Burnet to be Author of that Pamphlet whether you will or not and in so doing you say I derogate from his Credit since he subscrib'd the Book of Homilies and has asserted Passive Obedience A strange shuffle indeed and of a piece with the rest of your Letter I never so much as insinuated any such thing and whether it be his or not I know not But sure I am all your Hearers thought and I have evinced it as much as the matter can bear That in the scurrilous Epithets you gave the Author of that Pamphet as you call it you design'd Dr. Burnet and this you wisely pass over without an Answer I was willing to think you were now asham'd of these Expressions but the whole Tenor of your Letter forbids me to think that blushing is your greatest fault It were a piece of odd presumption to suppose that Great Man needed any Mans Vindication especially mine And sure I am in his subscribing the Homilies and asserting Passive Obedience he sufficiently understood the sense of the Words and his Reason and Learning is too great to have been cheated into your Notion of them But you know the Sun loses none of his Rays by being barkt at In your second Paragraph I find nothing but a Repetition of the Homilies yet once more to prove Passive Obedience a Principle of the Church of Englands and this requires no other Answer but what I have already given you in stating the Question and clearing the sense of the Words You begin your third Paragraph with another shuffle in making me call Passive Obedience the darling Principle of the Church of England than which nothing was farther from my thoughts and to call it yours meaning Mr. Vicars was not in my Opinion to father it upon the Church of England Then you tell me I am forc'd to own That the Government of the Empire is so far different from that of England that what would be Rebellion here would be but a legal Defence there This requires indeed a considerable Talent of Confidence for I acknowledge no such thing Yea upon the contrary I asserted That the Bulla Aurea of the Empire and the Coronation Oath in England were so far parallel that they were both Barriers against the Incroachments of the Sovereign One would have thought that instead of mis-citing my Expressions a Man of your Character would rather have endeavoured to give a fair Answer by evincing That the Bulla Aurea warrants Resistance and the Coronation Oath disallows it You are as unjust to Sleidan as to me for the Duke of Saxony is mentioned by him to use no such Expressions as these you mentioned but instead of saying The Emperor was not a proper Sovereign his words are He is not an absolute and despotick Monarch and so may be resisted When you aver That Luther at first understood not the Government of the Empire when he was for Resistance I cannot but regret his misfortune in the want of your acquaintance seeing he might have been better instructed by you at Newcastle than either by his Reading or Converse with the Greatest Men upon the place And I have as little reason to believe his Ignorance on that Head as his recanting his Opinion for both are equally true As to what you say of Calvin and Melancthon's being for Passive Obedience if I had their Works besides me as I have not I could evince the contrary from their Writings But who knows not that the first did vindicate the Genevans their throwing off the Jurisdiction both of the Bishop of Geneva and Duke of Savoy whereof one of them behov'd to be their Soveraign and the last did allow of the Famous Smalcalde League against Charles V. Next you are so kind as to instruct me a little of the power of the Ephori whereof you suppose I am utterly ignorant I cannot in good manners but thank you for this condescendance And yet it 's somewhat strange how you come to have so intuitive acknowledge of me as without search to find me ignorant of what ev'ry School Boy may know I never dream'd that Keckerman Aristotle or Plutarchs works were so rare in Scotland as you insinuate perhaps the Books we have under these Names are spurious and you by a vast charge of enquiry have found out the Genuine ones that have not yet come our length I am hopeful your charity will oblige you to bestow one true Copy of these great Mens Works upon a whole Nation you have so great a kindness for And yet Sir if what we have of Plutarch be true you are as ignorant of the Spartan Kings as I of the Ephori for if you will consult his Lives of Agesilaus Agis and Lysander you may find that albeit Lycurgus found the Government lodged in two Kings and left it so yet both before his time and afterwards the Spartans were ruled but by one King and particularly from Archidamus to Agis the last of the Heraclidae including six Kings one after another