“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. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil… For he is the minister of God to thee for good…”
Rom. 13:1-4
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Subsections
Romans 13
Political Theology
Voting
Jurisprudence
General Equity of OT Civil Laws
Resistance to Tyranny
War
Against Separation from Impure Civil Governments
Church-State Relations
Reforming according to Calling
Contra Bellarmine on Magistrate
Reformed vs. Aquinas
Taxes
Usurped Powers
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Order of Contents
Nature of
Under God’s Law
Human Root of Civil Power
Government if No Sin?
Relations of People to Government
Limits of Civil Government
Contra Regulative Principle of
Grounds & Extent of Rights & Restrictions
Civil Rights
Civil Liberty
Executive Privilege, Power & Mandates
Unbelieving Magistrates
Qualifications of Officers 3
Church-Officers Hold Civil Office?
Laws & Punishment
Laws: Not for Private Interests
Punishes Crime as Scandal, not Sin
Punishment may be unto Individual’s Reformation
Capital Crimes
Police Officer?
Torture
Prayers for Government
Biblio
Latin & French 6+
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Articles
1500’s
Melanchthon, Philip
ch. 29. ‘On Magistrates’ in The Loci Communes of Philip Melanchthon… tr. Charles L. Hill (1521; Boston: Meador Publishing, 1944), pp. 262-65
Though Melanchthon (1497–1560) was a Lutheran, this work of his was the first ‘systematic theology’ of the Reformation, and, as it was very influential on reformed systematic theologies following shortly thereafter.
ch. 36. ‘Of Worldly Authority’ in Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine, Loci Communes, 1555 tr. Clyde L. Manschreck (1555; NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 323-43
Zwingli, Ulrich – ‘Magisterial Office’ in Commentary on True & False Religion eds. Jackson & Heller (1525; Labyrinth Press, 1981), pp. 293-318
Melanchthon, Philip – Article 16, Of Political Order in The Apology of the Augsburg Confession tr: F. Bente & W. H. T. Dau (1531)
Calvin, John
ch. 33. ‘The Magistrate or Civic Officer’ in Instruction in Faith (1537) tr. Paul T. Fuhrman (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949), pp. 76-79
ch. 16. ‘Of Civil Government’ in Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition tr. Elsie A. McKee (1541; Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 656-81
ch. 6. ‘On Magistrates’ in A Short Instruction for to Arm All Good Christian People against the Pestiferous Errors of the Common Sect of Anabaptists (London: Daye, 1549), no page numbers
ch. 20. ‘Of Civil Government’ in Institutes of the Christian Religion tr. Henry Beveridge (1559; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845), vol. 3, bk. 4, pp. 518-54
Bullinger, Henry
The Decades ed. Thomas Harding (1549; Cambridge: Parker Society, 1849), vol. 1, 2nd Decade
7th Sermon, ‘Of the office of the magistrate, whether the care of religion appertain to him or no, and whether he may make laws and ordinances in cases of religion’ 323-44
17. ‘Of the Magistrate & Lawful Obedience’ in Questions of Religion Cast Abroad in Helvetia [Switzerland] by the Adversaries of the Same, & Answered… tr. John Coxe (London, 1572), pp. 141-45
‘On the Duties of Rulers & Subjects’ in Edmund Morgan, Puritan Political Ideas: 1558-1794, pp. 15-35 being selections from Bullinger’s Decades
Bucer, Martin – On the Reign of Christ tr. Satre & Pauck in Melanchthon & Bucer in The Library of Christian Classics, vol. 19 (London: SCM Press LTD, 1969), bk. 2
56. ‘On the Revision and Elaboration of Civil Laws’ 357
57. ‘The Eleventh Law: the Appointment of Magistrates’ 361
58. ‘The Twelfth Law: the Establishment and Correction of Tribunals and Judges’ 374
59. ‘The Thirteenth Law: The Custody of Accused Persons’ 377
60. ‘The Fourteenth Law: the Modification of Penalties’ 379-84
Vermigli, Peter Martyr – The Common Places… (d. 1562; London: Henrie Denham et al., 1583)
pt. 2, ch. 8, ‘The Fifth Precept: of the Honoring of Superiors’, ‘A Comparison between the Duties of Parents & Magistrates’ 377-79
pt. 4
ch. 13, ‘Of a Magistrate, of the Difference between Civil & Ecclesiastical Power’ 226-45
ch. 14, ‘Of the Office of Magistrates, especially in Exercising of Judgment’ 245
‘That the charge of religion belongs to princes’ 246
‘Of the Clemency of Princes’ 248
‘Whether it be Lawful for Magistrates to let the Guilty go Unpunished’ 248
‘Whether the excuse of David in not punishing of Joab may be allowed, and whether a magistrate may well let pass a fault without any manner of punishment’ 256
‘Whether it be lawful to release just punishments which are enjoined by laws’ 260
‘Of Executioners & Hangmen’ 264
‘Of Sanctuaries’ 265
ch. 15, ‘Of Exile or Banishment’ 270
ch. 16, ‘Whether it be Lawful for a Christian Man to go to Law’ 275
Musculus, Wolfgang – Common Places of the Christian Religion (1560; London, 1563)
‘Magistrates & What a Magistrate is’ 546.a
Of whence the magistrate is 546.b
What manner of men they ought to be which do bear office and be magistrates 548.a
What is the office of magistrate 549.b
Comodiously 551.a
Honesty 551.b
Godly 552.b
Whether that the magistrate have authority to take order in religion or no 553.a
How far forth the authority of the magistrate served in religion 555.b
Of the magistrates of the Roman Empire, sworn to the Emperor 559.b
Whether Christian men need to have a magistrate 560.b
Whether that a Christian man may be a magistrate 561.a
What is due to the Magistrate from his subjects 562.a
Who and whether ecclesiastical persons ought to be reputed for subjects 563.a
How far forth men ought to obey the magistrate 567.a
Beza, Theodore
A Brief & Pithy Sum of the Christian Faith made in Form of a Confession (London, 1562)
ch. 5
42. Of the civil and Christian magistrate and to what end his office tends
43. How far they are bound to obey the magistrate
ch. 7, 15. The Papists be manifestly culpable of rebellion against the magistrate
Viret, Pierre – A Christian Instruction… (d. 1571; London: Veale, 1573)
The Sum of the Principal Points of the Christian Faith
51. Of the Magistrate 52
The Summary of the Christian Doctrine, set forth in Form of Dialogue & of Catechism
Of the Ministers of the Church & of Magistrates
Zanchi, Girolamo – ch. 26, ’Of a Magistrate’ in Confession of the Christian Religion… (1586; Cambridge, 1599), pp. 242-50
Beza, Theodore, Anthony Faius & Students – 78. ‘Of the Magistracy’ in Propositions & Principles of Divinity Propounded & Disputed in the University of Geneva by Certain Students of Divinity there, under Mr. Theodore Beza & Mr. Anthony Faius… (Edinburgh: Waldegrave, 1591), pp. 258-63
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1600’s
Bucanus, William – 49. ‘Of Magistrates’ in Institutions of Christian Religion... (London: Snowdon, 1606), pp. 854-908
Is the doctrine of policy or civil government and magistracy to be delivered in the Church?
