are so smart upon, was not so much out of the way, but had our Saviour's own authority to back him, when he said that Christian princes were indeed no other than the people's servants; it is very certain that all good magistrates are so. Insomuch that christians either must have no king at all, or if they have, that king must be the people's servant. Absolute lordship and christianity are inconsistent. Moses himself, by whose ministry that servile œconomy of the old law was instituted, did not exercise an arbitrary, haughty power and authority, but bore the burden of the people, and carried them in his bosom, as a nursing father does a sucking child, Numb. xi. and what is that of a nursing father but a ministerial employment? Plato would not have the magistrates called lords, but servants and helpers of the people; nor the people servants, but maintainers of their magistrates, because they give meat, drink, and wages to their kings. themselves. Aristotle calls the magistrates, keepers and ministers of the laws. Plato, ministers and servants. The apostle calls them ministers of God; but they are ministers and servants of the people, and of the laws, nevertheless for all that; the laws and the magistrates were both created for the good of the people and yet this is it, that you call " the opinion of the fanatic mastiffs in England." I should not have thought the people of England were mastiff dogs, if such a mongrel cur as thou art did not bark at them so currishly. The master, if it shall please ye, of St. Lupus, complains it seems, that the mastiffs are mad (fanatics). Germanus heretofore, whose colleague that Lupus of Triers was, deposed our incestuous king Vortigern by his own authority. And therefore St. Lupus despises thee, the master not of a

* Lupus in Latin, signifies a wolf.

Holy Wolf, but of some hunger-starved thieving little wolf or other, as being more contemptible than that master of vipers, of whom Martial makes mention, who hast by relation a barking she-wolf at home too, that domineers over thee most wretchedly; at whose instigations, as I am informed, thou hast wrote this stuff. And therefore it is the less wonder, that thou shouldst endeavour to obtrude an absolute regal government upon others, who hast been accustomed to bear a female rule so servilely at home thyself. Be therefore, in the name of God, the master of a wolf, lest a she-wolf be thy mistress; be a wolf thyself, be a monster made up of a man and a wolf; whatever thou art, the English mastiffs will but make a laughing-stock of thee. But I am not now at leisure to hunt for wolves, and will put an end therefore to this digression. You that but a while ago wrote a book against all manner of superiority in the church, now call St. Peter the prince of the apostles. How inconstant you are in your principles! But what says Peter? "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme, or to governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and the praise of them that do well : for so is the will of God," &c. This epistle Peter wrote, not only to private persons, but those strangers scattered and dispersed through Asia; who, in those places where they sojourned, had no other right, than what the laws of hospitality entitled them to. Do you think such men's case to be the same with that of natives, freeborn subjects, nobility, senates, assemblies of estates, parliaments? nay, is not the case far different of private persons, though in their own country; and senators, or magistrates, without whom kings themselves cannot possibly subsist? But let us suppose, that St. Peter had

directed his epistle to the natural-born subjects, and those not private persons neither; supposé he had writ to the senate of Rome; what then? No law that is grounded upon a reason expressly set down in the law itself, obligeth further than the reason of it extends. "Be subject," says he, woraynre: that is, according to the genuine sense and import of the word," be subordinate, or legally subject." For the law, Aristotle says, is order. "Submit for the Lord's sake." Why so? Because a king is an officer "appointed by God for the punishment of evil doers, and the praise of them that do well; for so is the will of God:" to wit, that we should submit and yield obedience to such as are here described. There is not a word spoken of any other. You see the ground of this precept, and how well it is laid. The apostle adds in the 16th verse, as free; therefore not as slaves. What now? if princes pervert the design of magistracy, and use the power that is put into their hands, to the ruin and destruction of good men, and the praise and encouragement of evil doers; must we all be condemned to perpetual slavery, not private persons only, but our nobility, all our inferiour magistrates, our very parliament itself? Is not temporal government called a human ordinance? How comes it to pass, then, that mankind should have power to appoint and constitute what may be good and profitable for one another; and want power to restrain or suppress things that are universally mischievous and destructive? That prince, you say, to whom St. Peter enjoins subjection, was Nerothe tyrant and from thence you infer, that it is our duty to submit and yield obedience to such. But it is not certain, that this epistle was writ in Nero's reign it is as likely to have been writ in Claudius's time. And they that are commanded to submit, were private persons and

strangers; they were no consuls, no magistrates it was not the Roman senate, that St. Peter directed his epistle to. Now let us hear what use you make of St. Paul (for you take a freedom with the apostles, I find, that you will not allow us to take with princes; you make St. Peter the chief of them to-day, and to-morrow put another in his place). St. Paul in his 13th chap. to the Romans, has these words: " Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God; the powers that be, are ordained of God." I confess he writes this to the Romans, not to strangers dispersed, as Peter did; but however he writes to private persons, and those of the meaner rank; and yet he gives us a true and clear account of the reason, the original, and the design of government: and shows us the true and proper ground of cur obedience, that it is far from imposing a necessity upon us of being slaves. "Let every soul," says he; that is, "let every man submit." Chrysostom tells us," that St. Paul's design in this discourse, was to make it appear, that our Saviour did not go about to introduce principles inconsistent with the civil government, but such as strengthened it, and settled it upon the surest foundations." He never intended then by setting Nero or any other tyrant out of the reach of all laws, to enslave mankind under his lust and cruelty." He intended too, (says the same author) to dissuade from unnecessary and causeless wars." But he does not condemn a war taken up against a tyrant, a bosom enemy of his own country, and consequently the most dangerous that may be. "It was commonly said in those days, that the doctrine of the Apostles was seditious, themselves persons that endeavoured to shake the settled laws and government of the world; that this was what they aimed at in all they said and did." The

Apostle in this chapter stops the mouths of such gainsayers so that the Apostles did not write in defence of tyrants as you do; but they asserted such things as made them suspected to be enemies to the government they lived under, things that stood in need of being explained and interpreted, and having another sense put upon them than was generally received. St. Chrysostom has now taught us what the Apostle's design was in this discourse; let us now examine his words: "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers." Ile tells us not what those higher powers are, nor who they are; for he never intended to overthrow all governments, and the several constitutions of nations, and subject all to some one man's will. Every good emperor acknowledged, that the laws of the empire, and the authority of the senate was above himself; and the same principle and notion of government has obtained all along in civilized nations. Pindar, as he is cited by Herodotus, calls the law Tartar Exonia, king over all. Orpheus, in his hymus, calls it the king both of Gods and men: and he gives the reason why it is so; because, says he, it is that that șits at the helm of all human affairs. Plato, in his book de Legibus, calls it τὸ χρατῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει : that that ought to have the greatest sway in the commonwealth. In his epistles he commends that form of government, in which the law is made lord and master, and no scope given to any man to tyrannize over the laws. Aristotle is of the same opinion in his Politicks; and so is Cicero in his book de Legibus, that the laws ought to govern the magistrates, as they do the people. The law therefore having always been accounted the highest power on earth, by the judgment of the most learned and wise men that ever were, and by the constitutions of the bestordered states; and it being very certain, that the doc