QUESTION XXXII: Whether or no the lawfulness of defensive wars can be proved from the Scripture, fr
QUESTION XXVII
WHETHER OR NO THE KING BE THE SOLE, SUPREME, AND FINAL INTERPRETER OF THE LAW
This question conduceth not a little to the clearing of the doubts concerning the king's absolute power, and the supposed sole nomothetic power in the king. And I think it not unlike to the question, Whether the Bope and Romish church have a sole and penemptory power of exponing laws, and the word of God? We are to consider that there is a twofold exposition of laws; 1. One speculative in a school way, so exquisite jurists have a power to expone laws. 2. Practical, in so far as the sense of the law falleth under our practice; and this is twofold,—either private and common to all, or judicial and proper to judges; and of this last is the question.
For this public, the law hath one fundamental rule, solus populi, like the king of planets, the sun, which lendeth star-light to all laws, and by which they are exponed: whatever interpretation swerveth either from fundamental laws of policy, or from the law of nature, and the law of nations, and especially from the safety of the public, is to be rejected as a perverting of the law; and therefore, conscientia humani generis, the natural conscience of all men, to which the oppressed people may appeal unto when the king exponeth a law unjustly, at his own pleasure, is the last rule on earth for exponing of laws. Nor ought laws to be made so obscure, as an ordinary wit cannot see their connexion with fundamental truths of policy, and the safety of the people; and therefore I see no inconvenience, to say, that the law itself is norma et regula juduicandi, the rule and directory to square the judge, and that the judge is the public practical interpreser of the law.
Assert. 1.—The king is not the sole and final interpreter of the law.
1. Because then inferior judges should not be interpreters of the law; but inferior judges are no less essentially judges than the king, (Deut. 1:17; 2 Chron. 19:6; 1 Pet. 2:14; Rom. 13:1, 2,) and so by office must interpret the law, else they cannot give sentence according to their conscience and equity. Now, exponing of the law judicially is an act of judging, and so a personal and incommunicable act; so as I can no more judge and expone the law according to another man's conscience, than I can believe with another man's soul, understand with another man's understanding, or see with another man's eye. The king's pleasure, therefore, cannot be the rule of the inferior judge's conscience, for he giveth an immediate account to God, the Judge of all, of a just or an unjust sentence. Suppose Cæsar shall expone the law to Pilate, that Christ deserveth to die the death, yet Pilate is not in conscience to expone the law so. If therefore inferior judges judge for the king, they judge only by power borrowed from the king, not by the pleasure, will, or command of the king thus and thus exponing the law, therefore the king cannot be the sole interpreter of the law.
2. If the Lord say not to the king only, but also to other inferior judges, "Be wise, understand, and the cause that you know not, search out," then the king is not the only interpreter of the law. But the Lord saith not to the king only, but to other judges also, Be wise, understand, and the cause that you know not, search out; therefore the king is not the sole law-giver. The major is clear from Psal. 2:10, "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings, be instructed, ye judges of the earth." So are commands and rebukes for unjust judgment given to others than to kings. (Ps. 82:1–5; 58:1, 2; Isa. 1:17, 23, 25, 26; 3:14; Job 29:12–15; 31:21, 22.)
3. The king is either the sole interpreter of law, in respect he is to follow the law as his rule, and so he is a ministerial interpreter of the law, or he is an interpreter of the law according to that super-dominion of absolute power that he hath above the law. If the former be holden, then it is clear that the king is not the only interpreter, for all judges, as they are judges, have a ministerial power to expone the law by the law: but the second is the sense of royalists.
Assert. 2.—Hence our second assertion is, That the king's power of exponing the law is a mere ministerial power, and he hath no dominion of any absolute royal power to expone the law as he will, and to put such a sense and meaning of the law as he pleaseth.
1. Because Saul maketh a law, (1 Sam. 14:24,) "Cursed be the man that tasteth any food till night, that the king may be avenged on his enemies," the law, according to the letter, was bloody; but, according to the intent of the lawgiver and substance of the law, profitable, for the end was that the enemies should be pursued with all speed. But king Saul's exponing the law after a tyrannical way, against the intent of the law, which is the diamond and pearl of all laws—the safety of the innocent people, was justly resisted by the innocent people, who violently hindered innocent Jonathan to be killed. Whence it is clear, that the people and princes put on the law its true sense and meaning; for Jonathan's tasting of a little honey, though as it was against that sinful and precipitate circumstance, a rash oath, yet it was not against the substance and true intent of the law, which was the people's speedy pursuit of the enemy. Whence it is clear, that the people, including the princes, hath a ministerial power to expone the law aright, and according to its genuine intent, and that the king, as king, hath no absolute power to expone the law as he pleaseth.
2. The king's absolute pleasure can no more be the genuine sense of a just law than his absolute pleasure can be a law; because the genuine sense of the law is the law itself, as the formal essence of a thing differeth not really, but in respect of reason, from the thing itself. The Pope and Romish church cannot put on the Scripture, ex plenitudine potestatis, whatever meaning they will, no more than they can, out of absolute power, make canonic scripture. Now so it is, that the king, by his absolute power, cannot make law no law. 1. Because he is king by, or according to, law, but he is not king of law. Rex est rex secundum legem, sed non est dominus et rex legis. 2. Because, although it have a good meaning, which Ulpian saith, "Quod principi placet legis vigorem habet,"—the will of the prince is the law; yet the meaning is not that anything is a just law, because it is the prince's will, for its rule formally; for it must be good and just before the prince can will it,—and then, he finding it so, he putteth the stamp of a human law on it.
3. This is the difference between God's will and the will of the king, or any mortal creature. Things are just and good, because God willeth them,—especially things positively good, (though I conceive it hold in all things,) and God doth not will things, because they are good and just; but the creature, be he king or any never so eminent, do will things, because they are good and just, and the king's willing of a thing maketh it not good and just; for only God's will—not the creature's—can be the cause why things are good and just. If, therefore, it be so, it must undeniably hence follow, that the king's will maketh not a just law to have an unjust and bloody sense; and he cannot, as king, by any absolute super-dominion over the law, put a just sense on a bloody and unjust law.
4. The advancing of any man to the throne and royal dignity putteth not the man above the number of rational men. No rational man can create, by any act of power never so transcendent or boundless, a sense to a law contrary to the law. Nay, give me leave to doubt if Omnipotence can make a just law to have an unjust and bloody sense, aut contra, because it involveth a contradiction;—the true meaning of a law being the essential form of the law. Hence judge what brutish, swinish flatterers they are who say, "That it is the true meaning of the law which the king, the only supreme and independent expositor of the law, saith is the true sense of the law." There was once an animal—a fool of the first magnitude—who said he could demonstrate, by invincible reasons, that the king's dung was more nourishing food than bread of the flour of the finest wheat. For my part I could wish it were the demonstrator's only food for seven days, and that should be the best demonstration he could make for his proof.
5. It must follow that there can be no necessity of written laws to the subjects, against Scripture and natural reason, and the law of nations, in which all accord: that laws not promulgated and published cannot oblige as law; yea, Adam, in his innocency, was not obliged to obey a law not written in his heart by nature, except God had made known the law; as is clear, Gen. 3:11, "Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?" But if the king's absolute will may put on the law what sense he pleaseth, out of his independent and irresistible supremacy, the laws promulgated and written to the subjects can declare nothing what is to be done by the subjects as just, and what is to be avoided as unjust; because the laws must signify to the subjects what is just and what is unjust, according to their genuine sense. Now, their genuine sense, according to royalists, is not only uncertain and impossible to be known, but also contradictory; for the king obligeth us, without gainsaying, to believe that the just law hath this unjust sense. Hence this of flattering royalists is more cruel to kings than ravens, (for these eat but dead men, while they devour living men,) When there is a controversy between the king and the estates of parliament, who shall expone the law and render its native meaning? Royalists say, Not the estates of parliament, for they are subjects, not judges, to the king, and only counsellors and advisers of the king. The king, therefore, must be the only judicial and final expositor. "As for lawyers, (said Strafford,) the law is not enclosed in a lawyer's cap." But I remember this was one of the articles laid to the charge of Richard II., that he said, "The law was in his head and breast." And, indeed, it must follow, if the king, by the plenitude of absolute power, be the only supreme uncontrollable expositor of the law, that is not law which is written in the acts of parliament, but that is the law which is in the king's breast and head, which Josephus (lib. 19, Antiq. c. 2.) objected to Caius. And all justice and injustice should be finally and peremptorily resolved on the king's will and absolute pleasure.
6. The king either is to expone the law by the law itself; or by his absolute power, loosed from all law, he exponeth it; or according to the advise of his great senate. If the first be said, he is nothing more than other judges. If the second be said, he must be omnipotent, and more. If the third be said, he is not absolute, if the senate be only advisers, and he yet the only judicial expositor. The king often professeth his ignorance of the laws; and he must then both be absolute above the law, and ignorant of the law, and the sole and final judicial exponer of the law. And by this, all parliaments, and their power of making laws, and of judging, are cried down.
Obj. 1.—Prov. 16:10, "A divine sentence is in the lips of the king; his mouth trangresseth not in judgment;" therefore he only can expone the law.
Ans.—Lavater saith, (and I see no reason on the contrary,) "By a king he meaneth all magistrates." Aben Ezra and Isidorus read the words imperatively. The Tigurine version,—"They are oracles which proceed from his lips; let not therefore his mouth transgress in judgment." Vatabulus,—"When he is in his prophecies, he lieth not." Jansenius,—"Non facile errabit in judicando." Mich. Jermine,—"If he pray." Calvin,—"If he read in the book of the law, as God commandeth him," Deut. 17. But why stand we on the place? "He speaketh of good kings, (saith Cornel, à Lapide,) otherwise Jeroboam, Ahab, and Manasseh, erred in judgment." "And except (as Mercerus exponeth it) we understand him to speak of kings according to their office, not their facts and practice, we make them popes, and men who cannot give out grievous and unjust sentences on the throne,"—against both the Word and experience.
Obj. 2.—Sometimes all is cast upon one man's voice; why may not the king be this one man?
Ans.—The antecedent is false; the last voter in a senate is not the sole judge, else why should others give suffrages with him? This were to take away inferior judges, contrary to God's word, Deut. 1:17; 2 Chron. 19:6, 7; Rom. 13:1–3.
QUESTION XXVIII
WHETHER OR NO WARS RAISED BY THE SUBJECTS AND ESTATES, FOR THEIR OWN JUST DEFENCE AGAINST THE KING'S BLOODY EMISSARIES, BE LAWFUL
Arnisæus perverteth the question; he saith, "The question is, Whether or no the subjects may, according to their power, judge the king and dethrone him; that is, Whether or no it is lawful for the subjects in any case to take arms against their lawful prince, if he degenerate, and shall wickedly use his lawful power."
1. The state of the question is much perverted, for these be different questions, Whether the kingdom may dethrone a wicked and tyrannous prince, and whether the kingdom may take up arms against the man who is the king, in their own innocent defence. For the former is an act offensive, and of punishing; the latter is an act of defence.
2. The present question is not of subjects only, but of the estates, and parliamentary lords of a kingdom. I utterly deny these, as they are judges, to be subjects to the king; for the question is, Whether is the king or the representative kingdom greatest, and which of them be subject one to another? I affirm, amongst judges, as judges, not one is the commander or superior, and the other the commanded or subject. Indeed, one higher judge may correct and punish a judge, not as a judge, but as an erring man.
3. The question is not so much concerning the authoritative act of war, as concerning the power of natural defence, upon supposition, that the king be not now turned an habitual tyrant; but that upon some acts of misinformation, he come in arms against his subjects.
Arnisæus maketh two sort of kings,—"Some kings integræ majestatis, of entire power and sovereignty; some kings by pactions, or voluntary agreement between king and people." But I judge this a vain distinction; for the limited prince, so he be limited to a power only of doing just and right, by this is not a prince integraæ majestatis, of entire royal majesty, whereby he may both do good and also play the tyrant; but a power to do ill being no ways essential, yea, repugnant to the absolute majesty of the King of kings, cannot be an essential part of the majesty of a lawful king; and therefore the prince, limited by voluntary and positive paction only to rule according to law and equity, is the good, lawful, and entire prince, only if he have not power to do every thing just and good in that regard, he is not an entire and complete prince. So the man will have it lawful to resist the limited prince, not the absolute prince; by the contrary, it is more lawful to me to resist the absolute prince than the limited, inasmuch as we may with safer consciences resist the tyrant and the lion, than the just prince and lamb. Nor can I assent to Cunnerius (de officio princip. Christia. c. 5 and 17,) who holdeth, "that these voluntary pactions betwixt king and people, in which the power of the prince is diminished, cannot stand, because their power is given to them by God's word, which cannot be taken from them by any voluntary paction, lawfully;" and from the same ground, Winzetus (in velit. contr. Buchan. p. 3) "will have it unlawful to resist kings, because God hath made them irresistible." I answer,—If God, by a divine institution, make kings absolute, and above all laws, (which is a blasphemous supposition—the holy Lord can give to no man a power to sin, for God hath not himself any such power,) then the covenant betwixt the king and people cannot lawfully remove and take away what God by institution has given; but because God (Deut. 17) hath limited the first lawful king, the mould of all the rest, the people ought also to limit him by a voluntary covenant; and because the lawful power of a king to do good is not by divine institution placed in an indivisible point. It is not a sin for the people to take some power, even of doing good, from the king, that he solely, and by himself, shall not have power to pardon an involuntary homicide, without advice and the judicial suffrages of the council of the kingdom, least he, instead of this, give pardons to robbers, to abominable murderers; and in so doing, the people robbeth not the king of the power that God gave him as king, nor ought the king to contend for a sole power in himself of ministering justice to all; for God layeth not upon kings burdens impossible; and God by institution hath denied to the king all power of doing all good; because it is his will that other judges be sharers with the king in that power, (Num. 14:16; Duet. 1:14–17; 1 Pet. 2:14; Rom. 13:1–4;) and therefore the duke of Venice, to me, cometh nearest to the king moulded by God, (Deut. 17) in respect of power, de jure, of any king I know in Europe. And in point of conscience, the inferior judge discerning a murderer and bloody man to die, may in foro conscientiæ despise the king's unjust pardon, and resist the King's force by his co-active power that God hath given him, and put to death the bloody murderer; and he sinneth if he do not this; for to me it is clear, that the king cannot judge so justly and understandingly of a murderer in Scotland, as a judge to whom God hath committed the sword in Scotland. Nor hath the Lord laid that impossible burden on a king to judge so of a murder four hundred miles removed from the king, as the judge nearer to him, as is clear by Num. 14:16; 1 Sam. 7:15–17. The king should go from place to place and judge; and whereas it is impossible to him to go through three kingdoms, he should appoint faithful judges, who may not be resisted,—no, not by the king.
1. The question is, If the king command A. B. to kill his father or his pastor,—the man neither being cited nor convicted of any fault, he may lawfully be resisted.