Thereafter you are pleased very obligingly to accuse me of a downright Lye in saying Grotius allows of Resistance and yet with the same breath you confess he dropt in his younger years some unmeet expressions and unsound arguments in his Book de Iure Belli Pacis which afterwards you confidently affirm he retracted I can hardly be perswaded to take with a Lye in saying Grotius allows of Resistance since in my second Letter I gave you his own words for it and you your self acknowledge he did so But I am fully convinc'd you are guilty of a thing called a mistake in saying he retracted his Opinion for Bleaw's Edition of that Book with the addition of Notes written by himself a little before his death as the very title bears not only repeats all he had formerly said upon that Head but confirms it with new Additions to which I refer you Your Reflection upon Gillespy I am willing to impute to your love to his Country and yet I perswade my self it will meet with no better name among the most of Men than that of a groundless calumny In your fourth Paragraph you would fain fix upon me a contradiction in first asserting Passive Obedience to be the darling Principle of the Church of England and then denying it Certainly this is to try how far you can push forward an untruth without lying I did indeed call Passive Obedience your darling meaning Mr. Iohn Marches but that it 's the Principle of the Church of England I have evinc'd the contrary The next time I have occasion to name any thing that belongs to you I find I must play the Quaker and use the word Thine otherwise you will Father it upon the whole Church Next with the same ingenuity you say I confessed the Government of Holland to be so far different from that of England that what were Lawful Resistance there would be Rebellion here I need not tell you I said no such thing upon the contrary I
but this was too hot for your Fingers and therefore you thought fit to drop it Secondly In your Second Paragraph I find nothing material for having referr'd you to the Homilies of our Church for Scripture Proofs of Passive Obedience you are it seems afraid to look into that excellent Book lest you should be found guilty of a Scandalum Ecclesiae and in truth I must commend your Wisdom for its much safer writing against a private Minister than against so glorious a Church but believe it you must not expect to go Scot-free since I have now prov'd the Doctrin of Passive Obedience in my narrow sense as you call it very improperly seeing it is the largest sense any takes it in to be the Doctrin of the Church of England Thirdly You say that I am unwilling the Protestants abroad should share with the Church of England in her darling Doctrin of Passive Obedience which is a Story as true as many you use to tell in the Coffee-house for if you look into the third Paragraph of my former Letter you 'll find me reproving your Learned Ignorance for abusing several of those great Names you mention such as Luther Melancthon Calvin Grotius and others whom you represent as Patrons of Resistance which is but another name for Rebellion You are now forc'd to own That the Government of the Empire differs so far from ours in England that what would be unlawful Resistance here would be but a legal Defence there and this alone is sufficient to vindicate most of those Foreign Divines you mention But because you are very hard to please I shall add further out of Sleidans Comment Lib. XVII where he tells us That the Elector of Saxony who was the chief Person engaged in the German Wars against Charles the Fifth did openly declare That if the said Charles was own'd to be a proper Sovereign with respect to the Princes of the Empire it must then be granted That it was not lawful to wage War with him I hope you will not be so injurious to the Prince of Orange as to affirm That he is no Sovereign Prince because he is proclaimed King of England Luther indeed at first was ignorant as you were of the Constitution of the Empire and therefore was altogether for resisting Charles the Fifth but afterwards he was better inform'd by Learned Lawyers as Sleidan and Melchar Adam Report Melancthon you 'll find Orthodox in this matter if you consult his Loc. Com. de Vindicat. Magistrat Indeed some have thought Calvin as you do a favourer of resisting Sovereign Princes because Lib. 4. Institut he has this Passage Si qui nunc sint populares Magistratus ad moderandum Regum libidinem constituti quales olim erant qui Lacaedemoniis Regibus oppositi erant Ephori If saith he there be any such Magistrates as the Ephori were among the Lacaedemonians they may oppose and resist Kings but in other cases he denies it Now because you are ignorant of the Power of the Ephori