be the judges what commaunds are lawfull and what not what things good and what evill so they make obedience arbitrary and government by pretending conscience at the discretion of the Subject yea though the things whereat they take check be of their own nature indifferent or doubtfull and therefore not matters of faith yet will not they submit themselves nor their opinions unto any no not to the judgement of the Church they live in no not to the judgement of the Church Catholique nor to the authority of it even in the purest times thereof But they from the authority of their own opinions or from the authority of such Teachers as they themselves have chosen to themselves to be their guides they will both censure condemne disobey and revile the Ordinances of their Church and the Governours thereof so secure in opposing imaginary or at least unproved superstitiō as they will not see how incompatible self-will presumption disobedience arrogance and railing are with true Religion nor that the false Teachers and their Disciples which our Saviour and his Apostles foretold should be in the last and perilous times and which St Peter calleth cursed children are not only described by this that they have a forme of Godlinesse but deny the power thereof That they are in sheeps clothing but are inwardly Wolves That the fruit they beare is not answerable to the tree they seem to be That their way of working is after the way of private insinuation creeping into houses and leading silly Women captive Having itching eares and after their own liking heaping to themselves teachers That they be they that separate themselves and the like But they are especially described to be Traiterous Heady high-minded to be such as despise government as are presumptuous self willed and not afraid to speak evill of dignities And again that they despise dominion and speak evill of Dignities And that they Perish in the gainsaying of Corah now we know that the sinne of Corah was that he being a Levite and countenanced by an hundred and fifty Princes of the assembly famous in the Congregation and at least fourteen thousand seven hundred of the people upon his own private opinion to which also his followers adhered that both he and all the Congregation were holy and might offer incense before the Lord as well as Aaron Charged Moses and Aaron that they tooke too much upon them and that they exalted themselves above the Congregation of the Lord and therefore they holding themselves in a parity of authority with them would not appeare on their Summons nor be obedient unto them Yet as if these passages of Scripture nothing concerned our times we are nothing shie of those things whereof they doe admonish us There be some that justifie that private men may resist authority when it would doe that which is hurtfull to the Church of God yea that it is then their duty to resist it that such resistance is no disobedience no rebellion no sinne at all These swallow that which may not be granted viz that they are competent Iudges of the Churches hurt and besides they make the rule that our Saviour gave us for discovering teachers of false Doctrine to be nothing worth Our Saviour tells us we shall know them by their fruits as granting fruit to be a thing apparant knowne of all and unchangeable but these men make the fruit to alter according to the diversity of the tree that beares it though otherwise it have the same shape taste and vertue For example disobedience resistance of authority sedition and rebellion are by the law of God and by the law of nature agreed both by Christians and Heathens to be evill fruits But these men and Iesuites tell us that resisting authority and raising force against it thereby to worke the good and safety of the Church of God though done by Subjects is no resistance no rebellion no sinne The fruit has lost his own nature which in it selfe was nought and takes a new nature of goodnes because it was brought forth by the good tree of piety toward the Church of God So our Saviours precept is made of no effect and we must learne of the Iesuite to un-know a knowne thing and know it for some other thing then ever we knew before and that by a new way too viz by that which is not to be known of it selfe We must know the fruit by the tree We deny not but that authority may commaund things that by no meanes at all ought to be done and that then we must not doe them but those things are such as are manifestly contrary to the expresse word of God and principles of Religion And even in them we are only simply to refuse the doing of the evill commaunded without any actuall resistance otherwise and so doing our not obeying is not to be counted disobedience because it being necessary obedience to the expresse word of God the primitive Soveraign of all authority it can never be disobedience as to the derivative But where authority commaunds nothing against the expresse word of God and principles of Religion as in things disputable it doth not there except the Governours that are the derivative be obeyed God the primitive is disobeyed For he strictly commaunds obedience to his Vice-gerents even in every ordinance of man But we are also to take heed we play not the hypocrites with God When thinking to doe a good office to the Church or State we resist authority that presses us with that which as we suppose threatens depravation of true Religion or due liberty For what know we but that by wrongfull suffering whereto all are called God calls us to a tryall of our faith patience and obedience in that way which if we doe not shew by keeping close to his command not turning on the left hand to doe any evill though commanded nor on the right hand to resist authority with violence although it hath commanded evill we then refuse Gods tryall and with an unseasonable zeale for Religion and for our wordly rights we contrary to Gods commaund resist his lawfull Vice-gerents the excuse we have for it is little better then like the Pharisees to say Corban God shall have profit by it in the good that we shall doe his Church thereby and make the precept of God of no effect and antevert the glory that god seemed to seeke in our tryall And having so justified our resistance we must then call it pious and an act of duty and such as God requires and so make God the author of our sinne and lodge it where we can never repent us of it There may undoubtedly be such pressures laid upon Subjects as that humanity cannot but commiserate and perhaps in some part excuse their impatience and resisting of them But the pittifulnes of the case cannot make the resistance lawfull though we remit much to the doers we must
