Note 7 — THE MEDIATOR’S KINGDOM NOT OF THIS WORLD: BUT SPIRITUAL

If the permission given to the church under the Mosaic dispensation to engage in war has not been disannulled by the gospel dispensation (which is by no means granted), it is thought that it does not admit of the consequences which are generally drawn. The Israelites were God’s covenant people and were utterly prohibited from making any covenant with the nations around them, or engaging with them in their wars. It must therefore be totally improper for God’s covenant people now to unite with those who are strangers to the covenant of promise, and engage with them in their tumult and fightings. It is presumed that no one who has ever read our Constitution will pretend that the American nation has, in the Scriptural sense, made a covenant with God. If the analogy holds good in one point, it must in another; and in that case there is no alternative left for God’s covenant people but either to withdraw from those who are not in covenant with God, or adopt a national religion which must be defended by the weapons of the nation. It is believed that those who will not admit that the permission granted to the Israelites to engage in war was abrogated by the gospel dispensation can never fully answer the arguments in favor of a national religion.