Whence is the commonwealth called, politeia, policy?
What is respublica, or the commonwealth?
What is the original cause of commonwealths?
Should there (if Adam had continued in his innocency) have been use of civil government?
Did subjects go before and constitute them princes, or princes go before and create unto them subjects?
How manifold is politic government?
How many forms are there of lawful government?
Which is the best kind of lawful government?
What forms of government are contrary to these three?
Which are the parts of politic government?
Whence is this word ‘magistrate’ derived?
What is magistracy?
What do officials differ from magistrates?
How many sorts of magistrates are there?
Who is the author of the magistrate?
Is it necessary to keep this particle in the definition of a magistrate, that he is ordained of God?
May a Christian man, being lawfully called, by the Law of God and in a good conscience become a magistrate?
Is power and authority from the Devil because he is called ‘the prince of the world,’ Jn. 12:31; 16:11, and because he says, Mt. 4:8-9, that the kingdoms of the earth are in his power and he can give them to whom he will?
But does not this make as though God allows not the authority of princes because He is displeased with his people for making a king in Israel, 1 Sam. 8:6-7
But since many bad men, yea tyrants, are magistrates, and in governments much injustice is committed and in judgments are many deceits, can we say that even their offices are of God?
Does not the Gospel utterly abolish politic order in prohibiting revenge?
Why do magistrates punish offences?
Seeing John Baptist, Lk. 3:13, granted to his young auditors to use politic offices, ought not the like to be granted to other Christians, who should be more perfect?
Did not Christ, when He would not condemn the adulteress to death, Jn. 8, by that fact disallow the severity of politic punishments?
Who has power to choose magistrates?
How ought magistrates to be chosen?
How ought magistrates to be qualified, and who elected and created?
What titles are given to magistrates in the Scriptures?
What is the office of the magistrate?
Does the care of religion belong to the magistrates?
Whether ought the magistrate to tolerate only the true religion in his dominions or diverse?
Ought the magistrate to compel any man to believe?
Is it lawful for the magistrate to put heretics to the sword?
May a Christian magistrate exercise civil or criminal judgments?
Does Paul condemn the order of judgments and all manner of contending at the law where he says, 1 Cor. 6:7, ‘There is utterly a fault amongst you because you go to Law one with another’?
What does Christ mean then, Mt. 5:39, when He forbids them to resist evil and commands them that to him that will take away their coat they should give the cloak also and to turn the right cheek to him that shall strike them on the left?
What say you to that of Solomon, Prov. 10:12, ‘Love covers all trespasses’? Does that speech command the magistrate to spare those that offend? or does it command private men that they shall not bring their complaints before the magistrate against those that do them injury?
In what sort are judgments to be ordered?
Seeing Christians are by the law of God forbidden to kill and it is prophesied of the Church, Isa. 11:9; 65:25, ‘There shall none hurt or destroy in all the mountain of my holiness,’ does not the magistrate therefore offend in putting malefactors to death?
Seeing our Savior Christ, Jn. 8:7, answers the accusers of the adulterous woman on this manner, ’Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone at her,’ may therefore offenders be condemned or punished, but by them that are just and free from sin?
May the chief magistrate with a good conscience show favor or give pardon unto malefactors that are lawfully convicted?
Forasmuch as we have no example or precept in the New Testament for warfare, is it unlawful therefore for Christians to go to war?
How many sorts of war be there?
What is political or carnal war?
Which are just wars?
Which are just and necessary causes of war?
Is it lawful to defend true religion with weapons?
Are those just actions, that do accompany and are incident to war, namely, spoils, ambushes, besiegings, slaughter, taking away their furniture and such other calamities which are usually done to the enemy in time of war?
Seeing that for the most part princes make war of an evil and corrupt affection, how shall the subjects that are their soldiers satisfy their consciences?
Are those mercenary soldiers to be allowed of, that being hired with a price will follow either side?
What kind of authority has the magistrate?
Seeing that, 1 Sam. 8:11, Samuel says, ‘This shall be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: 1. He will take your sons and daughters, and make them his servants. 2. He will take your fields and your vineyards, and your best olive trees and give them to his servants, 3. He will take the tenth of your seed and of your vineyards, and give it to his servants. 4. He will take your men-servants and your maid-servants, and your choice young men, and will put them to his work. 5. He will take the tenth of your sheep. 6. And lastly you shall be his servants: does Samuel in this place arm kings with an infinite or absolute power circumscribed within no laws over the bodies and substance of his subjects?
Has the chief magistrate free power in his subjects’ affairs and causes, beside or contrary to the laws received for the determining of any matter?
What is equity?
What politic laws are to be allowed?
What things are there that give weight and strength to the law?
Does the Judicial Law of Moses bind the Christian magistrate?
Are tithes abolished because the Ceremonial Law is abolished?
What is understood by this name ‘subject’?
Who are the magistrates subjects?
What is the office of a good subject and citizen towards his commonwealth?
What is the office of subjects to the magistrate?
What if some magistrates command things just or unjust, are the godly citizens to esteem them laws as such as they are bound to keep?
Does Paul exempt the faithful from obedience to these laws in saying, 1 Tim. 1:9, ‘The Law is not given to the righteous’?
What is the second office of subjects towards the magistrate?
What is the third?
What is the forth?
What is the fifth?
What is the sixth?
What is the seventh?
Are clergymen, or Church-men, as they are called, exempted from all taxes and subsidies?
Why must subjects perform obedience to the magistrate?
May subjects rise up in arms against magistrates or become mutinous?
Did Naboth well, 1 Kings 21:3, to deny Ahab his vineyard, who deserved it and offered money for it?
What if the magistrate offer thee some open and great wrong? what must thou do?
But seeing you set down this true doctrine of obedience, tell me whether this be the doctrine of popery, that it is lawful for any man to kill a prince who is of a contrary religion to Popery?
What are the assertions of papists in this point?
Come we next to practices, show me them
But this is only for obedience to kings, what can you show for offering violence to kings?
But you cannot show that any Romanists have commended this practice?
But have not Lutherans, Calvinists and such as are called Puritans defended and practiced the murdering, or at the least deposing of princes, and does not this author whom you have translated defend the like?
You have added to your author 8 questions and answers, return again unto him, what is the general end of politic administration and magistracy, or of magistrates?
What use make you of this doctrine of magistracy?
What now is contrary to this doctrine of magistracy?
