The Inevitability of Public Religion

Vermigli and Prynne

More positively, Vermigli provides a few principles of magistracy. “First I say that the Magistrate is the keeper of the law of God, which containeth not only the latter Table but also the first: Wherefore the Magistrate is a keeper as well of the one as of the other.”

It is commonplace today to argue that the civil power has no interest in, or authority over, the keeping of the first table of the Decalogue, but only the second. That is, that the civil power’s only purview pertains to justice between men but not between men and God.

No such artificial bifurcation of the Two Tables is discernible in Vermigli, his contemporaries, nor his theological progeny. Again, when the king transcribed the law for himself his pen was not limited to the latter commandments only. He was charged with knowing, keeping, and applying the whole law both for himself and for his people.

“A private man saith Augustine serueth the Lord, if he confesses his name, and live uprightly: But this is not sufficient for a king and Magistrate, seeing he ought so by his authority and power to serve the Lorde, that he punish those that be his enemies: which unless he doe, he seemeth to consent unto blasphemers and heretics. For the king when he sees these men and suffers them, is as much in fault as if he should join himself with them, and maintain their wickedness […] our Magistrates ought wholly to take away all Idolatries, blasphemies, and superstitions, so soon as ever they shall find them out.”

Vermigli includes in his argument a point similar to that of William Prynne (1600-1669) and others, viz., that the punishment of blasphemy and heresy against the religion of the kingdom is always and everywhere accepted, even amongst heathen—what Vermigli calls “Ethnick” (like Musculus)—kings.

Prynne, in his The Sword of Christian Magistracy (1653), articulates the inevitability of public religion and its enforcement best:

“Now, what was the ground of Nebuchadnezzar’s, and these other Pagan Idolaters’… corporal Censures, and capital Proceedings against the Servants, Apostles and Saints of God, but this? they deemed them Hereticks, false Teachers, Opposers, and Blasphemes of their Idol-gods, and false Religions, which they embraced, believed as the true: For as the very light of Nature instructs all Nations that there is a God, and instigates them to elect and adore some Deity or other as their God and Savior: So it farther instructs them, that that Deity they adore, and that Religion they embrace is no ways to be openly blasphemed, reviled, oppugned, contemned, under pain of the most severe capital punishments, because such offences against the supremist [sic] Majesty of God transcend any Treason against an earthly Sovereign… and by the light of Nature in all ages punished such whom they esteemed Atheists, Heretics, Blasphemers of their gods, or oppugners of their established Religion… [Although] ‘Tis true, most of these erred in the object, in deeming that Heresy, Schism, Blasphemy, Error, which was not.”[1]

Prynne’s point is that even pagan governments punish that which contravenes their respective religious/moral baseline and that this is to some degree unavoidable and (provisionally) proper even when the object of punishment or promotion is, in fact, false. (As Thomas Aquinas taught, evil is always a privation of the good.) Socrates was condemned by the Athenians for heretical propagation, Vermigli reminds us: “I demand not now, how rightly or justly” this act was, but rather, Vermigli intends only to highlight that

“he was for no other cause condemned, but for Religion: as though he taught new gods and led away the youth from the ancient and received worshiping of the gods: and he was by a prophane Magistrate condemned. Wherefore, the Athenians thought that the preservation and care of Religion belonged to their Magistrate.”

On the flipside, Vermigli notes that when Nebuchadnezzar and Darius were variously converted, their first decrees were capital punishment for blasphemers against the God of Daniel.

Again, the king or magistrate is a decidedly public person and, therefore, “he ought so by his authority and power to serve the Lord,” which, for Vermigli, means that he “punish those that be [God’s] enemies: which unless he do, he seemeth to consent unto blasphemers and heretics.”

Christian magistrates are no exception, of course:

 “Constantine and Theodosius and many other godly princes are commended, because they took away Idols, and either closed up, or else overthrew their Temples. Howbeit they did not these things in any other respect than that they thought the charge of Religion to belong unto them: otherwise they should have been busy fellows, and should have put their Sickle into an other man’s harvest.”

Vermigli affiliates opposition to this view with Donatism, a label of disparagement for any orthodox Christian and a faction which Augustine refuted in his own day. Vermigli further recalls that it was Godly emperors, not popes or any particular bishop, that called the great ecumenical councils together for the sake of creedal formulation—the peace and unity of the church being a Christian magistrate’s priority. Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon were all called by emperors.[2]

For the honor and duty of a ruler cannot be equated simply with external security, with triumph in battle abroad. It also must contemplate internal wellbeing and triumph over enemies at home, so to speak. “[P]eace among Citizens and domestical discipline” must also be a priority.

“And therefore,” concludes Vermigli,

“Justinian in the Preface upon the Institutions of the Civil law: The Majesty of the Emperor (saith he) ought not only to be adorned with arms, but also armed by laws, that each time, as well of war as of peace may be rightly governed, and that the Roman prince may not only be conqueror of his enemies in battles, but also by right course expel the lewdness of malicious detractors, and that he may become as well most religious for the law as triumphant over his enemies.”[3]

What is the law the good ruler should propound?

“And the law is, not man’s opinion (as some have foolishly thought) but an everlasting precept proceeding from nature being the guide, and from the law. And that which is here spoken as touching nature, that do we much more truly understand of God himself, the author of nature. For that which GOD hath set down ought to be a law unto us. And that law men do oftentimes understand by some light of nature, and (as Cicero saith) by a long experience of affairs, and government of common weal. For things being in such sort marked of wise men, committed to writing, and declared in their kinds and distributed in their parts become at the last a certain Art, or else some similitude of an Art.”[4]

Vermigli says that dealing justly with his people is of supreme importance for a ruler, for per Solomon, it is by this that the seat of kings shall be establish forever. “Contrariwise, Tyrants because of their iniquity shall soon be taken away.”[5]

In a sense, the ruler “should be as it were a certain living law.”[6]

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[1] Prynne, The sword of Christian magistracy supported, or, A vindication of the Christian magistrates authority under the Gospell, to punish idolatry, apostacy, heresie, blasphemy, and obstinate schism, with corporall, and in some cases with capitall punishments (London, 1653), 18-19.

[2] Vermigli, Loci, 4.13.244.

[3] Vermigli, Loci, 4.14.245.

[4] Vermigli, Loci, 4.14.245 (“Ulpian in the Digests, in the title De Iure & legibus, saith that Ius, that is, right, is so called of Iusticia, that is, Iustice.”). Whether right precedes justice or the other way around, Vermigli says “the matter is not of great weight.” The point is that “A Prince ought to take special heed that he minister justice, and that he do it with a good mind and justly.” Ibid., 246. “For the Magistrate is the keeper of Justice, wherefore he is bound by his office to giue e∣uerie man his right: which unless he do, he is no lawful Prince.” Ibid., 254.

[5] Vermigli, Loci, 4.14.246.

[6] Vermigli, Loci, 4.14.246.