reformed the church, or by those no less zealous, who withstood corruption and the bishops here at home, branded with the name of puritans and nonconformists, we shall abound with testimonies to make appear: that men may yet more fully know the difference between Protestant divines, and these pulpit-firebrands. "Such is the state of things at this day, that men neither can, nor will, nor indeed, ought to endure longer the domination of you princes." (22) "Neither is Cæsar to make war as head of Christendom, protector of the church, defender of the faith; these titles being false and windy, and most kings being the greatest enemies to religion."() What hinders then, but that we may depose or punish them? These also are recited by Cochlæus in his Miscellanies to be the words of Luther, or some other eminent divine, then in Germany, when the Protestants there entered into solemn covenant at Smalcaldia: Ut ora iis obturem, &c. “That I may stop their mouths, the pope and emperor are not born, but elected, and may also be deposed, as hath been often done." If Luther, or whoever else, thought so, he could not stay there; for the right of birth or succession can be no privilege in nature, to let a tyrant sit irremovable over a nation freeborn, without transforming that nation from the nature and condition of men born free, into natural, hereditary, and successive slaves. Therefore he saith

(22)❝Is est hodie rerum status," &c.-Luther. Lib. contra rusticos apud Sleidan. 1. v.

66

(23) Neque vero Cæsarem," &c.-Lib. de Bello contra Turcas, apud Sleid. 1. xiv.

further; "To displace and throw down this exactor, this Phalaris, this Nero, is a work pleasing to God;" namely, for being such a one: which is a moral reason. Shall then so slight a consideration as his hap to be not elective simply, but by birth, which was a mere accident, overthrow that which is moral, and make unpleasing to God that which otherwise had so well pleased him? Certainly not: for if the matter be rightly argued, election, much rather than chance, binds a man to content himself with what he suffers by his own bad election. Though indeed neither the one nor other, binds any man, much less any people, to a necessary sufferance of those wrongs and evils, which they have ability and strength enough given them

to remove.

58. "When kings reign perfidiously, and against the rule of Christ, they may, according to the word of God be deposed." (4) "I know not how it comes to pass, that kings reign by succession, unless it be with consent of the whole people." (25) "But when by suffrage and consent of the whole people, or the better part of them, a tyrant is deposed or put to death, God is the chief leader in that action." (26) "Now that we are so lukewarm in upholding public justice, we endure the vices of tyrants to reign now-a-days with impunity;

(2) "Quando vero perfidè," &c.-Zwinglius, tom. i. arti

cul. 42.

(25) "Mihi ergo compertum non est," &c.—Ibid.

justly therefore by them we are trod underfoot, and shall at length with them be punished. Yet ways are not wanting by which tyrants may be removed, but there wants public justice." (7) "Beware, ye tyrants! for now the gospel of Jesus Christ, spreading far and wide, will renew the lives of many to love innocence and justice; which if ye also shall do, ye shall be honoured. But if ye shall go on to rage and do violence, ye shall be trampled on by all men." (28) "When the Roman empire, or any other, shall begin to oppress religion, and we negligently suffer it, we are as much guilty of religion so violated, as the oppressors themselves." (29)

4

59. "Now-a-days monarchs pretend always in their titles, to be kings by the grace of God: but how many of them to this end only pretend it, that they may reign without control! for to what purpose is the grace of God mentioned in the title of kings, but that they may acknowledge no superior? In the meanwhile God, whose name they use to support themselves, they willingly would tread under their feet. It is therefore a mere cheat, when they boast to reign by the grace of God." (3°) "Earthly princes depose themselves, while they

(27) "Nunc cum tam tepidi sumus," &c.-Zwinglius, tom.

i. articul. 42.

(26) "Cavete vobis ô tyranni.”—Ibid.

(29) "Romanum imperium imô quodque," &c.—Idem. Epist. ad Conrad. Somium.

(30)

"Hodie monarchæ semper in suis titulis," &c.-Calvin on Daniel, c. iv. v. 25.

rise against God; yea they are unworthy to be numbered among men: rather it behoves us to spit upon their heads, than to obey them." (31)

60. "If a sovereign prince endeavour by arms to defend transgressors, to subvert those things which are taught in the word of God, they, who are in authority under him, ought first to dissuade him; if they prevail not, and that he now bears himself not as a prince but as an enemy, and seeks to violate privileges and rights granted to inferior magistrates or commonalties, it is the part of pious magistrates, imploring first the assistance of God, rather to try all ways and means, than to betray the flock of Christ to such an enemy of God: for they also are to this end ordained, that they may defend the people of God, and maintain those things which are good and just. For to have supreme power lessens not the evil committed by that power, but makes it the less tolerable, by how much the more generally hurtful. Then certainly the less tolerable, the more unpardonably to be punished." (32) Of Peter Martyr we have spoke before. "They whose part is to set up magistrates, may restrain them also from outrageous deeds, or pull them down; but all magistrates are set up either by parliament or by electors, or by other magistrates; they, therefore, who exalted them may lawfully degrade and punish them." (33)

(31) "Abdicant se terreni principes," &c.-On Dan. c. vi.

v. 22.

(32) "Si princeps superior," &c.-Bucer on Matth. c. v. (33) "Quorum est constituere magistratus," &c.---Paræus in Rom. xiii.

61. Of the Scots divines I need not mention others than the famousest among them, Knox, and his fellow-labourers in the reformation of Scotland; whose large treatise on this subject defends the same opinion. To cite them sufficiently, were to insert their whole books, written purposely on this argument. "Knox's Appeal ;" and to the reader; where he promises in a postscript, that the book which he intended to set forth, called, "The Second Blast of the Trumpet," should maintain more at large, that the same men most justly may depose and punish him whom unadvisedly they have elected, notwithstanding birth, succession, or any oath of allegiance. Among our own divines, (34) Cartwright and Fenner, two of the learnedest, may

(34) Hobbes, who hated religion still more, if possible, than he did liberty, observes that this "seditious doctrine" found several advocates among the doctors of the church. Treating of the internal causes which produce the dissolution of governments, he first classes among "seditious opinions," the notion that private individuals are able to form a just idea of right and wrong; the second political heresy is the belief that subjects may sin in obeying the unjust commands of those in authority; and the third "doctrina seditiosa," deriving its origin from the same root, is, that tyrannicide is lawful. "This opinion, however," he says, 66 was defended, in his day, by certain theologians, and in old times by all the sophists, by Plato, for example, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and the other Greek and Roman advocates of anarchy, who not only thought it lawful, but worthy of the highest praise. And by the word tyrants they understood not only monarchs, but whoever held the supreme power in a state." (De Cive, cap. xii. p. 186.) It is not a little amusing to hear the modern Protagoras complimenting the greatest philosophers of antiquity with the appellation which he knew would surely be applied by posterity to himself. Perhaps he regarded