Historic Documents

Lex Rex by Samuel Rutherford

Lex, Rex,
or
The Law and the Prince;
A dispute for The Just Prerogative of King and People: containing The reasons and causes of the most necessary defensive wars of the Kingdom of Scotland, and of their Expedition for the aid and help of their dear brethren of England;

in which their innocency is asserted, and a full answer is given to a seditious pamphlet,
entitled,
“SACRO-SANCTA REGUM MAJESTAS,”
or
The Sacred and Royal Prerogative of Christian Kings;
under the name of J. A., but penned by
John Maxwell, the excommunicate Popish Prelate;
with a scriptural confutation of the ruinous grounds of W. Barclay, H. Grotius, H. Arnisæus,
Ant. de Domi. popish Bishop of Spilato, and of other late anti-magitratical
royalists, as the author of Ossorianum, Dr. Ferne, E. Symmons,
the Doctors of Aberdeen, etc.

In Forty-four Questions

by the
Rev. Samuel Rutherford
sometime Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrews

London: Printed for John Field, and are to be sold at his house
upon Addle-hill, near Baynards-Castle. Octob. 7, 1644.

Edited by Jon Roland
2002

Lex, Rex
Author’s Preface

by Rev. Samuel Rutherford

Who doubteth (Christian Reader) but innocency must be under the courtesy and mercy of malice, and that it is a real martyrdom to be brought under the lawless inquisition of the bloody tongue. Christ, the prophets, and apostles of our Lord, went to heaven with the note of traitors, seditious men, and such as turned the world upside down: calumnies of treason to Cæsar were an ingredient in Christ’s cup, and therefore the author is the more willing to drink of that cup that touched his lip, who is our glorious Forerunner: what, if conscience toward God, and credit with men, cannot both go to heaven with the saints, the author is satisfied with the former companion, and is willing to dismiss the other. Truth to Christ cannot be treason to Cæsar, and for his choice he judgeth truth to have a nearer relation to Christ Jesus, than the transcendent and boundless power of a mortal prince.

He considered that popery and defection had made a large step in Britain, and that arbitrary government had over-swelled all bans of law, that it was now at the highest float, and that this sea approaching the farthest border of fancied absoluteness, was at the score of ebbing: and the naked truth is, prelates, a wild and pushing cattle to the lambs and flock of Christ, had made a hideous noise, the wheels of their charriot did run an equal pace with the blood-thirsty mind of the daughter of Babel. Prelacy, the daughter planted in her mother’s blood, must verify that word, As is the mother, so is the daughter: why, but do not the prelates now suffer? True, but their sufferings are not of blood, or kindred, to the calamities of these of whom Lactantius saith, (1. 5, c. 19,) O quam honesta voluntate miseri erant. The causes of their suffering are, 1st, Hope of gain and glory, steering their helm to a shore they much affect; even to a church of gold, of purple, yet really of clay and earth. 2nd, The lie is more active upon the spirits of men, not because of its own weakness, but because men are more passive in receiving the impressions of error than truth; and opinions lying in the world’s fat womb, or of a conquering nature, whatever notions side with the world, to prelates and men of their make are very efficacious.

There is another cause of the sickness of our time, God plagued heresy to beget Atheism and security, as atheism and security had begotten heresy, even as clouds through reciprocation of causes engender rain, rain begat vapours, vapours clouds, and clouds rain, so do sins overspread our sad times in a circular generation.

And now judgment presseth the kingdoms, and of all the heaviest judgments the sword, and of swords the civil sword, threateneth vastation, yet not, I hope, like the Roman civil sword, of which it was said,

Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos.

I hope this war shall be Christ’s triumph, Babylon’s ruin.

That which moved the author, was not (as my excommunicate adversary, like a Thraso, saith) the escapes of some pens, which necessitated him to write, for many before me hath learnedly trodden in this path, but that I might add a new testimony to the times.

I have not time to examine the P. Prelate’s preface, only, I give a taste of his gall in this preface, and of a virulent piece, of his agnosco stylum et genium Thrasonis, in which he laboureth to prove how inconsistent presbyterial government is with monarchy, or any other government.

  1.  He denieth that the crown and sceptre is under any co-active power of pope or presbytery, or censurable, or dethroneable; to which we say, presbyteries profess that kings are under the co-active power of Christ’s keys of discipline, and that prophets and pastors, as ambassadors of Christ, have the keys of the kingdom of God, to open and let in believing princes, and also to shut them out, if they rebel against Christ; the law of Christ excepteth none, (Mat. xvi. 19; xviii. 15, 16; 2 Cor. x. 6; Jer. i. 9,) if the king’s sins may be remitted in a ministerial way, (as Job xx. 23, 24,) as prelates and their priests absolve kings; we think they may be bound by the hand that loosed; presbyteries never dethroned kings, never usurped that power. Your father, P. Prelate, hath dethroned many kings; I mean the pope whose power, by your own confession, (c. 5, p. 59,) differeth from yours by divine right only in extent.
  2.  When sacred hierarchy, the order instituted by Christ, is overthrown, what is the condition of sovereignty? — Ans. — Surer than before, when prelates deposed kings. 2. I fear Christ shall never own this order.
  3.  The mitre cannot suffer, and the diadem be secured. — Ans. — Have kings no pillars to their thrones but antichristian prelates. Prelates have trampled diadem and sceptre under their feet, as histories teach us.
  4.  Do they not (puritans) magisterially determine that kings are not of God’s creation by authoritative commission; but only by permission, extorted by importunity, and way given, that they may be a scourge to a sinful people? — Ans. — Any unclean spirit from hell, could not speak a blacker lie; we hold that the king, by office, is the church’s nurse father, a sacred ordinance, the deputed power of God; but by the Prelate’s way, all inferior judges, and God’s deputies on earth, who are also our fathers in the fifth commandment style, are to be obeyed by no divine law; the king, misled by p. prelates, shall forbid to obey them, who is in downright truth, a mortal civil pope, may loose and liberate subjects from the tie of a divine law.
  5.  His inveighing against ruling elders, and the rooting out of antichristian prelacy, without any word of Scripture on the contrary, I pass as the extravagancy of a malcontent, because he is deservedly excommunicated for perjury, popery, Socinianism, tyranny over men’s conscience, and invading places of civil dignity, and deserting his calling, and the camp of Christ, &c.
  6.  None were of old anointed but kings, priests, and prophets; who, then, more obliged, to maintain the Lord’s anointed, than priests and prophets? The church hath never more beauty and plenty under any government than monarchy, which is most countenanced by God, and magnified by Scripture. — Ans. Pastors are to maintain the rights of people, and a true church, no less than the right of kings; but prelates, the court parasites, and creatures of the king, that are born for the glory of their king, can do no less than profess this in words, yet it is true that Tacitus writeth of such, (Hist. 1. 1,) Libentius cum fortuna principis, quam cum principe loquuntur: and it is true, that the church hath had plenty under kings, not so much, because they were kings, as because they were godly and zealous: except the P. P. say, that the oppressing kings of Israel and Judah, and the bloody horns that made war with the lamb, are not kings. In the rest of the epistle he extols the Marquis of Ormond with base flattery, from his loyalty to the king, and his more than admirable prudence in the treaty of cessation with the rebels; a woe is due to this false prophet, who calleth darkness light, for the former was abominable and perfidious apostacy from the Lord’s cause and people of God, whom he once defended, and the cessation was a selling of the blood of many hundred thousand protestants, men, women, and sucking children.

This cursed P. hath written of late a treatise against the presbyterial government of Scotland, in which there is a bundle of lies, hellish calumnies, and gross errors.

  1.  The first lie is, that we have lay elders, whereas, they are such as rule, but labour not in the word and doctrine (1 Tim. v. 7, p. 3).
  2.  The second lie, that deacons, who only attend tables, are joint rulers with pastors (p. 3).
  3.  That we never, or little use the lesser excommunication, that is, debarring from the Lord’s Supper (p. 4).
  4.  That any church judicature in Scotland exacteth pecuniary mulcts, and threaten excommunication to the non-payers, and refuseth to accept the repentance of any who are not able to pay: the civil magistrate only fineth for drunkenness, and adultery, blaspheming of God, which are frequent sins in prelates.
  5.  A calumny it is to say that ruling elders are of equal authority to preach the word as pastors (p. 7).
  6.  That laymen are members of presbyteries or general assemblies. Buchanan and Mr. Melvin were doctors of divinity; and could have taught such an ass as John Maxwell.
  7.  That expectants are intruders upon the sacred function, because, as sons of the prophets, they exercise their gifts for trial in preaching.
  8.  That the presbytery of Edinburgh hath a superintending power, because they communicate the affairs of the church and write to the churches, what they hear prelates and hell devise against Christ and his church.
  9.  That the king must submit his sceptre to the presbytery; the king’s sceptre is his royal office, which is not subject to any judicature, no more than any lawful ordinance of Christ; but if the king, as a man, blasphem God, murder the innocent, advance belly-gods, (such as our prelates, for the most pare, were,) above the Lord’s inheritance, the ministers of Christ are to say, “The king troubleth Israel, and they have the keys to open and shut heaven to, and upon the king, if he can offend.”
  10.  That king James said, a Scottish presbytery and a monarchy agreeth as well as God and the devil, is true, but king James meant of a wicked king; else he spake as a man.
  11.  That the presbytery, out of pride, refused to answer king James’s honourable messengers, is a lie; they could not, in business of high concernment, return a present answer to a prince, seeking still to abolish presbyteries.
  12.  Its a lie, that all sins, even all civil business, come under the cognizance of the church, for only sins, as publicly scandalous, fall under their power. (Matt. xviii. 15-17, &c.; 2 Thess. iii. 11; 1 Tim. v. 20.) It is a calumny that they search out secret crimes, or that they ever disgraced the innocent, or divided families; where there be flagrant scandals, and pregnant suspicions of scandalous crimes, they search out these, as the incest of Spotswood, P. Prelate of St Andrews, with his own daughter; the adulteries of Whitefore, P. Prelate of Brichen, whose bastard came weeping to the assembly of Glasgow in the arms of the prostitute: these they searched out, but not with the damnable oath, ex officio, that the high commission put upon innocents, to cause them accuse themselves against the law of nature.
  13.  The presbytery hinder not lawful merchandise; scandalous exhortation, unjust suits of law, they may forbid; and so doth the Scripture, as scandalous to Christians, 2 Cor. vi.
  14.  They repeal no civil laws; they preach against unjust and grievous laws, as, Isaiah (x. 1) doth, and censure the violation of God’s holy day, which prelates profaned.
  15.  We know no parochial popes, we turn out no holy ministers, but only dumb dogs, non-residents, scandalous, wretched, and apostate prelates.
  16.  Our moderator hath no dominion, the P. Prelate absolveth him, while he saith, “All is done in our church by common consent” (p. 7).
  17.  It is true, we have no popish consecration, such as P. Prelate contendeth for in the mass, but we have such as Christ and his apostles used, in consecrating the elements.
  18.  If any sell the patrimony of the church, the presbytery censures him; if any take buds of malt, meal, beef, it is no law with us, no more than the bishop’s five hundred marks, or a year’s stipend that the entrant gave to the Lord Bishop. for a church. And whoever took buds in these days, (as king James by the earl of Dunbar, did buy episcopacy at a pretended assembly, by foul budding,) they were either men for the episcopal way, or perfidiously against their oath became bishops, all personal faults of this kind imputed to presbyteries, agree to them under the reduplication of episcopal men.
  19.  The leading men that covered the sins of the dying man, and so lost hissoul, were episcopal men; and though some men were presbterians, the faults of men cannot prejudice the truth of God; but the prelates always cry out against the rigour of presbyteries in censuring scandals; because they themselves do ill, they hate the light; now here the prelate condemneth them of remissness in discipline.
  20.  Satan, a liar from the beginning, saith, The presbytery was a seminary and nursery of fiends, contentious, and bloods, because they excommunicated murderers against king James’ will; which is all one to say, prophesying is a nurse of bloods, because the prophets cryed out against king Achab, and the murderers of innocent Naboth; the men of God must be either on the one side or the other, or then preach against reciprocation of injuries.
  21.  It is false that presbyteries usurp both swords; because they censure sins, which the civil magistrate should censure and punish. Ilias might be said then to mix himself with the civil business of the kingdom, because he prophecied against idolators’ killing of the Lord’s prophets; which crime the civil magistrate was to punish. But the truth is, the assembly of Glasgow, 1637, condemned the prelates, because they, being pastors, would be also lords of parliament, of session, of secret council, of exchequer, judges, barons, and in their lawless high commission, would fine, imprison, and use the sword.
  22.  It is his ignorance that he saith, a provincial synod is an associate body chosen out of all judicial presbyteries; for all pastors and doctors, without delegation, by virtue of their place and office, repair to the provincial synods, and without any choice at all, consult and voice there.
  23.  It is a lie that some leading men rule all here; indeed, episcopal men made factions to rent the synods; and though men abuse their power to factions, this cannot prove that presbyteries are inconsistent with monarchy; for then the Prelate, the monarch of his diocesan rout, should be anti-monarchical in a higher manner, for he ruleth all at his will.
  24.  The prime men, as Mr. R. Bruce, the faithful sevant of Christ, was honoured and attended by al, because of his suffering, zeal, and holiness, his fruitful ministry in gaining many thousand souls to Christ. So, though king James cast him off, and did swear, by God’s name, he intended to be king, (the Prelate maketh blasphemy a virtue in the king,) yet king James swore he could not find an honest minister in Scotland to be a bishop, and therefore he was necessitated to promote false knaves; but he said sometimes, and wrote it under his hand, that Mr R. Bruce was worthy of the half of his kingdom: but will this prove presbyteries inconsistent with monarchies? I should rather think that knave bishops, by king James’ judgment, were inconsistent with monarchies.
  25.  His lies of Mr R. Bruce, excerpted out of the lying manuscripts of apostate Spotswood, in that he would not but preach against the king’s recalling from exile some bloody popish lords to undo all, are nothing comparable to the incests, adulteries, blasphemies, perjuries, Sabbath-breaches, drunkenness, profanity, &c., committed by prelates before the sun.
  26.  Our General Assembly[1]is no other than Christ’s court, (Acts xv.) made up of pastors, doctors, and brethren, or elders.
  27.  They ought to have no negative vote to impede the conclusions of Christ in his servants.
  28.  It is a lie that the king hath no power to appoint time and place for the General Assembly; but his power is not privative to destroy the free courts of Christ, but accumulative to aid and assist them.
  29.  It is a lie that our General Assembly may repeal laws; command and expect performance of the king, or then excommunicate, subject to them, force and compel king, judges, and all, to submit to them. They may not force the conscience of the poorest beggar, nor is any Assembly infallible, nor can it lay bounds upon the souls of judges, which they are to obey with blind obedience—their power is ministerial, subordinate to Christ’s law; and what civil laws parliaments make against God’s word, they may authoritatively declare them to be unlawful, as though the emperor (Acts xv.) had commanded fornication and eating of bloos. Might not the Assembly forbid these in the synod? I conceive the prelates, if they had power, would repeal the act of parliament made, anno 1641, in Scotland, by his majesty personally present, and the three estates concerning the annulling of these acts of parliament and laws which established bishops in scotland; therefore bishops set themselves as independent monarchs above kings and laws; and what they damn in presbyteries and assemblies, that they practise themselves.
  30.  Commissioners from burghs, and two from Edinburgh, because of the largeness of that church, not for cathedral supereminence, sit in assemblies, not as sent from burghs, but as sent and authorised by the church session of the burgh, and so they sit there in a church capacity.
  31.  Doctors both in academies and in parishes, we desire, and our book of discipline holdeth forth such.
  32.  They hold, (I believe with warrant of God’s word,) if the king refuse to reform religion, the inferior judges, and assembly of godly pastors, and other church-officers may reform; if the king will not kiss the Son, and do his duty in purging the House of the Lord, may not Elijah[2] and the people do their duty, and cast out Baal’s priests. Reformation of religion is a personal act that belongeth to all, even to any one private person according to his place.
  33.  They may swear a covenant without the king, if he refuse; and build the Lord’s house (2 Chron. xv. 9) themselves; and relieve and defend one another, when they are oppressed. For my acts and duties of defending myself and the oppressed, do not tye my conscience conditionally, so the king consent, but absolutely, as all duties of the law of nature do. (Jer xxii. 3; Prov. xxiv. 11; Isa. lviii. 6; i. 17.)
  34.  The P. Prelate condemneth our reformation, because it was done against the will of our popish queen. This showeth what estimation he hath of popery, and how he abhorreth protestant religion.
  35.  They deposed the queen for her tyranny, but crowned her son; all this is vindicated in the following treatise.
  36.  The killing of the monstrous and prodigious wicked cardinal in the Castle of St Andrews, and the violence done to the prelates, who against all law of God and man, obtruded a mass service upon their own private motion, in Edinburgh anno 1637, can conclude nothing against presbyterial government except our doctrine commend these acts as lawful.
  37.  What was preached by the servant of Christ, whom (p. 46) he calleth the Scottish Pope, is printed and the P. Prelate durst not, could not, cite any thing thereof as popish or unsound, he knoweth that the man whom he so slandereth, knocked down the Pope and the prelates.
  38.  The making away the fat abbacies and bishoprics is a bloody heresy to the earthly-minded Prelate; the Confession of Faith commended by all the protestant churches, as a strong bar against popery, and the book of discipline, in which the servants of God laboured twenty years with fasting and praying, and frequent advice and counsel from the whole reformed churches, are to the P. Prelate a negative faith and devout imaginations; it is a lie that episcopacy, by both sides, was ever agreed on by law in Scotland.
  39.  And it was a heresy that Mr Melvin taught, that presbyter and bishop are one function in scripture, and that abbots and priors were not in God’s books, dic ubi legis; and is this a proof of inconsistency of presbyteries with a monarchy?
  40.  It is a heresy to the P. Prelate that the church appoint a fast, when king James appointed an unseasonable feast, when God’s wrath was upon the land, contrary to God’s word (Isa xxii. 12-14); and what! will this prove presbyteries to be inconsistent with monarchies?
  41.  This Assembly is to judge what doctrine is treasonable. What then? Surely the secret council and king, in a constitute church, is not synodically to determine what is true or false doctrine, more than the Roman emperor could make the church canon, Acts xv.
  42.  Mr Gibson, Mr Black, preached against king James’ maintaining the tyranny of bishops, his sympathizing with papists, and other crying sins, and were absolved in a general Assembly; shall this make presbyteries inconsistent with monarchy? Nay, but it proveth only that they are inconsistent with the wickedness of some monarchies; and that prelates have been like the four hundred false prophets that flattered king Achab, and those men that preached against the sins of the king and court, by prelates in both kingdoms, have been imprisoned, banished, their noses ript, their cheeks burnt, their ears cut.
  43.  The godly men that kept the Assembly of Aberdeen, anno 1603, did stand for Christ’s Prerogative, when king James took away all General Assemblies, as the event proved; and the king may, with as good warrant, inhibit all Assemblies for word ans sacrament, as for church discipline.
  44.  They excommunicate not for light faults and trifles, as the liar saith: our discipline saith the contrary.
  45.  This assembly never took on them to choose the king’s counsellors; but those who were in authority took king James, when he was a child, out of the company of a corrupt and seducing papist, Exme Duke of Lennox, whom the P. Prelate nameth noble, worthy, of eminent endowments.
  46.  It is true Glasgow Assembly, 1637, voted down the high commission, because it was not consented unto by the church, and yet was a church judicature, which took upon them to judge of the doctrine of ministers, and deprive them, and did encroach upon the liberties of the established lawful church judicatures.
  47.  This Assembly might well forbid Mr John Graham, minister, to make use of an unjust decree, it being scandalous in a minister to oppress.
  48.  Though nobles, barons, and burgesses, that profess the truth, be elders, and so members of the general Assembly, this is not to make the church the house, and the commonwealth the hanging; for the constituent members, we are content to be examined by the pattern of synods, Acts xv. 22, 23. Is this inconsistent with monarchy?
  49.  The commissioners of the General Assembly, are,
    1.  A mere occasional judicature.
    2.  Appointed by, and subordinate to the General Assembly.
    3.  They have the same warrant of God’s word, that messengers of the synod (Acts. xv. 22-27) hath.
  50.  The historical calumny of the 17th day of December, is known to all:
    1.  That the ministers had any purpose to dethrone king James, and that they wrote to John L. Marquis of Hamilton, to be king, because king James had made defection from the true religion: Satan devised, Spotswood and this P. Prelate vented this; I hope the true history of this is known to all. The holiest pastors, and professors in the kingdom, asserted this government, suffered for it, contended with authority only for sin, never for the power and office. These on the contrary side were men of another stamp, who minded earthly things, whose God was the world.
    2.  All the forged inconsistency betwixt presbyteries and monarchies, is an opposition with absolute monarchy and concluded with a like strength against parliaments, and all synods of either side, against the law and gospel preached to which kings and kingdoms are subordinate.

Lord establish peace and truth.

Question I

Whether government be warranted by a divine law.

I reduce all that I am to speak of the power of kings, to the author or efficient, — the matter or subject, — the form or power, — the end and fruit of their government, — and to some cases of resistance. Hence,

The question is either of government in general, or of particular species of government, such as government by one only, called monarchy, the government by some chief leading men, named aristocracy, the government by the people, going under the name of democracy. We cannot but put difference betwixt the institution of the office, viz. government, and the designation of person or persons to the office. What is warranted by the direction of nature’s light is warranted by the law of nature, and consequently by a divine law; for who can deny the law of nature to be a divine law?

That power of government in general must be from God, I make good, 1st, Because (Rom. xiii. 1) “there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God.”2nd, God commandeth obedience, and so subjection of conscience to powers; Rom. xiii. 5, “Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, (or civil punishment) but also for conscience sake;” 1 Pet. ii. 13, “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to the king as supreme,” &c. Now God only by a divine law can lay a band of subjection on the conscience, tying men to guilt and punishment if they transgress.

Conclus. All civil power is immediately from God in its root; in that, 1st, God hath made man a social creature, and one who inclineth to be governed by man, then certainly he must have put this power in man’s nature; so are we, by good reason, taught by Aristotle.[1] 2nd, God and nature intendeth the policy and peace of mankind, then must God and nature have given to mankind a power to compass this end; and this must be a power of government. I see not, then, why John Prelate, Mr. Maxwell, the excommunicated prelate of Ross, who speaketh in the name of J. Armagh,[2] had reason to say, That he feared that we fancied that the government of superiors was only for the more perfect, but had no authority over or above the perfect, nec lex, nec rex, justo posita. He might have imputed this to the Brazillians, who teach that every single man hath the power of the sword to revenge his own injuries, as Molina saith.[3]


[1] Aristot. Polit. lib. 1, c. 2.

[2] Sacro Sanc. Reg. Majestus, c. 1, p. 1,

[3] Molina, tom. 1, de justit. disp. 22.

Question II

Whether or not government be warranted by the law of nature.

As domestic society is by nature’s instance, so is civil society natural in radice, in the root, and voluntary in modo, in the manner of coalescing. Politic power of government agreeth not to man, singly as one man, except in that root of reasonable nature; but supposing that men be combined in societies or that one family cannot contain a society, it is natural that they join in a civil society, though the manner of union in a politic body, as Bodine saith,[1] be voluntary, Gen. x. 10; xv. 7; and Suarez saith,[2] That a power of making laws is given by God as a property flowing from nature, Qui dat formam, dat consequentia ad formam; not by any special action or grant, different from creation, nor will he have it to result from nature, while men be united into one politic body: which union being made, that power followeth without any new action of the will.

