I lay down this maxime of Divinitie; Tyranny being a worke of Sathan, is not from God, because sinne either habituall or actuall, is not from God; the power that is, must be from God; the Magistrate as Magistrate, is good, in nature of office, and the intrinsecall end of his office, Rom. 13:4. for he is the Minister of God for thy good; and therefore a power ethicall, politick, or morall, to oppresse, is not from God, and is not a power, but a licentious deviation of a power, and is no more from God, but from sinfull nature, and the old serpent, then a license to sinne. - Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or the Law and the Prince (1644), emphases added. Lex, Rex, or the Law and the Prince is available on thePuritan Hard Drive along with many other books and MP3s by Samuel Rutherford.
Pornography, the Anabaptists, and Doug Wilson's Civil Antinomianism (1997), by Dr. Reg Barrow (free online text) (Pointed but irenic, Barrow decisively refutes the view of Doug Wilson (cf. "Cyberporn: A Case Study" [Credenda/Agenda, vol. 7, no. 5, p. 11]), many modern Theonomists and the civil libertarians, that the production and distribution of pornography is not a crime (and thus not subject to negative penal sanctions by the civil magistrate). Barrow demonstrates that Wilson's view of civil government (which logically results in such a monstrous conclusion) is actually an overly strict view of the regulative principle. This "hyper-regulativism" (denying lawful inferences, or what Samuel Rutherford calls "logical consequence") is then wrongly applied to the civil magistrate, rather than to worship (when rightly interpreted). He also points out the link between Wilson's view and the principles of the Anabaptists, Libertines and other antiestablishmentarian forces. With an impressive array of historical citations (primarily John Calvin, George Gillespie, Samuel Rutherford, and the Westminster Confession of Faith), and a cogent analysis and application of relevant Scripture passages, Barrow shows clearly that Wilson's view of civil government "gives birth to illegitimate offspring in the case of pornography, contradicting as it does common sense (the light of nature), our reformed fathers in the faith, and the express commands and approved examples of Scripture. In short, it is anything but the 'classical Protestant' position, and anything but biblical." This item is appendix "B" in the book Saul in the Cave of Adullam: A Testimony Against the Fashionable Sub-Calvinism of Doug Wilson (Editor of Credenda/Agenda Magazine); and, For Classical Protestantism and the Attainments of the Second Reformation, by Dr. Reg Barrow.)
"And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers..." (Isaiah 49:23)
"Now, Christians, the more great and glorious things you expect from God, as the downfall of antichrist, the conversion of the Jews, the conquest of the nations to Christ, the breaking of all yokes, the new Jerusalem's coming down from above, the extraordinary pouring out of the Spirit, and a more general union among all saints, the more holy, yea, the more eminently holy in all your ways and actings it becomes you to be." - Thomas Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, 1662, Complete Works on the Puritan Hard Drive, 1867, p. 444
The anti-Christian leaven, which has been so extensively diffused, shall be purged out of both the churches and the nations. Every usurper of the rights and prerogatives of Sion's King shall be pushed from his seat. Every rival kingdom shall be overthrown. The civil and ecclesiastical constitutions of the earth shall be regulated by the infallible standard of God's word; their office-bearers, of every kind, shall acknowledge the authority of Messiah the Prince; and the greatest kings on earth shall cast their crowns at his feet. All enemies shall be put under his feet; and such as resist the melting influence of his grace, shall be crushed beneath the iron rod of his power. By spiritual conversion or judicial destruction, he shall effect the entire subjugation of the globe. And, at the last, there shall not be a spot on the face of the habitable earth where the true church of Christ shall not have effected a footing, nor a single tribe of the vast family of man which shall not have felt the meliorating and blissful influence of Christian laws and institutions.- William Symington, Messiah the Prince or, The Mediatorial Dominion of Jesus Christ (Still Waters Revival Books, [1884] 1990), pp. 185-86 (emphases added), on the Puritan Hard Drive.
And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. - Isa. 2:2, KJV
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