fall under a commandment of God; and certainly it is an irrational law (glorified be his name) that God should command Antipas either formally to suffer, or formally not to suffer death by these of the synagogue of Satan, (Rev. ii. 13,) because if they be pleased not to kill him, it is not in his free will to be killed by them; and if they shall have him in their power (except God extraordinarily deliver) it is not in his power, in an ordinary providence, not to be killed.

2. All these places of God's word, that recommendeth suffering to the followers of Christ, do not command formally that we suffer; therefore, suffering falleth not formally under any commandment of God. I prove the antecedent, because if they be considered, they prove only that comparatively we are to choose rather to suffer than to deny Christ before men, (Mat. x. 28, 32; Rev. ii. 13; Mat. x. 37; xvi. 24; xix. 29,) or then they command not suffering according to the substance of the passion, but according to the manner that we suffer, willingly, cheerfully, and patiently. Hence Christ's word to take up his cross, which is not a mere passion, but commendeth an act of the virtue of patience. Now no Christian virtue consisteth in a mere passion, but in laudable habits, and good and gracious acts, and the text we are now on (1 Pet. ii. 18, 19) doth not recommend suffering from the example of Christ, but patient suffering; and so the word borardóμsvou, not simply enjoined, υποτασσόμενου, but iv xavrì rã póca in all fear, (ver. 18,) and the words ὑποφέρειν and ὑπομενεῖν, to suffer with patience, as 2 Tim. iii. 11; 1 Cor. x. 13, and oμ; is to suffer patiently, 1 Cor. xiii. 7, love πάντα ὑπομένει suffereth all things; Heb. xii. 17, if you suffer correction ; 1 Tim. v. 5, she continueth patiently in prayers; Heb. xii. 2, Christ endureth the cross patiently (Rom. xv. 5; viii. 25; Luke viii. 15; xxi. 29). The derivations hence signify patience; so do all our interpreters, Beza, Calvin, Marloratus, and popish expositors, as Lorinus, Estius, Carthusian, Lyra, Hugo Cardinalis, expound it of patient suffering; and the text is clear, it is suffering like Christ, without rendering evil for evil, and reviling for reviling.

3. Suffering simply, according to substance of the passion, (I cannot say action,) is common to good and ill, and to the wicked, yea to the damned in hell, who suffer against their will, and that cannot be joined according to its substance as an act of formal obedi

ence and subjection to higher powers, kings, fathers, masters, by force of the fifth commandment, and of the place, Rom. xiii. 1, 2. Which, according to its substance, wicked men suffer, and the damned in hell also against their will.

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4. Passive obedience to wicked emperors can but be enjoined (Rom. xiii.) but only in the manner, and upon supposition, that we must be subject to them, and must suffer against our wills all the ill of punishment that they can inflict; we must suffer tiently, and because it is God's permissive will that they punish us unjustly; for it is not God's ruling and approving will (called voluntas signi) that they should, against the law of God and man, kill us, and persecute and therefore neither Rom. xiii., nor 1 Pet. ii., nor any other place in God's word, any common divine, natural, national or any municipal law, commandeth formally obedience passive, or subjection passive, or non-resistance under the notion of passive obedience; yea, to me, obedience passive (if we speak of obedience, properly called, as relative essentially to a law) is a chimera, a dream, and repugnantia in adjecto; and therefore I utterly deny that resistance passive, or subjection passive, doth formally fall under either commandment of God affirmative or negative; only the unlawful manner of resistance by way of revenge, or for defence of popery and false religion, and out of impatient toleration of monarchy or any tyranny, is forbidden in God's word; and certainly all the words used Rom. xiii., as they fall under a formal commandment of God, are words of action, not of any chimerical passive obedience, as we are not to resist actively God's ordinance, as his ordinance, (ver. 1, 2,) that is, to resist God actively. We are to do good works, not evil, if we would have the ruler no terror to us (ver. 3). We must not do ill if we would be free of vengeance's sword (ver. 7); we are to pay tribute and to give fear and honour to the ruler, all which are evidently actions, not passive subjection; and if any passive subjection be commanded, it is not here, nor in the first commandment, commanded, but in the first commandment under the hand of patience and submission under God's hand in sufferings, or in the third commandment under the hand of rather dying for Christ than denying his truth before men. Hence I argue here (Rom. xiii.; 1 Pet. ii.; Tit. iii.) is nothing else but an exposition of the fifth