Polyander, Johannes – 50. ‘On the Civil Magistrate’ in Synopsis of a Purer Theology: Latin Text & English Translation Buy (1625; Brill, 2016), vol. 3, pp. 462-508
Rutherford, Samuel – ch. 19, ‘On the Magistrate’ in Examination of Arminianism tr. by AI by Monergism (1639-1642; Utrecht, 1668; 2024), pp. 668-89
1. Whether it is lawful for the magistrate to afflict the dissolute and murderers with capital punishment? We affirm against the Remonstrants and Socinians.
2. Whether it is for the magistrate to punish heretics? Whether it is agreeable to the laws of our most merciful Savior Jesus Christ that the magistrate tolerate Jews, Turks, Papists, etc, and all heretics in the republic who err with a purely mental error? We affirm the former. We deny the latter with a distinction against the Remonstrants.
3. Whether none errs in doing works, nor persuades himself to err while he is stirred up on account of his eternal salvation? We deny against the Remonstrants.
4. Whether the power of the magistrate is supreme in the external rule of the Church, is in kind higher than Church-power and is immediately subject to God alone? We deny against the Remonstrants.
Gillespie, George – ‘On Whether Lawful Authorities may Impose Oaths’ (1649) 31 paragraphs
The original Westminster Confession in chapter 22.3 says that, “It is a sin to refuse an oath touching anything that is good and just, being imposed by lawful authority.” See this article for the proof-texts of this Biblical teaching and that it was lawful for Scotland and England to impose the Solemn League and Covenant, 1643, on their populaces (which was the catalyst for the Westminster Confession of Faith).
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1800’s
Girardeau, John – ‘Conscience & Civil Government: an Oration’ 1860 28 pp.
Hodge, Charles – ‘On Suing another Christian in Civil Court’ from his Commentary on 1 Corinthians, ch. 6:1-11
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2000’s
Wolfe, Stephen – ‘Correcting Theologians: a Response to Brian Mattson’ (2023)
Wolfe wrote the book, The Case for Christian Nationalism (2022), which was self-consciously grounded by him in the theology of reformed orthodoxy. Wolfe here responds to a neo-Calvinist critic, and very helpfully clarifies and elaborates on reformed orthodox anthropology as a basis for political theory, quoting many classic reformed theologians.
Fentiman, Travis – “Civil Authority, Dethronement & Cameronianism” in “Editor’s Extended Introduction”, 3. “Principled Partial Conformity in Government: The Church of Scotland under Erastianism & Episcopacy (1660–1688)” in English Puritans, A Refutation of the Errors of Separatists (1604; RBO, 2025), pp. 95-103
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Books
Middle Ages
Marsilius of Padua – The Defender of the Peace Buy (1324; trans. 2005)
“This is arguably the best place to go to understand the Protestant argument against the tyranny of the late medieval papacy and church authorities, and it was written two centuries before the Protestant Reformation! So sweeping was Marsilius’s condemnation of the papacy and the assumptions that underlay it that he was forced to flee even the anti-papal stronghold of Paris and take refuge with the German prince Ludwig of Bavaria. Pope Clement VI later anathematized the book as containing ‘more than 240 heretical articles.’
…At its heart is a positive vision of the function of politics as the art of establishing tranquillity and justice that is deeply rooted in Aristotle and Augustine and at the same time startlingly anticipates many of the key developments of modern political theory. Among them: a thoroughgoing account of popular sovereignty as the basis of all government, arguments for the importance of regular elections, a clear articulation of the principle of the indivisibility of sovereignty, and a sharp distinction between sins and crimes.” – Davenant Institute
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1500’s
Melanchthon, Philip – A Civil Nosgay, wherein is Contained Not Only the Office & Duty of All Magistrates & Judges, but Also of All Subiects… ([London: 1550]) 68 pp. ToC
Calvin, John – On God & Political Duty ed. John T. McNeill (NY: Macmillan, 1950) 130 pp. ToC Selections from his Institutes and commentaries on Romans & Daniel.\
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2000’s
Hazony, Yoram – The Virtue of Nationalism Buy (2018)
“This well-timed bombshell of a book by the remarkable Israeli philosopher and political theorist Yoram Hazony… is a broadside against the consensus of liberal internationalism, in all its forms, that has dominated Western discourse for at least the last generation.
Hazony argues that ‘nationalism’ is a much-misunderstood concept; it is not about valuing the aggrandizement of one’s own nation at the expense of all others (indeed, that is but a form of imperialism), but about valuing the good of nations as such—the distinctiveness of different cultural and regional traditions, and the value of them having a mechanism to govern themselves: the nation-state…
…the nationalist heritage as one rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures, recovered by the Protestant Reformers, and best developed within the heritage of Anglo-American political thought.” – Davenant Institute
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Quote
1600’s
John Bairdie
Balm from Gilead, or the Differences about the Indulgence Stated & Impleaded in a Sober & Serious Letter to Ministers & Christians in Scotland (1674; London: Cockerill, 1681), pp. 171-72
“Next to fidelity towards God, study to adorn your cause with loyalty to your king, in the Lord, Rom. 13:1, 5; Prov. 24:21; 1 Pet. 2:13. ‘Give unto God the things which are God’s, and unto Ceasar the things which are Cesar’s,” that hereby ye may stop the mouths of them that falsely speak evil of the presbyterian interest and party as inimical to king’s crowns, 1 Pet. 2:15. Did he not in the Usurper’s [Cromwell’s] time find you the most faithful party to him of any? And albeit ye be but ill requat, yet discourage not to follow your duty for the Lord’s sake. We are apt to believe, if any other party in the nation had been so crushed and harassed by his power as ye, none would have born it better.
Let him still find that no discouragement will fret or tempt you from your duty and that for conscience-sake, without by-ends; yea, bear due allegiance to him so far as may stand with your allegiance to the King of kings and Lord of lords. And who knows what a conviction this may produce in end? 1 Sam. 24:17-18, testifying to him and all men your cause is of God, which leads you to be so conscientious toward man; and that you are the only fast and faithful friends to authority, who will cleave to it in a stormy day out of the fear of God when all its self-seeking friends will desert it when their interest parts with it; and that it is not humor, but conscience which keeps you off from complying with his will in the matters of your God wherein ye differ from him.”
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On the Nature of Civil Government
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Civil Government & Governers are under God’s Law
Quotes
1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
Lex Rex... (1644; Edinburgh: Ogle, 1843)
“50… All the forged inconsistency betwixt presbyteries and monarchies is an opposition with absolute monarchy and concluded with a like strength against parliaments, and all synods of either side, against the law and gospel preached, to which kings and kingdoms are subordinate.”
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p. 65 rt col
“And because the king being made a king leaves not off to be a reasonable creature, he must be under a law, and so his will and lust cannot be the rule of his power and dominion, but law and reason must regulate him.
