Foreword
The substantial elements of 17th-century England were combustible, and John Bunyan’s ministry was a blazing torch. Bunyan’s is a household name amongst most evangelicals thanks to his bestseller, Pilgrim’s Progress. But important lessons — les sons most relevant to our own times of state overreach — are lost if we only know this Puritan Non-Conformist apart from his times and only for one book. Revisiting Bunyan in historical context, and especially noting his book Of Antichrist, and His Ruin, is instructive for evangelicals seeking light in the foggy at mosphere of contemporary church and state relations.
John Bunyan was an English Puritan; the Puritans sought to conform the Church’s worship to the norms of Scripture and, further, to reform society and government with the same. J.I. Packer explains:
Puritanism was an evangelical holiness movement seeking to imple ment its vision of spiritual renewal, national and personal, in the church, the state, and the home; in education, evangelism, and eco nomics; in individual discipleship and devotion, and in pastoral care and competence. 1
1. J.I. Packer, quoted in Joel Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology, (Reformation Heritage Books: Grand Rapids, MI, 2012), 5.
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The Puritan movement in England galvanized during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, 1558 to 1603. Elizabeth moved the church away from Romish liturgy with her 1559 Act of Unifor mity, but Puritan ministers argued she still needed to take the reforms further. Chafing under her prescribed ecclesiastical vestments, they found themselves oppressed under her rule, es pecially over the penalties levied against those who refused to use the Anglican Book of Common Prayer or who spoke against it.2 That said, she did turn a blind eye to some of the Puritans, allow ing them space to flourish. The Puritans became more hopeful when the throne passed to James I in 1603, but when they pre sented him with their desire for further reforms he threatened to “harry them out of the land, or else do worse.”3 King James raised their ire further when he published the Book of Sports in 1618, encouraging sports on Sunday in contravention to Puritan teaching.4 In 1625 King Charles I succeeded James, and he appointed men to torture ecclesiastical dissenters, like the Puritans, which provoked over 13,000 Puritans to flee to America. King Charles I was a thrice son of hell, who resented accountability to God’s Law and especially abhorred the Puritan attestation that King Jesus is true Head of the Church, instead claiming that place for himself.
Pressure escalated even more when Charles insisted on his divine right to tax the people without parliamentary approval. By this time Puritanism had grown as a movement, and Puritans had made inroads into Parliament. Puritan parliamentarians, al ready vexed with the King’s insistence on taxation without repre sentation, wanted to do away with the Anglican bishops and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. With the outbreak of civil war in 1642, the combustible 17th-century was finally set ablaze.
2. Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were, (Zondervan Academic: Grand Rapids, MI, 2010), 5. 3. Ibid., 9. 4. Ibid.
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The Crown collided with Parliament, and the Puritans naturally backed Parliament. The ultimate parliamentary triumph sealed the eventual beheading of the thrice son of hell King Charles I in 1649. His son and heir was also exiled. Oliver Cromwell, a parliamentarian and Puritan, ascended to prominence in the Civil War and, following the war, assumed power as Lord Protector of England. Under his Protectorate England functioned as a repub lic, adopting a policy of general religious toleration, abolishing the Anglican bishops and discountenancing the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.5
The tolerance of Puritanism lasted until a few years after Cromwell’s death in 1658, after which his sons proved inept to match his strength of leadership which had been a major factor in achieving the political stability of Cromwell’s interregnum. Parliament, seeking stability, reinstated the monarchy in 1660. Charles II — the exiled son of the thrice son of hell Charles I — ascended the throne, promising that he would maintain the pol icy of general religious tolerance. He was his father’s son, and he reneged. Most famously, the Act of Uniformity was passed on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1662, and it mandated that the Anglican Book of Common Prayer be used in all England’s churches. Puri tan pastors refused to conform, and over 2,000 were ejected from their pulpits. During Charles II’s time, John Bunyan lamented that England’s sins “are conspicuous, they are open, they are de clared as Sodom’s were,” and, “they have infected most of them that now name the name of Christ.”6 Charles II spent his reign slandering Cromwell and persecuting Puritans. He died in 1685,
5. “Cromwell, Oliver,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., edited by E.A. Livingstone and F.L. Cross (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1997), 436.
6. John Bunyan, “A Holy Life The Beauty of Christianity,” in The Works of John Bunyan, ed. by George Offor, vol. 2 (The Banner of Truth Trust: Carlisle, PA, 1991), 534.
