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Friday, July 29, 2005

Christ's kingdom & the magistrate's power

John Owen was the prince of Puritan theologians, military chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and architect of the Savoy Declaration. Here’s an excerpt from a sermon of he preached before Parliament, setting forth his views on OT law:

***QUOTE***

Although the institutions and examples of the Old Testament, of the duty of magistrates in the things and about the worship of God, are not; in their whole latitude and extent, to be drawn into rules that should be obligatory to all magistrates now, under the administration of the gospel--and that because the magistrate was "custos, vindex, et administrator legis judicialis, et politiae Mosaicae," from which, as most think, we are freed--yet, doubtless, there is something moral in those institutions, which, being unclothed of their Judaical form, is still binding to all in the like kind, as to some analogy and proportion. Subduct from those administrations what was proper to, and lies upon the account of, the church and nation of the Jews, and what remains upon the general notion of a church and nation must be everlastingly binding.

Works (Banner of Truth 1967), 8:394.

***END-QUOTE***

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