Now if God had given to the king a dominion over men as reasonable creatures, his power and dominion which by royalists is conceived to be above law, should be a rule to men as reasonable men, which would make men under kings no better than brute beasts, for then should subjects exercise acts of reason, not because good and honest, but because their prince commands them so to do; and if this cannot be said, none can be at the disposing of kings in politic acts liable to royal government, that way that the slave is in his actions under the dominion of his master.”
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The Due Right of Presbyteries... (London, 1644), pt. 2, p. 415
“…but the truth is, neither the king’s judgment [is] as a certain rule to the representative Church, nor [is] the representative Church’s judgment a rule to the king, but the Word of God [is], the infallible rule to both. Judgement may crook; truth cannot bow; it stands still, unmoveable, like God the Father of Truth.”
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The Human Root of Civil Power
Quotes
1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
Lex Rex... (1644; Edinburgh: Ogle, 1843)
“For the subject of royal power, we affirm, the first and ultimate, and native subject of all power is the community, as reasonable men naturally inclining to a society; but the ethical and political subject, or the legal and positive receptacle of this power is various, according to the various constitutions of the policy. In Scotland and England, it is the three estates of parliament; in other nations, some other judges or peers of the land.”
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question 17, p. 69 rt col top
“There is no community but is major [has authority] in this, that it can appoint its own tutors; and though it cannot be without all rulers [due to the inclinations of nature], yet it may well be without this or that prince and ruler, and, therefore, may resume its power, which it gave conditionally to the ruler for its own safety and good; and in so far as this condition is violated, and power turned to the destruction of the commonwealth, it is to be esteemed as not given; and though the people be not a politic judge in their own cause, yet in case of manifest oppression, nature can teach them to oppose defensive violence against offensive. A community in its politic body is also above any ruler, and may judge what is manifestly destructive to itself.”
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question 17, p. 69 rt col mid
“…and the people has virtually all royal power in them, as in a sort of immortal and eternal fountain, and may create to themselves many kings.”
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Would there be Civil Government if there were No Sin?
No
Quotes
1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
Lex Rex... (1644; Edinburgh: Ogle, 1843)
question 13, p. 50 rt col
“1. There is a subjection in respect of natural being, as the effect to the cause; so, though Adam had never sinned, this morality of the Fifth Command should have stood in vigor, that the son by nature, without any positive law, should have been subject to the father, because from him he has his being, as from a second cause. But I doubt if the relation of a father, as a father, does necessarily infer a royal or kingly authority of the father over the son; or by nature’s law, that the father has a power of life and death over, or above, his children, and the reasons I give are:
(1) Because power of life and death is by a positive law, presupposing sin and the fall of man [Gen. 9:5-6]; and if Adam, standing in innocency, could lawfully kill his son, though the son should be a malefactor, without any positive law of God, I much doubt [Gen. 4:14-15].
(2) I judge that the power royal, and the fatherly power of a father over his children, shall be found to be different; and the one is founded on the law of nature, the other, to wit, royal power, on a mere positive law.
2. The degree or order of subjection natural is a subjection in respect of gifts or age. So Aristotle (1 polit., chp. 3) says, “that some are by nature servants.” His meaning is good — that some gifts of nature, as wisdom natural, or aptitude to govern, has made some men of gold, fitter to command, and some of iron and clay, fitter to be servants and slaves…
It is possible Plato had a good meaning (Dialogue 3, Of Laws) who made six orders here. “1. That fathers command their sons; 2. The noble the ignoble; 3. The elder the younger; 4. The masters the servants; 5. The stronger the weaker; 6. The wise the ignorant.” Aquinas (22, q. 57, article 3), Driedo (de libert. Christ, bk. 1, p. 8), following Aristotle (polit. bk. 7, ch. 14) hold, though man had never sinned there should have been a sort of dominion of the more gifted and wiser above the less wise and weaker; not antecedent from nature properly, but consequent, for the utility and good of the weaker, in so far as it is good for the weaker to be guided by the stronger, which cannot be denied to have some ground in nature.”
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p. 79 lt col top
“But a king, by a sort of contingency, succeeds to kings; for nature does not ascertain us there must be kings to the world’s end, because the essence of governors is kept safe in aristocracy and democracy, though there were no kings;
and that kings should necessarily have been in the world, if man had never fallen in sin, I am not, by any cogent argument, induced to believe. I conceive there should have been no government but those of fathers and children, husband and wife, and (which is improperly government) some more gifted with supervenient additions to nature, as gifts and excellencies of engines.”
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Yes
1600’s
George Gillespie
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The Relations of the People to their Government
Articles
1600’s
Rutherford, Samuel – Lex Rex... (1644; Edinburgh: Ogle, 1843)
Question 19, ‘Whether or no the King be in Dignity and Power above the People’ 77-88
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Quotes
1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
Lex Rex... (1644; Edinburgh: Ogle, 1843)
p. 56 rt col mid
“…for the king and people are each of them above and below others in divers respects: the people, because they create the man king, they are so above the king, and have a virtual power to compel him to do his duty; and the king, as king, has an authoritative power above the people, because royalty is formally in him, and originally and virtually only in the people, therefore may he compel them to their duty, as we shall hear anon; and therefore there is no need of an earthly ruler higher than both, to compel both.”
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p. 70 lt col mid
“Assertion 3. The king is more properly a sort of patron, to defend the people (and therefore has no power given either by God or man to hurt the people) and a minister, or public and honorable servant (Rom. 13:4), for he is the minister of God to thee for good.
1. He is the commonwealth’s servant objectively, because all the king’s service, as he is king, is for the good, safety, peace and salvation of the people, and in this he is a servant.
2. He is the servant of the people representatively, in that the people has impawned in his hand all their power to do royal service.”
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On the Limits of Civil Government
Quote
1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
Lex Rex... (1644; Edinburgh: Ogle, 1843), p. 34
“I lay down this maxim of divinity: Tyranny being a work of Satan, is not from God, because sin, either habitual or actual, is not from God; the power that ‘is’ [Rom. 13:1], must be from God; the magistrate as magistrate, is good, in nature of office, and the intrinsecal end of his office, Rom. 13:4, for he is the minister of God for thy good; and therefore a power ethical, politic, or moral, to oppress, is not from God, and is not a power, but a licentious deviation of a power, and is no more from God (but from sinful nature, and the old serpent) than a license to sin.”
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Against the Regulative Principle of Civil Government
Quotes
Order of
Ames
Edwards
Baillie
Gillespie
Rutherford
English Presbyterians
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1600’s
William Ames
A Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in God’s Worship… (Amsterdam: Thorp, 1633), ch. 1 on section 2, p. 2
“General rules are given in the New Testament for civil policy or government of commonwealth: yet no man (I think) will say that civil policy is so fully and perfectly taught in the New Testament as it was in the Old, or as religious worship is now in the New.”
