to yours I am glad to find your Paroxism over in the end of your Letter and you inclinable to a little Sport in proposing to me Two Questions in Physick I might laugh them over if your Skill in Physick were not greater than mine in Divinity And to shew my self all Obedience I answer to the first That under your Correction a redundancy in Choler with a little mixture of adust Melancholy has produced more Tragedies in the Body of Man than the Juice of the Pancreas is capable to do and these Affections seldom hit the Body without allowing a large share to the Mind As to the second Question I was almost going to complement you by giving the credit of the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood to a Clergy-man the great Padro Paulo as Bishop Bedel insinuates but I am as loath to part with the Honour of that Discovery from my own Profession as you are to allow mine that of knowing Divinity And if I should affirm That the 12 th Chapter of Ecclesiastes contains a true Systeme of the Circulation of the Blood you might have a large Field to shew your Skill of Physick and Divinity at once by demonstrating the contrary Now I hope my Obedience to you will oblige you to a jus talionis and instead of two Questions I 'le presume but to propose one Viz. Whether or not he that pays the stipend should jure Divino present to the Church This is a Question may concern you and I am positively for the affirmative till you convince me of the contrary SIR Your humble Servant JAMES WELWOOD P. S. I must add one thing more How kindly would your Principle of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance relish with the poor Protestants of Ireland at this day And indeed if they be all of your Opinion we are like to have many thousands of Martyrs if the goodness of God and the Princes Conduct prevent it not Thus Sir I have answered your Letter in a Strain somewhat different from yours for your Heat and Bitterness shall not Authorize mine If you have any further Commands for me you shall find me ready to serve you being that I am To Doctor WELWOOD Newcastle Feb. 19. 1688 9. Good Doctor YOU were it seems in some danger of losing the honour of being an Apathist because you found not in the Superscription of my Letter the glorious Title of Dr. Medicinae but if you will be at the charge of consulting the Heralds Office you may soon satisfie your self That tho perhaps you may have commenc'd Doctor in some Foreign Academy yet you have no claim to the Priviledges of the same degree in England till you are admitted ad cundem in one of our Famous Universities if this Apology will not allay the effervence of your Choler I have nothing to plead besides the Ignorance of your Quality You are in a much greater ferment by reason of that rude Answer you say I sent you but others that saw it thought it more modest than you deserved considering these Provocations you had given me a Person that never injur'd you in my life But I fancy you expected from me some such mighty Complements as Dr. Burnet met with in his Travels for charging me with false Doctrin waspish Expressions want of Breeding scurrilous and indecent Epithets black Aspersions bad Genius horrible Positions Scandalum Magnatum want of Prudence Choller narrow Theatre having Books and not reading them For these and many more are the Flowers and Embellishments of your Stile and yet good Man you are not capable of any Impressions of Heat and Bitterness but more cool than the Alpes and a greater Adeptus in Stoicism than Old Zeno was who yet say some did at last swing himself out of the World in a pleasant Paroxism of Apathy But in lieu of your charging me with Cholerick Strains I shall return you two known Sayings Turpe est Doctori cum culpa redarguit ipsum Et Medice cura teipsum Before I come to examine what you may think material in your second Letter I shall premise something concerning the Doctrin of the Church of England which I think may be better gathered out of her own Authentick Monuments than out of your Country-men barely and this will bring us to the truest State of the Controversie In order thereunto I shall begin with the necessary Doctrin and Erudition of a Christian Man set forth by the Authority of Henry the Eighth and compos'd by Cranmer Ridley Redman and other glorious Martyrs On the fifth Commandment they deliver themselves thus Subjects be bound not to withdraw their Fealty Truth Love and Obedience towards their Prince for any Cause whatsoever it be neither for any Cause they may conspire against his Person nor do any thing towards the hindrance nor hurt thereof nor of his Estate and they prove this from Rom. 13. Whosoever resisteth the Powers resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist them get to themselves Damnation And upon the sixth Commandment No Subjects may draw their Swords against their Prince for whatsoever Cause it be and tho Princes which be the Supreme Heads of their Realms do otherwise than they ought to do yet God hath assign'd no Judges over them in this World but will have the Judgment of them reserv'd to himself and will punish them when he seeth it time In the Second Part of the Sermon of Obedience in the Book of Homilies our Church declareth That it is not lawful for Inferiours and Subjects in any case to resist and stand against the higher Powers For St. Pauls Words are plain Whosoever withstandeth shall get to themselves Damnation In the Second Part of the Homily against Rebellion we have these Words David was fain to save his Life not by