none of them but as if he would shew he should be a King in fact not in right in some way in which God would own nothing but the permission only he bad him as one would say be his owne carver and take ten peices to himselfe What the progresse of the story was we all know when the people had made a King of their own then they and their King must have a Religion of their own fitted to their new framed Kingdome and to effect that the old Priests of God must be sent away as absolute impediments to the setling of their new government and when that was done then were they absolute indeed and had as much authority over their God as they before had taken liberty against their King so it followed that when the People had made an usurper King their King and they made a Calfe their God and the summe of the peoples reforming their Kings misgovernance and relieving their own grievances was they made them selves a King that made them all castawaies he himselfe the reproach of Soveraignty and an infamous stigmatique to all posterity and his sinnes for ever adhering to the People till they had caused their utter extirpation and till of free-borne Subjects under a King of their own they became perpetuall slaves to the Subjects of another Kingdome So unpleasing to God and so pernitious to the people themselves are the fruits of those reformations which only or principally are managed by the popular inclination in which though for the most part a desire of doing justice or preserving true religion be pretended yet private discontent in some and ambition in others is commonly the chief and radicall incitement of the work The means that belongs to private men to use for reforming of Kingdoms is that which the Apostle shewes Let prayers saith he and supplications be made for Kings and all that are in Authority that we may lead a Godly life The people must not with impatience and puffed up mindes invade Gods peculiar right of calling Kings to account but every man betaking himselfe to the reformation of himselfe and to prayers unto God must seek of him that has the hearts of Kings in his hand to dispose the Kings heart to the desired reformation Many think this way long and tedious and like better that the people should Offer themselves willingly and help God in some readier way But truly if such private reformation and prayer be the right means of publique good and be too long neglected that is the peoples own fault and they may not by their fault gaine a power which before they had not Yet true it is that in great misgovernances God often uses the peoples hand to doe his work of Iustice but that we may know the way is not right as not agreeable to his revealed will we shall finde that the work of justice that he so beginneth by them he endeth not till he hath finished it on them and his hand is never more heavy then against that rodd that in the way of injustice hath done his justice service But will you heare God himselfe taking cognisance of the misgovernance of Princes and determining of it In the 81. Psalme God declares himselfe to stand in the congregation of Princes and to be judge among Gods so calleth he Kings there Then he expostulâ—teth the matter with wicked Princes How long will ye give wrong judgement and accept the persons of the wicked Then he complaineth They will not be instructed but walk on in darknesse the foundations of the earth are out of square The misgovernance is great and the consequence of it desperate but does God in that case give the people power to reforme No clean contrary God without any revocation still affirmes I have said ye are Gods and ye are all children of the most high persons sacred not to be approached by the prophane hands of the people but to awe and restraine Princes he tells them that though he has made them Gods yet they shall dye like men when they must make account to him of their misgoverning so that God reserves the judgement of them to himselfe and no whit authorises the people to have any thing to doe with their misdoeings This is not to flatter Princes to say God has appointed men no meanes to relieve themselves against their misgovernment but only praiers to be made either to them or for them and that men have not otherwise to meddle with the right of liberty and duties of Princes then only by way of supplication Nor is this a security for Princes for though in a lawfull and ordinate way there be no other means yet no examples are more familiar then those in which the sinne the injustice and violence of wicked Princes are in this world punished by the sinne injustice violence of wicked people sometimes their own sometime others subjects Gods extraordinary and supream justice is tied to none of those regulations with which he has circumscribed his ordinary justice committed to the administration of man but as we said before we may still observe Gods indignation not more fatally incensed against any then against those whose wickednesse has put them forward to be the instruments of his extraordinary justice upon others But to pursue the examination of the right that people may have in questioning and reforming the rule of Kings Let us farther examine what we find in Scripture David sinning by numbring the people was enforced to his choice of one of three plagues Famine Sword or Pestilence Deus malum avertat this is but a dolefull instance for the people The King sinnes and God laies all the punishment upon the people Nay he gives not them so much as the choice of the punishment which they must suffer for the King but the sinning King must choose which of the three plagues the innocent people must undergoe this is strange did not the great judge of heaven and earth doe right yes undoubtedly and the matter was the wickednesse of the people had grievously provoked God so as the King must be let goe and suffered to fall into sinne that way may be made for the peoples punishment This seems no lesse strange on the other side that because the people sinne therefore the Prince should be let fall that for the transgressions of the land the Prince as wee have it in another place should be punished with division and diminution and many should be the Princes of the land Nay that for the sinne of the people the Prince should be cast away as in that place If ye doe wickedly ye shall perish you and your King All this were strange indeed should we consider Prince and people as persons strangers in interest to one another but therefore these places shew the strict union and indivisible mutuality of interest that they have in the doings and sufferings each of other beyond any thing that can be created by the