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An Analytical Exposition of Both Epistles of the Apostle Peter… (London, 1641), p. 58
“Question: Why is the Magistracy called an ‘ordinance of man’ [1 Pet. 2] v. 13, seeing all powers are ordained of God, and every power is the ordinance of God, Rom. 13:1-2?
Answer: The superiority of power, or government itself, is simply and absolutely commanded by God, and in that respect [it] is called the ordinance of God; but this or that special manner of power or government is not determined by God, but by men; and is therefore [it is] called an ordinance of man, which as touching the nature of it, may also be called an ordinance of God: And this is the difference betwixt an ecclesiastical and a civil office: An ecclesiastical office is not legitimate if it be not directly determined by God Himself, and consequently cannot be changed by men: but this or that civil office may be made and changed by men. And the reason of the difference is this, because God and Christ alone has dominion and power in spiritual matters; but in civil matters men are also [g]ods, though not absolute.”
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Thomas Edwards
Antapologia, or a Full Answer to the Apologetical Narration (London: G.M., 1644), p. 72
“Nay suppose some should so extol the fullness and sufficiency of the Scriptures that they should hold them so perfect and sufficient for all Christians as to be a perfect rule for all civil government, and that Chrstian commonwealths ought to be governed by laws only there recorded and by no other (which opinion in substance Carolostadius held; that in courts of justice judges should not proceed according to humane laws, but according to the law of Moses; and so for military practices, should hold all the way of war must be founded upon the Scriptures, and thereupon should clamor against any other art and way of war than what was practised there.
What would you reply to these men, or what strength were there in such principles? Would not you answer them in what sense the Scriptures were perfect, and how they must understand it?”
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Robert Baillie
A Dissuasive From the Errours of the Time (1645), p. 31
“They spoil kings and parliaments of their legislative power.
But their great tenet about the magistracy is this, that no prince nor state on the earth has any legislative power; that neither king nor parliament can make any law in anything that concerns either church or state; that God alone is the Lawgiver; that the greatest magistrate has no other power, but to execute the Laws of God set down in Scripture; that the judicial Law of Moses binds at this day all the nations of the world as well as ever it did the Jews: They tell us that whatever God in Scripture has left free, it may not be bound by any human law, whether civil or ecclesiastic; and what God has bound by any law in Scripture, they will not have it loosed by the hand of any man.”
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George Gillespie
Aaron’s Rod Blossoming; or, the divine ordinance of church government vindicated (1646; Edinburgh, 1844), p. 84
“The presbyterial government has no such liberty nor arbitrariness as civil or military government has, there being in all civil or temporal affairs a great deal of latitude left to those who manage the same, so that they command nor act against the Word of God. But presbyterial government is tied up to the rules of Scripture in all such particulars as are properly spiritual and proper to the church, though, in other particulars, occasional circumstances of times, places, accommodations and the like, the same light of nature and reason guides both church and state; yet in things properly spiritual and ecclesiastical, there is not near so much latitude left to the presbytery, as there is in civil affairs to the magistrate.”
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One Hundred and Eleven Propositions concerning the Ministry and Government of the Church (1647; Edinburgh, 1844), p. 12
“40. The reformed churches believe also, and openly confess, the power and authority of emperors over their empires, of kings over their kingdoms, of princes and dukes over their dominions, and of other magistrates or states over their commonwealths and cities, to be the ordinances of God Himself appointed as well as to the manifestation of his own glory, as to the singular profit of mankind: and withal, that by reason of the will of God Himself, revealed in his Word, we must not only suffer and be content that those do rule which are set over their own territories, whether by hereditary or elective right, but also to love them, fear them, and with all reverence and honor embrace them as the ambassadors and ministers of the most high and good God, being in his stead, and preferred for the good of their subjects, to pour out prayers for them, to pay tributes to them, and in all business of the commonwealth which is not against the Word of God, to obey their laws and edicts.
…
48. For to that end also is the holy Scripture profitable, to show which is the best manner of governing a commonwealth, and that the magistrate, as being Gods minister, may by this guiding star be so directed, as that he may execute the parts of his office according to the will of God and may perfectly be instructed to every good work…”
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Samuel Rutherford 1658
A Survey of the Survey of that Sum of Church Discipline Penned by Thomas Hooker, p. 278
“2. The civil corporation may:
[1.] limit the major [an official] in regard of time, for a year and no longer;
2. they may make him half a tyrant, a dictator and absolute, or give him less power, that he shall rule none but with the consent of 12 assessors; but the people may not make him a pastor for a year and then lay him aside for no fault as a major is unofficed; nor may they limit him so as he shall not preach in season and out of season but by the consent of 12 men.
3. The corporation may erect itself in a kingdom or commonwealth and may create consuls, dictators, praetors, tribunos plebis, etc. as may most serve for the safety and peace of this State; but the Church may bring in no new officers but those appointed by Christ; nor may they alter the government, and metamorphose it into another than that which is according to the pattern showed in the mount.”
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English Presbyterians
Anonymous, English Presbytery, or an Account of the Main Opinions of those ministers and people in England who go under the name of Presbyterians… (London, 1680), p. 11
“Concerning the Civil Magistrate
…
2. For the due form of government, or power of governors in any nation, they believe God’s Word has fixed no universal rule, only confirming the just laws of kingdoms and polities, and they believe it their duty to be obedient to such governors in all places, as the laws in that place have established, and in the exercise of such power as those laws have given them. From the obedience to which no person upon the account of religion can pretend to an immunity; and in the exercise of which no magistrate ought by any to be resisted.”
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On the Grounds & Extent of Civil Rights & Restrictions
Quotes
1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience… (1649), ch. 2, p. 39
“…whereas liberty to do ill in any sense is licentiousness, not liberty.”
.
Richard Baxter
The English Nonconformity as under King Charles II & King James II Truly Stated & Argued (London: Parkhurst, 1689), Preface
“It is agreed on by all real Christians that man being made an intelligent, free agent, not under bruitish necessitating determination by objects, is governed by God by the moral way of law; that is by the signification of his Ruler’s will, making his duty, and not by mere natural or forcible motion: And it is agreed that God Himself is his only absolute Universal Ruler, and his laws given in nature and by revelation are the only universal laws, which no human power can abrogate or dispense with:
And that kings and magistrates are his ministers for men’s good, and have no power but from Him, and none against Him or his laws; and that it is not man but God, by whom we must all be judged to everlasting reward or punishment: And therefore that all men must obey God before men, and must not fear them that can but kill the body, but Him who is able to cast both soul and body into Hell.”
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Robert L. Dabney
The Practical Philosophy (Mexico, MO, 1897), p. 383
“Man’s natural liberty is this: privilege of having and doing those things only to which the individual has a moral right. Consequently, the natural liberty of two men in the same commonwealth may be different, because under Providence, their natural endowments and relations may differ. Were it possible to frame a government thoroughly equitable, each person’s civic liberty would be identical with his natural: the privilege of having and doing all those things, and those only, to which each has a moral right.”