Rebellion or any Resistance but by flight and hiding himself from the Kings sight Shall we not rise and rebel against our known mortal and deadly Enemy that seeks our Lives No saith godly David What shall we do then to a Saul an evil unkind Prince an Enemy to us hated of God hurtful and pernicious to the Common-Wealth Lay no violent hand upon him saith good David but let him live until God appoint or work his end It is most plain from these Passages That the Church of England forbids all Resistance of the Higher Powers in all Causes whatsoever And tho you and your Country-man Barclay were pleased to trouble the World with nice Distinctions our Church thinks it more advisable to follow St. Paul's Example and use none at all Having premis'd thus much to state the Controversie aright I shall now examine your Letter First You will have Dr. Burnet the Author of that Pamphlet whether I will or no and bring such silly Arguments to prove it as are not worth the mentioning But since you will have it so I wish you had taken more pains to vindicate his Reputation seeing he has subscribed the Homilies and asserted Passive Obedience to the heighth
Sovereign but only to God by Prayer and Patience Bishop Iewell in his Defence of the Apology speaks thus We teach the People as St. Paul doth to be subject to the Higher Powers not only for fear but also for Conscience sake We teach 'em That whoso striketh with the Sword by private Authority shall perish with the Sword. If the Prince happen to be wicked or cruel or burdensom we teach 'em to say with St. Ambrose Tears and Prayers be our Weapons This I hope will be sufficient to evince That Passive Obedience was own'd by our Church in the Days of Queen Elizabeth of Blessed Memory and that in the same sense I did assert in my Sermon Fifthly In the next place you attempt to prove the lawfulness of Resisting the Kings of England from the Coronation Oath which you say is of the same import with the Bulla Aurea in Germany but for this we have no other proof than your own ipse dixit as if the Soul of Pythagoras by a Metempsychosis had at last taken up its Lodging in a Scots Tenement But I assure you Sir your bare word is of no such Authority with me Besides I have already proved That the Emperor by reason of the Bulla Aurea is no proper Sovereign And if you should say the Prince of Orange is no proper Sovereign now that he is proclaim'd King of England it would be as bad or worse than to drink a Health to the Success of King Iames's Forces against all Invaders whatsoever at that very time when the Prince of Orange was coming over to rescue the Nation from Popery and Slavery and yet this you merrily did in a certain House at the lower end of Westgate so that for all your pretended Zeal you are a sneaking Proteus and it would be as easie to shape a Coat for the Moon as for your Latitudinarian Conscience But I must instruct you That the King of England is a Sovereign Prince before his Coronation nor is his Oath necessary to make him so seeing Henry the Sixth Reign'd divers Years in England before he was Crown'd and yet was own'd by his Parliaments for their dread Sovereign Nay further our Chronicles inform us That some of our Kings were never Crown'd and besides all this I desire you and those of your Cabal to shew any thing in the Coronation Oath that allows Subjects to take up Arms against their Prince In the next place you pretend to give such an exact State of the Controversie as you say will in one word refute the Tenet of Passive Obedience and in order hereunto you offer four Cases out of Barclay and others in which as you tell me They all agree that it 's lawful for Subjects to resist and wage War against their Sovereign Princes Had you read your Country-man Barclay as you pretend you would have found that he allows only two Cases in which a Prince may be divested of his Royal Dignity and when you come to propose these four Cases you mention only three Such is the great Excellence of your Memory notwithstanding that according to the Proverb Some stand in need of a very good one First Your first Case is When a Prince does voluntarily and freely relinquish his Crown and Dignity as did Charles the Fifth Christiana of Sweden and to name no more nine Saxon Kings mentioned in Fuller's Church History Now in this Case the Prince who voluntarily resigns the Crown becomes for the future a private Person and should he afterwards by force endeavour to recover his Dignity which by his own consent is vested in the next Heir he may no doubt be resisted But sure this is not resisting a King or the Higher Powers but a private Person in defence of a lawful King and so is nothing to your purpose and pray look your Barclay again and see if this Case as you say is there Secondly If a Prince alienates his Crown and Subjects to another you say he may be resisted this without any harm may be granted too For as I own no Allegiance to a Foreign Prince so my own Prince has voluntarily divested himself and thrust himself into a private Capacity and in this case we do not resist the Higher Powers but a private Person And this instance does also fall short of the mark Thirdly The third Case is more pertinent for you say a King may be deposed or resisted Si hostili animo in populi exitium feratur This you have transcribed from Grotius and the meaning of it is this Whether a Sovereign Prince may be resisted in case he undertakes to destroy his whole Kingdom or any considerable part thereof If we may take your honest word Grotius and all that