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change of the general, or form of government, would prove a cure. But if a monarch be faulty, in an aristocracy you will but have many faulty governors for one; and in a democracy a multitude of tyrants".

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Direct. xxI. Set yourselves much more to study your duty to your governors, than the duty of your governors to you; as knowing, that both your temporal and eternal happiness depend much more upon yourselves, than upon them. God doth not call you to study other men's duties so much as your own. If your rulers sin, you shall not answer for it; but if you sin yourselves, you shall. If you should live under the Turk, that would oppress and persecute you, your souls shall speed never the worse for this; it is not 'you, but he that should be damned for it. If you say, But it is we that should be oppressed by it;' I answer, 1. How small are temporal things to a true believer, in comparison of eternal things? Have not you a greater hurt to fear, than the killing of your bodies by mend? 2. And even for this life, do you not believe that your lives and liberties are in the power of God, and that he can relieve you from the oppression of all the world, by less than a word, even by his will? If you believe not this, you are atheists; if you do, you must needs perceive that it concerneth you more to care for your duty to your governors, than for theirs to you; and not so much to regard what you receive, as what you do; nor how you are used by others, as how you behave yourselves to them. Be much more afraid lest you should be guilty of murmuring, dishonouring, disobeying, flattering, not praying for your governors, than lest you suffer any thing unjustly from them. "Let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil doer, or as a busybody in other men's matters; yet if any man suffer as

b Eam rempublicam optimam dicunt Stoici, quæ sit mixta ex regno et populari dominatu, optimorumque potentia. Diog. Laert. in Zenone.

c Bad people make bad governors; in most places the people are so wilful and tenacious. of their sinful customs, that the best rulers are not able to reform them. Yea, many a ruler hath cast off his government, being wearied with mutinous and obstinate people. Plato would not meddle with government in Athens. Quia plebs aliis institutis et moribus assueverat. Diog. Laert. in Platone. And many other philosophers that were fittest for government, refused it on the same account, through the disobedience of the people.

d Luke xii. 4.

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a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf.- If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, ye are happy." Live so, that all your adversaries may be forced to say, as it was said of Daniel, "We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God." Let none be able justly to punish you as drunkards, or thieves, or slanderers, or fornicators, or perjured, or deceivers, or rebellious, or seditious, and then never fear any suffering for the sake of Christ or righteousness. Yea, though you suffer as `Christ himself did, under a false accusation of disloyalty, fear not the suffering nor the infamy, as long as you are free from the guilt. See that all be well at home, and that you be not faulty against God or your governors, and then you may boldly commit yourselves to God 8.

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Direct. XXII. The more religious any are, the more obedient should they be in all things lawful. Excel others. in loyalty, as well as in piety.' Religion is so far from being a just pretence of rebellion, that it is the only effectual bond of sincere subjection and obedience.

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Direct. XXIII. Therefore believe not them that would exempt the clergy from subjection to the civil powers.' none should know the law of God so well as they, so none should be more obedient to kings and states, when the law of God so evidently commandeth it. Of this read "Bilson of Christian Subjection" (who besides many others, saith enough of this). The arguments of the Papists from the supposed incapacity of princes, would exempt physicians, and other arts and sciences, from under their government, as well as the clergy.

Direct. XXIV. Abase not magistrates so far, as to think their office and power extend not to matters of religion, and the worship of God.' Were they only for the low and contemptible matters of this world, their office would be contemptible and low. To help you out in this, I shall answer some of the most common doubts.

Quest. 1. Is the civil magistrate judge in controversies of faith or worship?"

Answ. It hath many a time grieved me to hear so easy a question frequently propounded, and pitifully answered, by

e 1 Pet. iv. 13-17.

f Dan. vi. 5.

1 Pet. ii. 23, 24.

such as the public good required to have had more understanding in such things. In a word, judgment is public or private. The private judgment, which is nothing but a rational discerning of truth and duty, in order to our own choice and practice, belongeth to every rational person. The public judgment is ever in order to execution. Now the execution is of two sorts, 1. By the sword. 2. By God's Word applied to the case and person. One is upon the body or estate; the other is upon the conscience of the person, or of the church, to bring him to repentance, or to bind him to avoid communion with the church, and the church to avoid communion with him. And thus public judgment, is civil or ecclesiastical; coercive and violent in the execution; or only upon consenters and volunteers. In the first, the magistrate is the only judge, and the pastors in the second. About faith or worship, if the question be, 'Who shall be protected as orthodox, and who shall be punished by the sword as heretical, idolatrous, or irreligious ;' here the magistrate is the only judge. If the question be, 'Who shall be admitted to church communion as orthodox, or ejected and excommunicated as heretical or prophane;' here the pastors are the proper judges. This is the truth, and this is enough to end all the voluminous wranglings upon the question, Who shall be judge?' And to answer the cavils of the Papists against the power of princes in matters of religion. It is pity that such gross and silly sophisms, in a case that a child may answer, should debase Christian princes, and take away their chief power, and give it to a proud and wrangling clergy, to persecute and divide the church with '.