commandment; but in the fifth commandment only active obedience is formally commanded, and the subordination of inferiors to superiors is ordained, and passive obedience is nowhere commanded, but only modus rei, the manner of suffering, and the occasion of the commandment, here it is thought that the Jews converted under this pretext, that they were God's people, believed that they should not be subject to the Romans. A certain Galilean made the Galileans believe that they should not pay tribute to strangers, and that they should call none lord, but the God of heaven; as Josephus saith, (Antiq. Judaic. 1. 20, c. 2, and de bell. Judaic. 1 7, c. 29,) yea and Hieron. (Com. in Tit.,) saith, At this time the sect of the Galileans were on foot. It is

like the Jews were thought to be Galileans, and that their liberty, purchased in Christ, could not consist with the order of master and servant, king and subject. And to remove this, Paul established magistracy, and commandeth obedience in the Lord; and he is more to prove the office of the magistrate to be of God than any other thing, and to show what is his due, than to establish absoluteness in Nero to be of God; yea, to me, every word in the text speaketh limitedness of princes, and crieth down absoluteness :— (1.) No power of God, (2.) no ordinance of God, who is a terror to evil, but a praise to good works, (3.) no minister of God for good, &c. can be a power to which we submit ourselves on earth, as next unto God, without controlment. That passive obedience falleth formally under no commandment of God, I prove thus: All obedience liable to a divine commandment, doth commend morally the performer of obedience, as having a will conformed to God's moral law, and deformity betwixt the will of him who performeth not obedience, involveth the non-obedient in wrath and guiltiness. But non-passive subjection to the sword of the judge doth not morally commend him that suffereth not punishment; for no man is formally a sinner against a moral law because he suffereth not the ill of punishment, nor is he morally good, or to be commended, because he suffereth ill of punishment, but because he doth the ill of sin. And all evil of punishment unjustly inflicted hath God's voluntas beneplaciti, the instrumental and hidden decree of God, which ordereth both good and ill, (Ephes. i. 11,) for its rule and cause, and hath not God's will or approba

tion called, voluntas signi, for its rule, both is contrary to that will. I am sure Epiphanius, (1. 1, tom. 3, heres. 40,) Basilius (in Psal. xxxii.), Nazianzen Orat. (ad subd. et imperat.), Hilar. (li. ad Constant.), and Augustine, all citeth these words, and saith the same. If, then, passive subjection be not commanded, non-subjection passive cannot be forbidden, and this text, Rom. xiii., and 1 Pet. ii. cannot a whit help the bad cause of royalists. All then must be reduced to some action of resisting; arguments for passive subjection, though there were shipfuls of them, they cannot help us.

Assert. 3.-By the place, 1 Pet. ii., the servant unjustly buffeted is not to buffet his master again, but to bear patiently as Christ did, who, when he was reviled, did not revile again. Not because the place condemneth resistance for self-defence, but because buffeting again is formally re-offending not defending: defending is properly a warding off a blow or stroke. If my neighbour come to kill me, and I can by no means save my life by flight, I may defend myself; and all divines say I may rather kill ere I be killed, because I am nearer, by the law of nature, and dearer to myself and my own life than to my brother;--but if I kill him, out of malice or hatred, the act of defending, by the unlawful manner of doing, becometh an act of offending and murder; whence the mind of the blood-shedder will vary the nature of the action from whence this corollary doth naturally issue, that the physical action of taking away the life maketh not murder nor homicide, and so the physical action of offending my neighbour is not murder. 1. Abraham kill his son, may -he for whom the cities of refuge were ordained, and did kill his brother, yet, not hating him, he was not, by God's law, judged a murderer; and, 2. It necessarily hence followeth, that an act which is physically an act of offending my brother, yea even to the taking away of his life, is often morally and legally an act of lawful selfdefence: an offending of another, necessitated from the sole invention of self-defence, is no more but an act of innocent self-defence. If David, with his men, had killed any of Saul's men in a set battle, David and his men only intending self-defence, the war on David's part was mere defensive; for physical actions of killing, indifferent of themselves, yet imperated by a principle of natural self-defence, and clothed with this formal