We are to distinguish betwixt a power of government, and a power of government by magistracy. That we defend ourselves from violence by violence is a consequent of unbroken and sinless nature; but that we defend ourselves by devolving our power over in the hands of one or more rulers seemeth rather positively moral than natural, except that it is natural for the child to expect help against violence from his father: for which cause I judge that learned senator Ferdinandus Vasquius said well,[3] That princedom, empire, kingdom, or jurisdiction hath its rise from a positive and secondary law of nations, and not from the law of pure nature. 1st, The law saith[4] there is no law of nature agreeing to all living creatures for superiority; for by no reason in nature hath a boar dominion over a boar, a lion over a lion, a dragon over a dragon, a bull over a bull: and if all men be born equally free, as I hope to prove, there is no reason in nature why one man should be king and lord over another; therefore while I be otherwise taught by the aforeside Prelate Maxwell, I conceive all jurisdiction of man over man to be as it were artificial and positive, and that it inferreth some servitude whereof nature from the womb hath freed us, if you except that subjection of children to parents, and the wife to the husband; and the law saith[5]De jure gentium secundarius est omnis principatus. 2nd, This also the Scripture proveth, while as the exalting of Saul or David above their brethren to be kings and captains of the Lord’s people, is ascribed not to nature (for king and beggar spring of one clay), but to an act of divine bounty and grace above nature, 1 Sam. xiii. 13; Ps. lxxviii. 70, 71.

1. There is no cause why royalists should deny government to be natural, but to be altogether from God, and that the kingly power is immediately and only from God, because it is not natural to us to be subject to government, but against nature for us to resign our liberty to a king, or any ruler or rulers; for this is much for us, and proveth not but government is natural; it concludeth that a power of government tali modo, by magistracy, is not natural; but this is but a sophism, a kata/ ti ad illud quod est dictum a0plw~j, this special of government, by resignation of our liberty, is not natural, therefore, power of government is not natural; it followeth not, a negatione specici non sequitur negatio generis, non est homo, ergo non est animal, And by the same reason I may, by an antecedent will, agree to a magistrate and a law, that I may be ruled in a politic society, and by a consequent will only, yea, and conditionally only, agree to the penalty and punishment of the law; and it is most true no man, by the instinct of nature, giveth consent to penal laws as penal, for nature doth not teach a man, nor incline his spirit to yield that his life shall be taken away by the sword, and his blood shed, except on this remote ground: a man hath a disposition that a vein be cut by the physician, or a member of his body cut off, rather than the whole body and life perish by some contagious disease; but here reason in cold blood, not a natural disposition, is the nearest prevalent cause and disposer of the business. When, therefore, a community, by the instinct and guidance of nature, incline to government, and to defend themselves from violence, they do not, by that instinct, formally agree to government by magistrates; and when a natural conscience giveth a deliberate consent to good laws, as to this, “Who so sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” Gen. ix. 6, he doth tacitly consent that his own blood shall be shed; but this he consenteth unto consequently, tacitly, and conditionally, — if he shall do violence to the life of his brother: yet so as this consent proceedeth not from a disposition every way purely natural. I grant reason may be necessitated to assent to the conclusion, being, as it were, forced by the prevalent power of the evidence of an insuperable and invincible light in the premises, yet, from natural affections, there resulteth an act of self-love for self-preservation. So David shall condemn another rich man, who hath many lambs, and robbeth his poor brother of his one lamb, and yet not condemn himself, though he be most deep in that fault, 1 Sam. xii. 5, 6; yet all this doth not hinder, but government, even by rulers, hath its ground in a secondary law of nature, which lawyers call secundario jus naturale, or jus gentium secundarium, a secondary law of nature, which is granted by Plato, and denied by none of sound judgment in a sound sense, and that is this, Licet vim virepellere, It is lawful to repel violence by violence; and this is a special act of the magistrate.

2. But there is no reason why we may not defend by good reasons that political societies, rulers, cities, and incorporations, have their rise, and spring from the secondary law of nature, 1st, Because by nature’s law family-government hath its warrant: and Adam, though there had never been any positive law, had a power of governing his own family, and punishing malefactors; but as Tannerus saith well,[6] and as I shall prove, God willing, this was not properly a royal or monarchical power; and I judge by the reasoning of Sotus,[7] Molina,[8] and Victoria.[9] By what reason a family hath a power of government, and of punishing malefactors, that same power must be in a society of men, supposing that society were not made up of families, but of single persons; for the power of punishing ill-doers doth not reside in one single man of a family, or in them all, as they are single private persons, but as they are in a family. But this argument holdeth not but by proportion; for paternal government, or a fatherly power of parents over their families, and a politic power of a magistrate over many families, are powers different in nature, — the one being warranted by nature’s law even in its species, the other being, in its specie and kind, warranted by a positive law, and, in the general only, warranted by a law of nature. 2nd, If we once lay the supposition, that God hath immediately by the law of nature appointed there should be a government, and mediately defined by the dictate of natural light in a community, that there shall be one or many rulers to govern a community, then the Scripture’s arguments may well be drawn out of the school of nature: as (1.) The powers that be, are of God (Rom. xiii.), therefore nature’s light teacheth that we should be subject to these powers. (2.) It is against nature’s light to resist the ordinance of God. (3.) Not to fear him to whom God hath committed the sword for the terror of evil-doers. (4.) Not to honour the public rewarder of well-doing. (5.) Not to pay tribute to him for his work. Therefore I see not but Govarruvias,[10] Soto,[11] and Suarez,[12] have rightly said, that power of government is immediately from God, and this or that definite power is mediately from God, proceeding from God by the mediation of the consent of a community, which resigneth their power to one or more rulers; and to me, Barclaius saith the same,[13]Quamvis populus potentice largitor videatur, &c.


[1] Bodin, de rep. lib. 1, c. 6.

[2] Suarez, tom. 1, de legib. lib. 3, c. 3.

[3] Vasquez illust. quæst. lib. 1, c. 41, num. 28, 29.

[4] Ib. lib. 2, in princ. F. de inst. et jur. et in princ. Inst. Cod. tit. c. jus . nat. 1. disp.

[5] Dominium est jus quoddam. lib. fin. ad med. C. de long. temp. prest. 1, qui usum fert.

[6] Ad Tannerus, m. 12. tom. 2, disp. 5. de peccatis, q. 5. dub. 1. num. 22.

[7] Sotis, 4. de justit. q. 4, art. 1.

[8] Lod. Molina. tom. 1 de just. disp. 22.

[9] Victoria in relect. de potest civil. q. 4, irt. 1.

[10] Govarruvias, tr. 2. pract. quest. 1. n. 2, 3, 4.

[11] Soto, loc. ett.

[12] Suarez de Reg. lib. 3, c. 4, n. 1, 2.

[13] Barclaius con. Monarchoma, l. 3, c. 2.

Question III

Whether royal power and definite forms of government be from God

The king may be said to be from God and his word in these several notions: —

1. By way of permission, Jer. xliii. 10, “Say to them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold I will send and take Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will set his throne upon these stones that I have hid, and he shall spread his royal pavilion over them.” And thus God made him a catholic king, and gave him all nations to serve him, Jer. xxvii. 6-8, though he was but an unjust tyrant, and his sword the best title to those crowns.

2. The king is said to be from God by way of naked approbation; God giving to a people power to appoint what government they shall think good, but institutiong none in special in his word. This way some make kingly power to be from God in the general, but in the particular to be an invention of men, negatively lawful, and not repugnant to the word, as the wretched popish ceremonies are from God. But we teach no such thing: let Maxwell[1] free his master Bellarmine,[2] and other Jesuites with whom he sideth in Romish doctrine: we are free of this. Bellarmine saith that politic power in general is warranted by a divine law; but the particular forms of politic power, (he meaneth monarchy, with the first,) is not by divine right, but de jure gentium, by the law of nations, and floweth immediately from human election, as all things, saith he, that appertain to the law of nations. So monarchy to Bellarmine is but an human invention, as Mr. Maxwell’s surplice is; and Dr. Ferne, sect 3, p. 13, saith with Bellarmine.

3. A king is said to be from God, by particular designation, as he appointed Saul by name for the crown of Israel. Of this, hereafter.

4. The kingly or royal office is from God by divine institution, and not by naked approbation; for, 1st, we may well prove Aaron’s priesthood to be of divine institution, because God doth appoint the priest’s qualification from his family, bodily perfections, and his charge. 2nd, We take the pastor to be by divine law and God’s institution, because the Holy Ghost (1 Tim iii. 1-4) describeth his qualifications; so may we say that the royal power is by divine institution, because God mouldeth him: Deut. xvii. 15, “Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose, one from amongst thy brethren,” &c; Rom xiii. 1, “There is no power but of God, the powers that be are ordained of God.”3rd, That power must be ordained of God as his own ordinance, to which we owe subjection for conscience, and not for fear of punishment; but every power is such, Rom. xiii. 4th, To resist the kingly power is to resist God. 5th, He is the minister of God for our good. 6th, He beareth the sword of God to take vengeance upon evildoers. 7th, The Lord expressly saith, 1 Pet. ii. 17, “Fear God, honour the king;” ver. 13, 14, “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors, as those that are sent by him,” &c.; Tit. iii. 1, “Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers;” and so the fifth commandment layeth obedience to the king on us no less than to our parents; whence, I conceive that power to be of God, to which, by the moral law of God, we owe perpetual subjection and obedience. 8th, Kings and magistrates are God’s, and God’s deputies and lieutenants upon earth, (Psalm lxxxii. 1, 6, 7; Exod. xxii. 8; iv. 16,) and therefore their office must be a lawful ordinance of God. 9th, By their office they are feeders of the Lord’s people, 1 Sam. ix. 19. 10th, It is a great judgment of God when a land wanteth the benefit of such ordinances of God, Isa. iii. 1-3, 6, 7, 11. The execution of their office is an act of the just Lord of heaven and earth, not only by permission, but according to God’s revealed will in his word; their judgment is not the judgment of men, but of the Lord, 2 Chron. xix. 6, and their throne is the throne of God. 1 Chron. xxii. 10. Jerome saith,[3] to punish murderers and sacrilegious persons is not bloodshed, but the ministry and service of good laws. So, if the king be a living law by office, and the law put in execution which God hath commanded, then, as the moral law is by divine institution, so must the officer of God be, who is custos et vindex legis divine, the keeper, preserver, and avenger of God’s law. Basilius saith,[4] this is the prince’s office, Ut opem ferat virtuti, malitiam vero impugnet. When Paulinus Treverensis, Lucifer Metropolitane of Sardinia, Dionysius Mediolanensis, and other bishops, were commanded by Constantine to write against Athanasius, they answered, Regnum non ipsius esse, sed dei, a quo acceperit, — the kingdom was God’s not his; as Athanasius saith,[5] Optatus Milevitanus[6] helpeth us in the cause, where he saith with Paul “We are to pray for heathen kings.” The genuine end of the magistrate, saith Epiphanius,[7] is ut ad bonum ordinem universitatis mundi omnia ex deo bene disponantur atque administrenter. But some object, If the kingly power be of divine institution, then shall any other government be unlawful, and contrary to a divine institution, and so we condemn aristocracy and democracy as unlawful. Ans. This consequence were good, if aristocracy and democracy were not also of divine institution, as all my arguments prove; for I judge they are not governments different in nature, if we speak morally and theologically, only they differ politically and positively; one is aristocracy any thing but diffused and enlarged monarchy, and monarchy is nothing but contracted aristocracy, even as it is the same hand when the thumb and the four fingers are folded together and when all the five fingers are dilated and stretched out; and wherever God appointed a king he never appointed him absolute, and a sole independent angel, but joined always with him judges, who were no less to judge according to the law of God (2 Chron. xix. 6,) than the king, Deut. xvii. 15. And in a moral obligation of judging righteously, the conscience of the monarch and the conscience of the inferior judges are equally under immediate subjection to the King of kings; for there is here a co-ordination of consciences, and no subordination, for it is not in the power of the inferior judge to judge, quoad specificationem, as the king commandeth him, because the judgment is neither the king’s, nor any mortal man’s, but the Lord’s, 2 Chron. xix. 6, 7.

Hence all the three forms are from God; but let no man say, if they be all indifferent, and equally of God, societies and kingdoms are left in the dark, and know not which of the three they shall pitch upon, because God hath given to them no special direction for one rather than for another. But this is easily answered. 1st, That a republic appoint rulers to govern them is not an indifferent, but a moral action, because to set no rulers over themselves I conceive were a breach of the fifth commandment, which commandeth government to be one or other. 2nd, It is not in men’s free will that they have government or no government, because it is not in their free will to obey or not to obey the acts of the court of nature, which is God’s court; and this court enacteth that societies suffer not mankind to perish, which must necessarily follow if they appoint no government; also it is proved elsewhere, that no moral acts, in their exercises and use, are left indifferent to us; so then, the aptitude and temper of every commonwealth to monarchy, rather than to democracy or aristocracy, is God’s warrant and nearest call to determine the wills and liberty of people to pitch upon a monarchy, hic et nunc, rather than any other form of government, though all the three be from God, even as single life and marriage are both the lawful ordinances of God, and the constitution and temper of the body is a calling to either of the two; nor are we to think that aristocracy and democracy are either unlawful ordinances, or men’s inventions, or that those societies which want monarchy do therefore live in sins.

But some say that Peter calleth any form of government an human ordinance, 1 Pet. ii. 13, a0nqrwpi/nh kti/sij, therefore monarchy can be no ordination of God. Ans. Rivetus saith,[8] — “It is called an ordinance of man, not because it is an invention of man, and not an ordinance of God, but respectu subjecti,” Piscator, [9] — “Not because man is the efficient cause of magistracy, but because they are men who are magistrates;” Diodatus,[10] — “Obey princes and magistrates, or governors made by men, or amongst men;” Oecumenius,[11] — “An human constitution, because it is made by an human disposition, and created by human suffrages;” Dydimus, — Because over it “presides presidents made by men;” Cajetanus,[12] Estius,[13] — “Every creature of God (as, preach the gospel to every creature) in authority.” But I take the word, “every creature of man,” to be put emphatically, to commend the worth of obedience to magistrates, though but men, when we do it for the Lord’s sake; therefore Betrandus Cardinalis Ednensis saith,[14] “He speaketh so for the more necessity of merit;” and Glossa Ordinaria saith, “Be subject to all powers, etiam ex infidelibus et incredulis, even of infidels and unbelievers.” Lyranus, — “For though they be men, the image of God shineth in them;” and the Syriac, as Lorinus saith,[15] leadeth us thereunto, )#OfnF) yn’b@; NwOhl;k@ul; [17] Lechullechum benai anasa: Obey all the children of men that are in authority. It is an ordinance of men, not effectively, as if it were an invention and a dream of men; but subjectively, because exercised by man. Objectively, and pelekwj[], for the good of men, and for the external man’s peace and safety especially; whereas church-officers are for the spiritual good of men’s souls. And Durandus saith well,[16] “Civil power according to its institution is of God, and according to its acquisition and way of use is of man.” And we may thus far call the forms of magistrates a human ordinance, — that some magistrates are ordained to care for men’s lives and matters criminal, of life and death, and some for men’s lands and estates; some for commodities by sea, and some by land; and are thus called magistrates according to these determinations or human ordinances.


[1] Sacrosan. Reg. Maj. the Sacred and Royal Pre[ro]gative of Christian kings, c. 1, q. 1, p. 6, 7.

[2] Bellarm. de locis, lib. 5, c.6, not. 5. Politica universe considerata est de jure divino, in particulari considerata est de jure gentium

[3] Jerome in 1. 4, Comment. in Jerem.

[4] Basilius. epist. 125.

[5] Athanasius, epist. ad solita

[6] Optat. Melevitanus, lib. 3.

[7] Epiphanius, lib. 1, tom. 3, Heres. 40.

[8] Rivetus in decal. Mand. 5, p. 124

[9] Piscator in loc.

[10] Diodatus, annot.

[11] Oecumenius quod hominum dispositione consistit, et humanis suffragiis creatur.

[12] Cajetanus, officium regiminis, quia humanis suffragiis creatur.

[13] Estius in loc.

[14] Betrandus, tom. 4, Bib.

[15] Lorin. in. lo.

[16] Durandus lib. de orig. juris.

______

[17] Original in Estrangela Syriac, )$N) yNB n whlKL, transliterated by Rutherford into Hebrew.

Question IV

Whether the king be only and immediately from God, and not from the people.

That this question may be the clearer we are to set down these considerations: —

1. The question is, Whether the kingly office itself come from God. I conceive it is, and floweth from the people, not by formal institution, as if the people had by an act of reason devised and excogitated such a power: God ordained the power. It is from the people only by a virtual emanation, in respect that a community having no government at all may ordain a king or appoint an aristocracy. But the question is concerning the designation of the person: Whence is it that this man rather than that man is crowned king? and whence is it — from God immediately and only — that this man rather than that man, and this race or family rather than that race and family, is chosen for the crown? Or is it from the people also, and their free choice? For the pastor’s and the doctor’s office is from Christ only; but that John rather than Thomas be the doctor or the pastor is from the will and choice of men — the presbyters and people.

2. The royal power is three ways in the people: 1st, Radically and virtually, as in the first subject. 2nd, Collative vel communicative, by way of free donation, they giving it to this man, not to that man, that he may rule over them. 3rd, Limitate, — they giving it so as these three acts remain with the people. (1.) That they may measure out, by ounce weights, so much royal power, and no more and no less. (2.) So as they may limit, moderate, and set banks and marches to the exercise. (3.) That they give it out, conditionate, upon this and that condition, that they may take again to themselves what they gave out upon condition if the condition be violated.

The first I conceive is clear, 1st, Because all living creatures have radically in them a power of self-preservation, to defend themselves from violence, — as we see lions have paws, some beasts have horns, some claws, — men being reasonable creatures, united in society, must have power in a more reasonable and honourable way to put this power of warding off violence in the hands of one or more rulers, to defend themselves by magistrates. 2nd, If all men be born, as concerning civil power, alike, — for no man cometh out of the womb with a diadem on his head or a sceptre in his hand, and yet men united in a society may give crown and sceptre to this man and not to that man, — then this power was in this united society, but it was not in them formally, for they should then all have been one king, and so both above and superior, and below and inferior to themselves, which we cannot say; therefore this power must have been virtually in them, because neither man nor community of men can give that which they neither have formally nor virtually in them. 3rd, Royalists cannot deny but cities have power to create a higher ruler, for royal power is but the united and superlative power of inferior judges in one greater judge whom they call a king.

Conclus. The power of creating a man a king is from the people.

1. Because those who may create this man a king rather than that man have power to appoint a king; for a comparative action doth positively infer an action. If a man have power to marry this woman and not that woman, we may strongly conclude that he hath power to marry; now 1 Kings xvi., the people made Omri king and not Zimri, and his son Achab rather than Tibni the son of Sinath. Nor can it be replied that this was no lawful power that the people used, for that cannot elude the argument; for (1 Kings i.) the people made Solomon king and not Adonijah, though Adonijah was the older brother. They say, God did extraordinarily both both make the office, and design Solomon to be king, — the people had no hand in it, but approved God’s act. Ans. This is what we say, God by the people, by Nathan the prophet, and by the servants of David and the states crying, “God save king Solomon!” made Solomon king; and here is a real action of the people. God is the first agent in all acts of the creature. Where a people maketh choice of a man to be their king, the states do no other thing, under God, but create this man rather than another; and we cannot here find two actions, one of God, another of the people; but in one and the same action, God, by the people’s free suffrages and voices, createth such a man king, passing by many thousands; and the people are not passive in the action, because by the authoritative choice of the states the man is made of a private man and no king, a public person and a crowned king: 2 Sam. xvi. 18, “Hushai said to Absalom, Nay, but whom the Lord and the people, and all the men of Israel choose, his will I be, and with him will I abide;” Judg. viii. 22, “The men of Israel said to Gideon, Rule thou over us;” Judg. ix. 6, “The men of Sechem made Abimelech king;” Judg. xi. 8, 11; 2 Kings xiv. 21, “The people made Azariah king;” 1 Sam. xii. 1; 2 Chron. xxiii. 3.

2. If God doth regulate his people in making this man king, not that man, then he thereby insinuateth that the people have a power to make this man king, and not that man. But God doth regulate his people in making a king; therefore the people have a power to make this man king, not that man king. The proposition is clear, because God’s law doth not regulate a non-ens, a mere nothing, or an unlawful power; nor can God’s holy law regulate an unlawful power, or an unlawful action, but quite abolish and interdict it. The Lord setteth not down rules and ways how men should not commit treason, but the Lord commandeth loyalty, and simply interdicteth treason. If people have then more power to create a king over themselves than they had to make prophets, then God forbidding them to choose such a man for their king should say as much to his people as if he would say, “I command you to make Isaiah and Jeremiah prophets over you, but not these and those men.” This, certainly, should prove that not God only, but the people also, with God, made prophets. I leave this to the consideration of the godly. The prophets were immediately called of God to be prophets, whether the people consented that they should be prophets or not; therefore God immediately and only sent the prophets, not the people; but though God extraordinarily designed some men to be kings, and anointed them by his prophets, yet were they never actually installed kings till the people made them kings. I prove the assumption, Deut. xvii. 14, 15, “When thou shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me, thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom the Lord thy God shall choose; one from amongst thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother.” Should not this be an unjust charge to the people, if God only, without any action of the people, should immediately set a king over them? Might not the people reply, We have no power at all to set a king over ourselves, more than we have power to make Isaiah a prophet, who saw the visions of God. To what end then should God mock us, and say, “Make a brother and not a stranger king over you?”

3. Expressly Scripture saith, that the people made the king, though under God: Judg. ix. 6, “The men of Sechem made Abimelech king;” 1 Sam. xi. 15, “And all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord;” 2 King. x. 5, “We will not make any king.” This had been an irrational speech to Jehu if both Jehu and the people held the royalists’ tenet, that the people had no power to make a king, nor any active or causative influence therein, but that God immediately made the king: 1 Chron. xii. 38, “All these came with a perfect heart to make David king in Hebron;” and all the rest were of one heart to make David king. On these words Lavater saith,[1] The same way are magistrates now to be chosen; now this day God, by an immediate oracle from heaven, appointeth the office of a king, but I am sure he doth not immediately design the man, but doth only mark him out to the people as one who hath the most royal endowments, and the due qualifications required in a lawful magistrate by the word of God: Exod xviii. 21, “Men of truth, hating covetousness,” &c.; Deut. i. 16, 17, Men who will judge causes betwixt their brethren righteously, without respect of persons; 1 Sam. x. 21, Saul was chosen out of the tribes according to the law of God; Deut xvii., They might not choose a stranger; and Abulensis, Serrarius, Cornelius á Lapide, Sancheiz, and other popish writers, think that Saul was not only anointed with oil first privately by Samuel, (1 Sam. x. 1,2,) but also at two other times before the people, — once at Mizpeh, and another time at Gilgal, by a parliament and a convention of the states. And Samuel judged the voices of the people so essential to make a king that Samuel doth not acknowledge him as formal king, (1 Sam. x. 7, 8, 17, 18, 19,) though he honoured him because he was to be king. (1 Sam. ix. 23, 24,) while the tribes of Israel and parliament were gathered together to make him king according to God’s law, (Deut. xvii..) as is evident. 1st, For Samuel (1 Sam. v. 20,) caused all the tribes of Israel to stand before the Lord, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken. The law provided one of their own, not a stranger to reign over them; and, because some of the states of parliament did not choose him, but, being children of Belial, despised him in their hearts, (v. 27,) therefore after king Saul, by that victory over the Ammonites, had conquered the affections of all the people fully, (v. 10, 11,) Samuel would have his coronation and election by the estates of parliament renewed at Gilgal by all the people, (v. 14, 15,) to establish him king. 2nd, The Lord by lots found out the tribe of Benjamin. 3rd, The Lord found out the man, by name, Saul the son of Kish, when he did hide himself amongst the stuff, that the people might do their part in the creating of the king, whereas Samuel had anointed him before. But the text saith expressly that the people made Saul king; and Calvin, Martyr, Lavater, and popish writers, as Serrarius, Mendoza, Sancheiz, Cornelius à Lapide, Lyranus, Hugo Cardinalis, Carthusius, Sanctius, do all hence conclude that the people, under God, make the king.