Quest. 11. May our oath of supremacy be lawfully taken, wherein the king is pronounced supreme governor in all cases ecclesiastical as well as civil?'

Answ. There is no reason of scruple to him that understandeth, 1. That the title'causes ecclesiastical' is taken from the ancient usurpation of the pope and his prelates, who brought much of the magistrate's work into their courts,

h of these things see my propositions of the difference of the magistrate's and pastor's power to Dr. Lud, Moul.

i The 'Rex sacrorum' among the Romans, was debarred from exercising any magistracy. Plut. Rom. Quest. 63.

2. That our

under the name of 'causes ecclesiastical' canons, and many declarations of our princes, have expounded it fully, by disclaiming all proper pastoral power. 3. That by governor' is meant only one that governeth coercively, or by sword; so that it is no more than to swear 'That in all causes ecclesiastical, so far as coercive government is required, it belongeth not to pope or prelates under him; but to the king and his officers or courts alone :' or, ⚫ That the king is chief in governing by the sword in causes ecclesiastical as well as civil.' So that if you put 'spiritual' instead of 'ecclesiastical,' the word is taken materially, and not formally; not that the king is chief in the spiritual government, by the keys of excommunication and absolution, but that he is chief in the coercive government about spiritual matters, as before explained *.

Quest. 111. 'Is not this to confound the church and state, and to give the pastor's power to the magistrate?'

Answ. Not at all; it is but to say that there may be need of the use both of the word and sword against the same persons, for the same offence; and the magistrate only must use one, and the pastors the other. An heretical preacher may be silenced by the king upon pain of banishment, and silenced by the church, upon pain of excommunication. And what confusion is there in this?

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Quest. IV. But hath not the king power in cases of church discipline, and excommunication itself?"

Answ. There is a magistrate's discipline, and a pastoral discipline. Discipline by the sword, is the magistrate's work; discipline by the Word is the pastor's work. And there is a coercive excommunication, and a pastoral excommunication. To command upon pain of corporal punishment, that a heretic or impenitent, wicked man shall forbear the sacred ordinances and privileges, a magistrate may do; but to command it only upon Divine and spiritual penalties, belongeth to the pastors of the church. The magistrate hath power over their very pastoral work, though he have not power in it, so as to do it himself. Suppose but all the physicians of

* See Bilson of Subject. pp. 238. 256. Princes only be governors in things and causes ecclesiastical; that is, with the sword. But if you infer,' ergo,' bishops be no governers in those things, meaning, no dispensers, guiders, nor directors of those things, your conclusion is larger, &c. So p. 256.

the nation to be of divine institution, with their colleges and hospitals, and in the similitude you will see all the difficulties resolved, and the next question fully answered 1.

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Quest. v. Seeing the king, and the pastors of the church may command and judge to several ends in the same cause, suppose they should differ; which of them should the church obey?'

Answ. Distinguish here, 1. Between a right judgment, and a wrong. 2. Between the matter in question; which is either, 1. Proper in its primary state to the magistrate. 2. Or proper primarily to the pastor. 3. Or common to both (though in several sorts of judgment). And so I answer the question thus.

1. If it be a matter wherein God himself hath first determined, and his officers do but judge in subordination to his law, and declare his will, then we must obey him that speaketh according to the Word of God, if we can truly discern it; and not him that we know goeth contrary to God". As if the magistrate should forbid communion with Arians or heretics, and the pastors command us to hold communion with them as no heretics; here the magistrate is to be obeyed (because God is to be obeyed) before the pastors, though it be in a matter of faith and worship. If you say, 'Thus you make all the people judges,' I answer you, And so you must make them such private judges, to discern their own duty, and so must every man; or else you must rule them as beasts or madmen, and prove that there is no heaven or hell for any in the world but kings and pastors; or, at least, that the people shall be saved or damned for nothing, but obeying or not obeying their governors; and if you could prove that, you are never the nearer reconciling the contradictory commands of those governors.

2. But if the matter be not fore-determined by God, but

It was somewhat far that Carolus Magnus went, to be actual guide of all in his chapel in reading even in all their stops, as it is at large declared by Abbas Usperg. Chro. p. 181.

m

Bishop Bilson p. 313. We grant, they must rather hazard their lives, than baptize princes which believe not, or distribute the Lord's mysteries to them that repent not, but give wilful and open signification of impiety, &c. Beda Hist. Eccles. lib. ii. c. 5. telleth us, That Melitus, bishop of London, (with Justus) was banished by the heirs of king Sabereth, because he would not give them the sacrament of the Lord's supper, which they would needs have before they were baptized.

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