end of self-defence, or according to the substance of the action, the act is of self-defence. If, therefore, one shall wound me deadly, and I know it is my death, after that, to kill the killer of myself, I being only a private man, must be no act of self-defence, but of homicide; because it cannot be imperated by a sinless dictate of a natural conscience, for this end of self-defence, after I know I am killed. Any mean not used for preventing death must be an act of revenge, not of self-defence, for it is physically unsuitable for the intended end of self-defence. And so, for a servant buffeted to buffet again, is of the same nature, the second buffet not being a conducible mean to ward the first buffet, but a mean to procure heavier strokes, and, possibly, killing, it cannot be an act of self-defence; for an act of selfdefence must be an act destinated ex natura rei, only for defence; and if it be known to be an act of sole offending, without any known necessary relation of a mean to selfdefence as the end, it cannot be properly an act of self-defence.

Assert. 4.-When the matter is lighter, as in paying tribute, or suffering a buffet of a rough master, though unjustly, we are not to use any act of re-offending. For, though I be not absolute lord of my own goods, and so may not at my sole pleasure give tribute and expend monies to the hurting of my children, where I am not, by God's law or man's law, obliged to pay tribute; and though I be not an absolute lord of my members, to expose face, and cheeks, and back, to stripes and whips at my own mere will, yet have we a comparative dominion given to us of God in matters of goods, and disposing of our members, (I think I may except the case of mutilation, which is a little death,) for buffets, because Christ, no doubt to teach us the like, would rather give of his goods, and pay tribute where it was not due, than that this scandal be in the way of Christ, that Christ was no loyal subject to lawful emperors and kings. And (1 Cor. ix.) Paul would rather not take stipend, though it was due to him, than hinder the course of the gospel. And the like is 1 Cor. vi., where the Corinthians were rather to suffer loss in their goods than to go to law before infidel judges, and by the like to prevent greater inconveniences, and mutilation, and death. The Christian servant hath that dominion over his members, rather to suffer buffets than to ward off buffets with violent resis

tance. But it is no consequence, that innocent subjects should suffer death of tyrants, and servants be killed by masters, and yet that they shall not be allowed, by the law of nature, to defend themselves, by re-offending, when only self-defence is intended, because we have not that dominion over life and death. And therefore, as a man is his brother's murderer, who, with froward Cain, will not be his brother's keeper, and may preserve his brother's life, without loss of his own life, when his brother is unjustly preserved; so, when he may preserve his own life, and doth not that which nature's law alloweth him to do, (rather to kill ere he be killed,) he is guilty of self-murder, because he is deficient in the duty of lawful self-defence. But I grant, to offend or kill is not of the nature of defensive war, but accidental thereunto; and yet killing of cutthroats, sent forth by the illegal commandment of the king, may be intended as a mean, and a lawful mean, of self-defence. Of two ills of punishment, we have a comparative dominion over ourselves,may cast his goods into the sea to redeem his life; so, for to redeem peace, we may suffer buffets, but because death is the greatest ill of punishment, God hath not made it eligible to us when lawful self-defence is at hand. But, in defending our own life against tyrannical power, though we do it by offending and killing, we resist no ordinance of God, only I judge killing of the king in self-defence not lawful, because selfdefence must be national on just causes.