2. Queritur.—If, in that case in which the king is captived, imprisoned, and not sui juris, and awed or overawed by bloody papists, and so is forced to command a barbarous and unjust war; and if, being distracted physically or morally through wicked counsel, he command that which no father in his sober wits would command, even against law and conscience,—that the sons should yield obedience and subjection to him in maintaining, with lives and goods, a bloody religion and bloody papists: if in that case the king may not be resisted in his person, because the power lawful and the sinful person cannot be separated. We hold, that the king using, contrary to the oath of God and his royal office, violence in killing, against law and conscience, his subjects, by bloody emissaries, may be resisted by defensive wars, at the commandment of the estates of the kingdom.
But before I produce arguments to prove the lawfulness of resistance, a little of the case of resistance. 1. Dr Ferne (part 3, sect. 5, p. 39) granteth resistance by force to the king to be lawful, when the assault is sudden, without colour of a law or reason, and inevitable. But if Nero burn Rome, he hath a colour of law and reason; yea, though all Rome, and his mother, in whose womb he lay, were one neck. A man who will I with reason go mad, hath colour of reason, and so of law, to invade and kill the innocent. 2. Arnisæus saith, (c. 2, n. 10,) "If the magistrate proceed extra-judicialiter, without order of law by violence, the laws giveth every private man power to resist, if the danger be irrecoverable; yea, though it be recoverable." (L. prohibitum, C. de jur. fisc. l. que madmodum, sect. 39, magistratus ad l. aquil. l. nec. magistratibus, 32, de injur.) Because, while the magistrate doth against his office, he is not a magistrate; for law and right, not injury, should come from the magistrate. (L. meminerint. 6, C. unde vi.) Yea, if the magistrate proceed judicially, and the loss be irrecoverable, jurists say that a private man hath the same law to resist. (Marantins. dis. 1, n. 35). And in a recoverable loss they say, every man is holden to resist, si evidenter constet de iniquitate, if the iniquity be known to all. (D. D. Jason, n. 19, des. n. 26, ad I. ut vim de just. et jur.) 3. I would think it not fit easily to resist the king's unjust exactors of custom or tribute. (1.) Because Christ paid tribute to Tiberius Cæsar, an unjust usurper, though he was free from that, by God's law, lest he should offend. (2.) Because we have a greater dominion over goods than over our lives and bodies; and it is better to yield in a matter of goods than to come to arms, for of sinless evils we may choose the least. 4. A tyrant, without a title, may be resisted by any private man. Quia licet vim vi repellere, because we may repel violence by violence; yea, he may be killed. Ut I. et vim. F. de instit. et jure, ubi plene per omnes. Vasquez, l. 1, c. 3, n. 33; Barclaius, contra Monarch. l. 4, c. 10, p. 268.
For the lawfulness of resistance in the matter of the king's unjust invasion of life and religion, we offer these arguments.
Arg. 1.—That power which is obliged to command and rule justly and religiously for the good of the subjects, and is only set over the people on these conditions, and not absolutely, cannot tie the people to subjection without resistance, when the power is abused to the destruction of laws, religion, and the subjects. But all power of the law is thus obliged, (Rom. 13:4; Deut. 17:18–20; 2 Chron. 19:6; Ps. 132:11, 12; 89:30, 31; 2 Sam. 7:12; Jer. 17:24, 25,) and hath, and may be, abused by kings, to the destruction of laws, religion, and subjects. The proposition is clear. 1. For the powers that tie us to subjection only are of God. 2. Because to resist them, is to resist the ordinance of God. 3. Because they are not a terror to good works, but to evil. 4. Because they are God's ministers for our good, but abused powers are not of God, but of men, or not ordinances of God; they are a terror to good works, not to evil; they are not God's ministers for our good.
Arg. 2.—That power which is contrary to law, and is evil and tyrannical, can tie none to subjection, but is a mere tyrannical power and unlawful; and if it tie not to subjection, it may lawfully be resisted. But the power of the king, abused to the destruction of laws, religion, and subjects, is a power contrary to law, evil, and tyrannical, and tyeth no man to subjection: wickedness by no imaginable reason can oblige any man. Obligation to suffer of wicked men falleth under no commandment of God, except in our Saviour. A passion, as such, is not formally commanded, I mean a physical passion, such as to be killed. God hath not said to me in any moral law, Be thou killed, tortured, beheaded; but only, Be thou patient, if God deliver thee to wicked men's hands, to suffer these things.
Arg. 3.—There is not a stricter obligation moral betwixt king and people than betwixt parents and children, master and servant, patron and clients, husband and wife, the lord and the vassal, between the pilot of a ship and the passengers, the physician and the sick, the doctor and the scholars, but the law granteth, (l. Minime 35, de Relig. et sumpt. funer,) if these betray their trust committed to them, they may be resisted: if the father turn distracted, and arise to kill his sons, his sons may violently apprehend him, and bind his hands, and spoil him of his weapons; for in that he is not a father. Vasquez, (Lib. 1, Illustr. quest. c. 8, n. 18,)—Si dominus subditum enormiter et atrociter oneraret, princeps superior vassallum posset ex toto eximere a sua jurisdictione, et etiam tacente subdito et nihil petente. Quid papa in suis decis. parliam. grat. decis. 62. Si quis Baro. abutentes dominio privari possunt. The servant may resist the master if he attempts unjustly to kill him, so may the wife do to the husband; if the pilot should wilfully run the ship on a rock to destroy himself and his passengers, they might violently thrust him from the helm. Every tyrant is a furious man, and is morally distracted, as Althusius saith, Polit. c. 28, n. 30, and seq.
Arg. 4.—That which is given as a blessing, and a favour, and a screen, between the people's liberty and their bondage, cannot be given of God as a bondage and slavery to the people. But the power of a king is given as a blessing and favour of God to defend the poor and needy, to preserve both tables of the law, and to keep the people in their liberties from oppressing and treading one upon another. But so it is, that if such a power be given of God to a king, by which, actu primo, he is invested of God to do acts of tyranny, and so to do them, that to resist him in the most innocent way, which is self-defence, must be a resisting of God, and rebellion against the king, his deputy; then hath God given a royal power as uncontrollable by mortal men, by any violence, as if God himself were immediately and personally resisted, when the king is resisted, and so this power shall be a power to waste and destroy irresistibly, and so in itself a plague and a curse; for it cannot be ordained both according to the intention and genuine formal effect and intrinsical operation of the power, to preserve the tables of the law, religion and liberty, subjects and laws, and also to destroy the same. But it is taught by royalists that this power is for tyranny, as well as for peaceable government; because to resist this royal power put forth in acts either ways, either in acts of tyranny or just government, is to resist the ordinance of God, as royalists say, from Rom. 13:1–3. And we know, to resist God's ordinances and God's deputy, formaliter, as his deputy, is to resist God himself, (1 Sam. 8:7; Matt. 10:40,) as if God were doing personally these acts that the king is doing; and it importeth as much as the King of kings doth these acts in and through the tyrant. Now, it is blasphemy to think or say, that when a king is drinking the blood of innocents, and wasting the church of God, that God, if he were personally present, would commit these same acts of tyranny, (God avert such blasphemy!) and that God in and through the king, as his lawful deputy and vicegerent in these acts of tyranny, is wasting the poor church of God. If it be said, in these sinful acts of tyranny, he is not God's formal vicegerent, but only in good and lawful acts of government, yet he is not to be resisted in these acts, not because the acts are just and good, but because of the dignity of his royal person. Yet this must prove that those who resist the king in these acts of tyranny, must resist no ordinance of God, but only resist him who is the Lord's deputy, though not as the Lord's deputy. What absurdity is there in that more than to disobey him, refusing active obedience to him who is the Lord's deputy, not as the Lord's deputy, but as a man commanding besides his master's warrant?
Arg. 5.—That which is inconsistent with the care and providence of God in giving a king to his church is not to be taught. Now God's end in giving a king to his church, is the feeding, safety, preservation, and the peaceable and quiet life of his church. (1 Tim. 2:2; Isa. 49:23; Psal. 78:71). But God should cross his own end in the same act of giving a king, if he should provide a king, who, by office, were to suppress robbers, murderers, and all oppressors and wasters in his holy mount, and yet should give an irresistible power to one crowned lion, a king, who may kill ten hundred thousand protestants for their religion, in an ordinary providence; and they are by an ordinary law of God to give their throats to his emissaries and bloody executioners. If any say the king will not be so cruel,—I believe it; because, actu secundo, it is not possibly in his power to be so cruel. We owe thanks to his good will that he killeth not so many, but no thanks to the nature and genuine intrinsical end of a king, who hath power from God to kill all these, and that without resistance made by any mortal man. Yea, no thanks (God avert blasphemy!) to God's ordinary providence, which (if royalists may be believed) putteth no bar upon the unlimited power of a man inclined to sin, and abuse his power to so much cruelty. Some may say, the same absurdity doth follow if the king should turn papist, and the parliament all were papists. In that case there might be so many martyrs for the truth put to death, and God should put no bar of providence upon this power, then more than now; and yet, in that case, the king and parliament should be judges given of God, actu primo, and by virtue of their office obliged to preserve the people in peace and godliness. But I answer, If God gave a lawful official power to king and parliament to work the same cruelty upon millions of martyrs, and it should be unlawful for them by arms to defend themselves, I should then think that king and parliament were both ex officio, by virtue of their office, and actu primo, judges and fathers, and also by that same office, murderers and butchers,—which were a grievous aspersion to the unspotted providence of God.
Arg. 6.—If the estates of a kingdom give the power to a king, it is their own power in the fountain; and if they give it for their own good, they have power to judge when it is used against themselves, and for their evil, and so power to limit and resist the power that they gave. Now, that they may take away this power, is clear in Athaliah's case. It is true she was a tyrant without a title, and had not the right of heaven to the crown, yet she had, in men's court, a title. For supposing all the royal seed to be killed, and the people consent, we cannot say that, for these six years or thereabout, she was no magistrate: that there were none on the throne of David at this time: that she was not to be obeyed as God's deputy. But grant that she was no magistrate; yet when Jehoash is brought forth to be crowned, it was a controversy to the states to whom the crown should belong. 1. Athaliah was in possession. 2. Jehoash himself being but seven years old, could not be judge. 3. It might be doubted if Joash was the true son of Ahaziah, and if he was not killed with the rest of the blood royal.
Two great adversaries say with us; Hugo Grotius (de jur. belli et pacis, l. 1, c. 4, n. 7,) saith he dare not condemn this, if the lesser part of the people, and every one of them indifferently, should defend themselves against a tyrant, ultimo necessitatis præsidio. The case of Scotland, when we were blocked up by sea and land with armies: the case of England, when the king, induced by prelates, first attempted to bring an army to cut off the parliament, and then gathered an army, and fortified York, and invaded Hull, to make the militia his own, sure is considerable. Barclay saith, the people hath jus se tuendi adversus immanem sævitiem, (advers. Monarch. l. 3, c. 8,) a power to defend themselves against prodigious cruelty. The case of England and Ireland, now invaded by the bloody rebels of Ireland, is also worthy of consideration. I could cite hosts more.
QUESTION XXIX
WHETHER, IN THE CASE OF DEFENSIVE WAR, THE DISTINCTION OF THE PERSON OF THE KING, AS A MAN, WHO CAN COMMIT ACTS OF HOSTILE TYRANNY AGAINST HIS SUBJECTS, AND OF THE OFFICE AND ROYAL POWER THAT HE HATH FROM GOD AND THE PEOPLE, AS A KING, CAN HAVE PLACE
Before I can proceed to other Scripture proofs for the lawfulness of resistance, this distinction, rejected by royalists, must be cleared. This is an evident and sensible distinction:—The king in concreto, the man who is king, and the ling in abstracto, the royal office of the king. The ground of this distinction we desire to be considered from Rom. 13. We affirm with Buchanan, that Paul here speaketh of the office and duty of good magistrates, and that the text speaketh nothing of an absolute king, nothing of a tyrant; and the royalists distinguish where the law distinguisheth not, against the law, (1. pret. 10, gl. Bart, de pub. in Rem.); and therefore we move the question here, Whether or no to resist the illegal and tyrannical will of the man who is king, be to resist the king and the ordinance of God; we say no. Nor do we deny the king, abusing his power in unjust acts, to remain king, and the minister of God, whose person for his royal office, and his royal office, are both to be honoured, reverenced, and obeyed. God forbid that we should do so as the sons of Belial, imputing to us the doctrine of anabaptists, and the doctrine falsely imputed to Wicliffe,—that dominion is founded upon supernatural grace, and that a magistrate being in the state of mortal sin, cannot be a lawful magistrate,—we teach no such thing. The P. Prelate showeth us his sympathy with papists, and that he buildeth the monuments and sepulchres of the slain and murdered prophets, when he, refusing to open his mouth in the gates for the righteous, professeth he will not purge the witnesses of Christ, the Waldenses, and Wicliffe, and Huss, of these notes of disloyalty, but that these acts proceeding from this root of bitterness, the abused power of a king, should be acknowledged with obedience active or passive, in these unjust acts, we deny.
Assert. 1.—It is evident from Rom. 13 that all subjection and obedience to higher powers commanded there, is subjection to the power and office of the magistrate in abstracto, or, which is all one, to the person using the power lawfully, and that no subjection is due by that text, or any word of God, to the abused and tyrannical power of the king, which I evince from the text, and from other Scriptures.
1. Because the text saith, "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers." But no powers commanding things unlawful, and killing the innocent people of God, can be ἐχυσίαι ὑπερεχύσαι higher powers, but in that lower powers. He that commandeth not what God commandeth, and punisheth and killeth where God, if personally and immediately present, would neither command nor punish, is not in these acts to be subjected unto, and obeyed as a superior power, though in habit he may remain a superior power; for all habitual, all actual superiority is a formal participation of the power of the Most High. Arnisæus well saith, (c. 4, p. 96,) "That of Aristotle must be true, It is against nature, better and worthier men should be in subjection to unworthier and more wicked men;" but when magistrates command wickedness, and kill the innocent, the non-obeyers, in so far, are worthier than the commanders (whatever they be in habit and in office) actually, or in these wicked acts are unworthier and inferior, and the non-obeyers are in that worthier, as being zealous adherents to God's command and not to man's will. I desire not to be mistaken; if we speak of habitual excellency, godly and holy men, as the witnesses of Christ in things lawful, are to obey wicked and infidel kings and emperors, but in that these wicked kings have an excellency in respect of office above them; but when they command things unlawful, and kill the innocent, they do it not by virtue of any office, and so in that they are not higher powers, but lower and weak ones. Laertius doth explain Aristotle well, who defineth a tyrant by this, "That he commandeth his subjects by violence;" and Arnisæus condemneth Laertius for this, "Because one tyrannical action doth no more constitute a tyrant, than one unjust action doth constitute an unjust man." But he may condemn, as he doth indeed, (Covarruvias pract. quest, c. 1, and Vasquez lllustr. quest. l. 1, c. 47, n. 1, 12,) for this is essential to a tyrant, to command and rule by violence. If a lawful prince do one or more acts of a tyrant, he is not a tyrant for that, yet his action in that is tyrannical, and he doth not that as a king, but in that act as a sinful man, having something of tyranny in him.
