GEORGE GILLESPIE (1613-1649) Although plagued by ill-health and dying tragically young, George Gillespie was one of the most learned, able and prolific of Scotland’s Reforming and Covenanting ministers. He was ordained and inducted to the parish of Wemyss in Fife in 1638, the year which saw the signing of the National Covenant and the restoration of full-blooded Presbyterianism after Charles I had attempted to force the romanising Scottish Prayer Book on a Calvinistic people the previous year. In 1641 Gillespie became one of the ministers in Edinburgh and in 1643 one of the six Scottish commissioners sent to the Westminister Assembly. Although without a vote his influence on the deliberations and doctrinal formulations was considerable. It was during the sitting of the Assembly that Gillespie’s most important work was published. With the title of Aaron’s Rod Blossoming, it was a vigorous defence of the Biblical pattern for church government, demonstrating in a thoroughgoing way from the government and discipline of the Jewish church and Christian church respectively, the error of the Erastian theory. This is the idea that the government of the church should be under that of the state. Many Christians have reacted against this theory by advocating a complete separation between church and state, confining the role of civil government to those matters which are ‘secular’ and temporal in character. Gillespie, and the Reformed Church in Scotland, believed that God instituted both church and state, the ecclesiastical and the civil power, and that both were bound to aim at His glory. The church’s duty was to encourage heart obedience to the divine laws, whereas the state was to enforce external obedience to the same laws. Described by a contemporary as a “thundering preacher” Gillespie’s voice fell silent not long after his return from the Westminster Assembly and he was buried at Kirkcaldy, Fife. The power of his pen lives on however. Gillespie’s acute mind and great learning were a source of some annoyance to the Erastians and when the Episcopalians regained the ascendancy in Scotland following the restoration to the throne of Charles II, they had Gillespie’s tombstone broken up by the public hangman. Chapter II of Book One of Aaron’s Rod Blossoming – “That the Jewish Church was Formally Distinct from the Jewish State or Commonwealth”: It hath been by some (with much confidence and scorn of all who say otherwise) averred, that excommunication and church government distinct from the civil hath no pattern for it in the Jewish church. “I am sure,” saith Mr Coleman in his Brotherly Examination Re-examined, p. 16, “the best reformed church that ever was, went this way, I mean the church of Israel, which had no distinction of church government and civil government.” Hast thou appealed unto Caesar? unto Caesar shalt thou go. Have you appealed to the Jewish church? thither shall you go. Wherefore I shall endeavour to make these five things appear: 1. That the Jewish church was formally distinct from the Jewish state. 2. That there was an ecclesiastical sanhedrim and government distinct from the civil. 3. That there was an ecclesiastical excommunication distinct from civil punishments. 4. That in the Jewish church there was also a public exomologesis, or declaration of repentance, and, thereupon, a reception or admission again of the offender to fellowship with the church in the holy things. 5. That there was a suspension of the profane from the temple and passover. First. The Jewish church was formally distinct from the Jewish state. I say formally, because ordinarily they were not distinct materially, the same persons being members of both; but formally they were distinct, as now the church and state are among us Christians. 1. In respect of distinct laws, the ceremonial law was given to them in reference to their church state, the judicial law was given to them in reference to their civil state. Is. Abrabanel, de capite fidei, cap. 13, putteth this difference between the laws given to Adam and to the sons of Noah, and the divine law given by Moses,—that those laws were given for conservation of human society, and are in the classes of judicial or civil laws. But the divine law given by Moses doth direct the soul to its last perfection and end. I do not approve the difference which he puts between these laws. This only I note, that he distinguisheth judicial or civil laws for conservation of society, though given by God, from those laws which are given to perfect the soul, and to direct it to its last end, such as he conceives the whole moral and ceremonial law of Moses to be. Halichoth Olam, tract 5, cap. 2, tells us that such and such rabbies were followed in the ceremonial laws; other rabbies followed in the judicial laws. 2. In respect of distinct acts, they did not worship God and offer sacrifices in the temple, nor call upon the name of the Lord, nor give thanks, nor receive the sacraments as that state, but as that church. They did not punish evil-doers by mulcts, imprisonment, banishment, burning, stoning, hanging, as that church, but as that state. 3. In respect of controversies, some causes and controversies did concern the Lord’s matters, some the king’s matters, 2 Chron. xix. 11. To judge between blood and blood was one thing; to judge between law and commandment, between statutes and judgments, that is, to give the true sense of the law of God when it was controverted, was another thing. 4. In respect of officers, the priests and Levites were church officers: magistrates and judges not so, but were ministers of the state. The priests might not take the sword out of the hand of the magistrates; the magistrates might not offer sacrifice nor exercise the priest’s office. 5. In respect of continuance, when the Romans took away the Jewish state and civil government yet the Jewish church did remain, and the Romans did permit them the liberty of their religion. And now, though the Jews have no Jewish state, yet they have Jewish churches; whence it is, that when they tell where one did or doth live, they do not mention the town but the church: “In the holy church at Venice, at Frankford,” &c. See Buxtorf. Lex. Rabbin. p. 1983. 6. In respect of variation, the constitution and government of the Jewish state was not the same, but different, under Moses and Joshua, under the judges, under the kings, and after the captivity; but we cannot say that the church was remodelled as often as the state was. 7. In respect of members; for, as Mr Selden hath very well observed concerning that sort of proselytes who had the name of Proselyti Justitiae. They were initiated into the Jewish religion by circumcision, baptism and sacrifice; and they were allowed not only to worship God apart by themselves, but also to come into the church and congregation of Israel, and to be called by the name of Jews,—nevertheless they were restrained and secluded from dignities, magistracies and preferments in the Jewish republic, and from divers marriages which were free to the Israelites, even as strangers initiated and associated into the church of Rome have not therefore the privilege of Roman citizens. Thus Mr Selden, who hath thereby made it manifest that there was a distinction of the Jewish church and Jewish state, because those proselytes, being embodied into the Jewish church as church members, and having a right to communicate in the holy ordinances among the rest of the people of God, yet were not proper members of the Jewish state, nor admitted to civil privileges; whence it is also that the names of Jews and proselytes were used distinctly, Acts ii. 10.