day no. 16,274: the stake and the stakes

"The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school." -- G.K. Chesterton

Sending a man to the stake is certainly more extreme than sending his son to elementary school, but the one is within the jurisdiction of the State and the other isn't. God has appointed the magistrate to be His deacon of wrath, not His department of education. As such, God has given the government the responsibility to execute convicted criminals, but has not given them the ability to educate covenant children. In this regard, conscripting kids to the secular catechism is an overreach of the State. The audacity is not in severity, but in scope. To send any man to his death is more severe than sending all men to school; but acting violently upon one man in a a single moment pales in comparison to acting subtly upon all men's children over time.