I see no reason why Barelaius should here distinguish a power of choosing a king, which he granteth the people hath, and a power of making a king, which he saith is only proper to God.[2] Ans. Choosing of a king is either — a comparative crowning of this man, not that man; and if the people have this it is a creating of a king under God, who principally disposeth of kings and kingdoms; and this is enough for us. The want of this made Zimri no king, and those whom the rulers of Jezreel at Samaria (2 King. x.) refused to make kings, no kings. This election of the people made Athaliah a princess; the removal of it, and translation of the crown by the people to Joash made her no princess: for, I ask you, what other calling of God hath a race of a family, and a person to the crown, but only the election of the states? There is now no voice from heaven, no immediately inspired prophets such as Samuel and Elisha, to anoint David, not Eliab, — Solomon, not Adonijah. The du/namij or the heroic spirit of a royal faculty of governing, is, I grant, from God only, not from the people; but I suppose that maketh not a king, for then many sitting on the throne this day should be no kings, and many private persons should be kings. If they mean by the people’s choosing nothing but the people’s approbative consent, posterior to God’s act of creating a king, let them show us an act of God making kings, and establishing royal power in this family rather than in that family, which is prior to the people’s consent, — distinct from the people’s consent I believe there is none at all.

Hence I argue: If there be no calling or title on earth to tie the crown to such a family and person but the suffrages of the people, then have the line of such a family, and the persons now, no calling of God, no right to the crown, but only by the suffrages of the people, except we say that there be no lawful kings on earth now when prophetical unction and designation to crowns are ceased, contrary to express scripture: Rom. xiii. 1-3; 1 Pet. ii. 13-17.

But there is no title on earth now to the crowns to families, to persons, but only the suffrages of the people: for, 1st, Conquest without the consent of the people is but royal robbery, as we shall see. 2nd, There is no prophetical and immediate calling to kingdoms now. 3rd, The Lord’s giving regal parts is somewhat; but I hope royalists will not deny but a child, young in years and judgment, may be a lawful king. 4th, Mr. Maxwell’s appointing of the kingly office doth no more make one man a lawful king than another; for this were a wide consequence. God hath appointed that kings should be; therefore John à Stiles is a king; yea, therefore David is a king. It followeth not. Therefore it remaineth only that the suffrages of the people of God is that just title and divine calling that kings have now to their crowns. I presuppose they have gifts to govern from God.

If the Lord’s immediate designation of David, and his anointing by the divine authority of Samuel, had been that which alone, without the election of the people, made David formally king of Israel, then there were two kings in Israel at one time; for Samuel anointed David, and so he was formally king upon the ground laid by royalists, that the king hath no royal power from the people; and David, after he himself was anointed by Samuel, divers times calleth Saul the Lord’s anointed, and that by the inspiration of God’s Spirit, as we and royalists do both agree. Now two lawful supreme monarchs in one kingdom I conceive to be most repugnant to God’s truth and sound reason; for they are as repugnant as two most highs or as two infinites. It shall follow that David all the while betwixt his anointing by Samuel and his coronation by the suffrages of all Israel at Hebron, was in-lacking in discharging and acquitting himself of his royal duty, God having made him formally a king, and so laying upon him a charge to execute justice and judgment, and defend religion, which he did not discharge. All David’s suffering, upon David’s part, must be unjust, for, as king, he should have cut off the murderer Saul, who killed the priests of the Lord; especially, seeing Saul, by this ground, must be a private murderer, and David the only lawful king. David, if he was formally king, deserted his calling in flying to the Philistines; for a king should not forsake his calling upon any hazard, even of his life, no more than a pilot should give over the helm in an extreme storm; but certainly God’s dispensation in this warranteth us to say, no man can be formally a lawful king without the suffrages of the people: for saul, after Samuel from the Lord anointed him, remained a private man, and no king, till the people made him king, and elected him; and David, anointed by that same divine authority, remained formally a subject, and not a king, till all Israel made him king at Hebron; and Solomon, though by God designed and ordained to be king, yet was never king until the people made him so, (1 Kings i.); therefore there floweth something from the power of the people, by which he who is no king now becometh a king formally, and by God’s lawful call; whereas before the man was no king, but, as touching all royal power, a mere private man. And I am sure birth must be less than God’s designation to a crown, as is clear, — Adonijah was older than Solomon, yet God will have Solomon, the younger by birth, to be king, and not Adonijah. And so Mr. Symons, and other court prophets, must prevaricate, who will have birth, without the people’s election, to make a king, and the people’s voices but a ceremony.

I think royalists cannot deny but a people ruled by aristocratic magistrates may elect a king, and a king so elected is formally made a lawful king by the people’s election; for of six willing and gifted to reign, what maketh one a king and not the other five? Certainly by God’s disposing the people to choose this man, and not another man. it cannot be said but God giveth the kingly power immediately; and by him kings reign, that is true. This office is immediately from God, but the question now is, What is that which formally applieth the office and royal power to this person rather than to the other five as meet? Nothing can here be dreamed of but God’s inclining the hearts of the states to choose this man and not that man.


[1] Lavater com. in part 12, 38. Hodie quoque in liberis arbibus, et gentibus, magistratus secundum dei verbum, Exod. xviii., Deut i., eligendi sunt, non ex affectibus

[2] Barclaius, lib. 3, cont. Monarchomach. 8. c. 3.

Question V.

Whether or no the Popish Prelate, the author of “Sac. San. Regum Majestas,” called the sacred and royal prerogative of kings, proveth that God is the immediate Author of sovereignty, and that the king is no creature of the people’s making.

Consider, 1. That the excommunicated prelate saith, (c. 2, p. 19,) “Kings are not immediately from God as by any special ordinance sent from heaven by the ministry of angels and prophets; there were but some few such; as Moses, Saul, David, &c.; yet something may immediately proceed from God, and be his special work, without a revelation or manifestation extraordinary from heaven; so the designation to a sacred function is from the church and from man, yet the power of word, sacraments, binding and loosing, is immediately from Jesus Christ, The apostle Matthias was from Christ’s immediate constitution, and yet he was designed by men, Acts i. The soul is by creation and infusion, without any special ordinance from heaven, though nature begetteth the body, and disposeth the matter, and prepareth it as fit to be conjoined with the soul, so as the father is said to beget the son.”Ans. 1st, The unchurched Prelate striveth to make us hateful by the title of the chapter, — That God is, by his title, the immediate author of sovereignty; and who denieth that? Not those who teach that the person who is king is created king by the people, no more than those who deny that men are now called to be pastors and deacons immediately, and by a voice from heaven, or by the ministry of angels and prophets, because the office of pastors and deacons is immediately from God. 2d, When he hath proved that God is the immediate author of sovereignty, what then? Shall it follow that the sovereign in concreto may not be resisted, and that he is above all law, and that there is no armour against his violence but prayers and tears? Because God is the immediate author of the pastor and of the apostle’s office, does it therefore follow that it is unlawful to resist a pastor though he turn robber? If so, then the pastor is above all the king’s laws. This is the Jesuit and all made, and there is no armour against the robbing prelate but prayer and tears.

2. He saith in his title, that “the king is no creature of the people’s making.” If he mean the king in the abstract, that is, the royal dignity, whom speaketh he against? Not against us, but against his own father, Bellarmine, who saith,[1] that “sovereignty hath no warrant by any divine law.” If he mean that the man who is king is not created and elected king by the people, he contradicteth himself and all the court doctors.

3. It is false that Saul and David’s call to royalty was only from God, “by a special ordinance sent from heaven,” for their office is (Deut. xvii. 14) from the written word of God, as the killing of idolators, (ver. 3, 7,) and as the office of the priests and Levites, (ver. 8-10,) and this is no extraordinary office from heaven, more than that is from heaven which is warranted by the word of God. If he mean that these men, Saul and David, were created kings only by the extraordinary revelation of God from heaven, it is a lie; for besides the prophetical anointing of them, they were made kings by the people, as the Word saith expressly; except we say that David sinned in cot setting himself down on the throne, when Samuel first anointed him king; and so he should have made away with his master, king Saul, out of the world; and there were not a few called to the throne by the people, but many, yea, all the kings of Israel and of Judah.

4. The prelate contendeth that a king is designed to his royal dignity “immediately from God, without an extraordinary revelation from heaven,” as the man is “designed to be a pastor by men, and yet the power of preaching is immediately from God,” &c.; but he proveth nothing, except he prove that all pastors are called to be pastors immediately, and that God calleth and designeth to the office such a person immediately as he hath immediately instituted by the power of preaching and the apostleship, and hath immediately infused the soul in the body by an act of creation; and we cannot conceive how God in our days, when there are no extraordinary revelations, doth immediately create this man a king, and immediately tie the crown to this family rather than to that. This he doth by the people now, without any prophetical unction, and by this medium, viz., the free choice of the people. He need not bring the example of Matthias more than of any ordinary pastor; and yet an ordinary pastor is not immediately called of God, because the office is from God immediately, and also the man is made pastor by the church.

The P. Prelate saith, (c. 2, p. 20-23,) A thing is immediately from God three ways. 1st, When it is solely from God, and presupposeth nothing ordinary or human antecedent to the obtaining of it. Such was the power of Moses, Saul and David; such were the apostles. 2d, When the collation of the power to such a person is immediately from God, though some act of man be antecedent, as Matthias was an apostle. A baptised man obtaineth remission and regeneration, yet aspersion of water cannot produce these excellent effects. A king giveth power to a favourite to make a lord or a baron, yet who is so stupid as to aver, that the honour of a lord cometh immediately from the favourite and not from the king. 3d, When a man hath, by some ordinary human right, a fall and just right, and the approbation and confirmation of this right is immediately from God.

The first way, sovereignty is not from God. The second way, sovereignty is conferred on kings immediately: though some created act of election, succession or conquest intervene, the interposed act containeth not in it power to confer sovereignty; as in baptism regeneration, if there be nothing repugnant in the recipient, is conferred, not by water, but immediately by God. In sacred orders, designation is from men, power to supernatural acts from God. Election, succession, conquests, remotely and improperly constitute a king. To say in the third sense, that sovereignty is immediately from God by approbation or confirmation only, is against Scripture, Prev. viii 15; Psal. lxxxviii. 8; John xix.; then the people say, You are God’s, your power is from below. And Paul’s “ordained of God,” is “approved and confirmed only of God;” the power of designation, or application of the person to royalty, is from man; the power of conferring royal power, or of applying the person to royal power, is from God. A man’s hand may apply a faggot to the fire, the fire only maketh the faggot to burn.

Answer. 1st, Apostles, both according to their office and the designation of their person to the office, were immediately and only from God, without any act of the people, and therefore are badly coupled with the royal power of David and king Saul, who were not formally made kings but by the people at Mizpeh and Hebron. 2d, The second way God giveth royal power, by moving the people’s hearts to confer royal power, and this is virtually in the people, formally from God. Water hath no influence to produce grace, God’s institution and promise doth it; except you dream with your Jesuits, of opus operatum, that water sprinkled, by the doing of the deed, conferreth grace, nisi ponatur obex, what can the child do, or one baptised child more than another, to hinder the flux of remission of sins, if you mean not that baptism worketh as physic on a sick man, except strength of humours hinder? and therefore this comparison is not alike. The people cannot produce so noble an effect as royalty, — a beam from God. True, formally they cannot, but virtually it is in a society of reasonable men, in whom are left beams of authoritative majesty, which by a divine institution they can give (Deut. xvii. 14) to this man, to David, not to Eliab. And I could well say the favourite made the lord, and placed honour in the man whom he made lord by a borrowed power from his prince; and yet the honour of a lord is principally from the king. 3. It is true the election of the people containeth not formally royal dignity, but the Word saith they made Saul, they made David king; so virtually election must contain it. Samuel’s oil maketh not David king, he is a subject after he is anointed; the people’s election at Hebron maketh him king, differeth him from his brethren, and putteth him in royal state; yet God is the principal agent. What immediate action God hath here, is said and dreamt of, bo man can divine, except Prophet P. Prelate. The e0cousi/a, royal authority, is given organically by that act by which he is made king: another act is a night-dream, but by the act of election, David is of no king, a king. The collation of du/namiv, royal gifts, is immediately from God, but that formally maketh not a king, if Solomon saw right, “servants riding on horses, princes going on foot.” 4th, Judge of the Prelate’a subtilty, — I dare say not his own; he stealeth from Spalato, but telleth it not, — “The applying of the person to royal authority is from the people; but the applying of royal authority to the person of the king, is immediately and only from God; as the hand putteth the faggot to the fire, but the tire maketh it burn?” To apply the subject to the accident, is it any thing else but to apply the accident to the subject? Royal authority is an accident, the person of the king the subject. The applying of the faggot to the fire, and the applying of the fire to the faggot, are all one, to anyone not forsaken of common sense. When the people applyeth the person to the royal authority, they but put the person in the state of royal authority; this is to make an union betwixt the man and royal authority, and this is to apply royal authority to the person. 5th, The third sense is the Prelate’s dream, not a tenet of ours. We never said that sovereignty in the king is immediately from God or approbation or confirmation only, as if the people first made the king, and God did only by a posterior and latter act say Amen to the deed done, and subscribe, as recorder, to what the people doth: so the people should deal crowns and kingdoms at their pleasure, and God behoove to ratify and make good their act. When God doth apply the person to royal power, is this a different action from the people’s applying the person to royal dignity? It is not imaginable. But the people, by creating a king, applyeth the person to royal dignity; and God, by the people’s act of constituting the man king, doth by the mediation of this act convey royal authority to the man, as the church by sending a man and ordaining him to be a pastor, doth not by that, as God’s instruments, infuse supernatural powers of preaching; these supernatural powers may be, and often are in him before he be in orders. And sometimes God infuseth a supernatural power of government in a man when he is not yet a King, as the Lord turned Saul into another man, (1 Sam. x. 5, 6,) neither at that point of time when Samuel anointed him, but afterwards: “After that thou shalt come to the hill of God, the Spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man;” nor yet at that time when he is formally made king by the people; for Saul was not king formally because of Samuel’s anointing, nor yet was he king because another spirit was infused into him, (v. 5, 6) for he was yet a private man till the states of Israel chose him king at Mizpeh. And the word of God used words of action to express the people’s power: Judg. ix. 6, And all the men of Sechem gathered together, and all the men of Millo, w%kylim;y%AwA regnare facerunt, they caused him to be king. The same is said 1 Sam. x. 15, They caused Saul to reign; 2 Kings x. 15 [5], #Oy)i K7ylim;nA )Ol We shall not king any man; 1 Chron. xii. 38 [39], They came to Hebron dywId@F-t)ee&nbspK7ylim;hal; to king David over all Israel; Deut. xvii. three times the making of a king is given to the people. When thou shalt say, [Deut. 17:14] K7leeme ylaa(f hmfy#io)ff I shall set a king over me. If it were not in their power to make a king no law could be imposed on them not to make a stranger their king; 1 Kings xii. 20, All the congregation kinged Jeroboam, or made him king over all Israel; 2 Kings xi. 12, They kinged Joash, or made Joash to reign. 6, The people are to say, You are God’s, and your power is below, saith the Prelate: What then? therefore their power is not from God also? It followeth not subordinata non pugnant. The Scripture saith both, the Lord exalted David to be king, and, all power is from God; and so the power of a lord mayor of a city: the people made David king, and the people maketh such a man lord mayor. It is the Anabaptists’ argument, — God writeth his law in our heart, and teacheth his own children; therefore books and the ministry of men are needless. So all sciences and lawful arts are from God; therefore sciences applied to men are not from men’s free will, industry and studies. The prelate extolleth the king when he will have his royalty from God, the way that John Stiles is the husband of such a woman. P. Prelate. — Kings are of God, they are God’s, children of the Most High, his servants, public ministers, — their sword and judgment are God’s. This he hath said of their royalty in abstracto and in concreto; their power, person, charge, are all of divine extract, and so their authority and person are both sacred and inviolable.[2]

Ans. — So are all the congregation of the judges; Psal. lxxxii. 1, 6, All of them are God’s; for he speaketh not there of a congregation of kings. So are apostles, their office and persons of God; and so the prelates (as they think), the successors of the apostles, are God’s servants; their ministry, word, rod of discipline, not theirs, but of God. The judgment of judges, inferior to the king, is the Lord’s judgment, not men’s. Deut. i; 17; 2 Chron. xix. 6, Hence by the Prelate’s logic, the persons of prelates, mayors, bailiffs, constables, pastors, are sacred and inviolable above all laws, as are kings. Is this an extolling of kings? But where are kings’ persons, as men, said to be of God, as the royalty in abstracto is? The Prelate seeth beside his book, (Psal. lxxxii. 7,) “But ye shall die like men.”

P. Prelate. — We begin with the law, in. which, as God by himself prescribed the essentials, substantiate, and ceremonies of his piety and worship, gave order for piety and justice; Deut. xvii. 14, 15, the king is here originally and immediately from God, and independent from all others. “Set over them” — them is collective, that is, all and every one. Scripture knoweth not this state principle, — Rex est singulis major, universis minor. The person is expressed in concreto, “Whom the Lord thy God shall choose.” This peremptory precept dischargeth the people, all and every one, diffusively, representatively, or in any imaginable capacity to attempt the appointing of a king, but to leave it entirely and totally to God Almighty.

Ans. — Begin with the law, but end not with traditions. If God by himself prescribed the essentials of piety and worship, the other part of your distinction is, that God, not by himself, but by his prelates, appointed the whole Romish rites, as accidentals of piety. This is the Jesuits’ doctrine. This place is so far from proving the king to be independent, and that it totally is God’s to appoint a king, that it expressly giveth the people power to appoint a king; for the setting of a king over themselves, this one and not that one, makes the people to appoint the king, and the king to be less and dependent on the people, seeing God intendeth the king for the people’s good, and not the people for the king’s good. This text shameth the Prelate, who also confessed, (p. 22,) that remotely and improperly, succession, election, and conquest maketh the king, and so it is lawful for men remotely and improperly to invade God’s chair.

P. Prelate. — Jesuits and puritans say, it was a privilege of the Jews that God chose their king. So Suarez, Soto, Navarra.

Ans. — The Jesuits are the Prelate’s brethren, they are under one banner, — we are in contrary camps to Jesuits. The Prelate said himself, (p. 19,) Moses, Saul, and David, were by extraordinary revelation from God. Sure I am kings are not so now. The Jews had this privilege that no nation had. God named some kings to them, as Saul, David, — he doth not so now. God did tie royalty to David’s house by a covenant till Christ should come, — he doth not so now; yet we stand to Deut. xvii.

P. Prelate. — Prov. 8.15, “By me kings reign.” If the people had right to constitute a king, it had not been king Solomon, but king Adonijah. Solomon saith not of himself, but indefinitely, “By me,” as by the Author, Efficient, and Constituent, kings reign. Per is by Christ, not by the people, not by the high priest, state or presbytery, — not per me iratum, by me in my anger, as some sectaries say. Paul’s diatagh/ tou~ qiou~, [Rom. 13:2] an ordinance by high authority not revocable. Sinesius so useth the word, Aristotle, Lucilius, Appian, Plutarch, yb@i in me and by me, and also Doctor Andrews. Kings indefinitely, all kings: none may distinguish where the law distinguisheth not, — they reign in concreto. That same power that maketh kings must unmake them. Ans. — 1. The prelate cannot restrict this to kings only; it extendeth to parliaments also. Solomon addeth, MynIz:row: and consuls, MyrI#offf all the sirs, and princes, MybiydIn:w% and magnificents, and nobles, and more CrE)e y+’p;#oO-lk@f and all the judges of the earth [Prov. 8:15,16], they reign, rule, and decree justice by Christ. Here, then, mayors, sheriffs, provosts, constables, are by the Prelate extolled as persons sacred, irresistible. Then, (1.) the judges of England rule not by the king of Britain, as their author, efficient, constituent, but by Jesus Christ immediately; nor doth the commissary rule by the prelate. (2.) All these, and their power, and persons, rule independently, and immediately by Jesus Christ. (3.) All inferior judges are diatagai\ tou~ qeou~, the ordinances of God not revocable. Therefore the king cannot deprive any judge under him; he cannot declare the parliament no parliament: once a judge, and always and irrevocably a judge. This Prelate’s poor pleading for kings deserves no wages. Lavater intelligit superiores et inferiores magistratus, non est potestas nisi a deo, Vatablus consiliarios. 2. If the people had absolute right to choose kings by the Law of Israel, they might have chosen another than either Adonijah or Solomon; but the Lord expressly put an express law on them, that they should make no king but him whom the Lord should choose, Deut. xvii. 4. Now the Lord did either by his immediately inspired prophet anoint the man, as he anointed David, Saul, Jehu, &c., or then ho restricted, by a revealed promise, the royal power to a family, and to the eldest by birth; and, therefore, the Lord first chose the man and then the people made him king. Birth was not their rule, as is clear, in that they made Solomon their king, not Adonijah, the elder; and this proveth that God did both ordain kingly government to the kingdom of Israel, and chose the man, either in his person, or tied it to the first-born of the line. Now we have no Scripture nor law of God to tie royal dignity to one man or to one family; produce a warrant for it in the Word, for that must be a privilege of the Jews for which we have no word of God. We have no immediately inspired Samuels to say, “Make David, or this man king;” and no word of God to say, “Let the first-born of this family rather than another family sit upon the throne;” therefore the people must make such a man king, following the rule of God’s word, (Deut. xvii. 14,) and other rules showing what sort of men judges must be, as Deut. i. 16-18; 2 Chron. xix. 6, 7. 3. It is true, kings in a special manner reign by Christ; therefore not by the people’s free election? The P. Prelate argueth like himself: by this text a mayor of a city by the Lord decreeth justice; therefore he is not made a mayor of a city by the people of the city. It followeth not. None of us teach that kings reign by God’s anger. We judge a king a great mercy of God to church or state; but the text saith not, By the Lord kings and judges do not only reign and decree justice, but also murder protestants, by raising against them an army of papists. And the word diatagai\, powers, doth in no Greek author signify irrevocable powers; for Uzziah was a lawful king, and yet (2 Chron. xxvi.) lawfully put from the throne, and “cut off from the house of the Lord.” And interpreters of this passage deny that it is to be understood of tyrants. So the Chaldee paraphrase turns it well, Potentes virga justitiæ:[3] so Lavater and Diodatus saith, this place doth prove, “That all kings, judges and laws, derivari a lege ceterna, are derived from the Eternal Law.” The prelate, eating his tongue for anger, striveth to prove that all power, and so royal power, is of God; but what can he make of it? We believe it, though he say (p. 30,) sectaries prove, by e0a/n mh\, “That a man is justified by faith only;” so there is no power but of God only: but feel the smell of a Jesuit. It is the sectaries’ doctrine, that we are justified by faith only, but the prelates and the Jesuits go another way, — not by faith only, but by works also. And all power is from God only, as the first Author, and from no man. What then? Therefore men and people interpose no human act in making this man a king and not that man. It followeth not. Let us with the Prelate join Paul and Solomon together, and say, “That sovereignty is from God, of God, by God, as God’s appointment irrevocable.” Then shall it never follow: it is inseparable from the person unless you make the king a man immortal. As God only can remove the crown, it is true God only can put an unworthy and an excommunicated prelate from office and benefice; but how? Doth that prove that men and the church may not also in their place remove an unworthy churchman, when the church, following God’s word, delivereth to Satan? Christ only, as head of the church, excommunicateth scandalous men; therefore the church cannot do it. And yet the argument is as good the one way as the other; for all the churches on earth cannot make a minister properly, — they but design him to the ministry whom God hath gifted and called. But shall we conclude that no church on earth, but God only, by an immediate action from heaven, can deprive a minister? How, then, dare prelates excommunicate, unmake, and imprison so many ministers in the three kingdoms? But the truth is, take this one argument from the Prelate, and all that is in his book falleth to the ground, — to wit, Sovereignty is from God only. A king is a creature of God’s making only; and what then? Therefore sovereignty cannot be taken from him: so God only made Aaron’s house priests. Solomon had no law to depose Abiathar from the priesthood. Possibly the Prelate will grant all. The passage, Rom. xiii., which he saith hath tortured us, I refer to a fitter place it will be found to torture court parasites. I go on with the Prelate, (c. 3,) “Sacred sovereignty is to be preserved, and kings are to be prayed for, that we may lead a godly life,” 1 Tim. iii. What then? All in authority are to be prayed for, — even parliaments; by that text pastors are to be prayed for, and without them sound religion cannot well subsist. Is this questioned, that kings should be prayed for; or are we wanting in this duty? but it followeth not that all dignities to be prayed for are immediately from God, not from men.