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with 14 illegitimate children and no legitimate heir.7
His brother James II succeeded him. An ardent Romanist, James plotted to consolidate power under his rule and Roman ize England through bribery and backroom deals. A minority of established Protestant clergy, wise to his intentions, invited his Dutch and Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange, to depose him in 1688. William obliged and, without bloodshed, reinstated English liberty — notably legislating the toleration of Puritanism — while sending James II into exile. The Orange Revolution, or Glorious Revolution, as it came to be known, ended the Antichrist reign in 17th-century England.
Bunyan’s Conversion and Ministry
While Antichrist blustered from the offices of state, God was quietly preparing another case of using the weak and foolish to shame the wise and powerful. John Bunyan, the son of a me chanic, was born one mile from Bedford, England, in 1628, 3 years after Charles I began his reign. He received little education, just enough for him to read and write. Sinfulness characterized his earliest years. “As soon as his strength enabled him, he devoted his whole soul and body to licentiousness.”8 He fought in the English Civil War, although what side he fought on is uncer tain. In 1648, with the war over and Bunyan still unconverted, he married a Christian woman who — despite her obvious lapse in becoming unequally yoked to him — with “affectionate, amiable mildness”9 influenced Bunyan to consider Christ.
Providence directed events that led to his eventual conversion. He once found himself under conviction for dishonouring
7. Roy Strong, The Story of Britain, (Pegasus Books, Ltd: New York, 2019), 262.
8. George Offor, “Memoir of John Bunyan,” in The Works of John Bunyan, vol. 1, iii.
9. Ibid., ix.
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the Sabbath, to the point that he wouldn’t stand near church bells for fear that God, in judgement, might cause them to fall and crush him.10 He became ashamed on another occasion when, while he was “cursing and swearing” in public, a woman, who herself was “a very loose and ungodly wretch,” publicly castigat ed him, saying his behaviour could “spoil all the youth in a whole town.”11 He later overheard a group of godly ladies discussing the second birth. He inquired of them, and they directed him to the Baptist church in Bedford. He was converted and then baptized by immersion, as a Baptist, in 1653. After an internal struggle with doubt over his salvation, God quieted his soul with assur ance. He began to preach the Gospel.
His popularity spread with the news of his dramatic con version, and he earned a reputation for fiery preaching. “Fear of the consequences, or of offending his enemies, never entered his mind.”12 Predictably, “Bunyan’s veneration for the Scrip tures, as the only source and standard of religious knowledge, led him into frequent controversies.”13 He preached against the unregenerate clergy of his day, and called believers to come out from among them. In retribution, they slandered him as a Jesuit, a thief, a polygamist, and an adulterer.14 Edward Fowler — the Bishop of Gloucester who Bunyan lumped with a “whole gang of…rabbling counterfeit clergy”15— called Bunyan “most unchristian and wicked,” “a piece of proud folly,” and, “infamous in Bedford for a pestilent schismatic.”16 Bunyan once exclaimed, “I
10. Ibid., x—xi.
11. John Bunyan, “Grace Abounding To The Chief Of Sinners,” in Works, vol. 1, 9.
12. Offor, “Memoir,” lvi.
13. Ibid., xliii.
14. Ibid., xliv.
15. Bunyan, “A Defence of the Doctrine of Justification,” in Works, vol. 2, 322.
16. Quoted by Offor, in “Editor’s Advertisement,” Ibid., 279.
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rejoice in reproaches for Christ’s sake.”17
His pastor, John Gifford, defended Bunyan: “I verily believe that God hath counted him faithful, and put him in the minis try.” Gifford also countered Bunyan’s attackers, asserting that, by Bunyan’s ministry, “their slothfulness hath been reproved, and the eyes of many have been opened to see a difference between those that are sent of God and those that run before they are sent.”18
Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II — the son of the thrice son of hell Charles I — became king, and Bunyan, on November 16, 1660, ominously became the first preacher imprisoned under Charles.