among the Spartans and that their two Kings were not proper Sovereigns but the one Admiral by Sea and the other Generalissimo of Land Forces I shall for your better instruction remit you to Arist. Polit. Lib. 2. Plutarch in Pausan or Keckerman de Repub. Spart a Book perhaps more easie to be got in Scotland You are pleas'd to triumph because Grotius as you say is of your Opinion and tell me He is not inferiour to me either for Learning or Judgment It 's well that you can speak a little truth at any time but whether it be your gross Ignorance or the liberty Travellers use to take it s very seldom that you speak all the Truth for the Learned Grotius though in his Book de Iure Belli pacis and in another written in his Younger Time he did drop some unmeet Expressions and unfound Arguments yet when he had weighed Matters better he retracted his former Opinions and in his last Works is as much for Non-Resistance as I was in my Sermon For proof of this Vid. Anot. on Rom. 13. Mat. 26.52 Vot pro pace where he approves of the Proceedings of the University of Oxford about Paraeus on the Romans and allows of this their Determination viz. That Subjects ought by no means to resist their King by force nor ought they to take either offensive or defensive Arms against the King for the cause of Religion or any other thing whatsoever But you no doubt will despise the Determination of our famous University though applauded by your own Grotius and imitate your Country-man Gillispie who in scorn called Prayers and Tears Oxford Divinity By these few instances it will I hope be evident to all unprejudic'd Persons how much you have abus'd these great Names Luther Melancthon Calvin and Grotius Fourthly In the next place you have the confidence to tell me That the Church of England is for the Principle of Resistance and that the Homilies cannot be for Passive Obedience Now this is not only to contradict me but also to contradict your self having in your former Paragraph call'd it the darling Doctrin of our Church You might have receiv'd full satisfaction in this matter had you according to my Advice consulted the Book of Homilies but instead of doing this and to have an opportunity to shew your great Talent of wrangling you labour to evince your impudent Assertion by these impertinent Arguments First Because Queen Elizabeth protected the Hollanders in the Revolt from Spain but this I have answer'd in my former Letter and obliged you to acknowledge That the Government of the Netherlands was vastly different from this of England so that theirs was not properly Resistance but a warrantable Defence This I say you were told before and own'd the matter and yet think fit to serve up your twice sodden Coleworts that you may seem to say something Secondly You tell me as a great Secret That the Convocation of the Clergy of England gave vast Sums towards the Protection of the Hollanders and the Preamble of every Act insinuates the lawfulness of their Resisting the King of Spain This is a Secret with a Witness for I dare be bold to say That the Learnedst Lawyer in England never heard of an Act of Parliament for Mony made by a Convocation But suppose the Bishops or any of the Clergy did contribute such vast Sums it will not prove That our Church did not own Passive Obedience in Queen Elizabeths time as you assert But pray Sir were not the Homilies in her time And that the Fathers of our Church did then take them in the same sense as I did in my Sermon will appear beyond all contradiction from the Testimonies of Bishop Bilson and Iewell I begin with Bishop Bilson who speaks thus in his Book of Christian Subjection Deliverance if you would have it obtain it by Prayer and expect it in Peace These be the Weapons for Christians the Subjects have no Refuge against their
Sovereign but only to God by Prayer and Patience Bishop Iewell in his Defence of the Apology speaks thus We teach the People as St. Paul doth to be subject to the Higher Powers not only for fear but also for Conscience sake We teach 'em That whoso striketh with the Sword by private Authority shall perish with the Sword. If the Prince happen to be wicked or cruel or burdensom we teach 'em to say with St. Ambrose Tears and Prayers be our Weapons This I hope will be sufficient to evince That Passive Obedience was own'd by our Church in the Days of Queen Elizabeth of Blessed Memory and that in the same sense I did assert in my Sermon Fifthly In the next place you attempt to prove the lawfulness of Resisting the Kings of England from the Coronation Oath which you say is of the same import with the Bulla Aurea in Germany but for this we have no other proof than your own ipse dixit as if the Soul of Pythagoras by a Metempsychosis