2 Kings 16:10-17 - Homiletics

A wicked king allowed to have his way by a weak priest.

The double regime , civil and ecclesiastical, which it pleased God to establish in his first Church, the Jewish, and to continue, with certain modifications, in his second Church, the Christian, seems to have been designed for the mutual advantage of both parties. Authority, in whatever hands it is placed, is always liable to be abused, to over-assert itself, to grow arbitrary, autocratic, tyrannical. Hence the necessity of checks, of a balance of forces, of counterpoise, of an arrangement by which the undue preponderance of any single authority shall be prevented. It is sometimes needful that the civil authority shall interpose to keep the spiritual within due bounds, and disallow the establishment of sacerdotal tyranny. It is quite as often requisite for the spirituality to assert itself, and check the endeavors of kings and nobles to establish an unlimited autocracy. From time to time the two independent authorities, the civil and ecclesiastical, the regale and the pontificale , are sure to come into collision. Our own history presents instances in the struggles of Anselm against Rufus, of Becket against Henry II ; and of the seven bishops against the last of the Stuart kings. Under such circumstances weakness on either side constitutes a serious peril to the community. A weak king, priest-ridden, makes dangerous concessions to the ecclesiastical order, and imperils the peace and prosperity of his kingdom by so doing. A weak priest, timid and timeserving, allows the rights of his order to be trampled on, and lays up no less an amount of trouble in the future for the nation to which he belongs. If Ahaz had been succeeded by another worldly minded and ambitious king, instead of the pious Hezekiah, there is no saying how low the ecclesiastical authority might not have sunk, or how soon the kingly office might not have freed itself from all checks, arid have become absolute, and in a short time tyrannical. Urijah did his best to destroy the constitution of his country, and to turn the Judaean limited monarchy into a pure despotism. He was weak rather than wicked; but his weakness might have had the worst results. It was only the accident of Ahaz being succeeded by a truly religious prince that prevented the precedent, which he had set, from entailing ruinous consequences.