you have read resolve this Point in the Affirmative To which I answer First That Grotius with due submission to your vast reading did as I shew'd above retract in his riper Years this dangerous Opinion which Erasmus in Luke 22. stiles a most pernicious Heresie Secondly Bishop Taylor calls it deservedly a Wild Tenet and Grotius as well as he acknowledges it can scarce seem possible to happen It is certain that we have not one single instance of it in the whole Race of our British Kings Thirdly More sober Casuists condemn the starting such speculative Cases as Princes cutting the Throats of their Subjects because they have been found the Incentives of Rebellion They were such Fears and Out-crys as these that brought King Charles the Martyr to the Block and have stain'd your Scotch Chronicles with the Murders of above sixty Sovereign Princes So that King William and Queen Mary will have cause to thank you for giving such early Demonstrations of your Loyalty in the very beginning of their Reign teaching their Subjects in how many cases they may resist when the Laws of the Land say expresly That it 's unlawful to take up Arms against the King upon any pretence whatsoever Fourthly Put the case that Tiberius Caligula Claudius or Nero be the King and your Countryman Barclay instances such Monsters as these as being the greatest he could find in all History you and he both affirm they may be lawfully resisted it is not for me to oppose such Learned Gentlemen but I will assure you once more Grotius is against you and I hope he is not very much inferior to your Doctorship in Learning and Judgment And must I tell you again what I told you from the Pulpit viz. That those Prohibitions against Resistance which are given in the New Testament by our Saviour St. Paul and St. Peter were remarkably given at such a time when these greatest Monsters of Cruelty sat on the Throne and pray ask my Parishioners whether they do not believe our Saviour St. Paul and St. Peter to be as good Casuists as your Doctorship and Countryman Barclay Having thus destroyed the very Foundations your State of the Controversie stood on your slender superstructure and puerile flourishes will tumble with them In the next
from a more intimate acquaintance than your narrow Theatre could allow you obliges me to do that Justice to the Protestants abroad as to affirm That notwithstanding all the Resistance they made to their Tyrannizing Princes they are as much for Passive Obedience in its true and rational sense as the Church of England it self that is where the Commands of the Sovereign are incompatible with their duty they hold themselves oblig'd to suffer for their disobedience rather than to sin In all their Confessions of Faith they own Magistracy as the Ordinance of God and disapprove opposition to it in execution of Law But they never so far divested themselves of Reason as to yield up their Throats to be cut by their Princes turn'd absolute Tyrants when it was in their power to vindicate their Religion and Liberties by their Sword. That England concurr'd with them in this opinion appears as I told you in my Letter by the mighty protection they vouchsaft them in this their Resistance Moreover which I forgot to tell you in all the Convocations of the Clergy of England at that time there were vast sums given to carry it on and the preamble of ev'ry Act does fairly insinuate the lawfulness of that resistance made by the Protestants abroad against their Princes so that resistance was not only allowed by the Nation but likewise by the Church of England in a full Convocation of its Fathers And if the Church of England assisted so generously in the support of the Protestants abroad at a time when their Religion was Heresie by the Laws of their Country How much rather would these excellent Fathers of the Church have done it if their Religion had been settled by positive and fundamental Laws as it was after by several Edicts and Treaties What you say of the difference of the Government of the Empire and that of England I know but let me tell you as the Golden Bull is the great Barrer against Slavery there the same is the Coronation Oath here and consequently if the Germans may lawfully resist the Emperor or the Rex Romanorum upon breach of that Bull the same may the Representatives and Nobility of England do upon palpable breaches of the Coronation Oath for as the Golden Bull is the great security of the German aggregate Body against the incroachments of the Emperor the same is the Coronation Oath in England against the incroachments of the King. Fourthly You tell me you hold Passive Obedience to be founded on the word of God and maintain'd by the Church of England and contain'd in her Homilies To this I Answer 1. Tell me what opinion was ever broached in the Church without a pretence of Scripture to back it And what gloss can you put upon any Text of Holy Writ to prove your position but what has been a thousand times said and as many times refell'd Yet if you had allowed me a Copy of your Sermon I would have endeavoured to clear the sense of the Texts you make use of which I do not exactly remember so as to make nothing for your purpose And in your doing the one and I the other neither of us would have reason to value our selves upon that score since I fear none of us could outdo what has been again and again done already on that Subject In the mean time let me tell you that the simple stating of the Question solves all the Arguments you can bring from Scripture as I shall make appear