P. Prelate. — Prov. viii., Solomon speaketh first of the establishment of government before he speaks of the works of creation; therefore better not be at all as be without government. And God fixed government in the person of Adam before Eve, or any one else, came into the world; and how shall government be, and we enjoy the fruits of it, except we preserve the king’s sacred authority inviolable?

Ans. — 1. Moses (Gen. i.) speaketh of creation before he speaketh of kings, and he speaketh (Gen. iii.) of Adam’s sins before he speaks of redemption through the blessed Seed; therefore better never be redeemed at all as to be without sin. 2. If God made Adam a governor before he made Eve, and any of mankind, he was made a father and a husband before he had either son or wife. Is this the Prelate’s logic? He may prove that two eggs on his father’s table are three this way. 3. There is no government where sovereignty is not kept inviolable. It is true, where there is a king, sovereignty must be inviolable. What then? Arbitrary government is not sovereignty. 4. He intimateth aristocracy, and democracy, and the power of parliaments, which maketh kings, to be nothing but anarchy, for he speaketh here of no government but monarchy.

P. Prelate. — There is need of grace to obey the king, Psal. xviii. 43; cxliv. 2. It is God who subdueth the people under David. Rebellion against the king is rebellion against God. 1 Pet. ii. 17; Prov. xxiv. 12. Therefore kings have a near alliance with God.

Ans. — 1. There is much grace in papists and prelates then, who use to write and preach against grace. 2. Lorinus your brother Jesuit will, with good warrant of the texts inter, that the king may make a conquest of his own kingdoms of Scotland and England by the sword, as David subdued the heathen. 3. Arbitrary governing hath no alliance with God; a rebel to God and his country, and an apostate, hath no reason to term lawful defence against cut-throat Irish rebellion. 4. There is need of much grace to obey pastors, inferior judges, masters, (Col. iii. 22, 23,) therefore their power is from God immediately, and no more from men than the king is created king by the people, according to the way of royalists.

P. Prelate. — God saith of Pharaoh, (Ex. ix. 17,) I have raised thee up. Elisha, directed by God, constituted the king of Syria, 2 Kings viii. 13. Pharaoh, Abimelech, Hiram, Hazael, Hadad, are no less honoured with the appellation of kings, than David, Saul, &c., Jer. xxix. 9. Nebuchadnezzar is honoured to be called, by way of excellency, God’s servant, which God giveth to David, a king according to his own heart. And Isa. xlv. 1, “Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, Cyrus;” and God nameth him near a hundred years before he was born; Isa. xliv. 28, “He is my shepherd;” Dan. v. 21, God giveth kingdoms to whom he will; Dan. v. 21, empires, kingdoms, royalties, are not disposed of by the composed contracts of men, but by the immediate hand and work of God; Hos. xiii. 11, “I gave thee a king in my anger, I took him away in my wrath;” Job, He places kings in the throne, &c.

Ans. — Here is a whole chapter of seven pages for one raw argument ten times before repeated.. 1. Exod. ix. 7, I have raised up Pharaoh; Paul expoundeth it, (Rom. ix.) to prove that king Pharaoh was a vessel of wrath fitted for destruction by God’s absolute will; and the Prelate following Arminius, with treasonable charity, applieth this to our king. Can this man pray for the king? 2. Elisha anointed, but did not constitute, Hazael king; he foretold he should be king; and if he be a king of God’s making, who slew his sick prince and invaded the throne by innocent blood, judge you. I would not take kings of the Prelate’s making. 3. If God give to Nebuchadnezzar the same title of the servant of God, which is given to Daniel, (Psal. xviii. 1, and cxvi. 16;) and to Moses, (Jos. i. 2,) all kings, because kings, are men according to God’s heart. Why is not royalty then founded on grace? Nebuchadnezzar was not otherwise his servant, than he was the hammer of the earth, and a tyrannous conqueror of the Lord’s people. All the heathen kings are called kings. But how came they to their thrones for the most part? As David and Hezekiah? But God anointed them not by his prophets; they came to their kingdoms by the people’s election, or by blood and rapine; the latter way is no ground to you to deny Athaliah to be a lawful princess — she and Abimelech were lawful princes, and their sovereignty, as immediately and independently from God, as the sovereignty of many heathen kings. See then how justly Athaliah was killed as a bloody usurper of the throne; and this would licence your brethren, the Jesuits, to stab heathen kings, whom you will have as well kings, as the Lord’s anointed, though Nebuchadnezzar and many of them made their way to the throne, against all law of God and man, through a bloody patent. 4. Cyrus is God’s anointed and his shepherd too, therefore his arbitrary Government is a sovereignty immediately depending on God, and above all law; it is a wicked consequence. 5. God named Cyrus near a hundred years ere he was born; God named and designed Judas very individually, and named the ass that Christ should ride on to Jerusalem, (Zach. ix. 9,) some more hundred years than one. What, will the Prelate make them independent kings for that? 6. God giveth kingdoms to whom he will What then? This will prove kingdoms to be as independent and immediately from God as kings are; for as God giveth kings to kingdoms, so he giveth kingdoms to Kings, and no doubt he giveth kingdoms to whom he will. So he giveth prophets, apostles, pastors, to whom he will; and he giveth tyrannous conquests to whom he will: and it is Nebuchadnezzar to whom Daniel speaketh that from the Lord, and he had no just title to many kingdoms, especially to the kingdom of Judah, which yet God, the King of kings, gave to him because it was his good pleasure; and if God had not commanded them by the mouth of his prophet Jeremiah, might they not have risen, and, with the sword, have vindicated themselves and their own liberty, no less than they lawfully, by the sword, vindicated themselves from under Moab, (Judges iii.,) and from under Jabin, king of Canaan, who, twenty years, mightily oppressed the children of Israel, Judges iv. Now this P. Prelate, by all these instances, making heathen kings to be kings by as good a title as David and Hezekiah, condemneth the people of God as rebels, if, being subdued and conquered by the Turk and Spanish king, they should, by the sword, recover their own liberty; and that Israel, and the saviours which God raised to them, had not warrant from the law of nature to vindicate themselves to liberty, which was taken from them violently and unjustly by the sword. From all this it shall well follow that the tyranny of bloody conquerors is immediately and only dependent from God, no less than lawful sovereignty; for Nebuchadnezzar’s sovereignty over the people of God, and many other kingdoms also, was revenged of God as tyranny, Jer. 1. 6, 7; and therefore the vengeance of the Lord, and the vengeance of his temple, came upon him and his land, Jer. 1. 16, &c. It is true the people of God were commanded of God to submit to the king of Babylon, to serve him, and to pray for him, and to do the contrary was rebellion; but this was not because the king of Babylon was their king, and because the king of Babylon had a command of God so to bring under his yoke the people of God. So Christ had a commandment to suffer the death of the cross, (John x. 18,) but had Herod and Pilate any warrant to crucify him? None at all. 7. He “saith, Royalties, even of heathen kings, are not disposed of by the composed contracts of men, but by the immediate hand and work of God. But the contracts of men to give a kingdom to a person, which a heathen community may lawfully do, and so by contract dispose of a kingdom, is not opposite to the immediate hand of God, appointing royalty and monarchy at his own blessed liberty. Lastly he saith, God took away Saul in his wrath; but I pray you, did God only do it? Then had Saul, because a king, a patent royal from God to kill himself, for so God took him away; and we are rebels by this, if we suffer not the king to kill himself. Well pleaded.


[1] Bellarmine, lib. 5, c. 6, not 5, de Laicis.

[2] Sacro. Sa. Reg. Ma. c. 24.

[3] Aquinas, 12, q. 93, art. 3.

Question VI.

Whether the king be so from God only, both in regard of his sovereignty and of the designation of his person to the crown, as that he is no way from the people, but by mere approbation.

Dr Ferne, a man much for monarchy, saith, Though monarchy hath its excellency, being first set up of God, in Moses, yet neither monarchy, aristocracy, nor any other form, is jure divino, but “we say (saith he)[1] the power itself, or that sufficiency of authority to govern that is in a monarchy or aristocracy, abstractly considered from the qualification of other forms, is a flux and constitution subordinate to that providence; an ordinance of that dixi or silent word by which the world was made, and shall be governed under God.” This is a great debasing of the Lord’s anointed, for so sovereignty hath no warrant in God’s word, formally as it is such a government, but is in the world by providence, as sin is, and at the falling of a sparrow to the ground: whereas God’s word hath not only commanded that government should be, but that fathers and mothers should be; and not only that politic rulers should be, but also kings by name, and other judges aristocratical should be, Rom. xiii. 3; Deut. xvii. 14; 1 Pet. ii. xvii.; Prov. xxiv. 21; Prov. xv. 16. If the power of monarchy and aristocracy, abstracted from the forms, be from God, then it is no more lawful to resist aristocratical government and our lords of parliament or judges, than it is lawful to resist kings.

But hear the Prelate’s reasons to prove that the king is from the people by approbation only, “The people (Deut. xvii.) are said to set a king over them only as (1 Cor. vi.) the saints are said to judge the world, that is, by consenting to Christ’s judgment: so the people do not make a king by transferring on him sovereignty, but by accepting, acknowledging, and reverencing him as king, whom God hath both constituted and designed king.”

Ans. — 1. This is said, but not a word proved, for the Queen of Sheba and Hiram acknowledged, reverenced and obeyed Solomon as king, and yet they made him not king, as the princes of Israel did. 2. Reverence and obedience of the people is relative to the king’s laws, but the people’s making of a king is not relative to the laws of a king; for then he should be a king giving laws and commanding the people as king, before the people make him king. 3. If the people’s approving and consenting that an elected king be their king, presupposeth that he is a king, designed and constituted by God, before the people approve him as king, let the P. Prelate give us an act of God now designing a man king, for there is no immediate voice from heaven saying to a people, This is your king, before the people elect one of six to be their king, And this infallibly proveth that God designeth one of six to be a king, to a people who had no king before, by no other act but by determining the hearts of the states to elect and design this man king, and pass any of the other five. 4. When God (Deut. xvii.) forbiddeth. them to choose a stranger, he presupposeth they may choose a stranger; for God’s law now given to man in the state of sin. presupposeth ho hath corruption of nature to do contrary to God’s law. Now if God did hold forth that their setting a king over them was but the people’s approving the man whom God shall both constitute and design to be king, then he should presuppose that God was to design a stranger to be the lawful king of Israel, and the people should be interdicted to approve and consent that the man should be king whom God should choose; for it was impossible that the people should make a stranger king (God is the only immediate king-creator), the people should only approve and consent that a stranger should be king; yet, upon supposition that God first constituted and designed the stranger king, it was not in the people’s power that the king should be a brother rather than a stranger, for if the people have no power to make a king, but do only approve him or consent to him, when he is both made and designed of God to be king, it is not in their power that he be either brother or stranger, and so God commandeth what is simply impossible. Consider the sense of the command by the Prelate’s vain logic: I Jehovah, as I only create the world of nothing, so I only constitute and design a man, whether a Jew or Nebuchadnezzar, a stranger, to be your king; yet I inhibit you, under the pain of my curse, that you set any king over yourselves, but only a brother. What is this, but I inhibit you to be creators by omnipotent power? 5. To these add the reasons I produced before, that the people, by no shadow of reason, can be commanded to make this man king, not that man, if they only consent to the man made king, but have no action in the making of the king.

P. Prelate. — All the acts, real and imaginable, which are necessary for the making of kings, are ascribed to God. Take the first king as a ruling case, 1 Sam. xii. 13, “Behold the king whom ye have chosen, and whom ye have desired; and, behold, the Lord hath set a king over you!” This election of the people can be no other but their admittance or acceptance of the king whom God hath chosen and constituted, as the words, “whom ye have chosen,” imply. 1 Sam. ix. 17; 1 Sam. x. 1, You have Saul’s election and constitution, where Samuel, as priest and prophet, anointeth him, doing reverence and obeisance to him, and ascribing to God, that he did appoint him supreme and sovereign over his inheritance.

And the same expression is, (1 Sam. xii. 13?) “The Lord hath set a king over you;” which is, Psal. ii. 6, “I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.” Neither man nor angel hath any share in any act of constituting Christ king. Deut. xvii. the Lord vindicateth, as proper and peculiar to himself, the designation of the person. It was not arbitrary to the people to admit or reject Saul so designed. It pleased God to consummate the work by the acceptation, consent and approbation of the people, ut suaviore modo, that by a smoother way he might encourage Saul to undergo the hard charge, and make his people the more heartily, without grumbling and scruple, reverence and obey him. The people’s admittance possibly added something to the solemnity and to the pomp, but nothing to the essential and real constitution or necessity; it only puts the subjects in mala fide, if they should contravene, as the intimation of a law, the coronation of an hereditary king, the enthronement of a bishop. And 1 Kings, iii. 7, “Thou hast made thy servant king;” 1 Sam. xvi. 1, “I have provided me a king;” Psal. xviii. 50, He is God’s king; Ps. lxxxix. 19, “I have exalted one chosen out of the people;” (ver. 20,) He anointeth them; (ver. 27,) adopteth them: “I will make him my first-born.” The first-born is above every brother severally, and above all, though a thousand jointly.

Ans. — 1. By this reason, inferior judges are no less immediate deputies of God, and so irresistible, than the king, because God took off the spirit that was on Moses, and immediately poured it on the seventy elders, who were judges inferior to Moses, Num. ii. 14-16. 2. This P. Prelate cannot make a syllogism. If all the acts necessary to make a king be ascribed to God, none to the people, then God both constituteth and designeth the king — but the former the Scripture saith; therefore, if all the acts be ascribed to God, as to the prime king-maker and disposer of kings and kingdoms, and none to the people, in that notion, then God both constituteth and designeth a king. Both major and minor are false. The major is as talse as the very P. Prelate himself. All the acts necessary for war-making are, in an eminent manner, ascribed to God, as (1.) The Lord fighteth for his own people. (2.) The Lord scattered the enemies. (3.) The Lord slew Og, king of Bashan. (4.) The battle is the Lord’s. (5.)

The victory the Lord’s; therefore Israel never fought a battle. So Deut. xxxii., The Lord alone led his people — the Lord led them in the wilderness — their bow and their sword gave them not the land. God wrought all their works for them, (Isa. xxvi. 12;) therefore Moses led them not; therefore the people went not on their own. legs through the wilderness; therefore the people never shot an arrow, never drew a sword. It followeth not. God did all these as the first, eminent, principal, and efficacious pre-determinator of the creature (though this Arminian and popish prelate mind not so to honour God). The assumption is also false, for the people made Saul and David kings; and it were ridiculous that God should command them to make a brother, not a stranger, king, if it was not in their power whether he should be a Jew, a Scythian, an Ethiopian, who was their king, if God did only, without them, both choose, constitute, design the person, and perform all acts essential to make a king; and the people had no more in them but only to admit and consent, and that for the solemnity and pomp, not for the essential constitution of the king. 1 Sam. ix. 17; 1 Sam. x. 1, we have not Saul elected and constituted king. Samuel did obeisance to him and kissed him, for the honour royal which God was to put upon him; for, before this prophetical unction, (1 Sam. ix. 22,) he made him sit in the chief place, and honoured him as king, when as yet Samuel was materially king, and the Lord’s vicegerent in Israel. If, then, the Prelate conclude any thing from Samuel’s doing reverence and obeisance to him as king, it shall follow that Saul was formally king, before Samuel (1 Sam. x. 1) anointed him and kissed him, and that must be before he was formally king, otherwise he was in God’s appointment king, before ever he saw Samuel’s face; and it is true he ascribeth honour to him, as to one appointed by God to be supreme sovereign, for that which he should be, not for that which he was, as (1 Sam. ix. 22) he set him in the chief place; and, therefore, it is false that we have Saul’s election and constitution to be king, (1 Sam. x.,) for after that time the people are rebuked for seeking a king, and that with a purpose to dissuade them from it as a sinful desire: and he is chosen by lots after that and made king, and after Samuel’s anointing of him he was a private man, and did hide himself amongst the stuff, ver. 22. 3. The Prelate, from ignorance or wiliully, I know not, saith, The expression and phrase is the same, 1 Sam. xii. 13, and Psal. ii. 6, which is false; for 1 Sam. xii. 13, it is K7leme Mkeyl'(j hwhy NtanF hn%””hiw:: Behold the Lord hath given you a king, such is the expression: Hos. xiii. 11, I gave them a king in my wrath, but that is not the expression in Psalm ii. 6, but this, ykil;maaa yt@@@ik;saanFF yni)jwAAA “But I have established him my king;” and though it were the same expression, it followeth not that the people have no hand any other way in appointing Christ their head, (though that phrase also be in the Word, Hos. i. 11,) than by consenting and believing in him as king; but this proveth not that the people, in appointing a king, hath no hand but naked approbation, for the same phrase doth not express the same action: nay, the judges are to kiss Christ, {Psal. ii. 12,) the same way, .and by the same action, that Samuel kissed Saul, (1 Sam. x. 1.) and the idolaters kissed the calves, (Hos. xiii. 2;) for the same Hebrew word is used in all the three places, and yet it it certain the first kissing is spiritual, the second a kiss of honour, and the third an idolatrous kissing. 4. The anointing of Saul cannot be a leading rule to the making of all kings to the world’s end; for the P. Prelate, forgetting himself, said, that only some few, as Moses, Saul, and David, &c., by extraordinary manifestation from heaven, were made kings, (p. 19.) 5. He saith it was not arbitrary for the people to admit or reject Saul so designed. What meaneth he. It was not morally arbitrary, because they were under a law (Deut. xvii. 14, 15) to make him king whom the Lord should choose. That is true. But was it not arbitrary to them to break a law physically? I think he, who is a professed Arminian, will not so side with Manicheans and fatalists. But the P. Prelate must prove it was not arbitrary, either morally or physically, to them not to accept Saul as their king, because they had no action at all in the making of a king. God did it all, both by constituting and designing the king. Why then did God (Deut. xvii.) give a law to them to make this man king, not that man, if it was not in their free will to have any action or hand in the making of a king at all? But that some sons of Belial would not accept him as their king, is expressly said, (1 Sam. x..27;) and how did Israel conspire with Absalom to unking and dethrone David, whom the Lord had made king? If the Prelate mean it was not arbitrary to them physically to reject Saul, he speaketh wonders; the sons of Belial did reject him, therefore they had physical power to do it. If he mean it was not arbitrary, that is, it was not lawful to them to reject him, that is true; but doth it follow they had no hand nor action in making Saul king, because it was not lawful for them to make a king in a sinful way, and to refuse him whom God choose to be king? Then see what I infer. (1.) That they had no hand in obeying him as king, because they sinned in obeying unlawful commandments against God’s law, and so they had no hand in approving, and consenting he should be king; the contrary whereof the P. Prelate saith. (2.) So might the P. Prelate prove men are passive, and have no action in violating all the commandments of God, because it is not lawful to them to violate any one commandment. 6. The Lord (Deut. xvii.) vindicates this, as proper and peculiar to himself, to choose the person, and to choose Saul. What then? Therefore now the people, choosing a king, have no power to choose or name a man. because God anointed Saul and David by immediate manifestation of his will to Samuel; this consequence is nothing, and also it followeth in nowise, that therefore the people made not Saul king. 7. That the peopled approbation of a king is not necessary, is the saving of Bellarmine and the papists, and that the people choose their ministers in the apostolic church, not by a necessity of a divine commandment, but to conciliate love betwixt pastor and people. Papists hold that if the Pope make a popish king the head and king of Britain, against the people’s will, yet is he their king. 8. David was then king all the time Saul persecuted him. He sinned, truly, in not discharging the duty of a king, only because he wanted a ceremony, the people’s approbation, which the Prelate saith is required to the solemnity and pomp, not to the necessity, and truth, and essence, of a formal king. So the king’s coronation oath, and the people’s oath, must be ceremonies; and because the Prelate is perjured himself, therefore perjury is but a ceremony also. 9. The enthronement of bishops is like the kinging of the Pope. The apostles must spare thrones when they come to heaven, (Luke xxii. 29, 30:) the popish prelates, with their head the Pope, must be enthroned. 10. The hereditary king he maketh a king before his coronation, and his acts are as valid before as after his coronation. It might cost him his head to say that the Prince of Wales is now king of Britain, and his acts acts of kingly royalty, no less than our sovereign is king of Britain, if laws and parliaments had their own vigour from royal authority. 11. I allow that kings be as high as God hath placed them, but that God said of all kings, “I will make him my first-born,” &c., Psal. lxxxix. 26, 27, — which is true of Solomon as the type, 2 Sam. vii.; 1 Chron. xvii. 22; 2 Sam. vii. 12; and fulfilled of Christ, and by the Holy Ghost spoken of him, (Heb. i. 5, 6,) — is blasphemous; for God said not to Nero, Julian, Dioclesian, Belshazzar, Evil-merodach, who were lawful kings, “I will make him my firstborn;” and that any of these blasphemous idolatrous princes should cry to God, “He is my father, my God,” &c., is divinity well-beseeming on excommunicated prelate. Of the king’s dignity above the kingdom I speak not now; the Prelate pulled it in by the hair, but hereafter we shall hear of it.

P. Prelate (p. 43, 44). — God only anointed David, (1 Sam. xvi. 4,) the men of Bethlehem, yea, Samuel knew it not before. God saith, “With mine holy oil have I anointed him,” Psal. lxxxix. 91. 1. He is the Lord’s anointed. 2. The oil is God’s, not from the apothecary’s shop, nor the priest’s vial — this oil descended from the Holy Ghost, who is no less the true olive than Christ is the true vine; yet not the oil of saving grace, as some fantastics say, but holy. (1.) From the author, God. (2.) From influence in the person, it maketh the person of the king sacred. (3.) From influence on his charge, his function and power is sacred.