2. The powers (Rom. 13:1) that be, are ordained of God, as their author and efficient; but kings commanding unjust things, and killing the innocent, in these acts, are but men, and sinful men; and the power by which they do these acts, a sinful and an usurped power, and so far they are not powers ordained of God, according to his revealed will, which must rule us. Now the authority and official power, in abstracto, is ordained of God, as the text saith, and other Scriptures do evidence. And this politicians do clear, while they distinguish betwixt jus personæ, and jus coronæ, the power of the person, and the power of the crown and royal office. They must then be two different things.
3. He that resisteth the power, that is, the official power, and the king, as king, and commanding in the Lord, resisteth the ordinance of God, and God's lawful constitution. But he who resisteth the man, who is the king, commanding that which is against God, and killing the innocent, resisteth no ordinance of God, but an ordinance of sin and Satan; for a man commanding unjustly, and ruling tyrannically, hath, in that, no power from God.
4. They that resist the power and royal office of the king in things just and right, shall receive to themselves damnation, but they that resist, that is, refuse, for conscience, to obey the man who is the king, and choose to obey God rather than man, as all the martyrs did, shall receive to themselves salvation. And the eighty valiant men, the priests, who used bodily violence against king Uzziah's person, "and thrust him out of the house of the Lord," from offering incense to the Lord, which belonged to the priest only, received not damnation to themselves, but salvation in doing God's will, and in resisting the king's wicked will.
5. The lawful ruler, as a ruler, and in respect of his office, is not to be resisted, because he is not a terror to good works, but to evil; and no man who doth good is to be afraid of the office or the power, but to expect praise and a reward of the same. But the man who is a king may command an idolatrous and superstitious worship—send an army of cut-throats against them, because they refuse that worship, and may reward papists, prelates, and other corrupt men, and may advance them to places of state and honour because they kneel to a tree altar,—pray to the east,—adore the letters and sound of the word Jesus—teach and write Arminianism, and may imprison, deprive, confine, cut the ears, and slit the noses, and burn the faces of those who speak and preach and write the truth of God; and may send armies of cut-throats, Irish rebels, and other papists and malignant atheists, to destroy and murder the judges of the land, and innocent defenders of the reformed religion, &c.,—the man, I say, in these acts is a terror to good works,—an encouragement to evil; and those that do good are to be afraid of the king, and to expect no praise, but punishment and vexation from him; therefore, this reason in the text will prove that the man who is the king, in so far as he doth those things that are against his office, may be resisted; and that in these we are not to be subject, but only we are to be subject to his power and royal authority, in abstracto, in so far as, according to his office, he is not a terror to good works, but to evil.
6. The lawful ruler is the minister of God, or the servant of God, for good to the commonwealth; and to resist the servant in that wherein he is a servant, and using the power that he hath from his master, is to resist the Lord his master. But the man who is the king, commanding unjust things, and killing the innocent, in these acts is not the minister of God for the good of the commonwealth;—he serveth himself, and papists, and prelates, for the destruction of religion, laws, and commonwealth; therefore the man may be resisted, by this text, when the office and power cannot be resisted.
7. The ruler, as the ruler, and the nature and intrinsical end of the office is, that he bear God's sword as an avenger to execute wrath on him that doth evil,—and so cannot be resisted without sin. But the man who is the ruler, and commandeth things unlawful, and killeth the innocent, carrieth the papist's and prelate's sword to execute, not the righteous judgment of the Lord upon the ill-doer, but his own private revenge upon him that doth well; therefore, the man may be resisted, the office may not be resisted; and they must be two different things.
8. We must needs be subject to the royal office for conscience, by reason of the fifth commandment; but we must not needs be subject to the man who is king, if he command things unlawful; for Dr Ferne warranteth us to resist, if the ruler invade us suddenly, without colour of law or reason, and unavoidably; and Winzetus, Barclay, and Grotius, as before I cited, give us leave to resist a king turning a cruel tyrant; but Paul (Rom. 13) forbiddeth us to resist the power, in abstracto; therefore, it must be the man, in concreto, that we must resist.
9. Those we may not resist to whom we owe tribute, as a reward of the onerous work on which they, as ministers of God, do attend continually. But we owe not tribute to the king as a man,—for then should we be indebted tribute to all men,—but as a king, to whom the wages of tribute is due, as to a princely workman,—a king as a king;—therefore, the man and the king are different.
10. We owe fear and honour as due to be rendered to the man who is king, because he is a king, not because he is a man; for it is the highest fear and honour due to any mortal man, which is due to the king, as king.
11. The man and the inferior judge are different; and we cannot, by this text, resist the inferior judge, as a judge, but we resist the ordinance of God, as the text proveth. But cavaliers resist the inferior judges as men, and have killed divers members of both houses of parliament; but they will not say that they killed them as judges, but as rebels. If, therefore, to be a rebel, as a wicked man, and to be a judge, are differenced thus, then, to be a man, and commit some acts of tyranny, and to be the supreme judge and king, are two different things.
12. The congregation, in a letter to the nobility, (Knox, Hist. of Scotland, l. 2.) say, "There is great difference betwixt the authority, which is God's ordinance, and the persons of those who are placed in authority. The authority and God's ordinance can never do wrong, for it commandeth that vice and wicked men be punished, and virtue, with virtuous men and just, be maintained; but the corrupt person placed in this authority may offend, and most commonly do contrary to this authority. And is then the corruption of man to be followed, by reason that it is clothed with the name of authority?" And they give instance in Pharaoh and Saul, who were lawful kings and yet corrupt men. And certainly the man and the divine authority differ, as the subject and the accident,—as that which is under a law and can offend God, and that which is neither capable of law nor sin.
13. The king, as king, is a just creature, and by office a living and breathing law. His will, as he is king, is nothing but a just law; but the king, as a sinful man, is not a just creature, but one who can sin and play the tyrant; and his will, as a private sinful man, is a private will, and may be resisted. So the law saith, "The king, as king, can do no wrong," but the king, as a man, may do a wrong. While as, then, the parliaments of both kingdoms resist the king's private will, as a man, and fight against his illegal cutthroats, sent out by him to destroy his native subjects, they fight for him as a king, and obey his public legal will, which is his royal will, de jure; and while he is absent from his parliaments as a man, he is legally and in his law-power present, and so the parliaments are as legal as if he were personally present with them.
Let me answer royalists.—The P. Prelate saith it is Solomon's word, "By me kings reign;"—kings, in concreto, with their sovereignty. He saith not, by me royalty or sovereignty reigneth. And elsewhere he saith that Barclay saith, "Paul, writing to the Romans, keepeth the usual Roman diction in this,—who express by powers, in abstracto, the persons authorised by power,—and it is the Scripture's dialect: by him were created "thrones, dominions, principalities," that is, angels; to say angels, in abstracto, were created, (2 Pet. 2:10,) They "speak evil of dignities," Jude 8, "despise dominion," that is, they speak ill of Cajus, Caligula, Nero. Our Levites rail against the Lord's anointed,—the best of kings in the world. Nero, (Rom. 12:4,) in concreto, beareth not the sword in vain. Arnisæus saith it better than the Prelate, (he is a witless thief,) Rom. 13:4, "The royal power, in abstracto, doth not bear the sword, but the person; not the power, but the prince himself beareth the sword." And the Prelate, poor man, following Dr Ferne, saith, "It is absurd to pursue the king's person with a cannon bullet at Edgehill, and preserve his authority at London, or elsewhere." So saith Ferne, (sect. 10, p. 64,) "The concrete powers here are purposed as objects of our obedience, which cannot be directed but upon power in some person; for it is said, αἱ οὐσαι εξουσίαι The powers that be are of God." Now power cannot be οὐσα existent but in some person; and, saith Ferne, "Can power in the abstract have praise? Or is tribute paid to the power in the abstract? Yea, the power is the reason why we yield obedience to the person," &c.
The Prelate hath as much learning as to copy out of Ferae, Barclay, Arnisæus, and others, these words and the like, but hath not wit to add the sinews of these authors' reason; and with all this he can in his preface call it his own, and "provoke any to answer him if they dare;" whereas, while I answer this excommunicated pamphleteer, I answer these learned authors, from which he stealeth all he hath; and yet he must persuade the king he is the only man who can defend his Majesty's cause, and "the importunity (forsooth) of friends extorted this piece," as if it were a fault that this delphic oracle (giving out railings and lies for responses) should be silent. 1. Not we only, but the Holy Ghost, in terminis, hath this distinction, Acts 4:19; 5:29, "We ought to obey God rather than men." Then rulers (for of rulers sitting in judgment is that speech uttered) commanding and tyrannising over the apostles, are men contradistinguished from God; and as they command and punish unjustly, they are but men, otherwise commanding for God, they are gods, and more than men. 2. From Theophylact also, or from Chrysostom on Rom. xiii. we have this,—The apostle speaketh not (say they) περὶ τῶν καθ ἐτασον ἀρχόντων, ἀλλὰ περὶ ἀυτοῦ τοῦ πράγματος 3. Sovereignty or royalty doth not properly reign or bear the sword, or receive praise, and this accident doth not bear a sword; nor do we think (or Paul speak, Rom. 13) of the abstracted due of power and royalty, subsisting out of its subject; nor dream we that the naked accident of royal authority is to be feared and honoured as the Lord's anointed; the person or man who is the king, and beareth the crown on his head, and holdeth the sceptre in his hand, is to be obeyed. Accidents are not persons; but they speak nonsense, and are like brute beasts who deny that all the kingly honour due to the king must be due to him as a king, and because of the royal dignity that God hath given to him, and not because he is a man; for a pursuivant's son is a man; and if a pursuivant's son would usurp the throne, and take the crown on his head, and the sceptre in his hand, and command that all souls be subject to such a superior power, because he is a man, the laws of Scotland would hang a man for a less fault, we know; and the P. Prelate was wont to edify women, and converted souls to Christ, with such a distinction as objectum quod and objectum quo, in the pulpits of Edinburgh, and it hath good use here; we never took abstract royalty to be the king. The kings of Scotland of old were not second notions, and we exclude not the person of the king; yet we distinguish, with leave of the P. Prelate, betwixt the person in linea physica (we must take physica largly here) and in linea morali, obedience, fear, tribute, honour is due to the person of the king, and to the man who is king, not because of his person, or because he is a man, (the P. Prelate may know in what notion we take the name person,) but because God, by the people's election, hath exalted him to royal dignity; and for this cause ill-doers are to subject their throats and necks to the sword of the Lord's anointed's executioner or hangman, with patience, and willingly; because, in taking away the head of ill-doers, for ill-doing, he is acting the office of the Lord, by whom he reigneth; but if he take away their heads, and send out the long-tusked vultures and boars of Babylon, the Irish rebels, to execute his wrath, as he is in that act a misinformed man, and wanteth the authority of God's law and man's law, he may be resisted with arms. For, 1. If royalists say against this, then, if a king turn an habitual tyrant, and induce an hundred thousand Turks to destroy his subjects upon mere desire of revenge, they are not to resist, but to be subject, and suffer for conscience. I am sure Grotius saith, "If a king sell his subjects, he loseth all title to the crown, and so may be resisted;" and Winzetus saith,2 "A tyrant may be resisted;" and Barclay, "It is lawful for the people, in case of tyranny, to defend themselves, adversus immanent sævetiam, against extreme cruelty." And I desire the Prelate to answer how people are subject in suffering such cruelty of the higher power, because he is God's ordinance, and a power from God, except he say, as he selleth his people, and barbarously destroyeth by the cut-throat Irishmen, his whole subjects refusing to worship idols, he is a man and a sinful man, eatenus, and an inferior power inspired by wicked counsel, not a king, eatenus, not a higher power; and that in resisting him thus, the subjects resist not the ordinance of God. Also suppose king David defend his kingdom and people against Jesse, his natural father, who we suppose cometh in against his son and prince, king David, with a huge army of the Philistines to destroy him and his kingdom, if he shall kill his own native father m that war, at some Edgehill, how shall he preserve at Jerusalem that honour and love that he oweth to his father, by virtue of the fifth commandment, "Honour thy father and thy mother, &c.," let them answer this; except king David consider Jesse in one relation, in abstracto, as his father, whom he is to obey, and as he is a wicked man, and a perfidious subject, in another relation; and except king David say, he is to subject himself to his father, as a father, according to the fifth commandment, and that in the act of his father's violent invasion, he is not to subject himself to him, as he is a violent invader, and as a man. Let the royalist see how he can answer the argument, and how Levi is not to know his father and mother, as they are sinful men, (Deut. 33:9,) and yet to know and honour them as parents; and how an Israelite is not to pity the wife that lieth in his bosom, when she enticeth him "to go a whoring after strange gods," but is to kill her, (Deut. 13:6–8,) and yet the husband is to "love the wife, as Christ loved his church," Eph. 5:25. If the husband take away his wife's life in some mountain in the Holy Land, as God's law commandeth, let the royalists answer us, where is then the marital love he owes to her, and that respect due to her as she is a wife and a helper? 2. But let not the royalist infer that I am from these examples pleading for the killing of kings; for lawful resistance is one thing, and killing of kings is another,—the one defensive and lawful, the other offensive and unlawful, so long as he remaineth a king, and the Lord's anointed; but if he be a murderer of his father, who doth counsel his father to come to a place of danger where he may be killed, and where the king ought not to be; as Abner was worthy of death, who watched not carefully king Saul, but slept when David came to his bedside, and had opportunity to kill the king; they are traitors and murderers of the king, who either counselled his Majesty to come to Edgehill, where the danger was so great, or did not violently restrain him from coming thither, seeing kings' safety and lives are as much, yea, more, in the disposing of the people than in their own private will (2 Sam. 18:2, 3); for certainly the people might have violently restrained king Saul from killing himself; and the king is guilty of his own death, and sinneth against his office and subjects, who cometh out in person to any such battles where he may be killed, and the contrary party free of his blood. And here our Prelate is blind, if he see not the clear difference between the king's person and his office as king, and between his private will and his public and royal will. 3. The angels may be named thrones and dominions in abstracto, and yet created in concreto, and we may say the angel and his power are both created at once; but David was not both born the son of Jesse and a king at once; and the P. Prelate by this may prove it is not lawful to resist the devil, (for he is of the number of these created angels, Col. 1,) as he is a devil; because in resisting the devil as a devil, we must resist an angel of God and a principality. 4. To speak evil of dignities, (2 Pet. 2; Jude 8,) Piscator insinuateth, is, to speak evil of the very office of rulers, as well as of their manners; and Theodat. saith, on 2 Pet. 2, that "these railers speak evil of the place of governors and masters, as unbeseeming believers." All our interpreters, as Beza, Calvin, Luther, Bucer, Marloratus, from the place, saith it is a special reproof of anabaptists and libertines, who in that time maintained that we are all free men in Christ, and that there should not be kings, masters, nor any magistrates. However the abstract is put for the concrete, it is true, and it saith we are not to rail upon Nero; but to say Nero was a persecutor of Christians, and yet obey him commanding what is just, are very consistent. 5. "The persons are proposed (Rom. 13) to be the object of our obedience," saith Dr Ferne. This is very true: but he is ignorant of our mind in exponing the word person. We never meant that fear, honour, royalty, tribute, must be due to the abstracted accident of kingly authority, and not to the man who is king; nor is it our meaning that royalty, in abstracto, is crowned king, and is anointed, but that the person is crowned and anointed. But, again, by a person, we mean nothing less than the man Nero wasting Rome, burning, crucifying Paul, and torturing Christians; and that we owe subjection to Nero, and to his person in concreto, as to God's ordinance, God's minister, God's swordbearer, in that notion of a person, is that only that we deny. Nay, in that Nero, in concreto, to us is no power ordained of God, no minister of God, but a minister of the devil, and Satan's armour-bearer, and therefore we owe not fear, honour, subjection, or tribute to the person of Nero. But the person thus far is the object of our obedience, that fear, honour, subjection and tribute must be due to the man in concreto, to his person who is prince, but not because he is a man, or a person simply, or a sword-bearer of papists, but for his office,—for that eminent place of royal dignity that God hath conferred on his person. We know the light of the sun, the heat of fire, in abstracto, do not properly give light and heat, but the sun and fire in concreto; yet the principium quo, ratio qua, the principles of these operations in sun and fire be light and heat; and we ascribe illuminating of dark bodies, heating of cold bodies, to sun and fire in concreto, yet not to the subjects simply, but to them as affected with such accidents; so here we honour and submit to the man who is king, not because he is a man, that were treason; not because he useth his sword against the church, that were impiety; but because of his royal dignity, and because he useth it for the Lord. It is true, Arnisæus, Barclay, and Ferne, say, "That kings leave not off to be kings when they use their power and sword against the church and religion. And also it is considerable, that when the worst of emperors, bloody Nero, did reign, the apostle presseth the duty of subjection to him, as to a power appointed of God, and condemneth the resisting of Nero, as the resisting of an ordinance of God. And certainly, if the cause and reason, in point of duty moral, and of conscience before God remain in kings, to wit, that while they are enemies and persecutors, as Nero was, their royal dignity, given them of God remaineth, then subjection upon that ground is lawful, and resistance unlawful."—Ans. It is true, so long as kings remain kings, subjection is due to them because kings; but that is not the question. The question is, if subjection be due to them, when they use their power unlawfully and tyrannically. Whatever David did, though he was a king, he did it not as king; he deflowered not Bathsheba as king, and Bathsheba might with bodily resistance and violence lawfully have resisted king David, though kingly power remained in him, while he should thus attempt to commit adultery; else David might have said to Bathsheba, "Because I am the Lord's anointed, it is rebellion in thee, a subject, to oppose any bodily violence to my act of forcing of thee; it is unlawful to thee to cry for help, for if any shall offer violently to rescue thee from me, he resisteth the ordinance of God." Subjection is due to Nero as an emperor, but not any subjection is due to him in the burning of Rome, and torturing of Christians, except you say that Nero's power abused in these acts of cruelty was, 1. A power from God. 2. An ordidance of God. 3. That in these he was the minister of God for the good of the commonwealth. Because some believed Christians were free from the yoke of magistracy, and that the dignity itself was unlawful; and because (c. 12) he had set down the lawful church rulers, and in this and the following chapter, the duties of brotherly love of one toward another; so here (c. 13) he teacheth that all magistrates, suppose heathen, are to be obeyed and submitted unto in all things, so far as they are ministers of God. Arnisæus objecteth to Buchanan, "If we are by this place to subject ourselves to every power, in abstracto, then also to a power contrary to the truth, and to a power of a king exceeding the limits of a king; for such a power is a power, and we are not to distinguish where the law distinguisheth not."