in one word anon 2. As to Passive Obedience its being the Doctrine of the Church of England I have told you already that the Fathers of the Church of England contradicted it in Queen Elizabeths Reign And where can we find more authentick records of their Opinion and Doctrine than in the Printed Manifesto's and Acts made in Convocation As to the 39 Articles which is in place of a Confession of Faith and the Homilies wherein you say that Doctrine is maintain'd I 'll make bold to say that Passive Obedience in the narrow sense you take it was not so much as thought on at the time of their Publishing And albeit you should find a way to make them seem to speak for you the simple right stating of thē question answers them sufficiently It would seem to me that the Mitred Clergy and particularly that excellent Prelate My Lord Bishop of London should be at least as well acquainted with the Doctrine of the Church of England as any private Minister in a corner of the Nation and how far they have refell'd your fond Principle appears with a Witness in their committing the Government to the Prince in this juncture and a great many other publick actings If your Passive Obedience be the Principle of the Church of England how few Church of England-men are there in both Houses of Convention at present since they act so diametrically opposite to it And yet I perswade my self these Worthy Patriots would take it ill to be call'd of any other Church 3. To refell your Tenet of Passive Obedience in one word I need no more but to state the case fair and without equivocation thus Whate're can be said from Scripture or the acknowledgment of Protestant Churches Centers all in this viz. That it is unlawful to resist the Magistrate while he is lawfully such because he is Gods Vicegerent within his own Iurisdistion But when by his maleversations he divests himself of that Office and assumes a contradictory Character by trampling upon Laws and endeavouring to subvert the fundamental constitutions of the State contrary to his Coronation Oath in this case in my humble opinion He is no more justly a Magistrate nor the object of our Obedience and sua culpa amittit Imperium Upon which the Primores Regni and the Representatives of the People may lawfully fill up the Throne vacated by such palpable incroachments This being the State of the case all the Texts of Scripture you can produce for Obedience to Magistrates are to be natively understood and in a Logical propriety of predication asserted of Obedience to Magistrates when they are justly and lawfully such but the Relatives do not meet when the Magistrate by his own fault becomes dispossest of the Office. There is one thing more I would have you to take notice of to clear this head and it 's this There is a great difference betwixt resisting the Magistrate when he tramples upon the Religion and Liberty of any part of his Subjects in the execution of the Laws made against them and his doing of it in contradiction to Fundamental Laws already made in their Favours As for example albeit I should acknowledge that in Nero's time it had been unlawful for the Christians to resist him because Christianity was at that time contradictory to the Laws of the Empire Yet I cannot perswade my self but in case the Laws at that time had not only established the Christian Religion as the Religion of the Empire but had
remain SIR Your Humble Servant JOHN MARCH Feb. 19. 1688 9. For the Reverend Mr. JOHN MARCH Vicar of Newcastle Newcastle March 3. 1688 9. SIR AFTER your so unusual method of exposing your Second Letter at your Stationers Shop and thereby to most of the Town I might have expected it my self especially considering my so often sending for it but your delaying it from day to day and at last absolute Refusal put me upon the necessity of getting a Copy of it another way I cannot much blame you for this Conduct the writing and dispersing such a Letter required indeed the Denial of it to the Person for whom it was design'd I find you are liable to the fate of him of whom it was said If he had held his Peace he might have been thought a Philosopher and I was nothing unwilling you should continue such in the Opinion of the Mobile I might well spare my self the trouble of a Rejoinder there being nothing in your Letter that requires one for they must have clearer Eyes than mine that can discover any thing material or to the purpose in it but instead thereof a continued shuffling and waving of the Question mixt with so mean Sarcasms that for your own Honour I could have wish'd you had omitted them So that to give you an Answer I am at a great loss being unacquainted with Billingsgate Oratory and oblig'd at every turn to repeat my own words in my former Letters which you have been pleas'd to wrest so far as I cannot say you have given a fair repetition of one single Sentence of mine all along yours But to evince to the unbiass'd and knowing Persons of the place That you are not infallible as your admiring Mobile would have you I have put my self upon a nauseating Task of writing you these few Lines in answer to so indigested and immethodick a Letter You begin it with bantering my taking notice of the Direction of your first and tell me That the Heraulds Office will inform me that a Doctor of a Foreign University has no Priviledge in England I pretend to no great Priviledges any where but I had reason to expect a designation you refuse not to some who scarce ever saw an University Neither have I liv'd so obscure or been so little imploy'd