had at last taken up its Lodging in a Scots Tenement But I assure you Sir your bare word is of no such Authority with me Besides I have already proved That the Emperor by reason of the Bulla Aurea is no proper Sovereign And if you should say the Prince of Orange is no proper Sovereign now that he is proclaim'd King of England it would be as bad or worse than to drink a Health to the Success of King Iames's Forces against all Invaders whatsoever at that very time when the Prince of Orange was coming over to rescue the Nation from Popery and Slavery and yet this you merrily did in a certain House at the lower end of Westgate so that for all your pretended Zeal you are a sneaking Proteus and it would be as easie to shape a Coat for the Moon as for your Latitudinarian Conscience But I must instruct you That the King of England is a Sovereign Prince before his Coronation nor is his Oath necessary to make him so seeing Henry the Sixth Reign'd divers Years in England before he was Crown'd and yet was own'd by his Parliaments for their dread Sovereign Nay further our Chronicles inform us That some of our Kings were never Crown'd and besides all this I desire you and those of your Cabal to shew any thing in the Coronation Oath that allows Subjects to take up Arms against their Prince In the next place you pretend to give such an exact State of the Controversie as you say will in one word refute the Tenet of Passive Obedience and in order hereunto you offer four Cases out of Barclay and others in which as you tell me They all agree that it 's lawful for Subjects to resist and wage War against their Sovereign Princes Had you read your Country-man Barclay as you pretend you would have found that he allows only two Cases in which a Prince may be divested of his Royal Dignity and when you come to propose these four Cases you mention only three Such is the great Excellence of your Memory notwithstanding that according to the Proverb Some stand in need of a very good one First Your first Case is When a Prince does voluntarily and freely relinquish his Crown and Dignity as did Charles the Fifth Christiana of Sweden and to name no more nine Saxon Kings mentioned in Fuller's Church History Now in this Case the Prince who voluntarily resigns the Crown becomes for the future a private Person and should he afterwards by force endeavour to recover his Dignity which by his own consent is vested in the next Heir he may no doubt be resisted But sure this is not resisting a King or the Higher Powers but a private Person in defence of a lawful King and so is nothing to your purpose and pray look your Barclay again and see if this Case as you say is there Secondly If a Prince alienates his Crown and Subjects to another you say he may be resisted this without any harm may be granted too For as I own no Allegiance to a Foreign Prince so my own Prince has voluntarily divested himself and thrust himself into a private Capacity and in this case we do not resist the Higher Powers but a private Person And this instance does also fall short of the mark Thirdly The third Case is more pertinent for you say a King may be deposed or resisted Si hostili animo in populi exitium feratur This you have transcribed from Grotius and the meaning of it is this Whether a Sovereign Prince may be resisted in case he undertakes to destroy his whole Kingdom or any considerable part thereof If we may take your honest word Grotius and all that you have read resolve this Point in the Affirmative To which I answer First That Grotius with due submission to your vast reading did as I shew'd above retract in his riper Years this dangerous Opinion which Erasmus in Luke 22. stiles a most pernicious Heresie Secondly Bishop Taylor calls it deservedly a Wild Tenet and Grotius as well as he acknowledges it can scarce seem possible to happen It is certain that we have not one single instance of it in the whole Race of our British Kings Thirdly More sober Casuists condemn the starting such speculative Cases as Princes cutting the Throats of their Subjects because they have been found the Incentives of Rebellion They were such Fears and Out-crys as these that brought King Charles the Martyr to the Block and have stain'd your Scotch Chronicles with the Murders of above sixty Sovereign Princes So that King William and Queen Mary will have cause to thank you for giving such early Demonstrations of your Loyalty in the very beginning of their Reign teaching their Subjects in how many cases they may resist when the Laws of the Land say expresly That it 's unlawful to take up Arms against the King upon any pretence whatsoever Fourthly Put the case that Tiberius Caligula Claudius or Nero be the King and your