Ans. 1.—The law clearly distinguisheth we are to obey parents in the Lord, and if Nero command idolatry, this is an excessive power. Are we obliged to obey, because the law distinguisheth not? 2. The text saith we are to obey every power from God that is God's ordinance, by which the man is a minister of God for good; but an unjust and excessive power is none of these three. 3. The text in words distinguisheth not obedience active in things wicked and lawful, yet we are to distinguish.
Symmons.—Is authority subjected solely in the king's law, and no whit in his person, though put upon him both by God and man? Or, is authority only the subject, and the person exercising the authority, a bare accident to that, being in it only more separably, as pride and folly are in a man. Then, if one in authority command out of his own will, and not by law,—if I neither actively nor passively obey, I do not so much as resist abused authority; and then must the prince, by his disorderly will, have quite lost his authority and become like another man; and yet his authority has not fled from him.
Ans. 1.—If we speak accurately, neither the man solely, nor his power only, is resisted; but the man clothed with lawful habitual power, is resisted in such and such acts flowing from an abused power. 2. It is an ignorant speech to ask, Is authority subjected solely in the king's law, and no whit in his person, for the authority hath all its power by law, not from the man's person? The authority hath nothing from the person but a naked inheritance in the person, as in the subject; and the person is to be honoured for the authority, not the authority for the person. 3. Authority is not so separable from the person, as that for every act of lawless will the king loseth his royal authority and ceaseth to be king. No, but every act of a king, in so far, can claim subjection of the inferior, as the act of commanding and ruling hath law for it; and in so far as it is lawless, the person in that act repugnant to law loseth all due claim of actual subjection in that act, and in that act power actual is lost, as is clear, Acts 4:19; 5:29 The apostles say to rulers, It is safer to obey God than man. What! Were not these rulers lawful magistrates armed with power from God? I answer, habitually they were rulers and more than men, and to obey them in things lawful is to obey God. But, actually, in these unlawful commandments, especially being commanded to speak no more in the name of Jesus, the apostles do acknowledge them to be no more but men; and so their actual authority is as separable from the person, as pride and folly from men.
Symmons.—The distinction holdeth good of inferior magistrates, that they may be considered as magistrates and as men, because their authority is only sacred, and addeth veneration to their persons, and is separable from the person. The man may live when his authority is extinguished, but it holdeth not in kings. King Saul's person is venerable as his authority, and his authority cometh by inheritance, and dieth, and liveth, inseparably with his person; and authority and person add honour, each one to another.
Ans. 1.—If this be true, Manasseh, a king, did not shed innocent blood and use sorcery. He did not these great wickednesses as a man, but as a king. Solomon played the apostate as a king, not as a man, if so, the man must make the king more infallible than the Pope; for the pope, as a man, can err;—as a pope he cannot err, say papists. But prophets, in their persons, were anointed of God as Saul and David were, then must we say, Nathan and Samuel erred not as men, because their persons were sacred and anointed, and sure they erred not as prophets, therefore they erred not all. A king, as a king, is an holy ordinance of God, and so cannot do injustice, therefore they must do acts of justice as men. 1. The inferior judge is a power from God. 2. To resist him is to resist an ordinance of God. 3. He is not a terror to good works, but to evil. 4. He is a minister of God for good. 5. He is God's sword-bearer. His official power to rule may by as good right come by birth as the crown; and the king's person is sacred only for his office, and is anointed only for his office. For then the Chaldeans dishonoured not inferior judges (Lam. 5:12,) when they "hanged the prince, and honoured not the faces of elders." It is in question, if the king's actual authority be not as separable from him, as the actual authority of the judge.
Symmons (p. 24).—The king himself may use this distinction. As a Christian he may forgive any that offendeth against his person, but as a judge, he must punish, in regard of his office.
Ans.—Well, then, flatterers will grant the distinction, when the king doth good and pardoneth the blood of protestants, shed by bloody rebels; but when the king doth acts of injustice, he is neither man nor king, but some independent absolute god.
Symmons (p. 27).—God's word tyeth me to every one of his personal commandments, as well as his legal commandments. Nor do I obey the king's law, because it is established, or because of its known penalty, nor yet the king himself, because he ruleth according to law, but I obey the king's law, because I obey the king; and I obey the king, because I obey God; I obey the king and his law, because I obey God and his law. Better obey the command for a reverent regard to the prince than for a penalty.
Ans.—It is hard to answer a sick man. It is blasphemy to seek this distinction of person and office in the King of kings, because by person in a mortal king, we understand a man that can sin. 1. I am not obliged to obey his personal commandment, except I were his domestic; nor his unlawful personal commandments, because they are sinful. 2. It is false that you obey the king's law, because you obey the king; for then you say but this, I obey the king because I obey the king. The truth is, obedience is not formally terminated on the person of the king. Obedience is relative to a precept, and it is men-service to obey a law, not because it is good and just, but upon this formal motive, because it is the will of a mortal man to command it. And reverence, love, fear, being acts of the affection, are not terminated on a law, but properly on the person of the judge; and they are modifications, or laudable qualifications of acts of obedience, not motives, not the formal reason why I obey, but the manner how I obey. And the apostle maketh expressly (Rom. 13:4) fear of punishment a motive of obedience, while he saith, "He beareth not the sword in vain," therefore be subject to the king; and this hindereth not personal resistance to unjust commandments.
Symmons (p. 27–29).—"You say, 'To obey the prince's personal commandment against his legal will, is to obey himself against himself.' So say I, 'To obey his legal will against his personal will, is to obey himself against himself, for I take his person to be himself.' "
Ans.—1. To obey the king's personal will, when it is sinful, (as we now suppose,) against his legal will, is a sin, and a disobedience to God and the king also, seeing the law is the king's will as king; but to obey his legal will, against his sinful personal will, (as it must be sinful if contrary to a just law,) is obedience to the king as king, and so obedience to God. 2. You take the king's person to be himself, but you take quid pro quo; for his person here you must not take physically, for his suppost of soul and body, but morally: it is the king, as a sinful man doing his worst will against the law, which is his just and best will, and the rule of the subjects. And the king's personal will is so far just, and to regulate the subjects, in so far as it agreeth with his legal will or his law, and this will can sin, and therefore may be crossed without breach of the fifth commandment; but his legal will cannot be crossed without disobedience both to God and the king.
Symmons (p. 28).—The king's personal will doth not always presuppose passion; and if it be attended with passion, yet we must bear it for conscience sake.—Ans. We are to obey the king's personal will, when the thing commanded is not sin; but his subjects, as subjects, have little to do with his personal will in that notion. It concerneth his domestic servant, and is the king's will as he is the master of servants, not as he is king in relation to subjects; but we speak of the king's personal will as repugnant to law, and contrary to the king's will as king, and so contrary to the fifth commandment; and this is attended often not only with passion, but also with prejudice; and we owe no subjection to prejudice and passions, or to actions commanded by these disordered powers, because they are not from God, nor his ordinances, but from men and the flesh, and we owe no subjection to the flesh.
Dr Ferne (sect. 9, p. 58).—The distinction of personal and legal will hath place in evil actions, but not in resistance, where we cannot sever the person and the dignity, or authority, because we cannot resist the power but we must resist the person who hath the power. Saul had lawfully the command of arms, but that power he useth unjustly, against innocent David. I ask, When these emperors took away lives and goods at their pleasure, was that a power ordained of God? No, but an illegal will, a tyranny—but they might not resist; nay, but they cannot resist; for that power and sovereignty employed to compass these illegal commandments was ordained and settled in them. When Pilate condemned our Saviour, it was an illegal will, yet our Saviour acknowledgeth in it, that Pilate's power was given him from above.
Ans.—1. Here we have the distinction denied by royalists, granted by Dr Ferne. But if, when the king commands us to do wickedness, we may resist that personal will, and when he commandeth us to suffer unjustly we cannot resist his will but we must resist also his royal person; what! is it not still the king, and his person sacred, as his power is sacred, when he commandeth the subjects to do unjustly, as when he commandeth them to suffer unjustly? It were fearful to say, when kings command any one act of idolatry, they are no longer kings. If, for conscience, I am to suffer unjustly, when Nero commandeth unjust punishment, because Nero commanding so, remaineth God's minister, why, but when Nero commandeth me to worship an heathen god, I am upon the same ground to obey that unjust will in doing ill; for Nero, in commanding idolatry, remaineth the Lord's minister, his person is sacred in the one commandment of doing ill, as in inflicting ill of punishment. And do I not resist his person in the one as in the other? His power and his person are as inseparably conjoined by God in the one as in the other. 2. In bodily thrusting out of Uzziah from the temple, these fourscore valiant men did resist the king's person by bodily violence, as well as his power. 3. If the power of killing the martyrs in Nero was no power ordained of God, then the resisting of Nero, in his taking away the lives of the martyrs, was but the resisting of tyranny; and certainly, if that power in Nero was τεταγμένη a power ordained of God, and not to be resisted, as the place (Rom. 13) is alleged by royalists, then it must be a lawful power, and no tyranny; and if it cannot be resisted, because it was a power ordained and settled in him, it is either settled by God, and so not tyranny, (except God be the author of tyranny,) or then settled by the devil, and so may well be resisted. But the text speaketh of no power but of that which is of God. 4. We are not to be subject to all powers in concreto, by the text; for we are not to be subject to powers lawful, yet commanding active obedience to things unlawful. Now subjection includeth active obedience of honour, love, fear, paying tribute, and therefore of need force, some powers must be excepted. 5. Pilate's power is merely a power by divine permission, not a power ordained of God, as are the powers spoken of, Rom. 13. Gregorius (mor. l. 3, c. 11) expressly saith,—"This was Satan's power given to Pilate against Christ. Manibus Satanæ pro nostra redemptione se tradidit." Lyra, "A principibus Romanorum et ulterius permissum a deo, qui est potestas, superior" Calvin, Beza and Diodatus, saith the same; and that he cannot mean of legal power from God's regulating will is evident, 1. Because Christ is answering Pilate, (John 19:10,) "Knowest though not that I have power to crucify thee?" This was an untruth. Pilate had a command to worship him, and believe in him; and whereas Ferne saith, (sect. 9, p. 59,) "Pilate had power to judge any accused before him;" it is true; but he being obliged to believe in Christ, he was obliged to believe in Christ's innocency, and so neither to judge nor receive accusation against him; and the power he saith he had to crucify, was a law-power in Pilate's meaning, but not in very deed any law power; because a law-power is from God's regulating will in the fifth commandment, but no creature hath a lawful or a law-power to crucify Christ. 2. A law-power is for good, (Rom. 13:4,) a power to crucify Christ is for ill. 3. A law-power is a terror to ill works, and a praise to good: Pilate's power to crucify Christ was the contrary. 4. A law-power is to execute wrath on ill-doing, a power to crucify Christ is no such. 5. A law-power conciliateth honour, fear, and veneration, to the person of the judge, a power to crucify Christ conciliateth no such thing, but a disgrace to Pilate. 6. The genuine acts of a lawful power are lawful acts; for such as is the fountain-power, such are the acts flowing therefrom. Good acts flow not from bad powers, neither hath God given a power to sin, except by way of permission.
