in his word, have been adopted into it,-nay, that all the leading doctrines of Chriftianity contained in our two Confeffions of Faith and Catechifms have been adopted into it, and the Confethons themselves exprefsly ingroffed into acts of Parliament?Indeed, if nations adopt nothing of the manifefted will of God, into their civil law, it will contain nothing but useless trifles. Will thefe be fit for directing the adminiftrations of minifters of God for good to men, or for fecuring, and, promoting the important welfare of any nation under. heaven?

3. If all civil authority to make laws, refident, either in fubjects or magiftrates, be neceffarily derived from God, as Former and King of nations;

magiftrates be ordained of God, to be minifters of God for good to men, to be for-terror and punishment, and revengers of evil doers, and a praife of them that da well, and to be obeyed for confcience fake, for the Lord's fake, Rom. xiii. 6. Pet. ii. 13. 14. Common fenfe loudly demands, That neither their will nor that of their fubjects, but the manifefted; will of God, their independent and infinitely high

Superior, fhould be the fupreme rule and fandard of all their administrations; and that no civil law fhould or can bind either magiftrates or their subjects, but in fo far as it is agreeable and fubordinated to the laws of God.

OBJECT. XIX: "Magiftracy being an office, not founded in revelation, but in the law of nature, the whole execution of it ought to be regulated by that law of nature, not by the will of God revealed in Scripture."

ANSW. 1. I thank you for fo quickly overturning your preceding objection, and adopting the divine law of nature, instead of your civil law, as the fu preme ftandard of magiftratical administration.

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2. According to your objection, parents, mafters, children and fervants, must regulate their per formance of relative duties, merely, by the law of nature, without taking the fmalleft affiftance from. the directions of the Holy Ghoft in Scripture. No parents or masters must instruct their children or fervants in the knowledge of the doctrines, promises, laws, worthip, or virtue required in the Bible, as these relations depend no more on Revelation than magiftracy doth. I defy you to prove they do. In performing the duty of our natural or civil relations, we muft act as mere deifts, ignorant of, or pouring contempt on the inspired oracles of the Great God, our Saviour.- What hurt have the laws of revelation done to fuch relative duties, that they must be thus infamoufly excluded from being any part of a rule of them?

3. No man can truely obey the law of nature, without heartily embracing and chearfully improving whatever revelations God is pleafed to bestow on him, as fuch revelations proceed from the fame divine authority as the law of nature; and must be a noted means of promoting true and proper obedi

ence to it,To exclude divine revelation, when granted, from regulating our performance of relative duties, must therefore not only amount to an heathenish contempt of the Scriptures, but to an atheiftical contempt of the law of nature, which neceffarily requires us to adopt divine Revelation for our fupreme rule, whenever it is graciously grant ed to us.

OBJECT. XX. "Many of the above-mentioned inftances of magiftrates' care about religion, and their reftraint and punishment of idolaters, blafphemers, and false prophets, related merely to the Jew. ifh Theocracy which was typical, and therefore not now to be copied."

ANSW. 1. Many of the above-mentioned inftances, particularly thofe refpecting Heathens, or contained in the promises to the gofpel Church, have not the leaft appearance of being typical. Nay, I defy you to prove that the inftances of Jewish rulers were merely typical.

2. Thefe, typical magiftrates of the Jewish nation alfo exercifed laws relative to murder, theft, unchaf tity, treafon, and other matters of the fecond table of the moral law. Ought therefore no magiftrates now, to do fo? The laws refpecting duties of the fecond table pertained as much to the Jewish Theocracy, as thofe, relating to the firft. Must therefore the Christian magiftrate, for fear of copying the Jewish Theocracy, meddle with no morality at all?,

3. Must every thing that was once typical, be now, under the gofpel, excluded from regulating. authority? Muft all the excellent patterns of Abel, Enoch, Noah. Abraham, Ifaac, Jacob, Jospeh, Job, Mofes, Aaron, Samuel, David, and other Hebrew faints be rejected as typical and ufelefs?

Muft all the laws directing to elect men, fearing. God, and hating covetousness, to be magiftrates, or