Piscator: A Common Distinction

[Christusregnat]

It is inquired, Whether the Judicial Laws of Moses should remain in their full vigor to this day, and therefore that the Christian magistrate should be bound to such laws at the present time no less than in former times, and that he may render judgment according to them with certainty, or whether he should enforce their precepts, as much as the Israelite magistrate was formerly obliged to do.

To this inquiry I respond by a distinction: He is obliged to those which teach concerning matters which are immutable and universally applicable to all nations; not, however, to those which teach concerning matters which are mutable and peculiar to the Jewish or Israelite nations for the times when those governments remained in existence. All such matters which are universally applicable to all nations (that is, which are suited to all men) and are immutable with respect to their own nature and their just penalties are moral offenses. That is, crimes against the Decalogue, as murder, adultery, theft, seduction from the true God, blasphemy, and smiting of parents. Things mutable and which were peculiar to the Jews for that time are such things as the emancipation of Hebrew slaves in the seventh year, Levirate marriage, releasing of debts in the appointed year, marriage with a woman from one’s own tribe, and if there were any other of the same sort. Likewise ceremonial crimes, as touching a dead body, touching a woman suffering her menstrual cycle, and others of the same sort.

Johannes Piscator, Disputations on the Judicial Laws of Moses

George Gillespie refers to this as a "common distinction."

Who else taught this prior to the Westminster Assembly?

Cheers,

 

[Christusregnat]

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