Countryman Barclay instances such Monsters as these as being the greatest he could find in all History you and he both affirm they may be lawfully resisted it is not for me to oppose such Learned Gentlemen but I will assure you once more Grotius is against you and I hope he is not very much inferior to your Doctorship in Learning and Judgment And must I tell you again what I told you from the Pulpit viz. That those Prohibitions against Resistance which are given in the New Testament by our Saviour St. Paul and St. Peter were remarkably given at such a time when these greatest Monsters of Cruelty sat on the Throne and pray ask my Parishioners whether they do not believe our Saviour St. Paul and St. Peter to be as good Casuists as your Doctorship and Countryman Barclay Having thus destroyed the very Foundations your State of the Controversie stood on your slender superstructure and puerile flourishes will tumble with them In the next
remain SIR Your Humble Servant JOHN MARCH Feb. 19. 1688 9. For the Reverend Mr. JOHN MARCH Vicar of Newcastle Newcastle March 3. 1688 9. SIR AFTER your so unusual method of exposing your Second Letter at your Stationers Shop and thereby to most of the Town I might have expected it my self especially considering my so often sending for it but your delaying it from day to day and at last absolute Refusal put me upon the necessity of getting a Copy of it another way I cannot much blame you for this Conduct the writing and dispersing such a Letter required indeed the Denial of it to the Person for whom it was design'd I find you are liable to the fate of him of whom it was said If he had held his Peace he might have been thought a Philosopher and I was nothing unwilling you should continue such in the Opinion of the Mobile I might well spare my self the trouble of a Rejoinder there being nothing in your Letter that requires one for they must have clearer Eyes than mine that can discover any thing material or to the purpose in it but instead thereof a continued shuffling and waving of the Question mixt with so mean Sarcasms that for your own Honour I could have wish'd you had omitted them So that to give you an Answer I am at a great loss being unacquainted with Billingsgate Oratory and oblig'd at every turn to repeat my own words in my former Letters which you have been pleas'd to wrest so far as I cannot say you have given a fair repetition of one single Sentence of mine all along yours But to evince to the unbiass'd and knowing Persons of the place That you are not infallible as your admiring Mobile would have you I have put my self upon a nauseating Task of writing you these few Lines in answer to so indigested and immethodick a Letter You begin it with bantering my taking notice of the Direction of your first and tell me That the Heraulds Office will inform me that a Doctor of a Foreign University has no Priviledge in England I pretend to no great Priviledges any where but I had reason to expect a designation you refuse not to some who scarce ever saw an University Neither have I liv'd so obscure or been so little imploy'd as not to be known for what I am by most of the Gentry and People of Quality in the place and you notably contradict your self in saying You was ignorant of my Quality since you name expresly my Profession in your first Letter But we shall not fall out upon that Head since the Heraulds Office is not like to be much troubled with either of our Escutcheons Next you would fix upon me a great ferment of Choler and Rudeness in many of my Expressions you enumerate and tell me I deserved not so modest an Answer as you vouchsaf'd me considering the Provocations I gave you a Person that never disobliged me I submit both my first and second to any neutral Person who perhaps will allow them a better Construction and if any thing of Heat has slipt from my Pen I hope the occasion of it will do more than procure me a pardon It 's true you never disoblig'd me but no Personal Injury could have affected me more than the hearing a glorious and unparallel'd Deliverance branded in the Pulpit with the infamous Names of Rebellion Damnation and the like and the being a Witness to a Series of Actings consequential to such Expressions You seem'd to me in inveighing against a Revolution wherein the Finger of God was so visible to act much in parallel with those of old who dar'd to attribute the stupendious Effects of Omnipotence to a baser Influence And for me to have been an Apathist on such an occasion would have been but another name for Stupidity In your accusing me of Passion you must needs have a fling at poor Zeno and Two thousand Years rest in his Grave must not shelter him from your accusation of a felo de se