His situation was desperate. Bunyan’s first wife had died, leaving him four children, the firstborn being blind. He had remarried in 1659. His second wife cared for the children after his 1660 arrest, and the stress of the arrest resulted in her mis carrying their first child. She once recounted her privations to a judge: “My lord, I have four small children that cannot help themselves, of which one is blind, and have nothing to live upon but the charity of good people.”19 Her agony induced her into a dangerous illness that she physically survived, but from which she never mentally recovered.20 Bunyan, in anguish over his fam ily’s dreadful circumstances, described his inner turmoil: “the parting with my wife and poor children hath oft been to me in this place as the pulling the flesh from my bones,” and continuing he explained, “because I should have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries and wants that my poor family was like to meet with , should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all I had beside.” He continued, “I saw in this condition I was as a man who was
17. Bunyan, “Grace Abounding,” 46.
18. Bunyan, “Grace Abounding,” 46.
19. Offor, Memoirs, lv.
20. Ibid., l.
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pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children.” Yet, he knew it was his duty to God and thus reasoned, “I must first pass a sentence of death upon everything that can properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments, and all, as dead to me, and myself to them,” while quoting Christ’s words in Matthew 10:37, “He that loveth father or mother, so or daughter, more than me, is not worthy of me.”21
With the tragedy of his family’s circumstances, Bunyan’s chronicle of his interactions with officials just after his arrest offers a most relevant historical lesson. A few months after his arrest, a Clerk of the Peace, one Mr. Cobb, visited Bunyan in prison. Cobb, Bunyan recounts, “came to admonish me.”22 As an historical pretext to his arrest and only a few weeks prior, a reli gious fanatic amassed a small crowd in London, unsuccessfully attempting to overthrow the newly restored King Charles II, and killing many in the process. With the public on edge, the Crown enforced assembly bans on unlicensed religious gatherings to prevent more zealots from organizing. Bunyan was under police surveillance prior to his arrest because the authorities feared he was about “to do some fearful business, to the destruction of the country,”23 and at his arrest he learned they suspected that his congregation was armed. Unfounded suspicions in mind, Cobb asserted that the state’s assembly bans were for the public good. Bunyan retorted, “My end in meeting with others is simply to do as much good as I can.”24 As in our own COVID-19 times, the Crown maintained that their restrictions served the public, while Bunyan, like the non-conforming clergy of our last two years, asserted that his assemblies served the people of God. Cobb continued, maintaining that the Crown permitted
21. Bunyan, Grace Abounding, 48.
22. Bunyan, “Relation of Bunyan’s Imprisonment,” in Works, vol. 1, 54. 23. Ibid., 50. 24. Ibid., 57
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Bunyan to communicate his beliefs to individuals, but only prohibited the gathering of crowds. He sounded much like the state’s offer during our own lockdowns which “permitted” on line preaching while severely restricting church capacity limits. Bunyan, like the faithful among us, knew better: “if I may, by the law, discourse with one, surely it is to do him good; and if I, by discoursing, may do good to one, surely, by the same law, I may do good to many.”25 Bunyan clashed with the Crown because he believed the unrestricted gathering was good in itself.
Following what has become a familiar line of reasoning in our own time, Cobb argued that Bunyan should act neighbour ly by submitting to the law: “Cannot you submit, and, notwith standing, do as much good as you can, in a neighbourly way, without having such meetings?” Bunyan replied, “I dare not but exercise that gift which God hath given me for the good of the people.”26 Contrary to Cobb, Bunyan understood that turning persons away from hearing him preach was unneighbourly.
Cobb attempted a compromise with Bunyan, asking him to stop gathering crowds temporarily: “[What] if you should for bear awhile, and sit still, till you see further how things will go?” Bunyan asserted that a temporary compromise would imperil his soul by referencing the famed 14th-century English outlaw preacher John Wycliffe: “Wicliffe saith, that he which leaveth off preaching and hearing of the Word of God for fear of excommu nication of men, he is already excommunicated of God, and shall in the day of judgment be counted a traitor to Christ.”27
Perhaps not surprisingly, Cobb also alluded to Romans 13:1 to convince Bunyan that full submission to the state is godly: “You know…that the Scripture saith ‘the powers that be are or dained of God,’” and, “the King then commands you, that you should not have any private meetings; because it is against his