Ans. — 1. The Prelate said before, David’s anointing was extraordinary; here he draweth this anointing to all kings. 2. Let David be formally both constituted and designed king divers years before the states made him king at Hebron, and then (1.) Saul was not king, — the Prelate will term that treason. (2.) This was a dry oil. David’s person was not made sacred, nor his authority sacred by it, for he remained a private man, and called Saul his king, his master, and himself a subject. (3.) This oil was, no doubt, God’s oil, and the Prelate will have it the Holy Ghost’s, yet he denieth that saving grace, yea, (p. 2. c. i.) he denieth that any supernatural gift should be the foundation of royal dignity, and that it is a pernicious tenet. So to me he would have the oil from heaven, and yet not from heaven. (4.) This holy oil, wherewith David was anointed, (Psal. lxxxix. 20,) is the oil of saving grace;[2]his own dear brethren, the papists, say so, and especially Lyranus,[3] Glossa ordinaria, Hugo Cardinalis,[4] his beloved Bellarmine, and Lorinus, Calvin. Musculus, Marloratos. If these be fanatics, (as I think they are to the Prelate,) yet the text is evident that this oil of God was the oil of saving grace, bestowed on David as on a special type of Christ, who received the Spirit above measure, and was the anointed of God, (Psal. xlv. 7,) whereby all his “garments smell of myrrh, aloes and cassia,” (ver. 8,) and “his name Messiah is as ointment poured out, (Song, i.) This anointed shall be head of his enemies. “His dominion shall be from the sea to the rivers,” ver. 25. He is in the covenant of grace, ver, 26. He is “higher than the kings of the earth.” The grace of perseverance is promised to his seed, ver. 28-30. His kingdom is eternal “as the days of heaven,” ver. 35, 36. If the Prelate will look under himself to Diodatus and Ainsworth,[5] this holy oil was poured on David by Samuel, and on Christ was poured the Holy Ghost, and that by warrant of Scripture, (1 Sam. xvi. 1; xiii. 14; Luke iv. 18, 21; John iii. 34,) and Junius[6] and Mollerus[7] saith with them. Now the Prelate taketh the court way, to pour this oil of grace on many dry princes, who, without all doubt, are kings essentially no less than David. He must see better than the man who, finding Pontius Pilate in the Creed, said, he behooved to be a good man; so, because he hath found Nero the tyrant, Julian the apostate, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-merodach, Hazael, Hagag, all the kings of Spain, and, I doubt not, the Great Turk, in Psal. lxxxix. 19, 20, so all these kings are anointed with the oil of grace, and all these must make their enemies’ necks their footstool. All these be higher than the kings of the earth, and are hard and fast in the covenant of grace, &c.

P. Prelate. — All the royal ensigns and acts of kings are ascribed to God. The crown is of God, Isa. lxii. 3; Psal. xxi. 3. In the emperors’ coin was a hand putting a crown on their head. The heathen said they were qeostefei~~j, as holding their crowns from God. Psal. xviii. 39, Thou hast girt me with strength (the sword is the emblem of strength) unto battle. See Judg. vii. 17, Their sceptre God’s sceptre. Exod. iv. 20; xvii. 9, We read of two rods, Moses’ and Aaron’s; Aaron’s rod budded: God made both the rods. Their judgment is the Lord’s, 2 Chron. xix. 6; their throne is God’s, 1 Chron. xix. 21. The fathers called them, sacra vestigia, sacra majestas, — their commandment, divalis jussio. The law saith, all their goods are res sacræ. Therefore our new statists disgrace kings, if they blaspheme not God, in making them the derivatives of the people, — the basest extract of the basest of irrational creatures, the multitude, the commonalty.

Ans. — This is all one argument from the Prelate’s beginning of his book to the end: In a most special and eminent act of God’s providence kings are from God; but, therefore, they are not from men and men’s consent. It followeth not. From a most special and eminent act of God’s providence Christ came into the world, and took on him our nature, therefore he came not of David’s loins. It is a vain consequence. There could not be a more eminent act than this, (Psal. xl.) “A body thou hast given me;” therefore he came not of David’s house, and from Adam by natural generation, and was not a man like us in all things except sin. It is tyrannical and domineering logic. Many things are ascribed to God only, by reason of a special and admirable act of providence, — as the saving of the world by Christ, the giving of Canaan to Israel, the bringing his people out from Egypt and from Chaldee, the sending of the gospel to both Jew and Gentile, &c.; but, shall we say that God did none of these things by the ministry of men, and weak and frail men? 1. How proveth the Prelate that all royal ensigns are ascribed to God, because (Isa. lxii.) the church universal shall be as a crown of glory and a royal diadem in the hand of the Lord; therefore, bæculus in angulo, the church shall be as a seal on the heart of Christ. What then? Jerome, Procopius, Cyrillus, with good reason, render the meaning thus: Thou, O Zion and church, shalt be to me a royal priesthood, and a holy people. For that he speaketh of his own kingdom and church is most evident, (ver. 1, 2,) “For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace,” &c. 2. God put a crown of pure gold on David’s head, (Psal. xxii 3,) therefore Julian, Nero, and no elective kings, are made and designed to be kings by the people. He shall never prove this consequence. The Chaldee paraphrase applieth it to the reign of King Messiah; Diodatus speaketh of the kingdom of Christ; Ainsworth maketh this crown a sign of Christ’s victory; Athanasius, Eusebius, Origen, Augustine, Dydimus, expound it of Christ and his kingdom. The Prelate extendeth it to all kings, as the blasphemous rabbins, especially Rabbin Salomon, deny that he speaketh of Christ here. But what more reason is there to expound this of the crowns of all kings given by God, (which I deny not,) to Nero, Julian, &c., than to expound the foregoing and following verses as applied to all kings? Did Julian rejoice in God’s salvation? did God grant Nero his heart’s desire? did God grant (as it is, ver. 4,) life eternal to heathen kings as kings? which words all interpreters expound of the eternity of David’s throne, till Christ come, and of victory and life eternal purchased by Christ, as Ainsworth, with good reason, expounds it. And what though God gave David a crown, was it not by second causes, and by bowing all Israeli heart to come in sincerity to Hebron to make David king? 1 Kings xii. 38. God gave com and wine to Israel, (Hos. ii.) and shall the prelate and the anabaptist infer, therefore, he giveth it not by ploughing, sowing, and the art of the husbandman? 3. The heathen acknowledged a divinity in kings, but he is blind who readeth them and seeth not in their writings that they teach that the people maketh kings. 4. God girt David with strength, while he was a private man, and persecuted by Saul, and fought with Goliah, as the title of the same beareth; and he made him a valiant man of war, to break bows of steel; therefore he giveth the sword to kings as kings, and they receive no sword from the people. This is poor logic. 5. The P. Prelate sendeth us (Judg. vii. 17 [25],) to the singular and extraordinary power of God with Gideon; and, I say, that same power behooved to be in Oreb and Zeeb, (ver. 27,) for they were yr”#off princes, and such at the Prelate, from Prov. vii. 15, saith have no power from the people. 6. Moses’ and Aaron’s rods were miraculous. This will prove that priests are also God’s, and their persons sacred. I see not (except the Prelate would be at worshipping of relics) what more royal divinity is in Moses’ rod, because he wrought miracles by his rod, than there is in Elijah’s staff, in Peter’s napkin, in Paul’s shadow. This is like the strong symbolical theology of his fathers the Jesuits, which is not argumentative, except he say that Moses, as king of Jeshurun, wrought miracles; and why should not Nero’s, Caligula’s, Pharaoh’s, and all kings’ rods then dry up the Red Sea, and work miracles? 7. We give all the styles to kings that the fathers gave, and yet we think not when David commandeth to kill Uriah, and a king commandeth to murder his innocent subjects in England and Scotland, that that is divalis jussio, the command of a god; and that this is a good consequence — Whatever the king commandeth, though it were to kill his most loyal subjects, is the commandment of God; therefore the king is not made king by the people. 8. Therefore, saith he, these new statists disgrace the king. If a new statist, sprung out of a poor pursuivant of Crail — from the dunghill to the court — could have made himself an old statist, and more expert in state affairs than all the nobles and soundest lawyers in Scotland and England, this might have more weight. 9. Therefore the king (saith P. P.) is not “the extract of the basest of rational creatures.” He meaneth, fex populi, his own house and lineage; but God calleth them his own people, “a royal priesthood, a chosen generation;” and Psal. lxxviii. 71, will warrant us to say, the people is much worthier before God than one man, seeing God chose David for “Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance,” that he might feed them. John P. P.’s Other’s suffrage in making a king will never be sought. We make not the multitude, but the three estates, including the nobles and gentry, to be as rational creatures as any apostate prelate in the three kingdoms.


[1] Dr Ferne, 3, s. 13.

[2] Aug. in locum, unxi manum fortem, servum obedientem ideo in eo posui adjutonum.

[3] Lyranus Gratia est habitualis, quia stat pugil contra diabolum.

[4] Hugo Cardinalis, Oleo latitiæ quo præ consortibus unctus fuit Christus, Ps. xlv.

[5] Ainsworth. Annot.

[6] Junius Annot. in loc.

[7] Mollerus Com. ib.

Question VII.

Whether or no the Popish Prelate, the aforesaid author, doth by force of reason evince that neither constitution nor designation of the king is from the people.

The P. Prelate aimeth (but it is an empty aim) to prove that the people are wholly excluded. I answer only arguments not pitched on before, as the Prelate saith.

P. Prelate — 1. To whom can it be more proper to give the rule over men than to Him who is the only king truly and properly of the whole world? 2. God is the immediate author of all rule and power that is amongst all his creatures, above or below. 3. Man before the fall received dominion and empire over all the creatures below immediately, as Gen. i. 28; Gen. ix. 2; therefore we cannot deny that the most noble government (to wit monarchy) must be immediately from God, without any contract or compact of men.

Ans. — 1. The first reason concludeth not what is in question; for God only giveth rule and power to one man over another; therefore he giveth it immediately. It followeth not. 2. It shall as well prove that God doth immediately constitute all judges, and therefore it shall be unlawful for a city to appoint a mayor, or a shire a justice of peace. 3. The second argument is inconsequent also, because God in creation is the immediate author of all things, and, therefore, without consent of the creatures, or any act of the creature, created an angel a nobler creature than man, and a man than a woman, and men above beasts; because those that are not can exercise no act at all. But it followeth not that all the works of providence, such as is the government of kingdoms, are done immediately by God; for in the works of providence, for the most part in ordinary, God worketh by means. It is then as good a consequence as this: God immediately created man, therefore he keepeth his life immediately also without food and sleep; God immediately created the sun, therefore God immediately, without the mediation of the sun, giveth light to the world. The making of a king is an act of reason, and God hath given a man reason to rule himself; and therefore hath given to a society an instinct of reason to appoint a governor over themselves; but no act of reason goeth before man be created, therefore it is not in his power whether he be created a creature of greater power than a beast or no. 4. God by creation gave power to a man over the creatures, and so immediately; but I hope men cannot say, God by creation hath made a man king over men. 5. The excellency of monarchy (if it be more excellent than any other government, of which hereafter) is no ground why it should be immediately from God as well as man’s dominion over the creature; for then the work of man’s redemption, being more excellent than the raising of Lazarus, should have been done immediately without the incarnation, death and satisfaction of Christ, (for no act of God without himself is comparable to the work of redemption, 1 Pet. i. 11, 12; Col. i. 18-22,) and God’s less excellent works, as his creating of beasts and worms, should have been done mediately, and his creating of man immediately.

P. Prelate. — They who execute the judgment of God must needs have the power to judge from God; but kings are deputies in the exercise of the judgments of God, therefore the proposition is proved. How is it imaginable that God reconcileth the world by ministers, and saveth man by them, (1 Cor. v.; 1 Tim. iv. 16,) except they receive a power so to do from God? The assumption is, (Deut. i. 17; 1 Chron. xix. 6,) Let none say Moses and Jehosaphat spake of inferior judges; for that which the king doth to others he doth by himself. Also, the execution of the kingly power is from God; for the king is the servant, angel, legate, minister of God, Rom. xiii. 6, 7. God properly and primarily is King, and King of kings, and Lord of lords (1 Tim. vi. 15; Rev. i. 5); all kings, related to him, are kings equivocally, and in resemblance, and he the only King.

Ans. — 1. That which is in question is never concluded, to wit, that “the king is both immediately constituted and designed king by God only, and not by the mediation of the people;” for when God reconcileth and saveth men by pastors, he saveth them by the ‘intervening action of men; so he scourgeth his people by men as by his sword, (Psal. xvii. 14,) hand, staff, rod, (Isa, x, 5,) and his hammer. Doth it follow that God only doth immediately scourge his people, and that wicked men have no more hand and action in scourging his people than the Prelate saith the people hath a hand in making a king? and that is no hand at all by the Prelate’s way. 2. We may borrow the Prelate’s argument: — Inferior judges execute the judgment of the Lord, and not the judgment of the king; therefore, by the Prelate’s argument. God. doth only by immediate power execute judgment in them, and the inferior judges are not God’s ministers, executing the judgment of the Lord. But the conclusion is against all truth, and so must the Prelate’s argument be; and that inferior judges are the immediate substitutes and deputies of God, is hence proved, and shall be hereafter made good, if God will. 3. God is properly King of kings, so is God properly causa causarum, the Cause of causes, the Life of lifes, the Joy of joys. What! shall it then follow that he worketh nothing in the creatures by their mediation as causes? Because God is Light of lights, doth he not enlighten the earth and air by the mediation of the sun? Then God communicateth not life mediately by generation, he causeth not his saints to rejoice, with joy unspeakable and glorious, by the intervening mediation of the Word. These are vain consequences. Sovereignty, and all power and virtue is in God infinitely; and what virtue and power of action is in the creatures, as they are compared with God, are in the creatures equivocally and in resemblance, and kata/ doch\n in opinion rather than really. Hence it must follow that second causes work none at all, — no more than the people hath a hand or action in making the King, and that is no hand at all, as the Prelate saith. And God only and immediately worketh all works in the creatures, because both the power of working and actual working cometh from God, and the creatures, in all their working, are God’s instruments. And if the Prelate argue so frequently from power given of God, to prove that actual reigning is from God immediately, — Deut. viii. 18, The Lord “giveth the power to get wealth,” — will it follow that Israel getteth no riches at all, or that God doth not mediately by them and their industry get them? I think not.

P. Prelate. — To whom can it be due to give the kingly office but to Him only who is able to give the endowment and ability for the office? Now God only and immediately giveth ability to be a king, as the sacramental anointing proveth, Josh. iii. 10.

Othniel is the first judge after Joshua; and it is said, “And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel:” the like is said of Saul and David.

Ans. — 1. God gave royal endowments immediately, therefore he immediately now maketh the king. It followeth not, for the species of government is not that which formally constituteth a king, for then Nero, Caligula, Julian, should not have been kings; and those who come to the crown by conquest and blood, are essentially kings, as the Prelate saith. But be all these Othniels upon whom the Spirit of the Lord cometh? Then they are not essentially kings who are babes and children, and foolish and destitute of the royal endowments; but it is one thing to have a royal gift, and another thing to be formally called to the kingdom. David had royal gifts after Samuel anointed him, but if you make him king, before Saul’s death, Saul was both a traitor all the time that he persecuted David, and so no king, and also king and God’s anointed, as David acknowledgeth him; and, therefore, that spirit that came on David and Saul, maketh nothing against the people’s election of a king, as the Spirit of God is given to pastors under the New Testament, as Christ promised; but it will not follow that the designation of the man who is to be pastor should not be from the church and from men, as the Prelate denieth that either the constitution or designation of the king is from the people, but from God only. 2. I believe the infusion of the Spirit of God upon the judges will not prove that kings are now both constituted and designed of God solely, only, and immediately; for the judges were indeed immediately, and for the most part extraordinarily, raised up of God; and God indeed, in the time of the Jews, was the king of Israel in another manner than he was the king of all the nations, and is the king of Christian realms now, and, therefore, the people’s despising of Samuel was a refusing that God should reign over them, because God, in the judges, revealed himself even in matters of policy, as what should be done to the man that gathered sticks on the Sabbath-day, and the like, as he doth not now to kings.

P. Prelate. — Sovereignty is a ray of divine glory and majesty, but this cannot be found in people, whether you consider them jointly or singly; if you consider them singly, it cannot be in every individual man, for sectaries say, That all are born equal, with a like freedom; and if it be not in the people singly, it cannot be in them jointly, for all the contribution in this compact and contract, which they fancy to be human composition and voluntary constitution, is only by a surrender of the native right that every one had in himself. From whence, then, can this majesty and authority be derived? Again, where the obligation amongst equals is by contract and compact, violation of the faith plighted in the contract, cannot in proper terms be called disobedience or contempt of authority. It is no more but a receding from, and a violation of, that which was promised, as it may be in states or countries confederate. Nature, reason, conscience, Scripture, teach, that disobedience to sovereign power is not only a violation of truth and breach of covenant, but also high disobedience and contempt, as is clear, I Sam. x. 26. So when Saul (chap. xi.) sent a yoke of oxen, hewed in pieces, to all the tribes, the fear of the Lord fell on the people, and they came out with one consent, 1 Sam. xi. 7; also, (Job xi. 18,) He looseth the bonds of kings, that is, he looseth their authority, and bringeth them into contempt; and he girdeth their loins with a girdle, that is, he strengthened their authority, and maketh the people to reverence them. Heathens observe that there is qeio/n ti, some divine thing in kings. Profane histories say, that this was so eminent in Alexander the Great, that it was a terror to his enemies, and a powerful loadstone to draw men to compose the most seditious councils, and cause his most experienced commanders embrace and obey his counsel and command. Some stories write that, upon some great exigency, there was some resplendent majesty in the eyes of Scipio. This kept Pharaoh from lilting his hand against Moses, who charged him so boldly with his sins. When Moses did speak with God, face to face, in the mount, this resplendent glory of majesty so awed the people, that they durst not behold his glory, Exod. xxxiv.; this repressed the fury of the people, enraged against Gideon from destroying their idol, Judg. vi.; and the fear of man is naturally upon all living creatures below, Gen. ix. So what can this reverence, which is innate in the hearts of all subjects toward their sovereigns, be, but the ordinance unrepeatable of God, and the natural effect of that majesty of princes with which they are endowed from above?

Ans. — 1. I never heard any shadow of reason till now, and yet (because the lie hath a latitude) here is but a shadow, which the Prelate stole from M. Anton. de Dom. Archiepisc, Spalatensis;[l] and I may say, confidently, his Plagiarius hath not one line in his book which is not stolen; and, for the present, Spalato’s argument is but spilt, and the nerves cut from it, while, it is both bleeding and lamed. Let the reader compare them, and I pawn my credit he hath ignorantly clipped Spalato. But I answer, “Sovereignty is a beam and ray (as Spalato saith) of divine majesty, and is not either formally or virtually in the people.” It is false that it is not virtually in the people; for there be two things in the judge, either inferior or supreme, for the argument holdeth in the majesty of a parliament, as we shall hear. (1.) The gift or grace of governing (the Arminian Prelate will be offended at this). (2.) The authority of governing. The gift is supernatural, and is not in man naturally, and so not in the king; for he is physically but a mortal man, and this is a gift received, for Solomon asked it by prayer from God. There is a capacity passive in all individual men for it. As for the official authority itself, it is virtually in all in whom any of God’s image is remaining since the fall, as is clear, as may be gathered from Gen. i. 28; yea, the father, the master, the judge, have it by God’s institution, in some measure, over son, servant, and subject, though it be more in the supreme ruler; and, for our purpose, it is not requisite that authoritative majesty should be in all, (what is in the father and husband I hope to clear,) I mean, it needeth not to be formally in all, and so all are born alike and equal. But he who is a Papist, a Socinian, an Arminian, and therefore delivered to Satan by his mother church, must be the sectary, for we are where this Prelate left us, maintainers of the Protestant religion, contained in the Confession of Faith and National Covenant of Scotland, when this Demas forsook us and embraced the world. 2. Though not one single man in Israel be a judge or king by nature, nor have in them formally any ray of royalty or magistratical authority, yet it followeth not that Israel, parliamentarily convened, hath no such authority as to name Saul king in Mizpeh, and David king in Hebron, 1 Sam. x. 24, 25; 1 Chron. xi. 12; xii. 38. 39. One man alone hath not the keys of the kingdom of heaven; (as the Prelate dreameth) but it followeth not that many, convened in a church way, hath not this power, Matt. rviii. 17; 1 Cor. v. 1-4. One man hath not strength to tight against an army of ten thousand; doth it follow, therefore, that an army of twenty thousand hath not strength to fight against these ten thousand? Though one Paul cannot synodically determine the question, (Acts xv.) it followeth not that the apostles, and elders, and brethren, convened from divers churches, hath not power to determine it in a lawful synod; and, therefore, from a disjoined and scattered power, no man can argue to a united power. So not any one man is an inferior ruler, or hath the rays and beams of a number of aristocratical rulers; but it followeth not that all these men, combined in a city or society, have not power, in a joint political body, to choose inferior or aristocratical rulers. 3. The P. Prelate’s reason is nothing. All the contribution (saith he) in the compact body to make a king, is only by a surrender of the native right of every single man (the whole being only a voluntary contribution). How, then, can there be any majesty derived from them? I answer, Very well; for the surrender is so voluntary, that it is also natural, and founded on the law of nature, that men must have governors, either many, or one supreme ruler. And it is voluntary, and dependeth on a positive institution of God, whether the government be by one supreme ruler, as in a monarchy, or in many, as in an aristocracy, according as the necessity and temper of the commonwealth do most require. This constitution is so voluntary, as it hath below it the law of nature for its general foundation, and above it, the supervenient institution of God, ordaining that there should be such inagistrates, both kings and other judges, because without such, all. human societies should be dissolved. 4. Individual persons, in creating a magistrate, doth not properly surrender their right, which can be called a right; for they do but surrender their power of doing violence to those of their fellows in that same community, so as they shall not now have moral power to do injuries without punishment; and this is not right or liberty properly, but servitude, for a power to do violence and injuries is not liberty, but servitude and bondage. But the Prelate talketh of royalty as of mere tyranny, as if it were a proper dominion and servile empire that the prince hath over his people, and not more paternal and fatherly, than lordly or masterly. 5. He saith, “Violation of faith, plighted in a contract amongst equals, cannot be called disobedience; but disobedience to the authority of the sovereign is not only breach of covenant, but high disobedience and contempt.” But violation of faith amongst equals, as equals, is not properly disobedience; for disobedience is betwixt a superior and an inferior: but violation of faith amongst equals, when they make one of their equals their judge and ruler, is not only violation of truth, but also disobedience. All Israel, and Saul, while he is a private man seeking his father’s asses, are equals by covenant, obliged one to another; and so any injury done by Israel to Saul, in that case, is not disobedience, but only violation of faith. But when all Israel maketh Saul their king, and sweareth to him obedience, he is not now their equal; and an injury done to him now, is both a violation of their faith, and high disobedience also. Suppose a city of aldermen, all equal amongst themselves in dignity and place, take one of their number and make him their mayor and provost — a wrong done to him now, is not only against the rules of fraternity, but disobedience to one placed by God over them. 6. 1 Sam. xi. 7, “The fear of the Lord fell on the people, and they came out with one consent to obey Saul;” therefore God hath placed authority in kings, which is not in people. It is true; because God hath transferred the scattered authorities that are in all the people, in one mass; and, by virtue of his own ordinance, hath placed them in one man, who is king. What followeth? That God conferreth this authority immediately upon the king, without the mediation of any action of the people? Yea, the contrary rather followeth. 7. God looseth the bond of kings; that is, when God is to cast off kings, he causeth them to loose all authority, and maketh them come into contempt with the people. But what doth this prove? That God taketh away the majesty and authority of kings immediately; and therefore God gave to kings this authority immediately, without the people’s conveyance? Yea, I take the Prelate’s weapon from him. God doth not take the authority of the king from him immediately, but mediately, by the people’s hating and despising him, when they see his wickedness, as the people see Nero a monster — a prodigious blood-sucker. Upon this, all the people contemn him and despise him, and so the majesty is taken from Nero and all his mandates and laws, when they see him trample upon all laws, divine and human, and that mediately by the people’s heart despising of his majesty; and so they repeat, and take again, that awesome authority that they once gave him. And this proveth that God gave him the authority mediately, by the consent of man. 8. Nor speaketh he of kings only, but (ver. 21) he poureth contempt [Psal. 107:40] Mybiydin;-l(aa super munificos. Pineda. Ans. Mont. super Principes, upon nobles and great men; and this place may prove that no judges of the earth are made by men. 9. The heathen say, That there is some divinity in princes, as in Alexander the Great and Scipio, toward their enemies; but this will prove that princes and kings have a superiority over those who are not their native subjects, for something of God is in them, in relation to all men that are not their subjects. If this be a ground strong and good, because God only, and independently from men, taketh away this majesty, as God only and independently giveth it, then a king is sacred to all men, subjects or not subjects. Then it is unlawful to make war against any foreign king and prince, for in invading him or resisting him, you resist that divine majesty of God that is in him; then you may not lawfully flee from a tyrant, no more than you may lawfully flee from God. 10. Scipio was not a king, therefore this divine majesty is in all judges of the earth, in a more or less measure; — therefore God, only and immediately, may take this spark of divine majesty from inferior judges. It followeth not. And kings, certainly, cannot infuse any spark of a divine majesty on any inferior judges, for God only immediately infuseth it in men; therefore it is unlawful for kings to take this divinity from judges, for they resist God who resist parliaments, no less than those who resist kings. Scipio hath divinity in him as well as Cæsar, and that immediately from God, and not from any king. 11. Moses was not a king when he went to Pharaoh, for he had not, as yet, a people. Pharaoh was the king, and because Pharaoh was a king, the divines of Oxford must say, His majesty must not, in words of rebuke, be resisted more than by deeds. 12. Moses’ face did shine as a prophet receiving the law from God — not as a king. And is this sunshine from heaven upon the face of Nero and Julian? It must be, if it be a beam of royal majesty, if this pratler say right, but (2 Cor. iii. 7) this was a majesty typical, which did adumbrate the glory of the law of God, and is far from being a royalty due to all heathen kings. 13. I would our king would evidence such a majesty in breaking the images and idols of his queen, and of papists about him. 14. The fear of Noah, and the regenerated who are in covenant with the beasts of the field, (Job v. 23,) is upon the beasts of the earth, not by approbation only, as the people maketh kings by the Prelate’s way; nor yet by free consent, as the people freely transfer their power to him who is king. The creatures inferior to man, have, by no act of free will, chosen man to be their ruler, and transferred their power to him, because they are, by nature, inferior to man; and God, by nature, hath subjected the creatures to man, (Gen. i. 28,) and so this proveth not that the king, by nature, is above the people — I mean the man who is king; and, therefore, though God had planted in the hearts of all subjects a fear and reverence toward the king, upon supposition that they have made him king, it followeth not that this authority and majesty is immediately given by God to the man who is king, without the intervening consent of the people, for there is a native fear in the scholar to stand in awe of his teacher, and yet the scholar may willingly give himself to be a disciple to his teacher, and so give his teacher power over him. Citizens naturally tear their supreme governor of the city, yet they give to the man who is their supreme governor, that power and authority which is the ground of awe and reverence. A servant naturally feareth his master, yet often he giveth his liberty, and resigneth it up voluntarily to his master; and this was not extraordinary amongst the Jews, where the servant did entirely love the master, and is now most ordinary when servants do, for hire, tie themselves to such a master. Soldiers naturally fear their commanders, yet they may, and often do, by voluntary consent, make such men their commanders; and, therefore, from this, it followeth in no way that the governor of a city, the teacher, the master, the commander in war, have not their power and authority only and immediately from God, but from their inferiors, who, by their free consent, appointed them for such places.

