James Bannerman on the state and the second table of the law

[Reformed Covenanter]

... The first Table of the moral law comprehends an order of duties which it is the main and direct object of the Church to inculcate and advance among men, and which Voluntaries will not admit to appertain in any sense to the civil magistrate. But setting aside these, there are the duties of the second Table of the moral law, which no one can pretend to deny are the concern of the state as much as of the Church.

The life of man, as entrusted to the keeping of his fellow-men, or exposed to their violence; the ordinance of marriage, with its rights and privileges both civil and sacred; the property of man, with the laws that regulate its possession, and declare the guilt of encroachment upon it; the duty and solemnity of an oath, which forms the cement of civilised society, and without which it could not cohere as a society at all; the obligation of honesty and justice between man and man, and the peace and contentment of each with his lot and outward estate: these are matters which are equally the concernment of the civil magistrate and of the Christian Church, and fall equally in one shape or other within the province of both. ...

For more, see James Bannerman on the state and the second table of the law.