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On Seeking, Maintaining & Defending Wholesome Civil Rights
Quotes
1600’s
Richard Baxter
Richard Baxter’s Answer to Dr. Edward Stillingfleet’s Charge of Separation… (London: 1680), ‘A Reply to Dr. Stillingfleet’s Letter’, p. 16
“4. Personal power in man is the first; family power is the next; city and kingdom power supposes these and cannot destroy them.
Hence subjects that are not mere slaves stand up to plead for their personal and domestic property, liberty and power, if my money, and limbs and life be not at the patron’s or the prince’s will, much less my soul. He is trusted with my estate and life; but I am first and more trusted with them. He may keep out ill physicians from the land, and encourage the good, but he has no power to tie me to an ill physician, nor to an ill diet, nor to ill servants, etc. The choice of these belongs to myself…
I will not believe that the patron loves me and all the parish better than we love ourselves.”
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Schism Detected in both Extremes, or Two Sorts of Sinful Separation… (London: 1684), ch. 4, p. 26
“XXVII. Self-interest, self-Government and family-government are all antecedent to publick government, which rules them for the common good, but has no authority to destroy them: No king or prelate can bind a man to do that which would damn his soul, nor to omit that which is needful to his salvation: All power is for edification: They are God’s ministers for God.
XXVIII. As it belongs to self-government to choose our own diet, and clothes, and wives, and physicians, (though we may be restrained from doing public hurt on such pretences); And it belong to family government to educate our own children, and choose their tutors, callings, wives, etc. so it more nearly belongs to self-government to choose the most safe and profitable means of our own salvation, which no man may forbid us; and to avoid that which is pernicious or hurtful; and to family-government to do the like for our children.”
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On Liberty & Civil Liberty
Article
1600’s
Gale, Theophilus – sect. 2, ‘On Physical Liberty’ tr. by AI by Nosferatu 63 pp. in General Philosophy in Two Parts... (London: 1676), pt. 1, bk. 3, ch. 3, pp. 440-508 Latin
Gale was a reformed philosopher in the Platonic tradition and here discusses lots of issues regarding physical liberty, concurrence (§9, pp. 26-49), etc.
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On Executive Privilege, Power & Mandates
Intro
Executive privilege is when no existent laws sufficiently govern how something (especially something emergent) ought to be done, and officers of the executive branch are left with the responsibility (for the good of the commonwealth) and liberty as to how that good end ought to be executed and accomplished. Good general ends, if they are to take effect, must be enacted in some particular way (which, though, could plausibly be done otherwise, there being some latitude in the matter regarding the indifferent means to the end). It is left to the discretion of the executive branch how to enact such things.
In the late-1500’s & 1600’s, such an executive privilege was known as the royal-prerogative. Today it is seen in America’s Executive Branch executing special powers delegated to them, usually (but not always) under numerous restrictions, in doing things apart from the Legislative Branch, sometimes by executive mandates.
Such an executive privilege is legitimate when it is grounded on sufficient natural and moral warrant, being in this way ministerial and declarative in nature. Needless to say, executive privilege is easily apt to be abused when such acts and mandates do not reflect natural law or preserve equality, or are truly for the health of the community, but rather are made at the mere pleasure and whim of rulers, embody partisan interests, are domineering in nature and do not have the populace’s consent.
During the Post-Reformation era, the Erastians and those who promoted the absolutism of political rulers (the reigning philosophy of the worldlings of the 1600’s) used the pretext of royal prerogative to justify nearly any and everything at the mere pleasure of the ruler, even when it went contrary to the very laws of the land. The people, needless to say, became enslaved to the mere whims and absolute dictates of their rulers, this often occurring under the pretext of the ‘Divine Right of Kings’.
The issue is not only civil: such arbitrary rule is not infrequently found in churches and families under the assumption of the liberty of the elders, husbands and fathers to rule as they see fit. In Rutherford’s chapter below, replace ‘king’ with ‘elders’ and ‘father’, and ‘royal prerogative’ with ‘the elders’ prerogative’ or ‘the father’s prerogative’, and worlds of real-life understanding will unfold before your eyes.
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Quotes
1600’s
George Gillespie
Aaron’s Rod Blossoming… (1646), Bk. 2, ch. 1, ‘Of the Rise, Growth, Decay & Reviving of Erastianism’, p. 163 Gillespie is giving the history of Erastianism since the Reformation by way of allegory.
“After that this unlucky child [Erastianism] had been nursed upon so bad milk, it came at last to eat strong food, and that was Arbitrary Government, under the name of Royal Prerogative.”
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Samuel Rutherford
Lex Rex... (1644; Edinburgh: Ogle, 1843), Question 39, ‘Whether or No any Prerogative at All Above the Law be Due to the King, or if Jura Magestatis [the Rights of Majesty] be any Such Prerogative Royal?’, p. 193
“I conceive kings are conceived to have a threefold supreme power:
1. Strictly absolute to do what they please, their will being simply a law. This is tyrannical. Some
kings have it, de facto, ex consuetudine [by custom], but
by a divine law none have it…
2. There is another power limited to God’s law, the due proper right of kings. (Dt. 17:18-20)
3. There is, a potestas intermedia, a middle power, not so vast as that which is absolute and tyrannical, which yet is some way human. This I take what jurists call jus regium, lex regia, jura regalia regis; Cicero, jura majestatis; Livius, jura imperii, and these royal privileges are such common and high dignities as no one particular magistrate can have [inherently, or to himself alone], seeing they are common to all the kingdom… so the magazine and armory for the safety of the kingdom is in the king’s hand. The king has the like of these privileges, because he is the common, supreme, public officer and minister of God for the good of all the kingdom;
and, amongst these royal privileges, I reckon that power that is given to the king, when he is made king, to do many things without warrant of the letter of the law, without the express consent of his council, which he cannot always carry about with him, as the law says. The king shall not raise armies without consent of the parliament; but if an army of Irish, or Danes, or Spaniards, should suddenly land in Scotland, he has a power, without a formally-convened parliament, to command them all to rise in arms against these invaders and defend themselves — this power no inferior magistrate has as he is, but [only] such a magistrate [as the king].
And in many such exigencies, when the necessity of justice or grace requires an ex-temporal [out of the moment] exposition of laws, pro re nata, ‘for present necessary execution’, some say only the emperor, — others, all kings have these pleasures.”
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Article
1600’s
Rutherford, Samuel – ch. 23, ‘Whether the King has Any Royal Prerogative, or a Power to Dispense with Laws; & Some Other Grounds Against Absolute Monarchy’ in Lex Rex (1644; 1843), p. 106-113
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Unbelievers can be Valid Magistrates
Articles
1600’s
Gillespie, George – bk. 2, ch. ? in Aaron’s Rod
.