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Let here the reader judge Barclay, (1. 3, c. 8, p. 159, con. Monar.) "If the king (saith he) shall vex the commonwealth, or one part thereof, with great and intolerable cruelty, what shall the people do? They have (saith he) in that case a power to resist and defend themselves from injury; but only to defend themselves, nor to invade the prince, nor to resist the injury, or to recede from reverence due to the prince."1

I answer, 1. Let Barclay or the Prelate, (if he may carry Barclay's books) or any, difference these two,-the people may resist a tyrant, but they may not resist the injuries inflicted by a tyrant's officers and cutthroats. I cannot imagine how to conciliate

1 Populo quidem hoc casu resitendi ac tuendi se ab injuria potestas competit. sed tuendi se tantum, non autem principem invadendi, et resistendi injuriæ illatæ, non recedendi a debita reverentia-non vim præteritam ulciscendi jus habet.

these two; for to resist the cruelty of a king is but to hold off the injury by resistance. 2. If this Nero waste the commonwealth insufferably with his cruelty, and remain a lawful king, to be honoured as a king, who may resist him, according to the royalists' way ? But, from Rom. xiii., they resist the ordinance of God. Resisting is not a mere suffering, nor is it a moral resisting by alleging laws to be broken by him. We had never a question with royalists about such resisting. Nor is this resisting non-obedience to unjust commandments; that resisting was never yet in question by any except the papists, who in good earnest, by consequent, say, It is better to obey men than God. 3. It is then resisting by bodily violence. But if the king have such an absolute power given him by God, as royalists fancy, from Rom. xiii. 1, 2; 1 Sam. viii. 9— 11, I know not how subjects have any power given them of God to resist the power from God, and God's ordinance. And if this resisting extend not itself to defensive wars, how shall the people defend themselves from injuries, and the greatest injuries imaginable,-from an army of cut-throats and idolators, in war coming to destroy religion, set up idolatry, and root out the name of God's people, and lay waste the mountain of the Lord's house? And if they may defend themselves by defensive wars, how can wars be without offending? 4. The law of nature teacheth to repel violence with violence, when one man is oppressed, no less than when the commonwealth is oppressed. Barclay should have given either Scripture or the law of nature for his warrant here. 5. Let us suppose a king can be perjured, how are the estates of the kingdom, who are his subjects, by Barclay's way, not to challenge such a tyrant of his perjury? He did swear he should be meek and clement, and he is now become a furious lion. Shall the flock of God be committed to the keeping of a furious lion?

Dr Ferne (p. 3, sect. 2, p. 9,) addeth, "Personal defence is lawful against sudden and illegal invasion, such as Elisha practised, even if it were against the prince, to ward blows, and to hold the prince's hand, but not to return blows; but general resistance by arms cannot be without many unjust violences, and doth immediately strike at the order, which is the life of the commonwealth.

Ans.-1. If it be natural to one man to

defend himself against the personal invasion of a prince, then is it natural and warrantable to ten thousand, and to a whole kingdom; and what reason to defraud a kingdom of the benefit of self-defence more than one man? 2. Neither grace nor policy destroyeth nature; and how shall ten or twenty thousand be defended against cannons and muskets, that killeth afar off, except they keep towns against the king, (which Dr Ferne and others say had been treason in David, if he had kept Keilah against king Saul,) except they be armed to offend, with weapons of the like nature to kill rather than be killed, as the law of nature teacheth. 3. To hold the hands of the prince is no less resisting violence than to cut the skirt of his garment, which royalists think unlawful, and is an opposing of external force to the king's person. 4. It is true, wars merely defensive cannot be but they must be offensive; but they are offensive by accident, and intended for mere defence, and they cannot be without wars sinfully offensive, nor can any wars be in rerum natura now, (I except the wars commanded by God, who only must have been sinful in the manner of doing,) but some innocent must be killed; but wars cannot for that be condemned. 5. Neither are offensive wars against those who are no powers and no ordinances of God, such as are cut-throat Irish, condemned prelates and papists now in arms, more destructive to the order established by God than acts of lawful war are, or the punishing of robbers. And by all this, protestants in Scotland and England should remain in their houses unarmed, while the papists and Irish come on them armed, and cut their throats, and spoil, and plunder at will.