P. Prelate (Arg. 7, p. 51, 52). — This seemeth, or rather is, an unanswerable argument, — No man hath power of life and death but the Sovereign Power of life and death, to wit, God, Gen. ix. 5 [6]. God saith thrice he will require the blood of man at the hands of man, and this power God hath committed to God’s deputy: whoso sheddeth man’s blood MdF)fb@f by man shall die, — by the king, for the world knew not any kind of government at this time but monarchical, and this monarch was Noah; and if this power be from God, why not all sovereign power? seeing it is homogeneous, and, as jurists say, in indivisibili posita, a thing in its nature indivisible, and that cannot be distracted or impaired, and if every man had the power of life and death, God should not be the God of order.

The P. Prelate taketh the pains to prove out of the text that a magistracy is established in the text. Ans. 1. Let us consider this unanswerable argument. (1.) It is grounded upon a lie, and a conjecture never taught by any but himself, to wit, that MdF)fb@f by, in, or through man, must signify a magistrate, and a king only. This king was Noah. Never interpreter, nay, not common sense can say, that no magistrate is here understood but a king. The consequence is vain: His blood shall be shed by man; therefore by a magistrate? it followeth not; therefore by a king? it followeth not. There was not a king in the world as yet. Some make Belus, the father of Ninus, the first king, and the builder of Babylon. This Ninus is thought the first builder of the city after called Nineveh, and the first king of the Assyrians. So saith Quintus Curtius[2] and others; but grave authors believe that Nimrod was no other than Belus the father of Ninus. So saith Augustine,[3] Eusebius, Hieronym.;[4] and Eusebius[5] maketh him the first founder of Babylon: so saith Clemens,[6] Pirerius,[7] and Josephus saith the same. Their times, their cruel natures are the same. Calvin saith,[8] Noah yet lived while Nimrod lived; and the Scripture saith, “Nimrod began to reign, and be powerful on the earth.” And Babel was wOt@k;lam;ma ty#Oi)r’ [Gen. 10:10] the beginning of his kingdom. No writer, Moses nor any other, can show as a king before Nimrod. So Eusebius,[9] Paul Orosius,[10] Hieronym.,[11] Josephus,[12] say that he was the first king; and Tostatus Abulens.,[13] and our own Calvin, Luther,[14] Musculus on the place, and Ainsworth, make him the first king and the founder of Babylon. How Noah was a king, or there was any monarchical government in the world then, the Prelate hath alone dreamed it. There was but family-government before this. 2. And if there be magistracy here established by God, there is no warrant to say it is only a monarchy; for if the Holy Ghost intendeth a policy, it is a policy to be established to the world’s end, and not to be limited (as the Prelate doth) to Noah’s days. All interpreters, upon good ground, establish the same policy that our Saviour speaketh of, when he saith, “He shall perish by the sword who taketh the sword,” Matt, xxvi. 52. So the Netherlands have no lawful magistrate who hath power of life and death, because their government is aristocratical, and they have no king. So all acts of taking away the lives of ill-doers shall be acts of homicide in Holland. How absurd! 3. Nor do I see how the place, in the native scope, doth establish a magistracy. Calvin saith not so;[15] and interpreters deduce, by consequence, the power of the magistrate from this place. But the text is general, — He who killeth man shall be killed by man: either he shall fall into the magistrate’s hand, or into the band of some murderer; so Calvin,[16] Marlorat, &c. He speaketh, saith Pirerius,[17] not of the fact and event itself, but of the deserving of murderers; and it is certain all murderers fall not into the magistrate’s hands; but he saith, by God and man’s laws they ought to die, though sometime one murderer killeth another. 4. The sovereign power is given to the king, therefore, it is given to him immediately without the consent of the people. It followeth not. 5. Power of life and death is not given to the king only, but also to other magistrates, yea, and to a single private man in the just defence of his own life. Other arguments are but what the Prelate hath said already.


[1] Antonin. de Dominis Archiepis. de dom. lib. 6, c. 2, n. 5, 6, seq.

[2] Quintius Curtius, lib. 5.

[3] Aug. de civ. Dei. lib. 16, c. 17.

[4] Hieron. in Hos. ii.

[5] Euseb. lib. 9, de prepar. Evan. c. 3.

[6] Clemems recog. lib. 4.

[7] Pirerius in Gen. x. 8, 9. diap. 3, a. 67. Illud quoque mihi fit percredible, Nimrod fuisse eundem, atque enim quem alii appellant Beluni patrem Nini

[8] Calvin Com. in Gen. ix.

[9] Euseb. prolog. 1 Chron.

[10] Paul Orosius, lib. l. de Ormesta mundl.

[11] Hieron. in traditio Hebrei in Gen.

[12] Tostat. Abulens, in Gen. x. 9.

[13] Josephus in Gen. x.

[14] Luth. Com. ib.

[15] Calvin Com. Quanquam hoc loco non simpliciter fertur lex politica, ut plectantur homicide.

[16] Calvin in lect.

[17] Pirerius in Gen. ix. 3, 4, n. 37. Vatablus hath divers interpretations: In homine, i. e. in conspectu omnium et publice, aut in homine, i.e. hominibus testincantibus: alii. in homine. i. e. propter hominem, quia occidit hominem. jussu magistratus. Cajetan expoundeth MdF)fb@f contra hominem, in despite of man.

Question VIII.

Whether the Prelate proveth by force of reason that the people cannot be capable of any power of government.

P. Prelate. — God and nature giveth no power in vain, and which may not be reduced into action; but an active power, or a power of actual governing, was never acted by the community; therefore this power cannot be seated in the community as in the prime and proper subject, and it cannot be in every individual person of a community, because government intrinsically and essentially includeth a special distinction of governors, and some to be governed; and, to speak properly, there can no other power be conceived in the community, naturally and properly, but only potestas passiva regiminis, a capacity or susceptibility to be governed, by one or by more, just as the first matter desireth a form. This obligeth all, by the dictate of nature’s law, to submit to actual government; and as it is in every individual person, it is not merely and properly voluntary, because, howsoever nature dictates that government is necessary for the safety of the society, yet every singular person, by corruption and self-love, hath a natural aversion and repugnance to submit to any: every man would be a king himself. This universal desire, appetitus universalis aut naturalis, or universal propension to government, is like the act of the understanding assenting to the first principles of truth, and to the will’s general propension to happiness in general, which propension is not a free act, except our new statists, as they have changed their faith, so they overturn true reason. It will puzzle them infinitely to make anything, in its kind passive, really active and collative

of positive acts and effects. All know no man can give what he hath not. An old philosopher would laugh at him who would say, that a matter perfected and actuated by union with a form, could at pleasure shake off its form, and marry itself to another. They may as well say, every wife hath power to resume her freedom and marry another, as that any such power active is in the community, or any power to cast off monarchy.

Ans. — 1. The P. Prelate might have thanked Spalato for this argument, but he doth not so much as cite him, for fear his theft be apprehended; but Spalato hath it set down with stronger nerves than the Prelate’s head was able to copy out of him. But Jac. de Almain,[1] and Navarrus,[2] with the Parisian doctors, said in the Council of Paris, “that politic power is immediately from God, but first from the community;” but so that the community apply their power to this or that government — not of liberty, but by natural necessity — but Spalato and the plagiary Prelate do both look beside the book.[3] The question is not now concerning the vis rectiva, the power of governing in the people, but concerning the power of government; for these two differ much. The former is a power of ruling and monarchical commanding of themselves. This power is not formally in the people, but only virtually; and no reason can say that a virtual power is idle because it cannot be actuated by that same subject that it is in; for then it should not be a virtual, but a formal power. Do not philosophers say such an herb virtually maketh hot? and can the sottish Prelate say this virtual power is idle, and in vain given of God, because it doth not formally heat your hand when you touch it 2. The P. Prelate, who is excommunicated for Popery, Socinianism, Arminianism, and is now turned apostate to Christ and his church, must have changed his faith, not we, and be unreasonably ignorant, to press that axiom, “That the power is idle that cannot be reduced to acts;” for a generative power is given to living and sensitive creatures, — this power is not idle though it be not reduced in act by all and every individual sensitive creature. A power of seeing is given to all who naturally do, or ought to see, yet it is not an idle power because divers are blind, seeing it is put forth in action in divers of the kind; so this power in the community is not idle because it is not put forth in acts in the people in which it is virtually, but is put forth in action in some of them whom they choose to be their governors; nor is it reasonable to say that it should be put forth in action by all the people, as if all should be kings and governors. But the question is not of the power of governing in the people, but of the power of government, that is, of the power of making governors and kings; and the community doth put forth in act this power, as a free, voluntary, and active power; for (1.) a community transplanted to India, or any place of the world not before inhabited, have a perfect liberty to choose either a monarchy, or a democracy, or an aristocracy; for though nature incline them to government in general, yet are they not naturally determinated to any one of those three more than another. (2.) Israel did of their own free will choose the change of government, and would have a king as the nations had; therefore they had free will, and so an active power so to do, and not a passive inclination only to be governed, such as Spalato saith agreeth to the first matter. (3.) Royalists teach that a people under democracy or aristocracy have liberty to choose a king; and the Romans did this, therefore they had an active power to do it, — therefore the Prelate’s simile crooks: the matter at its pleasure cannot shake off its form, nor the wife cast off her husband being once married; but Barclaius, Grotius, Arnisæus, Blackwood, and all the royalists, teach that the people under any of these two forms of democracy or aristocracy may resume their power, and cast off these forms and choose a monarch; and if monarchy be the best government, as royalists say, they may choose the best. And is this but a passive capacity to be governed? (4.) Of ten men fit for a kingdom they may design one, and put the crown on his head, and refuse the other nine, as Israel crowned Solomon and refused Adonijah. Is this not a voluntary action, proceeding from a free, active, elective power? It will puzzle the pretended Prelate to deny this, — that which the community doth freely, they do not from such a passive capacity as is in the first matter in regard of the form. 3. It is true that people, through corruption of nature, are averse to submit to governors “for conscience sake, as unto the Lord,” because the natural man, remaining in the state of nature, can do nothing that is truly good, but it is false that men have no active moral power to submit to superiors, but only a passive capacity to be governed. He quite contradicteth himself; for he said before, (c. 4, p. 49,) that there is an “innate fear and reverence in the hearts of all men naturally, even in heathens, toward their sovereign;” yea, as we have a natural moral active power to love our parents and superiors, (though it be not evangelically, or legally in God’s court, good) and so to obey their commandments, only we are averse to penal laws of superiors. But this proveth no way that we have only by nature a passive capacity to government; for heathens have, by instinct of nature, both made laws morally good, submitted to them, and set kings and judges over them, which clearly proveth that men have an active power of government by nature. Yea, what difference maketh the Prelate betwixt men and beasts? for beasts have a capacity to be governed, even lions and tigers; but here is the matter, if men have any natural power of government, the P. Prelate would have it, with his brethren the Jesuits and Arminians, to be not natural, but done by the help of universal grace; for so do they confound nature and grace. But it is certain our power to submit to rulers and kings, as to rectors, and guides, and fathers, is natural; to submit to tyrants in doing ills of sin is natural, but in suffering ills of punishment is not natural. “No man can give that which he hath not,” is true, but that people have no power to make their governors is that which is in question, and denied by us. This argument doth prove that people hath no power to appoint aristocratical rulers more than kings, and so the aristocratical and democratical rulers are all inviolable and sacred as the king. By this the people may not resume their freedom if they turn tyrants and oppressors. This the Prelate shall deny, for he averreth, (p. 96,) out of Augustine, that the people may, without sin, change a corrupt democracy into a monarchy.

P. Prelate (pp. 95, 96). — If sovereignty be originally inherent in the people, then democracy, or government by the people, were the best government, because it cometh nearest to the fountain and stream of the first and radical power in the people, yea, and all other forms of government were unlawful; and if sovereignty be natively inherent in the multitude it must be proper to every individual of the community, which is against that false maxim of theirs, Quisque nascitur liber. Every one by nature is born a free man, and the posterity of those who first contracted with their elected king are not bound to that covenant, but, upon their native right and liberty, may appoint another king without breach of covenant. The posterity of Joshua, and the elders in their time, who contracted with the Gibeonites to incorporate them, though in a serving condition, might have made their fathers’ government nothing.

Ans. — 1. The P. Prelate might thank Spalato for this argument also,[4] for it is stolen; but he never once named him, lest his theft should be apprehended. So are his other arguments stolen from Spalato; but the Prelate weakeneth them, and it is seen stolen goods are not blessed. Spalato saith, then, by the law of nature every commonwealth should be governed by the people, and by the law of nature the people should be under the worst government; but this consequence is nothing; for a community of many families is formally and of themselves under no government, but may choose any of the three; for popular government is not that wherein all the people are rulers, for this is confusion and not government, because all are rulers, and none are governed and ruled. But in popular government many are chosen out of the people to rule; and that this is the worst government is said gratis, without warrant; and if monarchy be the best of itself, yet, when men are in the state of sin, in some other respects it hath many inconveniences. 2. I see not how democracy is best because nearest to the multitude’s power of making a king; for if all the three depend upon the free will of the people, all are alike afar off, and alike near hand, to the people’s free choice, according as they see most conducive to the safety and protection of the commonwealth, seeing the forms of government are not more natural than politic incorporations of cities, yea, than of shires; but from a positive institution of God, who erecteth this rather than that, not immediately now, but mediately, by the free will of men; no one cometh formally, and ex natur a rei, nearer to the fountain than another, except that materially democracy may come nearer to the people’s power than monarchy, but the excellency of it above monarchy is not hence concluded; for by this reason the number of four should be more excellent than the number of five, of ten, of a hundred, of a thousand, or of millions, because four cometh near to the number of three, which Aristotle calleth the first perfect number, cui additur to\ pa~n of which yet formally all do alike share in the nature and essence of number. 2. It is denied that it followeth from this antecedent, that the people have power to choose their own governors; therefore all governments except democracy, or government by the people, must be sinful and unlawful. (1.) Because government by kings is of divine institution, and of other judges also, as is evident from God’s word, Rom. xiii. 1-3; Deut. xvii. 14; Prov. viii. 15, 16; 1 Pet. ii. 13, 14; Psal. ii. 10, 11, &c. (2.) Power of choosing any form of government is in the people; therefore there is no government lawful but popular government. It followeth no ways; but presupposeth that power to choose any form of government must be formally actual government; which is most false, yea, they be contrary, as the prevalency or power and the act are contrary; so these two are contrary, or opposite. Neither is sovereignty, nor any government, formally inherent in either the community by nature, nor in any one particular man by nature; and that every man is born free, so as no man, rather than his brother, is born a king and a ruler, I hope, God willing, to make good, so as the Prelate shall never answer on the contrary. 3. It followeth not that the posterity living, when their fathers made a covenant with their first elected king, may without any breach of covenant on the king’s part, make void and null their fathers’ election of a king, and choose another king, because the lawful covenant of the fathers, in point of government, if it be not broken, tyeth the children, but it cannot deprive them of their lawful liberty naturally inherent in them to choose the fittest man to be king; but of this hereafter more fully. 4. Spalato addeth,[5] (the Prelate is not a faithful thief,) ” If the community by the law of nature have power of all forms of government, and so should be, by nature, under popular government, and yet should refuse a monarchy and an aristocracy,” yet, Augustine addeth.[6] “If the people should prefer their own private gain to the public good, and sell the commonwealth, then some good man might take their liberty from them, and, against their will, erect a monarchy or an aristocracy.” But the Prelate (p. 97) and Augustine supposeth the people to be under popular government. This is not our case; for Spalato and the Prelate presupposeth by our grounds that the people by nature must be under popular government. Augustine dreameth no such thing, and we deny that by nature they are under any form of government. Augustine, in a case most considerable thinketh one good and potent man may take the corrupt people’s power of giving honours, and making rulers from them, and give it to some good men, few or many, or to one; then Augustine layeth down as a ground that which Spalato and the Prelate denieth, — that the people hath power to appoint their own rulers; otherwise, how could one man take that power from them? The Prelate’s fifth argument is but a branch of the fourth argument, and is answered already.

P. Prelate (chap. 11). — He would prove that kings of the people’s making are not blessed of God. The first creature of the people’s making was Abimelech (Judg. ix. 22), who reigned only three years, well near Antichrist’s time of endurance. He came to it by blood, and an evil spirit rose betwixt him and the men of Sechem, and he made a miserable end. The next was Jeroboam, who had this motto, He made Israel to sin. The people made him king, and he made the same pretence of a glorious reformation that our reformers now make: new calves, new altars, new feasts are erected; they banish the Levites and take in the scum and dross of the vulgar, &c. Every action of Christ is our instruction. Christ was truly born a king, notwithstanding, when the people would make him a king, he disclaimed it — he would not be in arbiter betwixt two brethren differing.

Ans. — I am not to follow the Prelate’s order every way, though, God willing I shall reach him in the forthcoming chapters. Nor purpose I to answer his treasonable railing against his own nation, and the judges of the land, whom God hath set over this seditious excommunicated apostate. He layeth to us frequently the Jesuit’s tenets, when as he is known himself to be a papist. In this argument he saith, Abimelech did reign only three years, well near Antichrist’s reign. Is not this the basis and the mother principle of popery, That the Pope is not the Antichrist, for the Pope haul continued many ages? He is not an individual man, but a race of men; but the Antichrist, saith Belarmine, Stapleton, Becanus, and the nation of Jesuits and poplings, shall be one individual man — a born Jew, and shall reign only three years and a half. But, 1. The argument from success proveth nothing, except the Prelate prove their bad success to be from this, because they were chosen of the people. When as Saul chosen of God, and most of the kings of Israel and Judah, who, undeniably, had God’s calling to the crown, were not blessed of God; and their government was a ruin to both people and religion, as the people were removed to all the Kingdoms of the earth, for the sins of Manasseh, Jer. xv. 4. Was therefore Manasseh not lawfully called to the crown? 2. For his instance of kings unlawfully called to the throne, he bringeth us whole two, and telleth us that he doubteth, as many learned men do, whether Jeroboam was a king by permission only, or by a commission from God. 3. Abimelech was cursed, because he wanted God’s calling to the throne; for then Israel had no king, but judges, extraordinarily raised up by God; and God did not raise him at all, only he came to the throne by blood, and carnal reasons moving the men of Sechem to advance him. The argument presupposeth that the whole lawful calling of a king is the voices of the people. This we never taught, though the Prelate make conquest a just title to a crown, and it is but a title of blood and rapine. 4. Abimelech was not the first king, but only a judge. All our divines, with the word of God, maketh Saul the first king. 5. For Jeroboam had God’s word and promise to be king, 1 Kings xi. 34-38. But, in my weak judgment, he waited not God’s time and way of coming to the crown; but that his coming to the throne was unlawful, because he came by the people’s election, is in question. 6. That the people’s reformation, and their making a new king, was like the kingdom of Scotland’s reformation, and the parliament of England’s way now, is a traitorous calumny. For, 1. It condemneth the king, who hath, in parliament, declared all their proceedings to be legal. Rehoboam never declared Jeroboam’s coronation to be lawful, but, contrary to God’s word, made war against Israel. 2. It is false that Israel pretended religion in that change. The cause was the rough answer given to the supplication of the estates, complaining of the oppression they were under in Solomon’s reign. 3. Religion is still subjected to policy by prelates and cavaliers, not by us in Scotland, who sought nothing but reformation of religion, and of laws so far as they serve religion, as our supplications, declarations, and the event proveth. 4. We have no new calves, new altars, new feasts, but profess, and really do hazard, life and estate, to put away the Prelate’s calves, images, tree-worship, altar-worship, saints, feast-days, idolatry, masses; and nothing is said here but Jesuits, and Canaanites, and Baalites, might say, (though falsely) against the reformation of Josiah. Truth and purity of worship this year is new in relation to idolatry last year, but it is simpliciter older. 5. We have not put away the Lord’s priests and Levites, and taken in the scum of the vulgar, but have put away Baal’s priests, such as excommunicated Prelate Maxwell and other apostates, and resumed the faithful servants of God, who were deprived and banished for standing to the Protestant faith, sworn to by the prelates themselves. 6. Every action of Christ, such as his walking on the sea, is not our instruction in that sense, that Christ’s refusing a kingdom is directly our instruction. And did Christ refuse to be a king, because the people would have made him a king? That is, non causa pro causa, he refused it, because his kingdom was not in this world, and he came to suffer for men, not to reign over man. 7. The Prelate, and others who wore lords of session, and would be judges of men’s inheritances, and would usurp the sword by being lords of council and parliament, have refused to be instructed by every action of Christ, who would not judge betwixt brother and brother.