25. Ibid., 58. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 59.
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law, and he is ordained of God, therefore you should not have any.” Referencing the legal troubles of Christ and the Apostle Paul, Bunyan justified his own disobedience to the state: “I hope you will not say that either Paul, or Christ, were such as deny magistracy, and so sinned against God in slighting the ordi nance.”28
Now in 2022, we remember that for nearly two years not a few Canadian pastors — fearful of COVID-19 and subservient to the state — shut churches, moved “worship” online, restricted church attendance, abandoned the sick to die alone, mandated masks during worship, turned unvaccinated worshippers away, enforced social distancing at church, advocated state intrusion that impoverished small family businesses, etc. Compliant clergy and bureaucrats alike resorted to a few stock arguments to cajole non-compliant churches into submission to so-called “health regulations”. Those arguments are manifestly similar, if not exact copies, to the ones used against Bunyan, which he documented. The global COVID-19 lockdowns showcased the perennial relevance of Bunyan’s time and testimony, even as they also demonstrate that Antichrist might change his shape but not his intentions. George Offor, editor of Bunyan’s works, writing long after the persecuting times of Bunyan, predicted Antichrist’s re turn: “The dread enemy may yet appear in a different shape to any that he has hitherto assumed.”29 Offor’s prediction has come true. We have beheld Antichrist in a different shape — this time with arbitrary “health mandates” — but still intent to lord over men and control Christian worship, thereby usurping the place of the Lord Christ. While we might hope that the COVID-19 era is behind us, we should reflect on those days to learn from them. Some should repent for how they carried on. Bunyan’s example will help us, and, as we prepare to potentially face Antichrist again, we should echo Bunyan’s confession to God: “Lord, I can 28. Ibid. 29. Offor, in “Prefatory Remarks by the Editor” to “Of Antichrist, and His Ruin,” by Bunyan, in Works, vol. 2, 41—42.
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and His Ruin not consent that human inventions and doctrines of men should be joined with thy institution as matters of worship and imposed upon my conscience as such.”30
Aiding us to that end, Bunyan wrote Of Antichrist, and His Ruin long after his 1673 release from his twelve-year imprison ment and after his final brief 1677 stint in prison. By then his popularity, with the runaway success of Pilgrim’s Progress, had exploded. One biographer noted that with one day’s notice he could preach to upwards of 3,000 people outdoors, and he once preached to 1,200 outdoors in London on a weekday at 7:00 AM in the winter. Distinguished Puritan scholar John Owen — a contemporary to Bunyan — was asked by King Charles II why a scholar like him would go listen to the preaching of an unedu cated tinker like Bunyan. Owen replied, “May it please your Maj esty, if I could possess the tinker’s abilities, I would gladly give in exchange all my learning.”31 Bunyan even became chaplain to the Lord Mayor of London. At the peak of his ministry with his twilight looming, he warned of Antichrist and offered hope with the promise of Antichrist’s ruin.
King James II — who succeeded his brother Charles II just three years before Bunyan’s death — attempted to Romanize En gland by consolidating local power under his rule. Alarmed by this new threat of arbitrary rule, Bunyan, by then also pastor of a flock, galvanized his Bedford congregation against James II’s conspiracy. Desiring to neutralize him, James II attempted to pacify Bunyan with political favours. Bunyan resisted and wrote Of Antichrist, and His Ruin. “At this time he again manifested his lion heart, by writing and preparing for the press a fearless treatise on Antichrist, and His Ruin… This was one of the last treatises which Bunyan prepared for the press, as if in his dying moments he would aim a deadly thrust at Apollyon.”32 The vol30. Bunyan, “Advice to Sufferers,” in Works, vol. 2, 714.
31. John Owen, quoted by Offor, “Memoir of John Bunyan,” in Works, vol. 1, lxx.
32. Offor, “Memoir,” lxxi—lxxii.
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ume, however, remained unpublished until it appeared in a folio in 1691, three years after Bunyan’s death. To my knowledge, this copy published by Ezra Press is the first time it has ever been published as a standalone volume.
Bunyan’s Legacy
Our contemporary English-speaking church has now, for at least a couple generations, received sensational teachings on Antichrist fabricated to sell novels and whatnot. This, quite understandably, has created a distaste for the concept, and deprived God’s peo ple of a meaningful, biblical lens through which to consider the doctrine of Antichrist. Therein might be why so many proved themselves unprepared for the COVID-19 lockdowns. Repulsed by fanciful concoctions of Antichrist, the church had no category for a state at war with her.
Born-again men and evil times are the substantial elements of combustion. Bunyan, from his study of Scripture in his own context, bequeathed to us a timeless biblical category for the combustion that occurs when a wicked establishment attacks a faithful church. By extracting the principles, we learn to diag nose our own times. Antichrist endeavors to usurp Christ’s headship over His Bride, the church, “to prostrate her to his lusts, to deflower her, and to make her an adulteress.”33 Antichrist “hath turned the sword of the magistrate against those that keep God’s law,” rendering the state’s sword “the ruin of the good and virtu ous, and a protection of the vile and base.”34 This book provides a needed category.