as not to be known for what I am by most of the Gentry and People of Quality in the place and you notably contradict your self in saying You was ignorant of my Quality since you name expresly my Profession in your first Letter But we shall not fall out upon that Head since the Heraulds Office is not like to be much troubled with either of our Escutcheons Next you would fix upon me a great ferment of Choler and Rudeness in many of my Expressions you enumerate and tell me I deserved not so modest an Answer as you vouchsaf'd me considering the Provocations I gave you a Person that never disobliged me I submit both my first and second to any neutral Person who perhaps will allow them a better Construction and if any thing of Heat has slipt from my Pen I hope the occasion of it will do more than procure me a pardon It 's true you never disoblig'd me but no Personal Injury could have affected me more than the hearing a glorious and unparallel'd Deliverance branded in the Pulpit with the infamous Names of Rebellion Damnation and the like and the being a Witness to a Series of Actings consequential to such Expressions You seem'd to me in inveighing against a Revolution wherein the Finger of God was so visible to act much in parallel with those of old who dar'd to attribute the stupendious Effects of Omnipotence to a baser Influence And for me to have been an Apathist on such an occasion would have been but another name for Stupidity In your accusing me of Passion you must needs have a fling at poor Zeno and Two thousand Years rest in his Grave must not shelter him from your accusation of a felo de se albeit his manner of Death is not agreed upon by Authors whereof not a few allow him a natural one Before you come to answer my Letter you will needs premise something concerning the Doctrin of the Church of England and this you say will bring us to the true State of the Question Whereupon you are at the pains to cite several Passages out of the Book of Homilies against Resistance and for Passive Obedience and then you subsume Having premis'd thus much to state the Question you come to examine my Letter Sir I thought every School-Boy knew better what it was to state a Question than to cite Authorities to prove the thing questioned and what gentiel Name to give your thus stating it I am at a loss The stating of a Question is properly the removing all Equivocation of Terms or Amphibologies of Speech as the Schools speak whereby both the Opponent and Defendant may agree in the same sense and meaning of the words And pray Sir how came you to imagine That the Authorities produc'd removed any Difficulty arising from a wrong understanding of the words Passive Obedience and Resistance c. that are the Subjects of our Debate If you had been at pains to cast your Eyes upon my Letter so as to read it I presume you would have found me stating the Question betwixt us thus upon the matter viz. That to resist the Magistrate when he is lawfully such and acting in execution of Laws is one thing but to resist the same Person when he divests himself of that Sacred Character by trampling on Fundamental Laws is quite another The first is certainly unlawful but not the second And to elucidate this I told you there was a great Difference betwixt a Princes trampling upon a part of his Subjects in execution of Laws made against them and his doing of the same in downright contradiction of Fundamental Laws made in their Favours And albeit in the first case it were disallowable to Resist yet in the second reason and common sense in my Opinion does warrant it And upon my thus stating of the Question I did then as now once for all tell you That all places of the Homilies yea of Holy Scripture it self disproving Resistance of Magistrates are to be understood in a natural sense and with Analogy of Reason to be meant of Magistrates when lawfully such and acting conform to Laws and not of Princes divesting themselves of that Office by their own Faults and Mismanagement And in my giving so necessary and natural a Gloss upon the Homilies I do but Justice to those worthy Reformers that compil'd them whereas on the contrary you by endeavouring to wrest their Words to your notion of Passive Obedience derogate from the Reason and Learning of those Excellent Men And thus you have lost your pains and time in citing them At length you come to examine my Letter and in the first place you tell me I will have Dr.
subject it to another But the reason you give for it is wide from the purpose For a Prince may Subject his Crown to another and yet not thrust himself into a private capacity as you call it When King Iohn subjected his Crown to the Pope he ceas'd not thereby to be King of England and the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily are true Monarchies in the Family of Spain and yet Feudatory and Subject to the Pope One would have thought that you might have taken some notice of what I said upon this case in relation to the Native incroachments of the Sea and Court of Rome and how far a subjection in Spirituals may usher in a dependance even in Temporals But your self denyal will not allow you to be thought too knowing in what relates to your own Profession When you come to my third Case thô you at first confess it a pertinent Case yet you bring four pretty Answers against it The case being thus a King may be Dethron'd si in populi exitium feratur you answer 1. Grotius retracted this opinion how true this is I refer you to that Edition of his Works I formerly mentioned