albeit his manner of Death is not agreed upon by Authors whereof not a few allow him a natural one Before you come to answer my Letter you will needs premise something concerning the Doctrin of the Church of England and this you say will bring us to the true State of the Question Whereupon you are at the pains to cite several Passages out of the Book of Homilies against Resistance and for Passive Obedience and then you subsume Having premis'd thus much to state the Question you come to examine my Letter Sir I thought every School-Boy knew better what it was to state a Question than to cite Authorities to prove the thing questioned and what gentiel Name to give your thus stating it I am at a loss The stating of a Question is properly the removing all Equivocation of Terms or Amphibologies of Speech as the Schools speak whereby both the Opponent and Defendant may agree in the same sense and meaning of the words And pray Sir how came you to imagine That the Authorities produc'd removed any Difficulty arising from a wrong understanding of the words Passive Obedience and Resistance c. that are the Subjects of our Debate If you had been at pains to cast your Eyes upon my Letter so as to read it I presume you would have found me stating the Question betwixt us thus upon the matter viz. That to resist the Magistrate when he is lawfully such and acting in execution of Laws is one thing but to resist the same Person when he divests himself of that Sacred Character by trampling on Fundamental Laws is quite another The first is certainly unlawful but not the second And to elucidate this I told you there was a great Difference betwixt a Princes trampling upon a part of his Subjects in execution of Laws made against them and his doing of the same in downright contradiction of Fundamental Laws made in their Favours And albeit in the first case it were disallowable to Resist yet in the second reason and common sense in my Opinion does warrant it And upon my thus stating of the Question I did then as now once for all tell you That all places of the Homilies yea of Holy Scripture it self disproving Resistance of Magistrates are to be understood in a natural sense and with Analogy of Reason to be meant of Magistrates when lawfully such and acting conform to Laws and not of Princes divesting themselves of that Office by their own Faults and Mismanagement And in my giving so necessary and natural a Gloss upon the Homilies I do but Justice to those worthy Reformers that compil'd them whereas on the contrary you by endeavouring to wrest their Words to your notion of Passive Obedience derogate from the Reason and Learning of those Excellent Men And thus you have lost your pains and time in citing them At length you come to examine my Letter and in the first place you tell me I will have Dr.
subject it to another But the reason you give for it is wide from the purpose For a Prince may Subject his Crown to another and yet not thrust himself into a private capacity as you call it When King Iohn subjected his Crown to the Pope he ceas'd not thereby to be King of England and the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily are true Monarchies in the Family of Spain and yet Feudatory and Subject to the Pope One would have thought that you might have taken some notice of what I said upon this case in relation to the Native incroachments of the Sea and Court of Rome and how far a subjection in Spirituals may usher in a dependance even in Temporals But your self denyal will not allow you to be thought too knowing in what relates to your own Profession When you come to my third Case thô you at first confess it a pertinent Case yet you bring four pretty Answers against it The case being thus a King may be Dethron'd si in populi exitium feratur you answer 1. Grotius retracted this opinion how true this is I refer you to that Edition of his Works I formerly mentioned wherein instead of retracting this Case he confirms it by his Notes upon it you are as far in the wrong to Erasmus as to Grotius for having lookt upon the place cited there is not one word there relating to this case 2ly you tell me B. Taylor calls it a wild Case which is nothing to the purpose for none but wild Men can be capable of it then you say Grotius calls it a Case that scarce seems possible to happen That there have been such Monsters in the World appears by Nero's Firing the City of Rome and Caligula's wishing the Roman People had but one single Neck yea in the late Age have we not seen a Northern Prince invite his whole Nobles aboard his Ship and order them all to be murder'd before his Eyes It 's true we have been blessed with a better Race of Kings in England than to find any such Monsters