P. Prelate. — Jephthah came to be judge by covenant betwixt him and the Gileadites. Here you have an interposed act of man, yet the Lord himself, in authorising him as judge, vindicateth it no less to himself, than when extraordinarily ha authorised Gideon and Samuel, 1 Sam. xii. 11; therefore, whatsoever act of man interveneth, it contributeth nothing to royal authorit[y] — it cannot weaken or repeal it.

Ans. — It was as extraordinary that Jephthah, a bastard and the son of an harlot, should be judge, as that Gideon should be judge. God vindicateth to himself, that he giveth his people favour in the eyes of their enemies. But doth it follow that the enemies are not agents, and to be commended for their humanity in favouring the people of God? So Psal. lxv. 9, 10, God maketh corn to grow, therefore clouds, and earth, and sun, and summer, and husbandry, contributeth nothing to the growing of corn. But this is but that which he said before. We grant that this is an eminent and singular act of God’s special providence, that he moveth and boweth the wills of a great multitude to promote such a man, who, by nature, cometh no more out of the womb a crowned king, than the poorest shepherd in the land; and it is an act of grace to endue him with heroic and royal parts for the government. But what is alt this? Doth it exclude the people’s consent? In no ways. So the works of supernatural grace, as to love Christ above all things, to believe in Christ in a singular manner, are ascribed to the rich grace of God. But can the Prelate say mat the understanding and will, in these acts, are merely passive, and contributeth no more than the people contributeth to royal authority in the king? and that is just nothing by the Prelates way. And we utterly deny, that as water in baptism hath no action at all in the working of remission of sins, so the people hath no influence in making a king; for the people are worthier and more excellent than the king, and they have an active power of ruling and directing themselves toward the intrinsical end of human policy, which is the external safety and peace of a society, in so far as there are moral principles of the second table, for this effect, written in their heart; and, therefore, that royal authority which, by God’s special providence, is united in one king, and, as it were, over-gilded and lustred with princely grace and royal endowments, is diffused in the people, for the people hath an after-approbative consent in making a king, as royalists confess water hath no such action in producing grace.


[1] M. Anto. de domini. Arch. Spalatens.. lib. 6, c. 2, n. 5, 6. Plebs potius habet a natura, non tam vim active rectivam aut gubernativam, quam inclinationem passive regibilem (ut ita loquar) et gubernabilem, qua volens et libens sese submittit rectoribus, &c.

[2] Almain de potest et I. a. 1. q. 1, c. 1, 6, et q. 2, 3, 5.

[3] Nem. don jud. not. 3, n. 85.

[4] Spalatensis, p. 648.

[5] Spalato, 16

[6] August, de lib. arb., lib. 1, c. 6. Si depravatus populus rem privatum Reipub. preferat. atque habeat venale suffragium cor ruptusque ab iis qui honores amant, regnum in sefactiosis consecleratisque committat; non ne item recte, si quis tunc extilerit vir bonus qui plurimum possit, adimat huic populo potestatem dandi honores. et in paveorum bonorum, vel etiam unjus redregat arbitrium?

Question IX.

Whether or no sovereignty is so from the people, that it remaineth in them in some part, so as they may, in case of necessity, reside it.

The Prelate will have it Babylonish confusion, that we are divided in opinion. Jesuits (saith he) place all sovereignty in the community. Of the sectaries, some warrant any one subject to make away his king, and such a work is no less to be rewarded than when one killeth a wolf. Some say this power is in the whole community; some will have it in the collective body, not convened, by warrant or writ of sovereignty; but when necessity (which is often landed) of reforming state and church, calleth them together; some in the nobles and peers: some in the three estates assembled by the king’s writ; some in the inferior judges.

I answer, If the Prelate were not a Jesuit himself, he would not bid his brethren take the mote out of their eye; but there is nothing here said but what Barclaius[1] said better before this plagiarius. To which I answer, We teach that any private man may kill a tyrant, void of all title; and that great Royalist saith so also. And if he have not the consent of the people, he is an usurper, for we know no external lawful calling that kings have now, or their family, to the crown, but only the call of the people. All other calls to us are now invisible and unknown; and God would not command us to obey kings, and leave us in the dark, that we shall not know who is the king. The Prelate placeth his lawful calling to the crown, in such an immediate, invisible, and subtle act of omnipotency, as that whereby God conferreth remission of sins, by sprinkling with water in baptism, and that where-by God directed Samuel to anoint Saul and David, not Eliab, nor any other brother. It is the devil in the P. P., not any of us, who teach that any private man may kill a lawful king, though tyrannous in his government. For the subject of royal power, we affirm. the first, and ultimate, and native subject of all power, is the community, as reasonable men naturally inclining to a society; but the ethical and political subject, or the legal and positive receptacle of this power, is various, according to the various constitutions of the policy. In Scotland and England, it is the three estates of parliament;; in other nations, some other judges or peers of the land. The Prelate had no more common sense for him to object a confusion of opinion to us, for this, than to all the commonwealths on earth, because all have not parliaments, as Scotland hath. All have not constables, and officials, and churchmen, and barons, lords of council, parliaments, &c., as England had: but the truth is, the community, orderly convened, as it includeth, all the estates civil, have hand, and are to act in choosing their rulers. I see not what privilege nobles have, above commons, in a court of parliament, by God’s law; but as they are judges, all are equally judges, and all make up one congregation of God’s. But the question now is, If all power of governing (the Prelate, to make all the people kings, saith, if all sovereignty) be so in the people that they retain power to guard themselves against tyranny; and if they retain some of it, habitu, in habit, and in their power. I am not now unseasonably, according to the Prelate’s order, to dispute of the power of lawful defence against tyranny; but, I lay down this maxim of divinity: Tyranny being a work of Satan, is not from God, because sin, either habitual or actual, is not from God: the power that is, must be from God; the magistrate, as magistrate, is good in nature of office, and the intrinsic end of his office, (Rom. xiii. 4) for he is the minister of God for thy good; and, therefore, a power ethical, politic, or moral, to oppress, is not from God, and is not a power, but a licentious deviation of a power; and is no more from God, but from sinful nature and the old serpent, than a license to sin. God in Christ giveth pardons of sin, but the Pope, not God, giveth dispensations to sin. To this add, if for nature to defend itself be lawful, no community, without sin, hath power to alienate and give away this power; for as no power given to man to murder his brother is of God, so no power to suffer his brother to be murdered is of God; and no power to suffer himself, a fortiori, far less can be from God. Here I speak not of physical power, for if free will be the creature of God, a physical power to acts which, in relation to God’s law, are sinful, must be from God.

But I now follow the P. Prelate (c. ix., p. 101, 102). — Some of the adversaries, as Buchanan, say that the parliament hath no power to make a law, but only probou/leuma without the approbation of “the community. Others, as the Observator, say, that the right of the gentry and commonalty is entirely in the knights and burgesses of the House of Commons, and will have their orders irrevocable. If, then, the common people cannot resume their power and oppose the parliament, how can tables and parliaments resume their power and resist the king?

Ans. — The ignorant man should have thanked Barclaius for this argument, and yet Barclaius need not thank him, for it hath not the nerves that Barclaius gave it. But I answer, 1. If the parliament should have been corrupted by fair hopes (as in our age we have seen the like) tho people did well to resist the Prelate’s obtruding the Mass Book, when the lords of the council pressed it, against all law of God and man, upon the kingdom of Scotland; and, therefore, it is denied that the acts of parliament are irrevocable. The observator said they were irrevocable by the king, he being but one man; the P. Prelate wrongeth him, for he said only, they have the power of a law, and the king is obliged to consent, by his royal office, to all good laws, and neither king nor people may oppose them. Buchanan said, Acts of parliament are not laws, obliging the people, till they be promulgated; and the people’s silence, when they are promulgated, is their approbation, and maketh them obligatory laws to them; but if the people speak against unjust laws, they are not laws at all: and Buchanan knew the power of the Scottish parliament better than this ignorant statist. 2. There is not like reason to grant so much to the king, as to parliaments, because, certainly, parliaments who make kings under God, or above any one man, and they must have more authority and wisdom than any one king, except Solomon (as base flatterers say) should return to the thrones of the earth. And as the power to make just laws is all in the parliament, only the people have power to resist tyrannical laws. The power of all the parliament was never given to the king by God. The parliament are as essentially judges as the king, and, therefore, the king’s deed may well be revoked, because he acteth nothing as king, but united with his great or lesser council, no more than the eye can see, being separated from the body. The peers and members of parliament have more than the king, because they have both their own power, being pacts and special members of the people, and, also, they have their high places in parliament, either from the people’s express or tacit consent. 3. We allow no arbitrary power to the parliament, because their just laws are irrevocable; for the irrevocable power of making just laws doth argue a legal, not an irrevocable, arbitrary power; nor is there any arbitrary power in the people, or in any mortal man. But of the covenant betwixt king and people hereafter.

P. Prelate (c. 10, p. 105). — If sovereign power be habitually in the community, so as they may resume it at their pleasure, then nothing is given to the king but an empty title; for, at the same instant, he receiveth empire and sovereignty, and layeth down the power to rule or determine in matters which concern either private or public good, and so he is both a king and a subject.

Ans. — This naked consequence the Prelate saith and proveth not, and we deny it, and give this reason, The king receiveth royal power with the states to make good laws, and power by his royalty to execute those laws, and this power the community hath devolved in the hands of the king and states of parliament; but the community keepeth to themselves a power to resist tyranny, and to coerce it, and eatenus in so far is Saul subject, that David is not to compear before him, nor to lay down Goliah’s sword, nor disband his army of defence, though the king should command him so to do.

P. Prelate (c. xvi. pp. 105-107). — By all politicians, kings and inferior magistrates are differenced by their different specific entity, but by this they are not differenced; nay, a magistrate is in a better condition than a king, for the magistrate is to judge by a known statute and law, and cannot be censured and punished but by law. But the king is censurable, yea, disabled by the multitude; yea, the basest of subjects may cite and convent the king, before the underived majesty of the community, and he may be judged by the arbitrary law that is in the closet of their hearts, not only for real misdemeanour, but for fancied jealousies. It will ha said, good kings are in danger; the contrary appeareth this day, and ordinarily the best are in greatest danger. No government, except Plato’s republic, wanteth incommodities: subtle spirits may make them apprehend them. The poor people, bewitched, follow Absalom in his treason; they strike not at royalty at first, but labour to make the prince naked of the good council of great statesmen, &c.

Ans. — Whether the king and the under magistrate differ essentially, we shall see. 1. The P. Prelate saith all politicians grant it, but he saith untruth. He bringeth the power of Moses and the judges to prove the power of kings; and so either the judges of Israel and the kings differ not essentially, or then the Prelate must correct the spirit of God, terming one book of Scripture Mykilaam; Kings, and another My+ip;wO#O Judges, and make the book of Kings the book of Judges. 2. The magistrate’s condition is not better than the king’s, because the magistrate is to judge by a known statute and law, and the king not so. God moulded the first king, (Deut. xvii. 18,) when he sitteth judging on his throne, to look to a written copy of the law of God, as his rule. Now, a power to follow God’s law is better than a power to follow man’s sinful will; so the Prelate putteth the king in a worse condition than the magistrate, not we, who will have the king to judge according to just statutes and laws. 3. Whether the king be censurable and deposable by the multitude, he cannot determine out of our writings. 4. The community’s law is the law of nature — not their arbitrary lust. 5. The Prelate’s treasonable railings I cannot follow. He saith that we agree not ten of us to a positive faith, and that our faith is negative; but his faith is Privative, Popish, Socinian, Arminian, Pelagian, and worse, for he was one of that same faith that we are of. Our Confession of Faith is positive, as the confession of all the reformed churches; but I judge he thinketh the Protestant faith of all the reformed churches but negative. The incommodities of government, before our reformation, were not fancied, but printed by authority. All the body of popery was printed and avowed as the doctrine of the Church of Scotland and England, as the learned author, and my much respected brother, evidenceth in his Ludensiumau0tokatakri/sij, the Canterburian Self-conviction. The parliament of England was never yet found guilty of treason. The good counsellors of great statesmen, that parliaments of both kingdoms would take from the king’s majesty, are a faction of perjured Papists, Prelates, Jesuits, Irish cut-throats, Strafords, and Apostates; subverters of all laws, divine, human, of God, of church, of state.

P. Prelate (c. 15, pp. 147, 148). — In whomsoever this power of government be it is the only remedy to supply all detects, and to set light whatever is disjointed in church and state, and the subject of this superintending power must be free from all error in judgment and practice, and so we have a pope in temporalibus; and if the parliament err the people must take order with them, else God hath left church and state remediless.

Ans. — 1. This is stolen from Barclaius also, who saith,[2] Si Rex regnum suum alienæ ditioni manciparit, reyno cadit: “If the king shall sell his kingdom, or enslave it to a foreign power, he falleth from all light to his kingdom,” But who shall execute any such law against him? — not the people, not the peers, not the parliament; for this mancipium ventris et aulæ, this slave saith, (p. 149,) “I know no power in any to punish or curb sovereignty but in Almighty God.” 2. We see no superintending power on earth, in king or people, which is infallible, nor is the last power of taking order with a prince who enslaveth his kingdom to a foreign power, placed by us in the people because they cannot err. Court flatterers, who teach that the will of the prince is the measure of all right and wrong, of law and no law, and above all law, must hold that the king is a temporal pope, both in ecclesiastical and civil matters; but because they cannot so readily destroy themselves (the law of nature having given to them a contrary internal principle of self-preservation) as a tyrant who doth care for himself and not for the people. 3. And because Extremis morbis extrema remedia, in an extraordinary exigent, when Ahab and Jezebel did undo the church of God, and tyrannise over both the bodies and consciences of priest, prophet and people, Elijah procured the convention of the states, and Elijah, with the people’s help, killed all Baal’s priests, the king looking on, without question, against his heart, in this case I think it is more than evident that the people resumed their power. 4. We teach not that people should supply all defects in government, nor that they should use their power when anything is done amiss by the king, no more than the king is to cut off the whole people of God when they refuse an idolatrous service, obtruded upon them against all law. The people are to suffer much before they resume their power; but this court slave will have the people to do what he did not himself; for when king and parliament summoned him, was he not obliged to appear? Non-compearance when lawful, royal, and parliamentary power summoneth, is no less resistance than taking of ports and castles.

P. Prelate. — Then this superintending power in people may call a king to account, and punish him for any misdemeanour or act of injustice. Why might not the people of Israel’s peers, or sanhedrim, have convented David before them, judged and punished him for his adultery with Bathsheba, and his murder of Uriah. But it is held by all that tyranny should be an intended universal, total, manifest destruction of the whole commonwealth, which cannot fall in the thoughts of any but a madman. What is recorded in the story of Nero’s wish in this kind, may be rather judged the expression of transported passion, than a fixed resolution.

Ans. — The P. Prelate, contrary to the scope of his book, which is all for the subject and seat of sovereign power, against all order, hath plunged himself in the deep of defensive arms, and yet hath no new thing. 1. Our law of Scotland will warrant any subject, if the king take from him his heritage, or invade his possession against law, to resist the invaders, and to summon the king’s intruders before the lords of session for that act of injustice. Is this against God’s word, or conscience? 2. The Sanhedrim did not punish David, therefore, it is not lawful to challenge a king for any one act of injustice: from the practice of the Sanhedrim to conclude a thing lawful or unlawful, is logic we may resist. 3. By the P. Prelate’s doctrine, the law might not put Bathsheba to death, nor yet Joab, the nearest agent of the murdering of innocent Uriah, because Bathsheba’s adultery was the king’s adultery — she did it in obedience to king David; Joab’s murder was royal murder, as the murder of all the cavaliers, for he had the king’s handwriting for it. Murder is murder, and the murderer is to die, though the king by a secret let-alone, a private and illegal warrant, command it; therefore the Sanhedrim might have taken Bathsheba’s life and Joab’s head also; and, consequently, the parliament of England, if they be judges, (as I conceive God and the law of that ancient and renowned kingdom maketh them,) may take the head of many Joabs and Jermines for murder; for the command of a king cannot legitimate murder. 4. David himself, as king, speaketh more for us than for the Prelate, — 2 Sam, xii. 7, “And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, (the man was himself, ver. 7, ‘Thou art the man,’) and he said to Nathan, as the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die,” 5. Every act of injustice doth not unking a prince before God, as every act of uncleanness doth not make a wife no wife before God. 6. The Prelate excuseth Nero, and would not have him resisted, if “all Rome were one neck that he might cut it off with one stroke (I read it of Caligula; if the Prelate see more in history than I do, I yield}. 7. He saith, the thoughts of total eversion of a kingdom must only fall on a madman. The king of Britain was not mad when he declared the Scots traitors (because they resisted the service of the mass) and raised an army of pre. latical cut-throats to destroy them, if all the kingdom should resist idolatry (as all are obliged). The king slept upon this prelatical resolution many months: passions in fervour have not a day’s reign upon a man; and this was not so clear as the sun, but it was as clear as written, printed proclamations, and the pressing of soldiers, and the visible marching of cut-throats, and the blocking up of Scotland by sea and land, could be visible to men having five senses.

Covarruvias, a great lawyer, saith,[3] that all civil power is penes remp. in the hands of the commonwealth; because nature hath given to man to be a social creature, and impossible he can preserve himself in a society except he, being in community) transform his power to an head. He saith: Hujus vero civilis societatis et resp. rector ab alio quam ab ipsamet repub. constitui non potest juste et absq. tyrannide. Siquidem ab ipso Deo constitatus non est, nec electus cuilibet civili societati immediate Rex aut Princeps. Arist. (polit 3, c. 10) saith, “It is better that kings be got by election than by birth; because kingdoms by succession are vere regia, truly kingly: these by birth are more tyrannical, masterly, and proper to barbarous nations. And Covarruv. (tom. 2, pract. quest, de jurisd. Castellan. Reip. c. 1, n. 4,) saith, “Hereditary kings are also made hereditary by the tacit consent of the people, and so by law and consuetude.”

Spalato saith,[4] “Let us grant that a society shall refuse to have a governor over them, shall they be for that free? In no sort. But there be many ways by which a people may be compelled to admit a governor; for then no man might rule over a community against their will. But nature hath otherwise disposed, ut quod singuli nollent, universi vellent, that which every one will not have, a community naturally desireth.” And the Prelate saith, “God is no less the author of order than he is the author of being; for the Lord who createth all conserveth all; and without government all human societies should be dissolved and go to ruin: then government must be natural, and not depend upon a voluntary and arbitrary constitution of men. In nature the creatures inferior give a tacit consent and silent obedience to their superior, and the superior hath a powertul influence on the inferior. In the subordination of creatures we ascend from one superior to another, till at last we come to one supreme, which, by the way, pleadeth for the excellency of monarchy. Amongst angels there is an order; how can it then be supposed that God hath left it to the simple consent of man to establish a heraldry of sub et supra, of one above another, which neither nature nor the gospel doth warrant? To leave it thus arbitrary, that upon this supposed principle mankind may be without government at all, is vain; which paradox cannot to maintained. In nature God hath established a superiority inherent in superior creatures, which is no ways derived from the inferior by communication in what proportion it will, and resumeable upon such exigents as the inferior listeth; therefore neither hath God left to the multitude, the community, the collective, the representative or virtual body, to derive from itself and communicate sovereignty, whether in one or few, or more, in what measure and proportion pleaseth them, which they resume at pleasure.”

Ans. — To answer Spalato: No society hath liberty to be without all government, for “God hath given to every society,” saith Covarruvias, “a faculty of preserving themselves, and warding off violence and injuries; and this they could not do except they gave their power to one or many rulers.”[5] But all that the Prelate buildeth on this false supposition, which is his fiction and calumny, not our doctrine, to wit, “that it is voluntary to man to be without all government, because it is voluntary to them to give away their power to one or more rulers,” is a mere non-consequence. 1. We teach that government is natural, not voluntary; but the way and manner of government is voluntary. All societies should be quickly ruined if there were no government; but it followeth not, therefore, God hath made some kings, and that immediately, without the intervening consent of the people, and, therefore, it is not arbitrary to the people to choose one supreme ruler, and to erect a monarchy, or to choose more rulers, and to erect an aristocracy. It followeth no way. It is natural to men to express their mind by human voices. Is not speaking of this or that language, Greek rather than Latin, (as Aristotle saith,) kata/ sunqh/khn by human institution? It is natural for men to eat, therefore election of this or that meat is not in their choice. What reason is in this consequence? And so it is a poor consequence also, Power of sovereignty is in the people naturally, therefore it is not in their power to give it out in that measure that pleaseth them, and to resume it at pleasure. It followeth no way. Because the inherency of sovereignty is natural and not arbitrary, therefore, the alienation and giving out of the power to one, not to three, thus much, not thus much, conditionally, not absolutely and irrevocably, must be also arbitrary. It is as if you should say, a father having six children, naturally loveth them all, therefore he hath not freedom of will in expressing his affection, to give so much of his goods to this son, and that conditionally, if he use these goods well; and not more or less of his goods at his pleasure. 2. There is a natural subordination in nature in creatures superior and inferior, without any freedom of election. The earth made not the heavens more excellent than the earth, and the earth by no freedom of will made the heavens superior in excellency to itself. Man gave no superiority of excellency to angels above himself. The Creator of all beings did both immediately, without freedom of election in the creature, create the being of all the creatures, and their essential degrees of superiority and inferiority, but God created not Saul by nature king over Israel; nor is David by the act of creation by which he is made a man, created also king over Israel; for then David should from the womb and by nature be a king, and not by God’s free gift. Here both the free gift of God, and the free consent of the people intervene. Indeed God made the office and royalty of a king above the dignity of the people, but he, by the intervening consent of the people, maketh David a king, not Eliab; and the people maketh a covenant at David’s inauguration, that David shall have so much power, to wit, power to be a father, not power to be a tyrant, — power to fight for the people, not power to waste and destroy them. The inferior creatures in nature give no power to the superior, and therefore they cannot give in such a proportion power. The denial of the positive degree is a denial of the comparative and superlative, and so they cannot resume any power; but the designing of these men or those men to be kings or rulers is a rational, voluntary action, not an action of nature, — such as is God’s act of creating an angel a nobler creature than man, and the creating of man a more excellent creature than a beast; and, for this cause, the argument is vain and foolish; for inferior creatures are inferior to the more noble and superior by nature, not by voluntary designation, or, as royalists say, by naked approbation, which yet must be an arbitrary and voluntary action. 3. The P. Prelate commendeth order while we come to the most supreme; hence he commendeth monarchy above all governments because it is God ‘s government. I am not against it, that monarchy well-tempered is the best government, though the question to me is most problematic; but because God is a monarch who cannot err or deny himself, therefore that sinful man be a monarch is miserable logic; and he must argue solidly, forsooth, by this, because there is order, as he saith, amongst angels, will he make a monarch and a king-angel? His argument, if it have any weight at all in it, driveth at that, even that there be crowned kings amongst the angels.


[1] Barclaius contr. Monarch. lib. 4. c. 10, p. 268, ut hostes publicos non solum ab universo populo. sed a singulis etiam impeti oædique jure optimo posse tota Antiquitas censuit.