Nor can we think that resistance to a king, in holding his hands, can be natural; if he be stronger, it is not a natural mean of self-preservation. Nature hath appointed innocent and offending violence, against unjust violence, as a means of self-preservation. Goliath's sword is no natural means to hold Saul's hands, for a sword hath no fingers; and if king Saul suddenly, without colour of law or reason, or inevitably, should make personal invasion on David to kill him, Dr Ferne saith he may resist; but resisting is essentially a re-action of violence. Show us Scripture or reason for violent holding a king's hands in an unjust personal invasion, without any other re-action of offence. Walter Torrils killed king W. Rufus as he was

shooting at a deer; the Earl of Suffolk killed Henry VIII. at tilting: there is no treasonable intention here, and so no homicide. Defensive wars are offensive, ex eventu et effectu, not ex causa, or ex intentione.

But it may be asked, if no passive subjection at all be commanded as due to superiors. Ans. None properly so called, that is, purely passive, only we are, for fear of the sword, to do our duty. We are to suffer ill of punishment of tyrants, ex hypothesi, that they inflict that ill on us some other way, and in some other notion than we are to suffer ill of equals; for we are to suffer of equals not for any paternal authority that they have over us, as certainly we are to suffer ill inflicted by superiors. I demand of royalists, If tyrants inflicting evil of punishment upon subjects unjustly be powers ordained of God: if to resist a power in tyrannical acts be to resist God. Since we are not to yield active obedience to all the commandments of superiors, whether they be good or ill, by virtue of this place, Rom. xiii. how is it that we may not deny passive subjection to all the acts of violence exercised, whether of injustice, whether in these acts of violence wherein the prince in actu exercito and formally, punisheth not in God's stead, or in these wherein he punisheth tyrannically, in no formal or actual subordination to God, we owe passive subjection? I desire an answer to these.

Assert. 5.-Flying from the tyranny of abused authority, is a plain resisting of rulers in their unlawful oppression and perverting of judgment.

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All royalists grant it lawful, and ground upon the law of nature, that those that are persecuted by tyrannous princes may flee, and it is evident from Christ's commandment," If they persecute you in one city, flee to another," Matt. x. 23, and by Matt. xxiii. 34. Christ fled from the fury of the Jews till his hour was come; Elias, Uriah, (Jer. xxvi. 20,) and Joseph and Mary fled; the martyrs did hide themselves in caves and dens of the earth (Heb. xi. 37, 38); Paul was let down through a window in a basket at Damascus. This certainly is resistance; for look, what legal power God hath given to a tyrannous ruler, remaining a power ordained of God, to summon legally, and set before his tribunal the servants of God, that he may kill them, and murder them unjustly, that same legal power he hath to murder them; for if it be a

legal power to kill the innocent, and such a power as they are obliged in conscience to submit unto, they are obliged in conscience to submit to the legal power of citing; for it is one and the same power. 1. Now, if resistance to the one power be unlawful, resistance to the other must be unlawful also; and if the law of self-defence, or command of Christ, warrant me to disobey a tyrannous power commanding me to compear to receive the sentence of death, that same law far more shall warrant me to resist and deny passive subjection in submitting to the unjust sentence of death. 2. When a murderer, selfconvicted, fleeth from the just power of a judge lawfully citing him, he resisteth the just power ordained of God (Rom. iii.); therefore, by the same reason, if we flee from a tyrannous power, we resist that tyrannous power, and so, by royalists' ground, we resist the ordinance of God by flying. Now, to be disobedient to a just power summoning a malefactor, is to hinder that lawful power to be put forth in lawful acts; for the judge cannot purge the land of blood if the murderer flee. 3. When the king of Israel sendeth a captain and fifty lictors to fetch Elisha, these come instructed with legal power from the king; if I may lay fetters on their power by flight, upon the ground of self-preservation, the same warrant shall allow me to oppose harmless violence for my own safety. 4. Royalists hold it unlawful to keep a stronghold against the king, though the fort be not the king's house, and though that David should not have offended if he had kept Keilah against Saul: Dr Ferne and royalists say it had been unlawful resistance. What more resistance is made to royal power by walls interposed than by seas and miles of earth interposed? Both are physical resistance, and violent in their kind.