meer constitution or agreement of men This case of Davids further teaches that if when the sinnes of the people be grown high it be any way necessary that the King be let fall into sinne before the People be punished then are Kings immediatly between God and the people and stand there like Moses in the gap to with-hold the hand of God from the people untill that they also by falling someway be removed Again if the Kings transgression in government has the originall from the sinnes of the people then are the People the prime offendors and first agents in the Kings transgression and He himselfe is as it were accessary and in a manner passive in it We see that God himselfe here judged so and laid the reall punishment upon the people whom he accounted the originall sinners as for the King to whom the sinne is verbally ascribed we see God reckons as if he were only passive in committing it and therefore inflicts no punishment on him but what he voluntarily took upon him an humbling of himself and a compassionate fellowfeeling of punishment such as a good common father has alwaies by the sense of his peoples suffering It now followes plainly that the people that have their hands in sinne are no competent Iusticiars for hearing judging and reforming of any misdemeanours especially of those in which they themselves having the principall hand are the principalls and lesse where the person questioned is but an accessary drawn in by them and least of all where he is a person sacred and one so much superiour as by Gods ordinance to stand immediatly betwixt God and them sure he that would not suffer one with a beam in his eye to pull a moat out of the eye of his brother does not permit him to doe it toward one so much superiour as his Prince nor suffer guilty Subjects to arraigne their soveraigne guilty servants their Lord nor guilty sonnes their common father To conclude we may consider the unlawfulnesse of popular animadversion into the manners and government of Princes especially of Princes that are lawfull Christian Monarchs even in this alone that there are no received nor known bounds of limitation how farre people may walk in the way of questioning and reforming the errours of Princes but that if any thing at all be lawfull for them to doe therein then may they without restraint proceed so farre as to depose Princes and deprive them of their lives if according to the doctrine of the Iesuite they finde it for the good and reformation of the Church and Commonwealth which how well it is warranted by the word of God we may see plainly enough in the case between Saul and David Saul was King but misgoverning himself and the Kingdom became as bad as excommunicate and deposed for he was rejected of God and David was by Gods expresse command annoynted to be King all which notwithstanding neither David nor the people ever sought to depose him to renounce obedience unto him to combine against him question his government or so much as meddle with ordering any of the affaires that belonged to the King Nay Saul after this persecuted David unjustly and in the midst of his unjust and hostile persecution was delivered into Davids hand and it was of necessity that David should take the advantage and kill him for he could not otherwise have any assurance of his owne life David did then but even cut of the skirt of Sauls garment to the end it might witnesse his faithfull loyalty because it made it manifest he could as easily have cut the thread of his life and even for this his heart so smote him as that he cries out The Lord forbid that I should doe this thing to my Maister the Lords annointed to stretch forth my hand against him That was not all neither but there were more circumstances in the case Saul was not yet reformed and going on still was another time delivered into Davids hands and the people both times understood it the speciall delivery of his enemy into his hands by God and would have embraced the opportunity and have made him away David restraines them still with the same bridle The Lord forbid c. and tells them Who can lay his hands on the Lords annointed and be guiltlesse No David though already annointed would tary Gods time the Lord should smite Saul or his day should come or he should descend into battaile and perish but Davids hand should not be against him No whatsoever Saul was or whatsoever he had done neither his falling from God nor Gods declaring him rejected nor Davids annointing by Gods command nor Sauls unjust persecution of David the Lords annointed in future could dissolve the duty of his Subjects nor make it lawfull for them to lay their hands on him no not when he was in wicked hostility against them But Saul in Davids account was still the Lords annointed still a sacred person still Davids maister notwithstanding the circumstances which might seeme to have discharged the tyes of duty which David and the people did formerly owe unto him Neither is the annointing of Kings a thing sacred as to their own Subjects only but the regard thereof is required at the hands of strangers also because of the prophanation and sacriledge that in the violation of their persons is committed even against God Wherefore we see that though the Amalekite were a stranger and made a faire pretence that he had done Saul a good office when at his own request he dispatched him of the paine of his wounds and of the pangs of his approaching death yet David taking his fact according to his owne confession makes a slight account of the causes which he pretended as a frivolous extenuation of an haynous fact and condemnes him though a stranger as an hainous Delinquent against the Majesty of God How wert thou not afraid saith he to stretch forth thy hand to destroy the Lords annointed neither his being a stranger nor any of the other circumstances were so availeable but that his bloud fell deservedly upon his own head The act is in it selfe perfectly wicked and in the degree hainous altogether against the word of God and therefore all actions of Subjects that in the progresse of them tend or by the way threaten to arrive at that upshot are all unlawfull fowle and wicked and not only the actors themselves wicked but their assistants favourers those that wish them well or as St Iohn speakes That bid them God speed are partakers of their evill deeds But errour in this point has made such impressions in the mindes of many as that they will never be perswaded but that they may disobey and resist Authority if ever they finde it faulty or the commaunds thereof not agreeing with their consciences They will grant that they may not disobey Authority in the lawfull commaunds thereof neither doe evill that good may come thereon but then they themselves will