QUESTION XXX
WHETHER OR NO PASSIVE OBEDIENCE BE A MEAN TO WHICH WE ARE SUBJECTED IN CONSCIENCE, BY VIRTUE OF A DIVINE COMMANDMENT; AND WHAT A MEAN RESISTANCE IS. THAT FLYING IS RESISTANCE
Much is built, to commend patient suffering of ill, and to condemn all resistance of superiors, by royalists, on the place, 1 Pet. 2:18, where we are commanded, being servants, to suffer buffets not only for ill-doing of good masters, but also undeservedly; and when we do well, we are to suffer of those masters that are evil; and so much more are we patiently without resistance to suffer of kings. But it is clear, the place is nothing against resistance, as in these assertions I clear:—
Assert. 1.—Patient suffering of wicked men, and violent resisting are not incompatible, but they may well stand together; so this consequence is the basis of the argument, and it is just nothing: to wit, servants are to suffer unjustly wounds and buffeting of their wicked masters, and they are to bear it patiently; therefore, servants are in conscience obliged to non-resistance. Now, Scripture maketh this clear,—1. The church of God is to bear with all patience the indignation of the Lord, because she hath sinned, and to suffer of wicked enemies which were to be trodden as mire in the streets (Micah 7:9–12); but withal, they were not obliged to non-resistance and not to fight against these enemies, yea, they were obliged to fight against them also. If these were Babylon, Judah might have resisted and fought if God had not given a special commandment of a positive law, that they should not fight; if these were the Assyrians and other enemies, or rather both, the people were to resist by fighting, and yet to endure patiently the indignation of the Lord. David did bear most patiently the wrong that his own son Absalom, and Ahitophel, and the people inflicted on him, in pursuing him to take his life and the kingdom from him, as is clear by his gracious expressions (2 Sam. 15:25, 26; 16:10–12; Psal. 3:1–3); yea, he prayeth for a blessing on the people that conspired against him (Psal. 3:8); yet did he lawfully resist Absalom and the conspirators, and sent out Joab and a huge army in open battle against them, (2 Sam. 18:1–4, &c.,) and fought against them. And were not the people of God patient to endure the violence done to them in the wilderness by Og, king of Bashan; Sihon, king of Heshbon; by the Amorites, Moabites, &c.? I think God's law tyeth all men, especially his people, to as patient a suffering in wars. (Deut. 8:16) God then trying and humbling his people, as the servant is to endure patiently, unjustly inflicted buffets (1 Pet. 2:18); and yet God's people at God's commaud did resist these kings and people, and did fight and kill them, and possess their land, as the history is clear. See the like Josh. 11:18, 19. 2. One act of grace and virtue is not contrary to another; resistance is in the children of God an innocent act of self-preservation, as is patient suffering, and therefore they may well subsist in one. And so saith Amasa by the Spirit of the Lord, 1 Chron. 12:18, "Peace, peace be unto thee, and peace to thy helpers, for God helpeth thee." Now, in that, David and all his helpers were registers of king Saul. 3. The scope of the place (1 Pet. 2) is not to forbid all violent resisting, as is clear he speaketh nothing of violent resisting either one way or other, but only he forbiddeth revengeful resisting of repaying one wrong with another, from the example of Christ, who, "when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not;" therefore, the argument is a falacy, ab so quod doeitur κατὰ τὶ, ad illud quod dieitur απλῶς. Though therefore the master should attempt to kill an innocent servant, and invade him with a weapon of death suddenly, without all reason or cause, or unavoidably, Dr Ferne, (p. 3, sect. 2, p. 10,) in that case, doth free a subject from guiltiness if he violently resist his prince; therefore, the servant who should violently resist his master in the aforesaid case should, and might patiently suffer and violently resist, notwithstanding anything that royalists can conclude on the contrary. 4. No prince hath a masterly or lordly dominion over his subjects, but only a free, ingenuous, paternal and tutorly oversight for the good of the people. (Rom. 13:4) The master, especially in the apostle Peter's time, had a dominion over servants as over their proper goods.
Assert. 2.—Neither suffering formally as suffering, and so neither can non-resisting passive fall under any moral law of God, except in two conditions: 1. In the point of Christ's passive obedience, he being the eternal God as well as man, and so lord of his own blood and life, by virtue of a special commandment imposed on him by his Father, was commanded to lay down his life, yea, and to be an agent as well as a patient in dying (Job. 10:18); yea, and actively he was to contribute something for his own death, and offer himself willingly to death (Matt. 28:20); and, knowing the hour that he was to depart out of this world unto the Father, (John 13:1,) would not only not fly—which is to royalists lawful, to us a special point of resistance (John 14:31; 18:4–7)—but upbraided Peter as the agent of Satan, who would dissuade him to die, (Matt. 16:22, 23,) and would fight for him. And he doth not fetch any argument against Peter's drawing of his sword from the unlawfulness of self-defence and innocent resistance, (which he should have done if royalists plead with any colour of reason from his example, against the lawfulness of resistance and self-defence,) but from the absolute power of God. 2. From God's positive will, who commanded him to die. (Matt. 26:53, 54.) If therefore royalists prove anything against the lawfulness of resisting kings, when they offer (most unjustly) violence to the life of God's servants, from this one merely extraordinary and rare example of Christ, the like whereof was never in the world, they may, from the same example, prove it unlawful to fly, for Christ would not fly. (Psal. 40:6, 7; Heb. 10:6–9; John 14:31; 18:4–7.) 1. They may prove that people sought by a tyrant to be crucified for the cause of God, are to reveal and discover themselves to an army of men who come to seek them. (John 13:1, 2; 18:4–7). 2. That martyrs are of purpose to go to the place where they know they shall be apprehended and put to death, for this Christ did, and are willingly to offer themselves to the enemy's army, for so did Christ (John 14:3; Mark 14:41, 42; Matt. 26:46, 47); and so by his example, all the parliament, all the innocents of the city of London, and assembly of divines, are obliged to lay down arms and to go to their own death to prince Rupert, and the bloody Irish rebels. 3. By this example it is unlawful to resist the cut-throats of a king, for Cæsar in his own royal person—the high priest in person, came not out against Christ; yea, it is not lawful for the parliament to resist a Judas, who hath fled as a traitorous apostate from the truth and the temple of Christ. 4. It is not lawful for innocents to defend themselves by any violence against the invasion of superiors, in Dr Ferne's three cases in which he alloweth resistance: (1.) When the invasion is sudden. (2.) Unavoidable. (3.) Without all colour of law and reason. In the two last cases, royalists defend the lawfulness of self-defence. 5. If the example be pressed,—Christ did not this and that, he resisted not with violence, to save his own life, therefore, we are to abstain from resistance and such and such means of self-preservation; then, because Christ appealed not from inferior judges to the emperor Cæsar; who, no doubt, would have shown him more favour than the scribes and pharisees did, and because Christ conveyed not a humble supplication to his sovereign and father Cæsar,—then because he proffered not a humble petition to prince Pilate for his life, he being an innocent man, and his cause just,—because he neither procured an orator to plead his own just cause, nor did he so plead for himself, and give in word and writ, all lawful and possible defences for his own safety, but answered many things with silence, to the admiration of the judge, (Mark 15:3–5,) and was thrice pronounced by the judge to be innocent (Luke 22:23); because, I say, Christ did not all these for his own life, therefore it is unlawful for Scotland and England to appeal to the king, to supplicate, to give in apologies, &c. I think royalists dare not say so. But if they say he would not resist, and yet might have done all these lawfully, because these be lawful means, and resistance with the sword unlawful,—because "He that taketh the sword, shall perish by the sword,"—let me answer then, 1. They leave the argument from Christ's example, who was thus far subject to higher powers, that he would not resist, and plead from the unlawfulness of resistance; this is petitio principii. 2. He that taketh the sword without God's warrant, which Peter had not, but the contrary, he was himself a Satan to Christ, who would but counsel him not to die; but there is no shadow of a word to prove that violent resisting is unlawful, when the king and his Irish cut-throats pursue us unjustly; only Christ saith, when God may deliver extraordinarily by his angels, except it be his absolute will that his Son should drink the cup of death, then to take the sword, when God hath declared his will on the contrary, is unlawful; and that is all; though do not question but Christ's asking for swords, and his arresting all his enemies to the ground (John 18:6) backward, is a justifying of self-defence. But hitherto it is clear, by Christ's example, that he only was commanded to suffer. Now the second case in which suffering falleth under a commandment, is indirectly and comparatively, when it cometh to the election of the witness of Jesus, that it is referred to them, either to deny the truth of Christ and his name, or then to suffer death. The choice is apparently evident; and this choice that persecutors refer us unto, is to us a commandment of God, that we must choose suffering for Christ, and refuse sinning against Christ. But the supposition must stand, that this alternative is unavoidable, that is not in our power to decline either suffering for Christ, or denying of Christ before men; otherwise no man is to expect the reward of a witness of Jesus, who having a lawful possible means of eschewing suffering, doth yet cast himself into suffering needlessly. But I prove that suffering by men of this world falleth not formally and directly under any divine positive law; for the law of nature,—whatever Arminians in their declaration, or this Arminian excommunicate think with them, (for they teach that God gave a commandment to Adam, to abstain from such and such fruit, with pain and trouble to sinless nature,)—doth not command suffering, or anything contrary to nature, as nature is sinless: I prove it thus:—
1. Whatever falleth under a positive commandment of God, I may say here, under any commandment of God, is not a thing under the free will and power of others, from whom we are not descended necessarily by natural generation, but that men of the world kill me, even these from whom I am not descended by natural generation (which I speak to exclude Adam, who killed all his posterity) is not in my free will, either as if they had my common nature in that act, or as if I were accessory by counsel, consent, or approbation to that act, for this is under the free will and power of others, not under my own free will; therefore, that I suffer by others is not under my free will, and cannot 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. 2:13,) 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. 10:28, 32; Rev. 2:13; Mat. 10:37; 16:24; 19:29,) 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. 2:18, 19) doth not recommend suffering from the example of Christ, but patient suffering; and so the word ὑποτασσόμενου, not simply enjoined, but ἐν παντὶ τῶ φόβω in all fear, (ver. 18,) and the words ὑποφέρειν and ὑπομενεῖν to suffer with patience, as 2 Tim. 3:11; 1 Cor. 10:13, and ὑπομνεῖν is to suffer patiently, 1 Cor. 13:7, love πάντα ὑπομένει suffereth all things; Heb. 12:17, if you suffer correction; 1 Tim. 5:5, she continueth patiently in prayers; Heb. 12:2, Christ endureth the cross patiently (Rom. 15:6; 8:25; Luke 8:15; 21:29). 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 obedience and subjection to higher powers, kings, fathers, masters, by force of the fifth commandment, and of the place, Rom. 13:1, 2 Which, according to its substance, wicked men suffer, and the damned in hell also against their will.
4. Passive obedience to wicked emperors can but be enjoined (Rom. 13) 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 patiently, 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 us; and therefore neither Rom. 13, nor 1 Pet. 2, 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. 13, 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. 13; 1 Pet. 2; Tit. 3) 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. l. 20, c. 2, and de bell. Judaic. l. 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. 1:11,) for its rule and cause, and hath not God's will or approbation 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. 32), 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. 13, and 1 Pet. 2 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. 2, 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 may kill his son,—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 self-defence: 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 I 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 self-defence 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 self-defence 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. 9.) 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. 6, 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 resistance. 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,—a man 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 self-defence must be national on just causes.
Let here the reader judge Barclay, (l. 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."
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 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. 13, 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. 13:1, 2; 1 Sam. 8:9–11, 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 idolaters, 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. 13 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.
All royalists grant it lawful, and ground it 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. 10:23, and by Matt. 23:34. Christ fled from the fury of the Jews till his hour was come; Elias, Uriah, (Jer. 26:20,) and Joseph and Mary fled; the martyrs did hide themselves in caves and dens of the earth (Heb. 11:37, 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 ordamed 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, self-convicted, fleeth from the just power of a judge lawfully citing him, he resisteth the just power ordained of God (Rom. 3); 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.
QUESTION XXXI
WHETHER OR NO SELF-DEFENCE AGAINST ANY UNJUST VIOLENCE OFFERED TO THE LIFE, BE WARRANTED BY GOLD'S LAW, AND THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS
Self-preservation in all creatures in which is nature, is in the creatures suitable to their nature. The bull defendeth itself by its horns, the eagle by her claws and bill, it will not follow that a lamb will defend itself against a wolf any other way than by flying. So men, and Christian men, do naturally defend themselves; but the manner of self-defence in a rational creature is rational, and not always merely natural; therefore, a politic community, being a combination of many natures, as neither grace, far less can policy, destroy nature, then must these many natures be allowed of God to use a natural self-defence. If the king bring in an army of foreigners, then a politic community must defend itself in a rational way. Why? Self-defence is natural to man, and natural to a lamb, but not the same way. A lamb or a dove naturally defend themselves against beasts of another kind only by flight, not by re-action and re-offending; but it followeth not that a man defendeth himself from his enemy only by flight. If a robber invade me, to take away my life and my purse, I may defend myself by re-action; for reason and grace both may determine the way of self-preservation. Hence royalists say, a private man against his prince hath no way to defend himself but by flight; therefore, a community hath no other way to defend themselves but by flight.
1. The antecedent is false. Dr Ferne alloweth to a private man supplications, and denying of subsidies and tribute to the prince, when he employeth tribute to the destruction of the commonwealth; which, by the way, is a clear resistance, and an active resistance made against the king (Rom. 13:6, 7) and against a commandment of God, except royalists grant tyrannous powers may be resisted. 2. The consequence is naught, for a private man may defend himself against unjust violence, but not any way he pleaseth; the first way is by supplications and apologies,—he may not presently use violence to the king's servants before he supplicate, nor may he use re-offending, if flight may save. David used all the three in order. He made his defence by words, by the mediation of Jonathan; when that prevailed not, he took himself to flight, as the next; but because he knew flight was not safe every way, and nature taught him self-preservation, and reason and light of grace taught him the means, and the religious order of these means for self-preservation, therefore he addeth a third, "He took Goliath's sword, and gathered six hundred armed men," and after that made use of an host. Now a sword and armour are not horsing and shipping for flight, but contrary to flight; so re-offending is policy's last refuge. A godly magistrate taketh not away the life of a subject if other means can compass the end of the law, and so he is compelled and necessitated to take away the life; so the private man, in his natural self-defence, is not to use re-action, or violent re-offending, in his self-defence against any man, far less against the servants of a king, but in the exigence of the last and most inexorable necessity. And it is true that M. Symmons saith, (sect. 11, p. 35,) "Self-defence is not to be used where it cannot be without sin." It is certain, necessity is but a hungry plea for sin, (Luke 14:18,) but it is also true, re-offending comparatively, that I kill rather than I be killed, in the sinless court of nature's spotless and harmless necessity, is lawful and necessary, except I be guilty of self-murder, in the culpable omission of self-defence. Now a private man may fly, and and that is his second necessity, and violent re-offending is the third mean of self-preservation; but, with leave, violent re-offending is necessary to a private man, when his second mean, to wit, flight, is not possible, and cannot attain the end, as in the case of David: if flight do not prevail, Goliath's sword and an host of armed men are lawful. So, to a church and a community of protestants, men, women, aged, sucking children, sick, and diseased, who are pressed either to be killed or forsake religion and Jesus Christ, flight is not the second mean, nor a mean at all, because not possible, and therefore not a natural mean of preservation; for the aged, the sick, the sucking infants, and sound religion in the posterity cannot flee; flight here is physically, and by nature's necessity, impossible, and therefore no lawful mean. What is to nature physically impossible is no lawful mean. If Christ have a promise that the ends of the earth (Psal. 2:8) and the isles shall be his possession, (Isa. 49:1,) I see not how natural defence can put us to flee, even ail protestants and their seed, and the weak and sick, whom we are obliged to defend as ourselves, both by the law of nature and grace. I read that seven wicked nations and idolatrous were cast out of their land to give place to the church of God to dwell there, but show me a warrant in nature's law and in God's word that three kingdoms of protestants, their seed, aged, sick, suking children, should flee out of England, Scotland, Ireland, and leave religion and the land to a king and to papists, prelates, and bloody Irish, and atheists; and therefore to a church and community having God's right and man's law to the land, violent re-offending is their second mean (next to supplications and declarations, &c.) and flight is not required of them as of a private man; yea flight is not necessarily required of a private man, but where it is a possible mean of self-preservation; violent and unjust invasion of a private man, which is unavoidable, may be obviated with violent re-offending. Now the unjust invasion made on Scotland in 1640, for refusing the service-book, or rather the idolatry of the mass, therein intended, was unavoidable; it was impossible for the protestants, their old and sick, their women and sucking children to flee over sea, or to have shipping betwixt the king's bringing an army on them at Dunse Law, and the prelates' charging of the ministers to receive the mass book. Althusius saith well, (Polit. c. 38, n. 78,) Though private men may flee, yet the estates, if they flee, they do not do their duty, to commit a country, religion and all, to a lion. Let not any object, We may not devise a way to fulfil the prophecy, Psal. 2:8, 9; Isa. 49:1; it is true, if the way be our own sinful way; nor let any object, a colony went to New England and fled the persecution. Answer, True, but if fleeing be the only mean after supplication, there was no more reason that one colony should go to New England than it is necessary, and by a divine law obligatory, that the whole protestants in the three kingdoms, according to royalists' doctrine, are to leave their native country and religion to one man, and to popish idolators and atheists, willing to worship idols with them, and whither then shall the gospel be, which we are obliged to defend with our lives?