[2] Barclaius contra Monarchom. lib. 5, c. 12, idem. lib. 3, c. ult. p. 2, 3.

[3] Covarruvias. tom. 2. pract. quest, c. 1, n. 2-4.

[4] Spalato de rep. eccles. lib. 6, c. 2, a. 32.

[5] Covarr. tom. 4, pract. quest. c. 1, a. 2.

Question X.

Whether or not royal birth be equivalent to divine unction.

Symmons holdeth[1] that birth is as good a title to the crown, as any given of God. How this question can be cleared, I see not, except we dispute that, Whether or not kingdoms be proper patrimonies derived from the father to the son. I take there is a large difference betwixt a thing transmitable by birth from the father to the son, and a thing not transmitable. I conceive, as a person is chosen to be a king over a people, so a family or house may be chosen; and a kingdom at first choosing a person to be their king, may also tie themselves to choose the first-born of his body, but as they transfer their power to the father, for their own safety and peace, (not if he use the power they give aim to their destruction,) the same way they tie themselves to his first-born, as to their king. As they choose the father not as a man, but a man gifted with royal grace and a princely faculty for government, so they can but tie themselves to his first-born, as to one graced with a faculty of governing; and if his first-born shall be born an idiot and a fool, they are not obliged to make him king; for the obligation to the son can be no greater than the obligation to the father, which first obligation is the ground, measure, and cause, of all posterior obligations. If tutors be appointed to govern such an one, the tutors have the royal power, not the idiot; nor can he govern others who cannot govern himself. That kings go not as heritage from the father to the son, I prove,

1. God (Deut. xvii.) could not command them to choose such an one for the king, and such an one who, sitting on his throne, shall follow the direction of God, speaking in his word, if birth were that which gave him God’s title and right to the crown; for that were as much as such a man should be heir to his fathers inheritance, and the son not heir to his father’s crown, except he were such a man. But God, in all the law moral or judicial, never required the heir should be thus and thus qualified, else he should not be heir; but he requireth that a man, and so that a family, should be thus and thus qualified, else they should not be kings. And I confirm it thus: — The first king of divine institution must be the rule, pattern, and measure, of all the rest of the kings, as Christ maketh the first marriage (Matt. xix. 8,) a pattern to all others; and Paul reduceth the right administration of the Supper to Christ’s first institution, 1 Cor. xi. 23 Now, the first king (Deut. xvii. 14, 15 is not a man qualified by naked birth, for then the Lord, in describing the manner or the king and his due qualifications, should seek no other but this, You shall choose only the first-born, or the lawful son of the former king. But seeing the king of God’s first moulding is a king by election, and what God did after, by promises and free grace, give to David and his seed, even a throne till the Messiah should come, and did promise to some kings, if they would walk in his commandments, that their sons, and sons’ sons, should sit upon the throne, in my judgment, is not an obliging law that sole birth should be as just a title, in foro Dei, (for now I dispute the question in point of conscience,) as royal unction.

2. If, by divine institution, God hath impawned in the people’s hand a subordinate power to the Most High, who giveth kingdoms to whom he will, to make and create kings, then is not sole birth a just title to the crown. But the former is true. By precept (Deut. xvii. 15) God expressly saith, “Thou shalt choose him king, whom the Lord shall choose.” And if it had not been the people’s power to create their own kings, how doth God, after he had designed Saul their king, yet expressly (1 Sam. x.) inspire Samuel to call the people before the Lord at Mizpeh to make Saul king? And how doth the Lord (ver. 22) expressly shew to Samuel and the people, the man that they might make him king? And because all consented not that Saul should be king, God will have his coronation renewed. Ver. 14, “Then said Samuel to the people, come and let us go to Gilgal, and renew the kingdom there;” ver. 15, “And all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal.” And how is it that David, anointed by God, is yet no king, but a private subject, while all Israel make him king at Hebron?

3. If royal birth be equivalent to royal unction and the best title; if birth speak and declare to us the Lord’s will and appointment, that the first-born of a king should be king, as M. Symmons and others say, then is all title by conquest, where the former king standeth in title to the crown and hath an heir, unlawful. But the latter is against all the nation of the royalists, for Arnisæus, Barclay, Grotius, Jo. Rossensis Episco., the Bishop of Spalato, Dr Ferne, M. Symmons, the excommunicate Prelate, if his poor learning may bring him in the roll, teach that conquest is a lawful title to a crown. I prove the proposition, (1.) because if birth speak God’s revealed will, that the heir of a king is the lawful king, then conquest cannot speak contrary to the will of God, that he is no lawful king, but the conqueror is the lawful king. God’s revealed will should be contradictory to himself, and birth should speak, it is God’s will that the heir of the former king be king, and the conquest being also God’s revealed will, should also speak that that heir should not be king. (2.) If birth speak and reveal God’s will that the heir be king, it is unlawful for a conquered people to give their consent that a conqueror be their king; for their consent being contrary to God’s revealed will, (which is, that birth is the just title,) must be an unlawful consent. If royalists say, God, the King of kings, who immediately maketh kings, may and doth transfer kingdoms to whom he will; and when he putteth the sword in Nebuchadnezzar’s hand to conquer the king and kingdom of Judah, then Zedekiah or his son is not king of Judah, but Nebuchadnezzar is king, and God, being above his law, speaketh in that case his wiu by conquests, as before he spake his will by birth. This is all can be said. Ans. They answer black treason in saying so, for if Jeremiah, from the Lord, had not commanded expressly, that both the king and kingdom of Judah should submit to the king of Babylon, and serve him, and pray for him, as their lawful king, it had been as lawful for them to rebel against that tyrant, as it was for them to fight against the Philistines and the king of Ammon; but if birth be the just and lawful title, in foro Dei, in God’s court, and the only thing that evidenceth God’s will, without any election of the people, that the first-born of such a king is their lawful king, then conquests cannot now speak a contradictory will of God; for the question is not, whether or not God. giveth power to tyrants to conquer kingdoms from the just heirs of kings, which did reign lawfully before their sword made an empty throne, but whether conquest now, when Jeremiahs are not sent immediately from God to command, for example, Britain to submit to a violent intruder, who hath expelled the lawful heirs of the royal line of the king of Britain, whether, I say, doth conquest, in a such a violent way, speak that it is God’s revealed will, called Voluntas signi, the will that is to rule us in all our moral duties, to cast off the just heirs of the blood royal, and to swear homage to a conqueror, and so as that conqueror now hath as just right as the king of Britain had by birth. This cannot be taken off by the wit of any who maintain that conquest is a lawful title to a crown, and that royal birth, without the people’s election, speaketh God’s regulating will in his word, that the first-born of a king is a lawful king by birth, for God now-a-days doth not say the contrary of what he revealed in his word. If birth be God’s regulating will, that the heir of the king is in God’s court a king, no act of the conqueror can annul that word of God to us, and the people may not lawfully, though they were ten times subdued, swear homage and allegiance to a conqueror against the due right of birth, which by royalists’ doctrine revealeth to us the plain contradictory will of God. It is, I grant, often God’s decree revealed by the event, that a conqueror be on the throne, but this will is not our rule, and the people are to swear no oath of allegiance contrary to God’s Voluntas signi, which is his revealed will in his word regulating us.

4. Things transferable and communicable by birth from father to son, are only, in law, those which heathens call bona fortunæ riches, as lands, houses, monies and heritages; and so saith the law also. These things which essentially include gifts of the mind, and honour properly so called — I mean honour founded on virtue — as Aristotle, with good reason, maketh honour præminum virtutis, cannot be communicated by birth from the father to the son; for royal dignity includeth these three constituent parts essentially, of which none can be communicable by birth. (1.) The royal faculty of governing, which is a special gift of God above nature, is from God. Solomon asked it from God, and had it not by generation from his father David. (2.) The royal honour to be set above the people because of this royal virtue is not from the womb, for then God’s Spirit would not have said, “Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles,” Eccl. x. 17; this honour, springing from virtue, is not born with any man, nor is any man born with either the gift or honour to be a judge. God maketh high and low, not birth. Nobles are bora to great estates. If judging be heritage to any, it is a municipal positive law. I now speak in point of conscience. (3.) The external lawful title, before men come to a crown, must be God’s will, revealed by such an external sign as, by God’s appointment and warrant, is to regulate our will; but according to Scripture, nothing regulateth our will, and leadeth the people now that they cannot err following God’s rule in making a king, but the free suffrages of the states choosing a man whom they conceive God hath endued with these royal girts required in the king whom God holdeth forth to them in his word. (Deut. xvii.) Now there be but these to regulate the people, or to be a rule to any man to ascend lawfully, in foro Dei, in God’s court to the throne. (1.) God’s immediate designation of a man by prophetical and divinely-inspired unction, as Samuel anointed Saul and David; this we are not to expect now, nor can royalists say it. (2.) Conquest, seeing it is an act of violence, and God’s revenging justice for the sins of a people, cannot give in God’s court such a just tide to the throne as the people are to submit their consciences unto, except God reveal his regulating will by some immediate voice from heaven, as he commanded Judah to submit to Nebuchadnezzar as to their king by the mouth of Jeremiah. Now this is not a rule to us; for then, if the Spanish king should invade this land, and, as Nebuchadnezzar did, deface the temple, and instruments and means of God’s worship, and abolish the true worship of God, it should be unlawful to resist him, after he had once conquered the land: neither God’s word, nor the law of nature could permit this. I suppose, even by grant of adversaries, now no act of violence dona to a people, though in God’s court they have deserved it, can be a testimony to us of God’s regulating will; except it have some warrant from the law and testimony, it is no rule to our conscience to acknowledge him a lawful magistrate, whose sole law to the throne is an act of the bloody instrument of divine wrath, I mean the sword. That, therefore, Judah was to submit, according to God’s word, to Nebuchadnezzar, whose conscience and best warranted calling to the kingdom of Judah was his bloody sword, even if we suppose Jeremiah had not commanded them to submit to the king of Babylon, I think cannot be said. (3) Naked birth cannot be this external signification of God’s regulating will to warrant the conscience of any to ascend to the throne, for the authors of this opinion make royal birth equivalent to divine unction; for David anointed by Samuel, and so anointed by God, is not king, — Saul remained the Lord’s anointed many years, not David, although anointed by God; the people’s making him king at Hebron, founded upon divine unction, was not the only external lawful calling that we read of that David had to the throne; then royal birth, because it is but equivalent only to divine unction, not superior to divine unction, it cannot have more force to make a king than divine unction. And if birth was equivalent to divine unction, what needed Joash, who had royal birth, be made king by the people? and what needed Saul and David, who bad more than royal birth, even divine unction, be made kings by the people? and Saul, having the vocal and infallible testimony of a prophet, needed not the people’s election — the one at Mizpeh and Gilgal, and the other at Hebron.

5. If royal birth be as just a title to the crown as divine unction, and so as the people’s election is no title at all, then is it unlawful that there should be a king by election in the world now; but the latter is absurd, — so is the former. I prove the proposition, because where conquerors are wanting, and there is no king for the present, but the people governing, and so much confusion aboundeth, they cannot lawfully appoint a king, for his lawful title before God must either be conquest — which to me is no title — (and here, and in this case, there is no conquest) or the title must be a prophetical word immediately inspired of God. but this is now ceased; or the title must be royal birth, but here there is no royal birth, because the government is popular; except you imagine that the society is obliged in conscience to go and seek the son of a foreign king to be their king. But I hope that such a royal birth should not be a just title before God to make him king of that society to which he had no relation at all, but is a mere stranger. Hence in this case no title could be given to any man to make him king, but only the people’s election, which, is that which we say. And it is most unreasonable that a people under popular government cannot lawfully choose a king to themselves, seeing a king is a lawful magistrate, and warranted by God’s word, because they have not a king of royal birth to sit upon the throne.

Mr Symmons saith[2] that birth is the best title to the crown, because after the first of the family had been anointed unction was no more used in that family, (unless there arose a strife about the kingdom, as betwixt Solomon and Adonijah, Joash and Athaliah) the eldest son of the predecessor was afterward the chosen of the Lord, his birthright spake the Lord’s appointment as plainly as his father’s unction. — Ans. 1. It is a conjecture that unction was not used in the family, after the first unction, except the contest was betwixt two brethren: that is said, not proved; for 2 Kings xxiii. 30, when good Josiah was killed, and there was no contest concerning the throne of that beloved pnnce, the people of the land took Jehoahaz his son, and anointed him, and made him king in his father’s stead; and the priests were anointed, (Lev. vi. 22,) yea, all the priests were anointed, (Numb. iii. 3,) yet read we not in the history, where this or that man was anointed. 2. In that Adonijah. Solomon’s elder brother, was not king, it is clear that God’s anointing and the people’s electing made the right to the crown. and not birth. 3. Birth de facto did design the man, because of God’s special promises to David’s house: but how doth a typical descent made to David, and some others by God’s promise, prove, that birth is the birthright and lawful call of God to a crown in all after ages? For as gifts to reign goeth not by birth, so neither doth God’s title to a crown go.

M. Symmons. — A prince once possessed of a kingdom coming to him by inheritance, can never, by any, upon any occasion be dispossessed thereof, without horrible impiety and injustice. Royal unction was an indelible character of old: Saul remained, the Lord’s anointed till the last gasp. David durst not take the right of government actually unto him, although he had it in reversion, being already anointed thereunto, and had received the spirit thereof.

Ans. — 1. This is the question, If a prince, once a prince by inheritance, cannot be dispossessed thereof without injustice: for if a kingdom be his by birth, as an inheritance transmitted from the father to the son, I see not but any man upon necessary occasions may sell his inheritance; but if a prince sell his kingdom, a very Barclay and a Grotius with reason will say, he may be dispossessed and dethroned, and take up his indelible character then. (2.) A kingdom is not the prince’s own, so as it is injustice to take it from him, as to take a man’s purse from him; the Lord’s church, in a Christian kingdom, is God’s heritage, and the king only a shepherd, and the sheep, in the court of conscience, are not his. (3.) Royal unction is not an indelible character; for neither Saul nor David were all their days kings thereby, but lived many days private men after divine unction, while the people anointed them kings, except you say that there were two kings at once in Israel; and that Saul, killing David, should have killed his own lord, and his anointed. (4.) If David durst not take the right of government actually on him, then divine unction made him not king, but only designed him to be king: the people’s election must make the king.

M. Symmons addeth,[3] “He that is born a king and a prince can never be unborn, Semel Augustus semper Augustus; yea, I believe the eldest son of such a king is, in respect of birth, the Lord’s anointed in his father’s life-time, — even as David was before Saul’s death, and to deprive him of his right of reversion is as true injustice as to dispossess him of it.”

Ans. — It is proper only to Jesus Christ to be born a king. Sure I am no man bringeth out of the womb with him a sceptre, and a crown on his head. Divine unction giveth a right infallibly to a crown, but birth doth not so; for one may be born heir to a crown, as was hopeful prince Henry, and yet never live to be king. The eldest son of a king, if he attempt to kill his father, as Absalom did, and raise forces against the lawful prince, I conceive he may be killed in battle without any injustice. If in his father’s time he be the Lord’s anointed, there be two kings; and the heir may have a son, and so there shall be three kings, possibly four, — all kings by divine right.

The Prelate of Rochester saith,[4] “The people and nobles give no right to him who is born a king, they only declare his right.”

Ans. — This is said, not proved. A man born for an inheritance is by birth an heir, because he is not born for these lands as a mean for the end, but by the contrary, these lands are for the heir as the mean for the end; but the king is for his kingdom as a mean for the end, as the watchman for the city, the living law for peace and safety to God’s people; and, therefore, is not heres hominum, an heir of men, but men are rather heredes regis, heirs of the king.

Arnisæus saith,[5] “Many kingdoms are purchased by just war, and transmitted by the law of heritage from the father to the son, beside the consent of the people, because the son receiveth right to the crown not from the people, but from his parents; nor doth he possess the kingdom as the patrimony of the people, keeping only to himself the burden of protecting and governing the people, but as a propriety given to him lege regni, by his parents, which he is obliged to defend and rule, as a father looketh to the good and welfare of the family, yet so also as he may look to his own good.

Ans. — We read in the word of God that the people made Solomon king, not that David, or any king, can leave in his testament a kingdom to his son. He saith, the son hath not the right of reigning as the patrimony of the people, but as a propriety, given by the law of the kingdom by his parents. Now this is all one as if he said the son hath not the right of the kingdom as the patrimony of the people, but as the patrimony of the people — which is good nonsense; for the propriety of reigning given from father to son by the law of the kingdom, is nothing but a right to reign given by the law of the people, and the very gift and patrimony of the people; for lex regni, this law of the kingdom is the law of the people, tying the crown to such a royal family;. and this law of the people is prior and more ancient than the king, or the right of reigning in the king, or which the king is supposed to have from his royal father, because it made the first father the first king of the royal line. For I demand, how doth the son succeed to his father’s crown and throne? Not by any promise of a divine covenant that the Lord maketh to the father, as he promised that David’s seed should sit on his throne till the Messiah should come. This, as I conceive, is vanished with the commonwealth of the Jews; nor can we now find any immediate divine constitution, tying the crown now to such a race, — nor can we say this cometh from the will of the father-king making his son king. For, 1. There is no Scripture can warrant us to say the king maketh a king, but the Scripture holdeth forth that the people made Saul and David kings. 2. This may prove that the father is some way a cause why this son succeedeth king; but he is not the cause of the royalty conferred upon the whole line, because the question is, Who made the first father a king? Not himself; nor doth God now immediately by prophets anoint men to be kings, — then must the people choose the first man, then must the people’s election of a king be prior and more ancient than the birth-law to a crown; and election must be a better right than birth. The question is, Whence cometh it that not only the first father should be chosen king; but also whence is it, that whereas it is in the people’s free will to make the succession of kings go by free election, as it is in Denmark and Poland, yet the people doth freely choose, not only the first man to be king, but also the whole race of the first-born of this man’s family to be kings. All here must be resolved in the free will of the community. Now, since we have no immediate and prophetical enthroning of men, it is evident that the lineal deduction of the crown from father to son, through the whole line, is from the people, not from the parent.

6. Hence, I add this as my sixth argument, That which taketh away that natural aptitude and nature’s birthright in a community, given to them by God and nature, to provide the most efficacious and prevalent mean for their own preservation and peace in the fittest government, that is not to be holden; but to make birth the best title to the crown, and better than free election, taketh away and impedeth that natural aptitude and nature’s birthright of choosing, not simply a governor, but the best, the justest, the more righteous, and tyeth and fettereth their choice to one of a house, whether he be a wise man, and just, or a fool and an unjust man; therefore to make birth the best title to the crown, is not to be holden.

It is objected, That parents may bind their after generations to choose one of such a line, but by this argument, their natural birthright of a free choice to elect the best and fittest, is abridged and clipped, and so the posterity shall not be tyed to a king of the royal line to which the ancestors did swear. See for this the learned author of “Scripture and Reasons pleaded for Defensive Arms.”

Ans. — Frequent elections of a king, at the death of every prince, may have, by accident, and through; the corruption of our nature, bloody and tragical sequels; and to eschew these, people may tie and oblige their children to choose one of the first-born, male or female, as in Scotland and England, of such a line; but I have spoken[6] of the excellency of the title by election above that of birth, as comparing things according to their own nature together, but give me leave to say, that the posterity are tied to that line, — 1. Conditionally: so the firstborn, ceteris paribus, be qualified, and have an head to sit at the helm. 2. Elections of governors would be performed as in the sight of God, and; in my weak apprehension, the person coming nearest to God’s judge, fearing God, hating covetousness; and to Moses’ king, (Dent. xvii,) one who shall read in the book of the law; and it would seem now that gracious morals are to us instead of God’s immediate designation. 3. The gennine and intrinsical end of making kings is not simply governing, but governing the best way, in peace, honesty, and godliness, (1 Tim. ii.) therefore, these are to be made kings who may most expeditely procure this end. Neither is it my purpose to make him no king who is not a gracious man. only here I compare title with title.

Arg. 7. Where God hath not bound the conscience, men may not bind themselves, or the consciences of the posterity. But God hath not bound any nation irrevocably and unalterably to a royal line, or to one kind of government; therefore, no nation can bind their conscience, and the conscience of the posterity, either to one royal line, or irrevocably and unalterably to monarchy. The proposition is clear. 1. No nation is tyed, jure divino, by the tie of a divine law, to a monarchy, rather than to another government. The Parisian doctors prove, that the precept of having a pope is affirmative, and so tyeth not the church, ad semper, for ever; and so the church is the body of Christ, without the Pope: and all oaths to things of their nature indifferent, and to things the contrary whereof is lawful and may be expedient and necessary, lay on a tie only conditionally, in so far as they conduce to the end. If the Gibeonites had risen in Joshua’s days to cut off the people of God, I think no wise man can think that Joshua and the people were tyed, by the oath of God, not to cut off the Gibeonites in that case; for to preserve them alive, as enemies, was against the intent of the oath, which was to preserve them alive, as friends demanding and supplicating peace, and submitting. The assumption is clear. If a nation seeth that aristocratical government is better than monarchy, hic et nunc, that the sequels of such a monarchy is bloody, destructive, tyrannous; that the monarchy compelleth the free subjects to Mahomedanism, to gross idolatry, they cannot, by the divine bond of any oath, captive their natural freedom, which is to choose a government and governors for their safety, and for a peaceable and godly life; or fetter and chain the wisdom of the posterity unalterably to a government or a royal line, which, hic et nunc, contrary to the intention of their oath, proveth destructive and bloody. And in this case, even the king, though tyed by an oath to govern, is obliged to the practices of the Emperor Otho; and as Speed saith of Richard the second,[7] to resign the crown for the eschewing of the effusion of blood. And who doubteth but the second wits of the experienced posterity may correct the first wits of their fathers; nor shall I ever believe that the fathers can leave in legacy by oath, any chains of the best gold to fetter the after wits of posterity, to a choice destructive to peace and true godliness.

Arg. 8. An heritor may defraud his first-born of his heritage, because of his dominion he hath over his heritage: a king cannot defraud his first-born of the crown. An heritor may divide his heritage equally amongst his twelve sons: a king cannot divide his royal dominions in twelve parts, and give a part to every son; for so he might turn a monarchy into an aristocracy, and put twelve men in the place of one king. Any heritor taken captive may lawfully oppignerate, yea, and give all his inheritance as a ransom for his liberty; for a man is better than his inheritance: but no king may give his subjects as a price or ransom.

Yet I shall not be against the succession of kings by birth with good limitations; and shall agree, that through the corruption of man’s nature, it may be in so far profitable, as it is peaceable, and preventeth bloody tumults, which are the bane of human societies. Consider farther for this, Ægid. Romanus, lib. 3. de reg. princi. cap. 5, Turrecremat. and Joan. de terræ Reubeæ, I tract, contr. Rebelles, ar. 1, con. 4. Yet Aristotle, the flower of nature’s wit, (lib. 3. polit. c. 10,) preferreth election to succession. He preferreth Carthage to Sparta, though their kings came of Hercules. Plutarch in Scylla, saith, he would have kings as dogs, that is, best hunters, not those who are born of best dogs. Tacitus, lib. 1, Naci et generari a Principibus, fortuitum, nec ultra æstimantur.


[1] Edward Symmons, in his Loyal Subjects Beleefe, sect. 3, p. 16.

[2] Symmons’ Loyal Subjects Beleefs, sect. 3, p. 16.

[3] Symmons, sect. 3, p. 7.

[4] Joan. Episco. Roffens. de potest. Papæ. lib. 2, c. 5.

[5] Arnisæus de authorit. princip. c. 1, n. 13.

[6] Sect. 4, p. 39.

[7] Speed, Hist. p, 757.