Beyond just leaving us that category, this book strengthens confidence that God has decreed all events, even the rise of An tichrist governments, for the good of His elect. “And the reason why Antichrist came into the world, was, That the church, which
33. Bunyan, “Of Antichrist, and His Ruin,” in Works, vol. 2, 75. 34. Ibid., 77.
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AntiChrist and His Ruin is the body of Christ, might be tried, and made white by suffer ing under his tyranny, and by bearing witness against his false hoods.”35 To this end, “the church shall single him out from all beasts, and so follow him with cries, and pinch him with their voices, that he alone shall perish by their means.”36 God in His wisdom appoints Antichrist to purge His church of hypocrites, to embolden His chosen in their militancy against evil, and to unveil His glory in triumph.
Explaining God’s purpose, Bunyan’s writing offers the sure hope of the church’s sure triumph and Antichrist’s sure demise. Thus “will the beauty of Antichrist fade like a flower, and fall as doth a leaf when the sap of the tree has left it.”37 Unlike many today who view the state as a neutral force, Bunyan maintained that God would, in His time, raise up a Christ-honouring state which would properly employ its sword to destroy the body of Antichrist. “I believe that by magistrates and powers we shall be delivered and kept from Antichrist.”38 “Now these kings whose hearts God shall set to destroy Antichrist, shall do it without those inward reluctancies that will accompany inferior men: they shall be stript of all pity and compassion.”39 As if to vindicate Bunyan posthumously, Providence directed William of Orange to enter England and depose James II — restoring English lib erty and enacting the toleration of Puritanism — less than two months after Bunyan’s August 1688 death. “An enlightened mon arch was placed upon the vacant throne, and persecution was deprived of its tiger claws and teeth by the act of toleration.”40 Bunyan entered ministry just prior to the enthronement of the tyrant King Charles II. That ministry ended with his death
35. Ibid., 77. 36. Ibid., 48. 37. Ibid., 49. 38. Ibid., 74 39. Ibid.
40. George Offor, in “The Editor’s Advertisement” to “A Holy Life The Beauty of Christianity,” by Bunyan, in Works, vol. 2, 505.
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only weeks before the dethronement of Charles II’s tyrannical successor King James II. As a result of the dethronement, England was liberated. For much of the 17th century, Antichrist belched his dense and foul breath into England’s island air. Bunyan’s ministry was a sustained witness against that beast. Among us — the contemporary heirs of Puritan Non-Conformity — Bunyan’s torch still blazes, and our foe Antichrist will inevitably combust in its light. After all, as John Bunyan said, “Religion that is pure is a hot thing, and it usually burns the fingers of those that fight against it.”41
Jacob Reaume, Senior Pastor, Trinity Bible Chapel Waterloo, Ontario August 18, 2022
41. Bunyan, “Advice to Sufferers,” 738.
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A PREMONITION TO THE READER
After that God had delivered Babylon and her king into the hands of the kings of the Medes and Persians, then began the liberty of the Jews, from their long and tedious captivity: For though Nebuchadnezzar and his sons did tyrannically enslave, and hold them under; yet so wrought God with the hearts of those kings that succeeded them, that they made proclamation to them to go home, and build their city, temple, etc., and worship their own God according to his own law (2 Chron 30:6; Ezra 1). But because I would not be tedious in enumerating instances for the clearing of this, therefore I will content myself with one, and with a brief note upon it. It is that in the seventh of Ezra 26: ‘And whosoever will not do the law of thy God, and the law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily upon him, whether it be to death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment.’ This is the conclusion of a letter that king Artaxerxes gave to Ezra the priest and scribe, when he granted his petition, and gave him leave to go to Jerusalem to build the temple, and to offer sacrifice there to the God whose house is in Jerusalem. And a conclusion it was, both comfortable and sharp; comfortable to Ezra and his companions, but sharp unto his en emies. I shall here present you with a copy of the letter at large:
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Artaxerxes, king of kings, unto Ezra the priest, a scribe of the law of the God of heaven, perfect peace, and at such a time. I make a decree, that all they of the people of Israel, and of his priests and levites, in my realm, which are minded of their own free-will to go up to Jerusalem, go with thee. Forasmuch as thou art sent of the king, and of his seven counsellors, to inquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem, according to the law of thy God which is in thine hand; And to carry the silver and gold, which the king and his counsellors have freely offered unto the God of Israel, whose habitation is in Je rusalem. And all the silver and gold that thou canst find in all the province of Babylon, with the free-will-offering of the people, and of the priests, offering willingly for the house of their God which is in Jerusalem: That