There is tutela vitæ proxima, et remota, a mere and immediate defence of our life, and a remote or mediate defence; when there is no actual invasion made by a man seeking our life, we are not to use violent re-offending. David might have killed Saul when he was sleeping, and when he cut off the lap of his garment, but it was unlawful for him to kill the Lord's anointed, because he is the Lord's anointed, as it is unlawful to kill a man, because he is the image of God, (Gen. 9:6,) except in case of necessity. The magistrate in case of necessity may kill the malefactor, though his maleficus do not put him in that case, that he hath not now the image of God; now prudence and light of grace determineth, when we are to use violent re-offending for self-preservation, it is not left to our pleasure. In a remote posture of self-defence, we are not to use violent re-offending: David having Saul in his hand was in a remote posture of defence, the unjust invasion then was not actual, not unavoidable, not a necessary mean in human prudence for self-preservation, for king Saul was then in a habitual, not in an actual pursuit of the whole princes, elders, and judges of Israel, or of a whole community and church; Saul did but seek the life of one man, David, and that not for religion, or a national pretended offence, and therefore he could not in conscience put hands on the Lord's anointed; but if Saul had actually invaded David for his life, David might, in that case, make use of Goliath's sword, (for he took not that weapon with him as a cypher to boast Saul—it is no less unlawful to threaten a king than to put hands on him,) and rather kill or be killed by Saul's emissaries; because then he should have been in an immediate and nearest posture of actual self-defence. Now the case is far otherwise between the king and the two parliaments of England and Scotland, for the king is not sleeping in his emissaries, for he hath armies in two kingdoms, and now in three kingdoms, by sea and land, night and day, in actual pursuit, not of one David, but of the estates, and a Christian community in England and Scotland, and that for religions, laws, and liberties; for the question is now between papist and protestant, between arbitrary or tyrannical government, and law government, and therefore by both the laws of the politic societies of both kingdoms, and by the law of God and nature, we are to use violent re-offending for self-preservation, and put to this necessity, when armies are in actual pursuit of all the protestant churches of the three kingdoms, to actual killing, rather than we be killed, and suffer laws and religion to be undone.
But, saith the royalist, David's argument, "God forbid that I stretch out my hand against the Lord's anointed, my master the king," concludeth universally, that the king in his most tyrannous acts, still remaining the Lord's anointed, cannot be resisted.
Ans.—1. David speaketh of stretching out his hand against the person of king Saul: no man in the three kingdoms did so much as attempt to do violence to the king's person. But this argument is inconsequent, for a king invading, in his own royal person, the innocent subject, suddenly, without colour of law or reason, and unavoidably, may be personally resisted, and that with opposing a violence bodily, yet in that invasion he remaineth the Lord's anointed. 2. By this argument the life of a murderer cannot be taken away by a judge, for he remaineth one indued with God's image, and keepeth still the nature of a man under all the murders that he doth, but it followeth nowise, that because God hath endowed his person with a sort of royalty, of a divine image, that his life cannot be taken; and certainly, if to be a man endued with God's image, (Gen. 6:9, 10,) and to be an ill-doer worthy of evil punishment, are different, to be a king and an ill-doer may be distinguished.
1. The grounds of self-defence are these:—A woman or a young man may violently oppose a king, if he force the one to adultery and incest, and the other to sodomy, though court flatterers should say, the king, in regard of his absoluteness, is lord of life and death; yet no man ever said that the king is lord of chastity, faith, and oath that the wife hath made to her husband.
2. Particular nature yields to the good of universal nature, for which cause heavy bodies ascend, airy and light bodies descend. If, then, a wild bull or a goring ox, may not be let loose in a great market-confluence of people, and if any man turn so distracted as he smite himself with stones and kill all that pass by him, or come at him, in that case the man is to be bound, and his hands fettered, and all whom he invadeth may resist him, were they his own sons, and may save their own lives with weapons, much more a king turning a Nero. King Saul, vexed with an evil spirit from the Lord, may be resisted; and far more if a king endued with use of reason, shall put violent hands on all his subjects, kill his son and heir; yea, and violently invaded, by nature's law, may defend themselves, and the violent restraining of such a one is but the hurting of one man, who cannot be virtually the commonwealth, but his destroying of the community of men sent out in wars, as his bloody emissaries, to the dissolution of the commonwealth.
3. The cutting off of a contagious membor, that by a gangrene, would corrupt the whole body, is well warranted by nature, because the safety of the whole is to be preferred to the safety of a part. Nor is it much that royalists say, The king being the head, destroy him, and the whole body of the commonwealth is dissolved; as cut off a man's head, and the life of the whole man is taken away. Because, 1. God cutteth off the spirits of tyrannous kings, and yet the commonwealth is not dissolved, no more than when a leopard or a wild boar, running through children, is killed, can be the destruction of all the children in the land. 2. A king indefinitely is referred to the commonwealth as an adequate head to a monarchical kingdom; and remove all kings and the politic body, as monarchical, in its frame, is not monarchical, but it leaveth not off to be a politic body, seeing it hath other judges; but the natural body without the head cannot live. 3. This or that tyrannous king, being a transient mortal thing, cannot be referred to the immortal commonwealth, as it is adequate correlate. They say, "the king never dieth," yet this king can die; an immortal politic body, such as the commonwealth, must have an immortal head, and that is a king as a king, not this or that man, possibly a tyrant, who is for the time (and eternal things abstract from time) only a king.
4. The reason of Fortunius Garcias, a skilful lawyer in Spain, is considerable, (Comment. in I. ut vim vi ff. de justit. et jure,) God hath implanted in every creature natural inclinations and motions to preserve itself, and we are to love ourselves for God, and have a love to preserve ourselves rather than our neighbour; and nature's law teacheth every man to love God best of all, and next ourselves more than our neighbour; for the law saith, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Then saith Malderius, (com. in 12, q. 26, tom. 2, c. 10, concl. 2,) "The love of ourselves is the measure of the love of our neighbour." But the rule and the measure is more perfect, simple, and more principal than the thing that is measured. It is true I am to love the salvation of the church, it cometh nearer to God's glory, more than my own salvation, as the wishes of Moses and Paul do prove; and I am to love the salvation of my brother more than my own temporal life; but I am to love my own temporal life more than the life of any other, and therefore, I am rather to kill than to be killed, the exigence of necessity so requiring. Nature without sin owneth this as a truth, in the case of loss of life, Proximus sum egomet mihi, (Ephes. 5:28, 29,) "He that loveth his wife, loveth himself; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth it, and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church." As then nature tyeth the dam to defend the young birds, and the lion her whelps, and the husband the wife, and that by a comparative re-offending, rather than the wife or children should be killed; yea, he that his wanting to his brother, (if a robber unjustly invade his brother,) and helpeth him not, is a murderer of his brother, so far God's spiritual law requiring both conservation of it in our person, and preservation in others. The forced damsel was commanded to cry for help, and not the magistrate only, but the nearest private man or woman was to come, by an obligation of a divine law of the seventh commandment, to rescue the damsel with violence, even as a man is to save his enemy's ox or his ass out of a pit. And if a private man may inflict bodily punishment of two degrees, to preserve the life and chastity of his neighbour, far rather than suffer his life and chastity to be taken away, then he may inflict violence of four degrees, even to killing, for his life, and much more for his own life. So when a robber, with deadly weapons, invadeth an innocent traveller to kill him for his goods, upon the supposition that if the robber be not killed, the innocent shall be killed. Now the question is, which of the two, by God's moral law and revealed will, in point of conscience, ought to be killed by his fellow? For we speak not now of God's eternal decree of permitting evil, according to the which murderers may crucify the innocent Lord of glory. By no moral law of God should the unjust robber kill the innocent traveller; therefore, in this exigence of providence, the traveller should rather kill the robber. If any say, by God's moral law not one should kill his fellow, and it is a sin against the moral law in either to kill the other, I answer,—If a third shall come in when the robber and the innocent are invading each other for his life, all acknowledge by the sixth commandment the third may cut off the robber's arm to save the innocent; but by what law of God he may cut off his arm, he may take his life also to save the other; for it is murder to wound unjustly, and to dismember a man by private authority, as it is to take away his life; if, therefore, the third may take away the robber's member, then also his life, so he do it without malice or appetite of revenge, and if he may do it out of this principle, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;" because a man is obliged more to love his own flesh than his neighbour's, Ephes. 5:28,) and so more to defend himself than to defend his neighbour,—then may he oppose violence to the robber. As two men drowning in a water, the one is not obliged by God's law to expose himself to drowning to save his neighbour; but by the contrary, he is obliged rather to save himself, though it were with the loss of his neighbour's lite. As in war, if soldiers in a strait passage be pursued on their life, nature teacheth them to flee; if one fall, his fellow in that exigence is not only not obliged to lift him up, but he and the rest flying, though they trample on him and kill him, they are not guilty of murder, seeing they hated him not before, (Deut. 19:4, 6;) so Chemnit. (loc. com. de vindic. q. 3) alloweth private defence. 1. When the violence is sudden. 2. And the violence manifestly inevitable. 3. When the magistrate is absent and cannot help. 4. When moderation is kept as lawyers require. 1. That it be done incontinent; if it be done after the injury, it is revenge, not defence. 2. Not of desire of revenge. 3. With proportion of armour. If the violent invader invade not with deadly weapons, you must not invade him with deadly weapons; and certainly the law (Exod. 22.) of a man's defending his house is clear. 1. If he come in the night, it is presumed he is a robber. 2. If he be taken with a weapon breaking the house, he cometh to kill, a man may defend himself, wife, and children, 3. But he is but to wound him, and if he die of the wound, the defender is free; so the defender is not to intend his death, but to save himself.
5. It were a mighty defect in providence to man, if dogs by nature may defend themselves against wolves, bulls against lions, doves against hawks, if man, in the absence of the lawful magistrate, should not defend himself against unjust violence; but one man might raise armies of papists, sick for blood, to destroy innocent men. They object, "When the king is present in his person, and his invaders, he is not absent, and so though you may rather kill a private man than suffer yourself to be killed, yet, because prudence determineth the means of self-defence, you are to expose your life to hazard for justice of your king, and therefore not to do violence to the life of your king; nor can the body, in any self-defence, fight against the head, that must be the destruction of the whole."—Ans. 1. Though the king be present as an unjust invader in wars against his innocent subjects, he is absent as a king, and a father and defender, and present as an unjust conqueror, and therefore the innocent may defend themselves when the king neither can, nor will defend them. "Nature maketh a man, (saith the law, Gener. c. de decur. l. 10, l. si alius sect. Bellissime ubique Gloss. in vers ex magn. not. per. ilium text. ff. quod vi aut clam. l. ait prætor. sect. si debitorem meum. ff. de hisque in fraud credito.,) even a private man, his own judge, magistrate, and defender, quando copiam judicis, qui sibi jus reddat, non habet, when he hath no judge to give him justice and law." The subjects are to give their lives for the king, as the king, because the safety of the king, as king, is the safety of the commonwealth. But the king, as offering unjust violence to his innocent subjects, is not king. Zoannet. (part 3, defens. n. 44,)—Transgrediens notorie officium suum judex, agit velut privatus aliquis, non ut magistratus (ff. de injur est bonus in simili in. l. qui fundum. sect. si. tutor ff. pro emptore). 3. If the politic body fight against this head in particular, not as head, but as an oppressor of the people, there is no fear of dissolution; if the body rise against all magistracy, as magistracy and laws, dissolution of all must follow. Parliaments and inferior judges are heads (Num. 1:16; 10:4; Deut 1:15; Josh. 22:21; Mic. 3:1, 9, 11; 1 Kings 8:1; 1 Chron. 5:25; 2 Chron. 5:2,) no less than the king; and it is unlawful to offer violence to them, though I shall rather think a private man is to suffer the king to kill him rather than he kill the king, because he is to prefer the life of a private man to the life of a public man.
6. By the law of nature a ruler is appointed to defend the innocent. Now, by nature, an infant in the womb defendeth itself first, before the parents can defend it, then when parents and magistrates are not, (and violent invading magistrates are not in that magistrates,) nature hath commended every man to self-defence.
7. The law of nature excepteth no violence, whether inflicted by a magistrate or any other. Unjust violence from a ruler is double injustice. 1. He doth unjustly as a man. 2. As a member of the commonwealth. 3. He committeth a special kind of sin of injustice against his office, but it is absurd to say we may lawfully defend ourselves from smaller injuries, by the law of nature, and not from the greater. "If the Pope, saith Fer. Vasquez (illust. quest. l. 1, c. 24, n. 24, 25) command to take away benefices from the just owner, those who are to. execute his commandment are not to obey, but to write back that that mandate came not from his holiness, but from the avarice of his officers; but if the Pope still continue and press the same unjust mandate, the same should be written again to him: and though there be none above the Pope, yet there is natural self-defence patent for all." "Defensio vitæ necessaria est, et a jure naturali profluit" (L. ut vim. ff. de just et jure 16,) "Nam quod quisque ob tutelam corporis sui fecerit, jure fecisse videatur," (C. jus naturale, 1 distinc. l. 1, ff. de vi et vi armata, l. injuriarum, ff. de injuria: C. significasti. 2, de hom. l. scientiam, sect. qui non aliter ff. ad leg. Aquil; C. si vero 1, de sent excom. et l. sed etsi ff. ad leg. Aquil.) "Etiamsi sequatur homicidium." Vasquez. (l. 1, C. 17, n. 5.)—"Etiam occidere licet ob defensionem rerum. Vim vi repellere omnia jura permittunt in C. significasti." Garcias Fortunius (comment. in l. 3)—"Defendere se est juris naturæ et gentium. A jure civili fuit additum moderamen inculpatæ tutelæ." Novel (defens. n. 101.)—"Occidens prinsipem vel alium tyrannidem exercentem, a pæna homicidii excusatur." Grotius (de jure belli et paeis, l. 2, c. 1, n. 3.)—"Si corpus impetatur vi presente, cum periculo vitæ non aliter vitabili, tunc bellum est licitum etiam cum interfectione periculum inferentis, ratio, natura quemque sibi commendat." Barclaius (advers. Monar. l. 3, c. 8.)—"Est jus cuilibet se tenendi adversus immanem sevitiam."