wherein instead of retracting this Case he confirms it by his Notes upon it you are as far in the wrong to Erasmus as to Grotius for having lookt upon the place cited there is not one word there relating to this case 2ly you tell me B. Taylor calls it a wild Case which is nothing to the purpose for none but wild Men can be capable of it then you say Grotius calls it a Case that scarce seems possible to happen That there have been such Monsters in the World appears by Nero's Firing the City of Rome and Caligula's wishing the Roman People had but one single Neck yea in the late Age have we not seen a Northern Prince invite his whole Nobles aboard his Ship and order them all to be murder'd before his Eyes It 's true we have been blessed with a better Race of Kings in England than to find any such Monsters in our Annals But how proper it was for a Divine to take notice of what I told you upon this Head How far a Prince may fall under this Category who endeavours to introduce a Religion inconsistent with his Peoples Eternal Happiness I am willing as well as you to appeal to your Parishioners Thirdly In answer to this Case you tell me More sober Casuists condemn the starting of such Speculative Cases and would fix upon me ill Service done to their Majesties in teaching their Subjects in what Cases they may Resist For the first part of this Answer you are pleas'd to instance no particular Casuist and I presume you are not able to do it unless you wrest their words as much as you use to do mine that is make them say what you please But when you so positively assert that in no case a Prince may be Resisted give me leave to think I refel sufficiently your assertion by instancing a case wherein you acknowledg you self Resistance is warrantable tho that case be very rare As to the second part of your answer I hope I shall be found to do no bad service to their Majesties in vindicating a Revolution wherein they have acted so glorious a part from the aspersions you have cast upon it And they have given the World so many and great demonstrations of a Sublim Vertue and of their abhorrence of Arbitrary Power as none but such as refuse to pray for them will dare to imagine they can possibly fall under any of the Cases I have mentioned And I heartily agree with you so far in point of Resistance that I firmly believe he who Resists such two darling Princes falls under the inevitable hazard of Damnation in the sense of your Text unless he repent Among a great deal of Rubbish of gentle Expressions I find nothing in your Fourth answer merits any notice but one thing that has been canted a thousands times over by your sort of Men Viz that the Precepts for Obedience given by our Saviour Saint Peter and Saint Paul were given at a time when the greatest Monsters of Cruelty were upon the Throne for so your express words are Sir even in this matter of Fact you commit a gross mistake for tho probably the two Apostles named wrote their Epistles in the Reigns of Caligula Domitian and Nero yet every Body knows that our Saviour's preaching was from the fifteenth till the eighteenth of Tiberius inclusivè who was none of the worst of Princes especially before that time of his Reign But as to that of the Apostles commanding subjection at a time when Monsters were upon the Throne to answer this I shall take occasion to give you my gloss upon that Text Romans 13.1.2 which has occasioned all our debate and in so doing perhaps I obviate all you have preached from it for Passive obedience and non-resistance The subjection there commanded to be given to the Higher Powers is in a proper sense a standing in order under them as on the contrary the Resistance prohibit is a Contraordinatness to them and so the very Etymology of the Greek words bears This being the genuine Critick of the words the meaning of them does fairly resolve into these two Corollaries First That the Gospel destroys not Magistracy nor exempts Christians from the Oeconomy of Subjection as some Hereticks at that time vainly imagined to which fond opinion it 's very probable the Apostle had an eye as many learn'd Men have thought particularly Gerhardus de Magist. polit n. 34.38 Secondly That Christianity exempts not the Professors of it from subjection to Heathen Magistrats as some Christians of that Age did maintain having imbib'd that principle from the Gaulonites among the Iews who held subjection to the Romans or any other Strangers unlawful and that likewise this heresie or error was in the Apostles view the same learn'd Author and a great many others do agree Now Resistance of open and notorious Violations of Magistracy in which case only I say Resistance is lawful contradicts not the subjection enjoyn'd in the Text being thus explain'd That subjection being nothing more but an acknowledgment of Magistrates as a Lawful Power ordain'd of God for the good of Mankind And that even at that time this was the Christians sense of this precept would appear by what I told you of the Senats declaring Nero an Enemy of Mankind and adjudging him to Death approv'd by the Christians of old and by the best of Lawyers and Casuists of late as for instance Bodinus de Republica Lib. 2. Cap. 5. And further That the Subjection here required is not to Princes abusing their Power by trampling upon all that 's Sacred as you would have it in naming of Nero is evincible from these Reasons First Such Princes are not the Ordinance of God the Relative of Subjection being they act in opposition to God. Secondly they are not a terror to