2000’s
Fentiman, Travis – ‘Unbelieving Magistrates: Theses 11-13’ in Theses on the Ethics of Civil Voting, with a Correction to the Booklet, Christ Centered Voting (2024) on the RBO page, ‘On Voting’
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On Qualifications of Civil Officers
See also, on a related topic, ‘On the Qualifications of 1 Tim. 3 & the Good Order of the Church’.
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Quotes
Order of
Calvin
Rutherford
MacWard
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1500’s
John Calvin
Commentary on Ex. 18, v. 21
“21. ‘Moreover, thou shalt provide out of all the people.’… meaning, thou shalt choose out and take the most worthy, so that such an office be not entrusted rashly to any one that offers. But this was most reasonable, among a free people, that the judges should not be chosen for their wealth or rank, but for their superiority in virtue.
Yet although it be right that regard should be chiefly had to virtue, so that if any one of the lower orders be found more suitable than others, he should be preferred to the noble or the rich; still should any one choose to, lay this down as a perpetual and necessary rule, he will be justly accounted contentious.”
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1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
The Divine Right of Church Government… (London, 1646), ch. 24, Question 20, pp. 547-48
“Objection 4 [by an Erastian]: When its required that the magistrates be men fearing God, hating coveteousness, etc. (Ex. 18:21; Dt. 1:16-17; 17:19-20), is not this an essential ingredient of a king as a king, that he read in the book of the Law, that he may fear God, Deut. 17?
[Rutherford’s] Answer: There is a twofold goodness here to be considered: one of the magistrate as a magistrate, another as a good and Christian magistrate.
The former is an official goodness, or a magistratical prudence, justice, and goodness; this is required of all magistrates, as such, to judge the people: so the acts of a heathen magistrate done according to common natural equity, by Nebuchadnezzar, Pilate, Caesar, Felix, Festus, are to be acknowledged as acts of a lawful magistrate, valid and no less essentially magistratical than if performed by King David; and of this goodness the Scriptures speak not as essential to a magistrate as a magistrate.
But there is another goodness required of magistrates as they are members of the Jewish Church, and as they are Christians, and of these the Scripture speaks; and so magistrates not as magistrates, but as good and Christian, are to be such as fear God, hate covetousness, respect not the face and favor of men; so its denied that the fear of God, hating of covteousness, are essential ingredients of kings as kings.
For kings as kings intend justice, peace, godliness, materially considered, both ex conditione operis [out of the nature of the work], and operantium [of those working]. But for justice and righteous judgment in a spiritu∣al and an evangelic way, that belongs not to the essence of a magistrate, nec ex conditione seu ex intentione operis, nec ex conditione operantis [neither out of the nature or the intention of the work, nor out of the nature of the one working]: The Holy Ghost requires it of judges, as they would approve themselves as truly holy and religious, and would be accepted of God;
And in this sense kings as kings do not serve God, nor the mediator Christ, nor yet as men; only they serve God and the mediator Christ as Christian Kings, or as Christian men rather.”
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Robert McWard
The Banders Disbanded (1681), p. 47 McWard was a protege of Rutherford and leader of the Scottish covenanters.
“XXV. As every escape, error, or act of unfaithfulness (even known and continued in) whether in a minister’s entry to the ministry, or in his doctrine or deportment, does not non-minister him, nor give sufficient ground to withdraw from, or reject him as a minister of Christ: So neither does every enormity, mis-demeanure or act of tyranny, injustice, perfidy or profanity etc. in the civil magistrate, whether as to his way of entry to that office or in the execution of it, or in his private and personal behavior, denominate him a tyrant or an usurper, or give sufficient ground to divest him of his magistratical power, and reject him as the lawful magistrate.”
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May Church-Officers Hold Civil Office?
Intro
Christ gives persons, and their spiritual gifts, as gifts to the Church, for her government and upbuilding (Eph. 4:11-13). Therefore, holding Church office is for life (apart from disqualifying oneself or extraordinary circumstances). Due to the importance of the spiritual work and calling (Mt. 6:33; Acts 13:2; 1 Cor. 14:1,5), Church-officers are admonished: “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.” This was the example of our Lord on earth (Lk. 12:13-14; Mt. 8:20-22), and his instruction to his appointed officers (Mk. 1:17-18; 28:18-20). Paul’s tentmaking was done out of necessity and was only temporary (for the greater good); the rule is that ministers ought to give themselves “continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the Word”, for “it is not reason that we should leave the Word of God, and serve tables.” (Acts 6:2,4) If Church-officers serve in civil offices, a significant amount of their time will be spent on the temporal affairs of this life, contrary to their higher calling.
For these reasons and others, many reformed countries at the Reformation banned Church-officers from holding civil office. The Romanists had also long and severely abused the practice, bringing in serious conflicts of interest while mixing jurisdictions. The Anglican Church, however, and her prelates, commonly continued the practice. The rise of the sects in London in the 1640’s, including congregationalism, commonly held that lay persons with ordinary, natural callings might regularly be pastors, as a matter of principle. The New England puritans, being congregationalists, tended to hold this theological viewpoint, but also were in the unique circumstance of struggling for their communities’ survival in the wilderness, there being only so many gifted men in their small towns.
John Davenant (1572–1641), being an Anglican, argues for the compatibility of Church-officers holding civil office. It is true that Church-officers can hold civil office (such as the Judges, David, etc., though these were types of Christ in that capacity), however, this ought only to be for necessity out of extraordinary reasons in special circumstances. Deacons and Ruling Elders commonly, today, hold secular positions while yet serving in the Church. This is out of necessity, as Gillespie and Rutherford remarked during the Post-Reformation, due to the poorness of the Church, who has little to pay them for their labors. In much of the Early Church and Middle Ages deacons and elders were able to be paid, and devote themselves, full-time.
Gillespie’s context below is a bit different. He is arguing against ecclesiastical men sitting in a civil body which was given, by charge of the king, jursidiction in both civil and ecclesiastical affairs. This is different than simply ecclesiastical men sitting in civil bodies that only judge of civil affairs by their civil office, such as was sometimes the case in Post-Reformation England and in Indpendent, puritan New England.