But what ground (saith the royalist) is there to take arms against the king? Jealousies and suspicions are not enough.
Ans.—1. The king sent first an army to Scotland, and blocked us up by sea, before we took arms. 2. Papists were armed in England. They have professed themselves in their religion of Trent to be so much the holier, that they root out protestants. 3. The king declared we had broken loyalty to him since the last parliament. 4. He declared both kingdoms rebels. 5. Attempted in his emissaries to destroy the parliament; 6. And to bring in a foreign enemy. And the law saith, "An imminent danger, which is a sufficient warrant to take up arms, is not strokes, but either the terror of arming or threatening." Glossator (in d. l. 1, C.)—"Unde vi. ait non esse verbera expectanda, sed vel terrorem armorum sufficere, vel minas, et hoc esse imminens periculum." L. sed et si quemcunque in princ. ff. ad leg. Aquil I. 3, quod qui armati ff. de vi et vi armata is qui aggressorem C. ad legem Corneli.
In most heinous sins, conatus, the endeavour and aim, etiamsi effectus non sequatur, puniri debet, is punishable. Bartol in l. "Si quis non dicam rapere."
The king hath aimed at the destruction of his subjects, through the power of wicked counsellors, and we are to consider not the intention of the workers, but the nature and intention of the work. Papists are in arms,—their religion, the conspiracy of Trent, their conscience, (if they have any,) their malice against the covenant of Scotland, which abjureth their religion to the full, their ceremonies, their prelates,—lead and necessitate them to root out the name of protestant religion, yea, and to stab a king who is a protestant. Nor is our king, remaining a protestant, and adhering to his oath made at the coronation in both kingdoms, lord of his own person, master of himself, nor able, as king, to be a king over protestant subjects, if the papists, now in arms under his standard, shall prevail.
The king hath been compelled to go against his own oath, and the laws which he did swear to maintain; the Pope sendeth to his popish armies both dispensations, bulls, mandates, and encouragements; the king hath made a cessation with the bloody Irish, and hath put arms in the hands of papists. Now, he being under the oath of God, tyed to maintain the protestant religion, he hath a metaphysically subtle, piercing faith of miracles, who believeth armed papists and prelates shall defend the religion of protestants; and those who have abjured prelates as the lawful sons of the Pope, that ο αντιχριστος and as the law saith, Quilibet in dubio præsumitur bonus. L. merito præsumi. L. non omnes, sect. a Barbaris de re milit. Charity believeth not ill; so charity is not a fool to believe all things. So saith the law, Semel malus, semper præsumitur malus, in eodem genere. C. semel malus de jure gentium in 6. Once wicked, is always wicked in that kind. Marius Salamonius, I. C. in L. ut vim atque injuriam ff. de just et jure. We are not to wait on strokes, the terror of armour, omnium consensu, by consent of all is sufficient (n. 3). "If I see (saith he) the enemy take an arrow out of the quiver, before he bend the bow, it is lawful to prevent him with a blow—cunctatio est periculosa." The king's coming with armed men into the House of Commons to demand the five members, is very symbolical, and war was printed on that fact, "he that runneth may read." His coming to Hull with an army, saith not he had no errand there, but to ask what it was in the clock. Novellus, that learned Venetian lawyer, in a treatise for defence, maketh continuatam rixam, a continued upbraiding, a sufficient ground of violent defence. He citeth Dr Comniter. in L. ut vim. ff. de just et jure. Yea, he saith, drunkenness, (defens. n. 44,) error, (n. 46,) madness, (n. 49, 50,) ignorance, (n, 51, 52,) impudence, (n. 54,) necessity, (n. 56,) laciviousness, (n. 58,) continual reproaches, (n. 59,) the fervour of anger, (n. 64,) threatening, (n. 66,) fear of imminent danger, (n. 67,) and just grief, do excuse a man from homicide, and that in these be ought to be more mildly punished, quia obnubilatum et mancum est consilium, reason in these being lame and clogged. (Ambros. 1. 1. offic.) Qui non repellit injuriam a socio, cum potest, tam est in vitio, quam ille qui facit. And as nature, so the law saith, "When the losses are such as can never be repaired, as death, mutilation, loss of chastity, quoniam facta infecta fieri nequeunt, things of that kind once done, can never be undone, we are to prevent the enemy" (l. Zonat. tract, defens. par. 3, l. in bello sect, factæ de capit. notat. Gloss, in l. si quis provocatione). If the king send an Irish rebel to cast me over a bridge, and drown me in a water, I am to do nothing, while the king's emissary first cast me over, and then in the next room I am to defend myself; but nature and the law of self-defence warranteth me (if I know certainly his aim,) to horse him first over the bridge, and then consult how to defend myself at my own leisure.
Royalists object that David, in his defence, never invaded and persecuted Saul; yea, when he came upon Saul and his men sleeping, he would not kill any; but the Scottish and parliament's forces not only defend, but invade, offend, kill, and plunder; and this is clearly an offensive, not a defensive war.
Ans. 1.—There is no defensive war different in specie and nature from an offensive war; if we speak physically, they differ only in the event and intention of the heart; and it is most clear that the affection and intention doth make one and the same action of taking away the life, either homicide, or no homicide. 1. If a man, out of hatred, deliberately take away his brother's life, he is a murderer eatenus, but if that same man had taken away that same brother's life, by the flying off of an axe-head off the staff, while he was hewing timber, he neither hating him before, nor intending to hurt his brother, he is no murderer, by God's express law, (Deut. 4:42; 19:4; Joshua 20:5.) 2. The cause between the king and the two parliaments, and between Saul and David, are so different in this, as it is much for us. Royalists say, David might, if he had seen offending to conduce for self-preservation, have invaded Saul's men, and, say they, the case was extraordinary, and bindeth not us to self-defence; and thus they must say—for offensive weapons, such as Goliath's sword, and an host of armed men, cannot by any rational man be assumed (and David had the wisdom of God) but to offend, if providence should so dispose; and so what was lawful to David, is lawful to us in self-defence; he might offend lawfully, and so may we.
2. If Saul and the Philistines, aiming (as under an oath) to set up dagon in the land of Israel, should invade David, and the princes and elders of Israel who made him king; and if David, with an host of armed men, he and the princes of Israel, should come in that case upon Saul and the Philistines sleeping, if in that case David might not lawfully have cut off the Philistines, and as he defended in that case God's church and true religion, if he might not then have lawfully killed, I say, the Philistines, I remit to the conscience of the reader. Now to us, papists and prelates under the king's banner, are Philistines, introducing the idolatry of bread-worship and popery, as hateful to God as dagon-worship.
3. Saul intended no arbitrary government, nor to make Israel a conquered people, nor yet to cut off all that professed the true worship of God; nor came Saul against these princes, elders and people, who made him king, only David's head would have made Saul lay down arms; but prelates, and papists, and malignants, under the king, intend to make the king's sole will a law, to destroy the court of parliament, which putteth laws in execution against their idolatry; and their aim is, that protestants be a conquered people; and their attempt hath been hitherto to blow up king and parliament, to cut off all protestants; and they are in arms, in divers parts of the kingdom, against the princes of the land, who are no less judges and deputies of the Lord than the king himself; and would kill, and do kill, plunder, and spoil us, if we kill not them. And the case is every way now between armies and armies, as between a single man unjustly invaded for his life, and an unjust invader. Neither in a natural action, such as is self-defence, is that of policy to be urged,—none can be judge in his own cause, when oppression is manifest: one may be both agent and patient, as the fire and water conflicting; there is no need of a judge, a community casts not off nature; when the judge is wanting, nature is judge, actor, accused, and all.
Lastly, no man is lord of the members of his own body, (m. I. liber homo ff. ad leg. Aqui.) nor lord of his own life, but is to be accountable to God for it.
QUESTION XXXII
WHETHER OR NOT THE LAWFULNESS OF DEFENSIVE WARS HATH ITS WARRANT IN GOD'S WORD, FROM THE EXAMPLE OF DAVID, ELISHA, THE EIGHTY PRIESTS WHO RESISTED UZZIAH, &c.
David defended himself against king Saul, 1. By taking Goliath's sword with him. 2. By being captain to six hundred men; yea, it is more than clear, (1 Chron. 12:22–34,) that there came to David a host like the host of God, to help against Saul, exceeding four thousand. Now, that this host came warrantably to help him against Saul, I prove, 1. Because it is said, "Now these are they that came to David to Ziklag, while he kept himself close, because of Saul the son of Kish; and they were amongst the mighty men, helpers of the war;" and then so many mighty captains are reckoned out. "There came of the children of Benjamin and Judah to the hold of David." And there fell some of Manasseh to David,—"As he went to Ziklag there fell to him of Manasseh, Kenah and Jozahad, Jediel and Michael, and Jozabad and Elihu, and Zilthai, captains of the thousands that were of Manasseh." "And they helped David against the band of the rovers." "At that time, day by day, there came to David, until it was a great host, like the host of God." Now the same expression that is in the first verse, where it is said they came to help David against Saul, is repeated in ver. 16, 19–23. 2. That they warrantably came, is evident; because, (1.) The Spirit of God commendeth them for their valour and skill in war, (ver. 2 &c.), which the Spirit of God doth not in unlawful wars. (2.) Because Amassai, (ver. 18), the Spirit or the Lord coming on him, saith, "Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse; peace, peace unto thee, and peace to thy helpers, for thy God helpeth thee." The Spirit of God inspireth no man to pray peace to those who are in an unlawful war. 3. That they came to David's side only to be sufferers, and to flee with David, and not to pursue and offend, is ridiculous. 1. It is said, (ver. 1,) "They came to David to Ziklag, while he kept himself close, because of Saul the son of Kish. And they were amongst the mighty men, helpers of the war." It is a scorn to say, that their might, and their helping in war, consisted in being mere patients with David, and such as fled from Saul, for they had been on Saul's side before; and to come with armour to flee, is a mocking of the word of God. 2. It is clear, the scope of the Spirit of God is to show how God helped his innocent servant David against his persecuting prince and master, king Saul, in moving so many mighty men of war to come in such multitudes, all in arms, to help him in war. Now to what end would the Lord commend them as fit for war, "men of might, fit to handle shield and buckler, whose feces are as the faces of lions, as swift as the roes on the mountains," (ver. 8,) and commend them as helpers of David, if it were unlawful for David, and all those mighty men, to carry arms to pursue Saul and his followers, and to do nothing with their armour but flee? Judge if the Spirit of God, in reason, could say, "All these men came armed with bows," (ver. 2,) and could "handle both the right hand and the left in flinging stones, and shooting of arrows," and that (ver. 22) all these "came to David, being mighty men of valour, and they came as captains over hundreds, and thousands, and they put to flight all them of the valleys, both toward the east and toward the west," (ver. 13, 15,) and that "David received them, and made them captains of the band," if they did not come in a posture of war, and for hostile invasion, if need were? For if they came only to suffer and to flee, not to pursue, bowmen, captains, and captains of bands made by David, and David's helpers in the war, came not to help David by flying, that was a hurt to David, not a help. It is true, Mr Symmons saith, (1 Sam. 22:2,) "Those that came out to David strengthened him, but he strengthened not them; and David might easily have revenged himself on the Ziphites, who did good will to betray him to the hands of Saul, if his conscience had served him.
Ans. 1.—This would infer that these armed men came to help David against his conscience, and that David was a patient in the business. The contrary is in the text, (1 Sam. 26:2,) "David became a captain over them;" and (1 Chron. 12:17, 18,) "If ye come peaceably to help me, my heart shall be knit to you. Then David received them, and made them captains of the band." 2. David might have revenged himself upon the Ziphites, true; but that conscience hindered him cannot be proved. To pursue an enemy is an act of a council of war; and he saw it would create more enemies, not help his cause. 3. To David to kill Saul sleeping, and the people who, out of a mis-informed conscience came out, many of them to help their lawful prince against a traitor (as was supposed) seeking to kill their king, and to usurp the throne, had not been wisdom nor justice; because to kill the enemy in a just self-defence, must be, when the enemy actually doth invade, and the life of the defendant cannot be otherwise saved. A sleeping enemy is not in the act of unjust pursuit of the innocent; but if an army of papists, Philistines, were in the fields sleeping, pursuing not one single David only for a supposed personal wrong to the king, but lying in the fields and camp against the whole kingdom and religion, and labouring to introduce arbitrary government, popery, idolatry, and to destroy laws, and liberties, and parliaments, then David were obliged to kill these murderers in their sleep.
If any say, The case is all one in a natural self-defence, whatever be the cause, and whoever be the enemy, because the self-defender is not to offend, except the unjust invader be in actual pursuit,—now armies in their sleep are not in actual pursuit.
Ans. 1.—When one man with a multitude invadeth one man, that one man may Pursue, as he seeth most conducible for self-defence. Now the law saith, "Threatenings and terror of armour maketh imminent danger," and the case of pursuit in self-defence lawful; if therefore an army of Irish rebels and Spaniards were sleeping in their camp, and our king in a deep sleep in the midst of them, and these rebels actually in the camp besieging the parliament, and the city of London, most unjustly to take away parliament, laws, and liberties of religion, it should follow that General Essex ought not to kill the king's majesty in his sleep, for he is the Lord's anointed; but will it follow that General Essex may not kill the Irish rebels sleeping about the king; and that he may not rescue the king's person out of the hands of the papists and rebels, ensnaring the king, and leading him on to popery, and to employ his authority to defend popery, and trample upon protestant parliaments and laws? Certainly from this example this cannot be concluded. For armies in actual pursuit of a whole parliament, kingdom, laws, and religion, (though sleeping in the camp,) because in actual pursuit, may be invaded, and killed, though sleeping. And David useth no argument, from conscience, why he might not kill Saul's army, (I conceive he had not arms to do that,) and should have created more enemies to himself, and hazard his own life, and the life of all his men, if he had of purpose killed so many sleeping men; yea, the inexpedience of that, for a private wrong to kill God's misled people, should have made all Israel enemies to David. But David useth an argument, from conscience only, to prove it was not lawful for him to stretch forth his hand against the king; and for my part, so long as he remaineth king, and is not dethroned by those who made him king at Hebron, to put hands on his person, I judge utterly unlawful. One man sleeping cannot be in actual pursuit of another man; so that the self-defender may lawfully kill him in his sleep; but the case is far otherwise in lawful wars; the Israelites might lawfully kill the Philistines encamping about Jerusalem to destroy it, and religion, and the church of God, though they were all sleeping; even though we suppose king Saul had brought them in by his authority, and though he were sleeping in the midst of the uncircumcised armies; and it is evident, that an host of armed enemies, though sleeping, by the law of self-defence, may be killed, lest they awake and kill us; whereas one single man, and that a king, cannot be killed. 2. I think, certainly, David had done unwisely, and hazarded his own life and all his men's, if he, and Abimelech, and Abishai, should have killed an host of their enemies sleeping: that had been a work as impossible to three, as hazardous to all his men.