thou mayest buy speedily with this money bullocks, rams, lambs, with their meat-offerings and their drink-offerings, and offer them upon the altar of the house of your God which is in Jeru salem. And whatsoever shall seem good to thee, and to thy brethren, to do with the rest of the silver and the gold, that do after the will of your God. The vessels also that are given thee for the service of the house of thy God, those deliver thou before the God of Jerusalem. And whatsoever more shall be needful for the house of thy God, which thou shalt have occasion to bestow, bestow it out of the king’s treasure- house. And I, even I Artaxerxes the king, do make a decree to all the treasurers which are beyond the river, that whatsoever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, shall require of you, it be done speedily. Unto an hundred talents of silver, and to an hundred measures of wheat, and to an hundred baths of wine, and to an hundred baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much. Whatsoever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it be diligently done for the house of the God of heaven: for why should there be wrath against the realm of the king and his sons? Also we certify you, that touching any of the priests and levites, singers, porters, nethinims, or ministers of this House of God, it shall not be lawful to impose toll, tribute, or custom, upon them. And thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God, that is in thine hand, set magistrates and judges, which may judge all the people that are beyond the river, all such as know the laws of thy God; and teach ye them that know them not. And whosoever will not do the law of thy God, and the law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily upon him, whether it be unto death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment (Ezra 7:11-26).
This is the letter; and now for the scope thereof. First, Generally.
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Secondly, Particularly.
Generally
The general scope of the letter is this: A grant given by the king to Ezra the scribe, to go to Jerusalem, and build there the temple of God, and offer sacrifice in it according to the law: With commis sions annexed thereunto, to the king’s lieutenants, treasurers and governors on that side the river, to further the work with such things as by the king was commanded they should.
Particularly
But we will consider the matter particularly:
1. As to the manner of the grant which the king gave to Ezra and his brethren to go thither.
2. As to the king’s grant, with reference to their building, and way of worship.
3. With reference to the king’s liberality and gifts towards the building of the temple, and by what rules it was to be bestowed.
4. As to the way that the king concluded they should be governed in their own land.
5. With reference to the king’s charge to his officers that were thereabout, not to hinder Ezra in his work.
6. And lastly, with reference to the king’s threat and commandment to do judgment if they should hinder it.
First, As to the manner of the grant that the king gave to Ezra and his brethren to go to build, it was such an one as forced none, but left every Jew to his own choice, whether he would go, or forbear.
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Premonition to
The words are these: ‘Artaxerxes, king of kings, unto Ezra the priest, a scribe of the law of the God of heaven, perfect peace, and at such a time. I make a decree, that all they of the people of Isra el, and of his priests and levites, in my realm, which are minded of their own free-will to go up to Jerusalem, go with thee’ (verse 12, 13).
Thus gracious then was the king: He made a decree, That all they of the captive Jews, their priests and levites, that would return to their own land, to build their temple, and to sacrifice there, might: He would hinder none, force none, but left them free, to do as they would.
Secondly, As to the king’s grant, with reference to their build ing, and way of worship there, nothing was to be done therein, but according to the law of the God of Ezra, which was in his hands (verse 14). Hence, when he was come to Jerusalem, he was to in quire concerning Judah and Jerusalem; to wit, what was wanting in order to the temple and worship of God there, according to the law of his God, which was in his hand. Also when they went about to build, and to sacrifice, all was to be done according as was commanded by the God of heaven (verse 23): Yea, this was granted by the king, and his seven counsellors.
Thirdly, As to the king’s liberality towards the building of this house, etc. it was large: He gave silver, gold, bullocks, rams, lambs; with wheat, wine, oil, and salt (verse 17, 22); but would by his royal power, give no orders how in particular things should be bestowed, but left all that to Ezra the priest, to do with it ac cording to the will, word, or law of his God (verse 18).
Fourthly, As to the way that the king concluded they should be governed in their own land, it was by their own laws; yea, he did bid Ezra the priest, after the wisdom of his God that was in his hand, set magistrates and judges, which might judge all the people, etc. only he bid him make them such, which did know the law of his God: Also the king added, That they should teach it to them that knew it not.
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