Punishment by Death; Its Authority and Expediency (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII. VRGUMENT FROM SCRIPTURE CONTINUED. PURPOSE AND DESIGN OP THIS ORDINANCE. ITS SANCTION OF THE CIVIL MAGISTRACY. OF THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT. OF ITS POWER TO TAKE LIFE. BENEVOLENT DESIGN OF THIS ORDINANCE. We are to consider in the next place the purpose and design of this ordinance. It must be considered first, as we have already intimated, as containing the sanction and divine authority of a civil magistracy. Doubtless, this was one of its objects. What goes before asserts and promises the providential interposition of God in making inquisition for blood, and visiting the iniquity of bloodshed on those who were guilty of it. But this or- dinance commits into the hands of men the solemn and awful power, authority, and duty of taking vengeance. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, By Man shall his Mood ie shed. Now, as it is not to be supposed for a moment that God meant that any and every individual in the event of a murder should consider himself authorized to kill the murderer; since this would be to produce anarchy instead of order and security in society;?as we cannot suppose that God intended to commit this power at random into the hands of individuals; we must regard it as referring to the formal exercise of justice in the civilgovernment. We are, in fact, compelled to this conclusion, there being no alternative. The learned Huguenot, Andreas Rivetus, among other commentators, has presented this view of the Noachic ordinance most clearly and satisfactorily, at the same time adducing and refuting the objections of the Socinians, Anabaptists, and others, who, he says, endeavoured to corrupt the passage and elude its force. " Est igitur hoc loco Siaraftia, seu constitutio Dei ipsius ore prolata, qua sanguis homicides voluntarii, qui humanum sanguinem aus...