Dr Ferne, as Arnisæus did before him, saith, "The example of David was extraordinary, because he was anointed and designed by God as successor to Saul, and so he must use an extraordinary way of guarding himself." Arnisæus (c. 2, n. 15) citeth Alberic. Gentilis, that David was now exempted from amongst the number of subjects.
Ans.—1. There were not two kings in Israel now, both David and Saul. 1. David acknowledgeth his subjection in naming Saul the Lord's anointed, and his master, lord and king; and, therefore, David was yet a subject. 2. If David would have proved his title to the crown by extraordinary ways, he who killed Goliath extraordinarily might have killed Saul by a miracle; but David goeth a most ordinary way to work for self-defence, and his coming to the kingdom was through persecution, want, eating shew-bread in case of necessity, defending himself with Goliath's sword. 3. How was anything extraordinary and above a law, seeing David might have killed his enemy Saul, and, according to God's law, he spared him? and he argueth from a moral duty, He is the Lord's anointed, therefore I will not kill him. Was this extraordinary above a law? then, according to God's law, he might have killed him. Royalists cannot say so. What ground to say one of David's acts in his deportment towards Saul was extraordinary, and not all? Was it extraordinary that David fled? No; or that David consulted the oracle of God what to do when Saul was coming against him? 4. In an ordinary fact something may be extraordinary,—as the dead sleep from the Lord upon Saul and his men, (1 Sam. 26) and yet the fact, according to its substance, ordinary. 5. Nor is this extraordinary,—that a distressed man, being an excellent warrior, as David was, may use the help of six hundred men, who, by the law of charity, are to help to deliver the innocent from death; yea, all Israel were obliged to defend him who killed Goliath. 6. Royalists make David's act of not putting hands on the Lord's anointed an ordinary moral reason against resistance, but his putting on of armour they will have extraordinary; and this is, I confess, a short way to an adversary to cull out something that is for his cause and make it ordinary, and something that is against his cause must be extraordinary. 7. These men, by the law of nature, were obliged to join in arms with David; therefore, the non-helping of an oppressed man must be God's ordinary law,—a blasphemous tenet. 8. If David, by an extraordinary spirit, killed not king Saul, then the Jesuits' way of killing must be God's ordinary law.
2. David certainly intended to keep Keilah against king Saul, for the Lord would not have answered David in an unlawful fact; for that were all one as if God should teach David how to play the traitor to his king; for if God had answered, They will not deliver thee up, but they shall save thee from the hand of Saul,—as David believed he might say this, as well as its contradicent, then David behoved to keep the city; for certainly David's question pre-supposeth he was to keep the city.
The example of Elisha the prophet is considerable, (2 Kings 6:32,) "But Elisha sat in his house, and the elders with him; and the king sent a man before him; but, ere the messengers came to him, he said to the elders, See now, the son of a murderer hath sent to take away mine head." 1. Here is unjust violence offered by king Joram to an innocent man. Elisha keepeth the house violently against the king's messenger, as we did keep castles against king Charles' unlawful messengers. "Look (saith he) when the messenger cometh,—shut the door." 2. There is violence also commanded, and resistance to be made, "Hold him fast at the door." In the Hebrew it is, כדלּת סגדוּ הדלּת ולחצתמ אתוּ Arias Montan.: Claudite ostium, et oppremetis eumin ostio, "Violently press him at the door." And so the Chaldee paraphrase, Nesinatis eum introire, Jerome. The LXX. Interpreters, ἐκθλίψατε αὐτὸν ἐν τῆ θύρα illidite eum in ostio, "Press him betwixt the door and the wall." It is a word of bodily violence, according to Vatablus; yea, Theodoret will have king Joram himself holden at the door. And, 3. It is no answer that Dr Ferne and other royalists give, that Elisha made no personal resistance to the king himself, but only to the king's cutthroat, sent to take away his head; yea, they say, it is lawful to resist the king's cutthroats. But the text is clear, that the violent resistance is made to the king himself also, for he addeth, "Is not the sound of his master's feet behind him?" And by this answer, it is lawful to keep towns with iron gates and bars, and violently to oppose the king's cut-throats coming to take away the heads of the parliaments of both kingdoms, and of protestants in the three kingdoms.
Some royalists are so impudent as to say that there was no violence here, and that Elisha was an extraordinary man, and that it is not lawful for us to call a king the son of a murderer, as the prophet Elisha did; but Ferne, (sect. 2, p. 9,) forgetting himself, saith from hence, "It is lawful to resist the prince himself, thus far, as to ward his blows, and hold his hands." But let Ferne answer, if the violent binding of the prince's hand, that he shall not be able to kill, be a greater violence done to his royal person than David's cutting off the skirt of Saul's garment; for certainly the royal body of a prince is of more worth than his clothes. Now it was a sin, I judge, that smote David's conscience, that he being a subject, and not in the act of natural self-defence, did cut the garment of the Lord's anointed. Let Ferne see, then, how he will save his own principles; for certainly he yieldeth the cause for me. I judge that the person of the king, or any judge who is the Lord's deputy, as is the king, is sacred; and that remaining in that honourable case, no subject can, without guiltiness before God, put hands on his person, the case of natural self-defence being excepted; for, because the royal dignity doth not advance a king above the common condition of men, and the throne maketh him not leave off to be a man, and a man that can do wrong; and therefore as one that doth manifest violence to the life of a man, though his subject, he may be resisted with bodily resistance, in the case of unjust and violent invasion. It is a vain thing to say, "Who shall be judge between the king and his subjects? The subject cannot judge the king, because none can be judge in his own cause, and an inferior or equal cannot judge a superior or equal." But I answer, 1. This is the king's own cause also, and he doth unjust violence as a man, and not as a king, and so he cannot be judge more than the subject. 2. Every one that doth unjust violence, as he is such, is inferior to the innocent, and so ought to be judged by some. 3. There is no need of the formality of a judge in things evident to nature's eye, such as are manifestly unjust violences. Nature, in acts natural of self-defence, is judge, party, accuser, witness, and all; for it is supposed the judge is absent when the judge doth wrong. And for the plea of Elista's extraordinary spirit, it is nothing extraordinary to the prophet to call the king the son of a murderer, when he complaineth to the elders for justice of his oppression, no more than it is for a plaintiff to libel a true crime against a wicked person, and if Elisha's resistance came from an extraordinary spirit, then it is not natural for an oppressed man to close the door upon a murderer, then the taking away of the innocent prophet's head must be extraordinary, for this was but an ordinary and most natural remedy against this oppression; and though to name the king the son of a murderer be extraordinary, (and I should grant it without any hurt to this cause,) it followeth nowise that the self-defence was extraordinary. 4. (2 Chron. 26:17.) Four score of priests, with Azariah, are commended as valiant men. LXX. ὑιοι δυναμεως Heb. בני־היל Arius Montan. Filii virtutis, Men of courage and valour, for that they resisted Uzziah the king, who would take on him to burn incense to the Lord, against the law. Mr Symmons, (p. 34, sect. 10,) They withstood him not with swords and weapons, but only by speaking, and one but spake. I answer, 1. It was a bodily resistance; for beside that, Jerome turneth it, Viri fortissimi, most violent men. And it is a speech in the Scriptures taken for men valorous for war; as 1 Sam. 16:18; 2 Sam. 17:10; 1 Chron. 5:18; and so doth the phrase גכור הולּ Potent in valour; and the phrase, אוּש-הול 2 Sam 24:9; 11:16; 1 Sam. 31:2; and therefore all the eighty, not only by words, but violently, expelled the king out of the temple. 2. ויעמדוּ עלּ־עזוּהוּ Ar. Mont. Et steterunt contra Huzzi-Jahu; the LXX say, καὶ επεστενσαν they resisted the king. So Dan. 11:17, The armies of the south shall not stand, Dan. 8:25, it is a word of violence. 3. The text saith, (ver. 20,) and they thrust him out. ויכהילוחוּ Arias Mont. Et fecerunt eum festinare; Hieron. Festinato expulerunt eum. The LXX. say, The priest κατέσπασεν αὑτὸν ἐκεῖθεν; so Vatablus, They cast him out. 4. It is said, (ver. 21,) "He was cut off from the house of the Lord." Dr Ferne saith, (sect. 4, p. 50,) "They are valiant men who dare withstand a king in an evil way, by a home reproof, and by withdrawing the holy things from him, especially since, by the law, the leper was to be put out of the congregation."
Ans. 1.—He contradicteth the text. It was not a resistance by words, for the text saith, "They withstood him, and they thrust him out violently." 2. He yieldeth the cause, for to withdraw the holy things of God by corporeal violence, and violently to pull the censer out of his hand, that he should not provoke God's wrath by offering incense to the Lord, is resistance; and the like violence may, by this example, be used when the king useth the sword and the militia to bring in an enemy to destroy the kingdom. It is no less injustice against the second table, that the king useth the sword to destroy the innocent than to usurp the censer against the first table. But Dr Ferne yieldeth, that the censer may be pulled out of his hand, lest he provoke God to wrath; therefore, by the same very reason, a fortiore, the sword, the castles, the sea-ports, the militia, may be violently pulled out of his hand; for if there was an express law that the leper should be put out of the congregation, and therefore the king also should be subject to his church-censor, then he subjecteth the king to a punishment to be inflicted by the subjects upon the king. 1. Therefore the king is obnoxious to the co-active power of the law. 2. Therefore subjects may judge him and punish him. 3. Therefore he is to be subject to all church-censors no less than the people. 4. There is an express law that the leper should be put out of the congregation. What then? Flattering court divines say, "The king is above all these laws;" for there is an express law of God as express as that ceremonial law on touching lepers, and a more binding law, that the murderer should die the death. Will royalists put no exception upon a ceremonial law of expelling the leper, and yet put an exception upon a divine moral law, concerning the punishing of murderers given before the law on Mount Sinai. (Gen. 6:9) They so declare that they accept the persons of men. 5. If a leper king could not actually sit upon the throne, but must be cut off from the house of the Lord, because of an express law of God, these being inconsistent, that a king remaining amongst God's people, ruling and reigning, should keep company with the church of God, and yet be a leper, who was to be cut off, by a divine law, from the church. Now, I persuade myself, that far less can he actually reign in the full use of the power of the sword, if he use the sword to cut off thousands of innocent people; because, murdering the innocent and the fatherless, and royal governing in righteousness and godliness, are more inconsistent by God's law, being morally opposite, than remaining a governor of the people, and the disease of leprosy, are incompatible. 6. I think not much that Barclay saith, (cont. Monar. l. 5, c. 11,) "Uzziah remained king, after he was removed from the congregation for leprosy." 1. Because that toucheth the question of dethroning kings, this is an argument brought for violent resisting of kings, and that the people did resume all power from Uzziah, and put it in the "hand of Jotham his son, who was over the king's house, judging the people of the land" (ver 21). And by this same reason the parliaments of both kingdoms may resume the power once given to the king, when he hath proved more unfit to govern morally than Uzziah was ceremonially, that he ought not to judge the people of the land in this case. 2. If the priests did execute a ceremonial law upon king Uzziah, far more may the three estates of Scotland, and the two houses of parliament of England, execute the moral law of God on their king.
If the people may covenant by oath to rescue the innocent and unjustly-condemned from the sentence of death, notoriously known to be tyrannous and cruel, then may the people resist the king in his unlawful practices; but this the people did in the matter of Jonathan. Mr Symmons (p. 32) and Dr Ferne (sect. 9, 49) say, "That with no violence, but by prayers and tears, the people saved Jonathan; as Peter was rescued out of prison by the prayers of the church, king Saul might easily be entreated to break a rash vow to save the life of his eldest son."—Ans. 1. I say not the common people did it, but the people, including proceres regni, the princes of the land, and captains of thousands. 2. The text hath not one word or syllable of either prayers, supplications or tears; but by the contrary, they bound themselves by an oath, contrary to the oath of Saul, (1 Sam. 14:44, 45,) and swore, "God forbid: as the Lord liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground. So the people rescued Jonathan;" The church prayed not to God for Peter's deliverance with an oath, that they must have Peter saved, whether God will or no. Though we read of no violence used by the people, yet an oath upon so reasonable a ground,—1. Without the king's consent. 2. Contrary to a standing law that they had agreed unto. (ver. 24.) 3. Contradictory to the king's sentence and unjust oath. 4. Spoken to the king in his face,—all these prove that the people meant, and that the oath ex conditione operis, tended to a violent resisting of the king in a manifestly unjust sentence. Chrysostom, hom. 14, ad Pop., Antioch accuseth Saul as a murderer in this sentence, and praiseth the people: so Junius, Peter Martyr (whom royalists impudently cite); so Cornelius à Lapide, Zanchius, Lyra, and Hugo Cardinalis say, "It was tyranny in Saul, and laudable that the people resisted Saul;" and the same is asserted by Josephus (l. 6, antiquit. c. 7; so Althusius, Polit. c. 38, n. 109).
We see also, (2 Chron. 21:10,) that Libnah revolted from under Jehoram, because he had forsaken the Lord God of his fathers. It hath no ground in the text that royalists say, that the defection of Libnah is not justified in the text, but the cause is from the demerit of wicked Jeboram, because he made defection from God. Libnah made defection from him, as the ten tribes revolted from Rehoboam for Solomon's idolatry, which, before the Lord, procured this defection, yet the ten tribes make defection for oppression. I answer, Where the literal meaning is simple and obvious, we are not to go from it. The text showeth what cause moved Libnah to revolt: it was a town of the Levites, and we know they were longer found in the truth than the ten tribes (2 Chron. 13:8–10; Hosea 11:12). Lavater saith, Jehoram hath pressed them to idolatry, and therefore they revolted. Zanchius and Cornelius à Lapide say, This was the cause that moved them to revolt, and it is clear, (ver. 13,) he caused Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to go a whoring from God, and no doubt tempted Libnah to the like."
Yea, the city of Abel (2 Sam. 20) did well to resist Joab, David's general, for he came to destroy a whole city for a traitor's sake, for Sheba; they resisted and defended themselves. The wise woman calleth the city a mother in Israel, and the inheritance of the Lord; (ver. 19;) and Joab professeth, (ver. 20,) far be it from him to swallow up and destroy Abel. The woman saith, (ver. 18,) "They said of old, they shall surely ask counsel at Abel; and so they ended the matter;" that is, the city of Abel was a place of prophets and oracles of old, where they asked responses of their doubts, and therefore peace should be first offered to the city before Joab should destroy it, as the law saith, Deut. 20:10. From all which it is evident, that the city, in defending itself, did nothing against peace, so they should deliver Sheba, the traitor, to Joab's hand, which they accordingly did; and Joab pursued them not as traitors for keeping the city against the king, but professeth in that they did no wrong.