Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/583

187*

(:The kings according to the old dispensation ruled the people by law. They did not punish robbery by execution but by restitution. The rulers of today, however, even though they call themselves Christian, abide by neither the new or the old law; they kill the robber.:) And it is said in the New Testament,

(:The Christian kings do not heed these principles;) There are some who do not have even as much sense as to be able to settle a small dispute between two peasants. (All they know is to hang and to torture.) The divine element is much smaller in the rule of Christian kings than it was in the rule of pagan and Jewish kings. Therefore, because both divine institutions, marriage and temporal rule, were unable to achieve perfection, God sent His Son, the Saviour of the world, in order that we might live through him. And he rules the world with greater perfection by means of truth, than all the kings of the earth by means of compulsion. Exodus 22:1.

Ephes. 4:28.

John 3:16. 187*