in our Annals But how proper it was for a Divine to take notice of what I told you upon this Head How far a Prince may fall under this Category who endeavours to introduce a Religion inconsistent with his Peoples Eternal Happiness I am willing as well as you to appeal to your Parishioners Thirdly In answer to this Case you tell me More sober Casuists condemn the starting of such Speculative Cases and would fix upon me ill Service done to their Majesties in teaching their Subjects in what Cases they may Resist For the first part of this Answer you are pleas'd to instance no particular Casuist and I presume you are not able to do it unless you wrest their words as much as you use to do mine that is make them say what you please But when you so positively assert that in no case a Prince may be Resisted give me leave to think I refel sufficiently your assertion by instancing a case wherein you acknowledg you self Resistance is warrantable tho that case be very rare As to the second part of your answer I hope I shall be found to do no bad service to their Majesties in vindicating a Revolution wherein they have acted so glorious a part from the aspersions you have cast upon it And they have given the World so many and great demonstrations of a Sublim Vertue and of their abhorrence of Arbitrary Power as none but such as refuse to pray for them will dare to imagine they can possibly fall under any of the Cases I have mentioned And I heartily agree with you so far in point of Resistance that I firmly believe he who Resists such two darling Princes falls under the inevitable hazard of Damnation in the sense of your Text unless he repent Among a great deal of Rubbish of gentle Expressions I find nothing in your Fourth answer merits any notice but one thing that has been canted a thousands times over by your sort of Men Viz that the Precepts for Obedience given by our Saviour Saint Peter and Saint Paul were given at a time when the greatest Monsters of Cruelty were upon the Throne for so your express words are Sir even in this matter of Fact you commit a gross mistake for tho probably the two Apostles named wrote their Epistles in the Reigns of Caligula Domitian and Nero yet every Body knows that our Saviour's preaching was from the fifteenth till the eighteenth of Tiberius inclusivè who was none of the worst of Princes especially before that time of his Reign But as to that of the Apostles commanding subjection at a time when Monsters were upon the Throne to answer this I shall take occasion to give you my gloss upon that Text Romans 13.1.2 which has occasioned all our debate and in so doing perhaps I obviate all you have preached from it for Passive obedience and non-resistance The subjection there commanded to be given to the Higher Powers is in a proper sense a standing in order under them as on the contrary the Resistance prohibit is a Contraordinatness to them and so the very Etymology of the Greek words bears This being the genuine Critick of the words the meaning of them does fairly resolve into these two Corollaries First That the Gospel destroys not Magistracy nor exempts Christians from the Oeconomy of Subjection as some Hereticks at that time vainly imagined to which fond opinion it 's very probable the Apostle had an eye as many learn'd Men have thought particularly Gerhardus de Magist. polit n. 34.38 Secondly That Christianity exempts not the Professors of it from subjection to Heathen Magistrats as some Christians of that Age did maintain having imbib'd that principle from the Gaulonites among the Iews who held subjection to the Romans or any other Strangers unlawful and that likewise this heresie or error was in the Apostles view the same learn'd Author and a great many others do agree Now Resistance of open and notorious Violations of Magistracy in which case only I say Resistance is lawful contradicts not the subjection enjoyn'd in the Text being thus explain'd That subjection being nothing more but an acknowledgment of Magistrates as a Lawful Power ordain'd of God for the good of Mankind And that even at that time this was the Christians sense of this precept would appear by what I told you of the Senats declaring Nero an Enemy of Mankind and adjudging him to Death approv'd by the Christians of old and by the best of Lawyers and Casuists of late as for instance Bodinus de Republica Lib. 2. Cap. 5. And further That the Subjection here required is not to Princes abusing their Power by trampling upon all that 's Sacred as you would have it in naming of Nero is evincible from these Reasons First Such Princes are not the Ordinance of God the Relative of Subjection being they act in opposition to God. Secondly they are not a terror to