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Articles
1600’s
English Partially Conforming Puritans – A Refutation of the Errors of Separatists (1604; RBO, 2025)
pt. 1, Objection 4, pp. 232-33
pt. 2, Objection 3, pp. 262-68
Davenant, John – ‘Civil Jurisdiction is Rightly Conceded to Ecclesiastical Persons’ in The Determinations, or Resolutions of Certain Theological Questions, Publicly Discussed in the University of Cambridge trans. Josiah Allport (1634; 1846), pp. 275-279 bound at the end of John Davenant, A Treatise on Justification, or the Disputatio de Justitia... trans. Josiah Allport (1631; London, 1846), vol. 2
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Quotes
Order of
French Reformed
Gillespie
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1600’s
French Reformed
ed. John Quick,Synodicon in Gallia reformata, or, The Acts, Decisions, Decrees & Canons of those Famous National Councils of the Reformed Churches in France (London: Parkhurst, 1692), Synod 21, of Tonneins, 1614, ch. 19, A Letter from the Church of Geneva. To the National Synod of the Reformed Churches of France assembled at Tonneins, pp. 441-42
“From whence we take the freedom to entreat you for God’s sake, strictly to inspect into vocations and employments, that they be not mixed nor confounded to the detriment both of the one and other. The ministerial function is expressly limited by the Word of God as to its laws, ends, means and actings, it being altogether different from, yea and totally contrary to the secular government; And we conceive that there is no such difficulty in the matter, but that ministers may be kept within the inviolable bounds of their most holy calling, and yet be useful unto the public without glorying in those little arts of subtilties and surprisals, which abutt at no other mark than temporal and carnal profit.
Besides that ’tis a very rare thing to find a man capable both of the one and other calling, there is this grand mischief in it, that flesh and blood seeing in the holy ministry nothing but what is mean and humble, despicable, and painful, difficult and dangerous, and contrariwise meeting in the management of secular affairs with food and fuel enough for pride, ambition and covetousness (the ground of all envies and jealousies), and with the means and helps to carry on designs of self-advancement and domination, as tricks, craft and dissimulation; It will be almost impossible to hinder the spreading of this contagion, which creeps insensibly into the greatest wits, and seizes upon them at unawares, and not as an affected and approved vice.
We know very well, that necessity, the law of the present day, is pleaded and urged on behalf of this practice, too too much in use among you to vindicate and justify it. But for God’s sake, most dear brethren, we beseech you to consider, whether it were not better that your temporal affair should suffer some inconveniencies, than your spiritual ones to be contaminated; And whether the great risk you run in ruining and depraving your pastors should be preferred unto your temporal interests. And whether it were not better to have a reserve among you of some pure and savory salt against the general corruption, rather than to hazard all in this universal overthrow by the world, upon which theater we see the most valiant champions to be foiled.
If the necessity be absolute, peremptory and indispensable, then let them go about such secular political affairs with regret and grief, troubled at their enforced distraction from their heavenly calling, lamenting as the spouse in the Canticles that they have made me the keeper of the vineyard, but mine own vineyard have I not kept. Let them go, but then only, when your businesses are in extreme danger, as it were at the last gasp, when you need the greatest circumspection, a most immovable fidelity, and unchangeable integrity, and without any affectation or introduction of ambition, or hidden, disguised interests. No man going to war entangles himself with the world, that so he may the better please his Captain that has listed him. That commination is very dreadful, the priest shall be as the people, and that lamentation exceeding doleful, All this evil and mischief is from the prophets, and the stones of the sanctuary are lying at the four corners of the streets.
Let us, most dear and honored brethren, give up and resign ourselves to the conduct of true wisdom, speaking to us from the Word of God, which is, to forsake our own. This also, most honored brethren should be endeavored, that all persons whatsoever in the ministry, when called forth unto those secondary employments of the Church, do retain in their deportments and conversations the marks and characters of their first and most sacred vocation. Let their devotion, piety, gravity, self-denial, and sequestration from worldly pleasures, used with too great a liberty by many Christian statesmen serve to maintain the sweet odor and reputation of our Church government, and to keep up inviolably the authority of their most holy ministry, and to bind the souls and consciences of men by religious humility to an everlasting dependance on the majesty of their great Lord, whose holiness and sovereign wisdom shines forth most resplendently in the order of his service, as the Queen of Sheba saw and admired it in the Court of Solomon.
Impiety and impudence are too much in vogue everywhere. But let the sanctuary, the Church of God be at least the receptacle and habitation of true and unfeigned piety, where it may act and breath freely at in the open air, with an uplifted countenance, in a courageous demonstration of the Spirit, and evidence of Truth, convincing and condemning the unfruitful works of darkness, and awakening with its bright shining flambeau the drowzy consciences of a perverse generation, it may encourage the faithful unto perseverance, and preserve the remnant of Jacob in this day of dispersions and desolations.”
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George Gillespie
English Popish Ceremonies (1637), pt. 3, bk. 8, Digression 4, pp. 195-97
“Now there was brought forth in Scotland, anno 1610, a certain amphibian brood, sprung out of the stem of Neronian tyranny and in manners like to his nearest kinsman, the Spanish Inquisition. It is armed with a transcendent power and called by the dreadful name of the High Commission. Among other things, it arrogates to itself the power of deposing ministers. But how un∣justly, thus it appears:
1. If those commissioners have any power at all to depose ministers, they have it from the king whose commissioners they are. But from him they have it not. Therefore they have none at all. The proposition is most certain:
For they sit not in that commission to judge in their own name, nor by their own authority quum nihil exerceat delegatus nomine proprio, as Panormitan says (apud Forb. Iren, bk. 2, ch. 11, p. 177), but by virtue only of the commission and delegation which they have of the king. Yea, bishops themselves exerce not any jurisdiction in the High Commission as bishops, but only as the king’s commissioners, as Dr. Downame aknowledges (Defens., bk. 1, p. 8).
The assumption is grounded upon this reason:
The king has not power to depose ministers. Therefore he cannot give this power to others. For Nemo potest plus juris transferre in alium quam sibi competere dignoscatur (Boniface, 8, De Regul. Juris Reg., 79). The king may sometimes inflict such a civil punishment upon ministers, whereupon secondarily and accidentally will follow their falling away from their ecclesiastical office and function, (in which sense it is said that Solomon deposed Abiathar, as we heard before), but to depose them directly and formally (which the High Commission usurps to do), he has no power, and that because this deposition is an act of ecclesiastical jurisdiction: Whereas the power of Ecclesiastical jurisdiction does no more agree to the king than the power of ecclesiastical order: his power is civil and temporal, not spiritual and ecclesiastical. Dr. Field also confesses that none may judicially degrade or put anyone lawfully admitted from his degree and order but the spiritual guides of the Church alone (Of the Church, bk. 5, ch. 53, p. 682).
2. The deposing of ministers pertains to classical presbyteries, or (if the matter be doubtful and difficille) to synods, as has been showed. And who then can give the High Commission such authority as to take this power from them, and to assume it unto itself. These Commissioners profess that they have authority to discharge other ecclesiastical judicatories within the kingdom from meddling with the judging of anything which they shall think impertinent for them, and which they shall think good to judge and decide by themselves in their commission. Which, if it be so, then (when it pleases them) they may make other ecclesiastical judicatories to be altogether useless and of no effect in the Church.
3. In this commission, ecclesiastical and temporal men are joined together, and both armed with the same power. Therefore it is not right nor regular, nor in any wise allowable. For even as when a minister has offended in a civil matter, his fault is to be judged by civil judges according to the civil laws, and by no other: so when he offends in an ecclesiastical matter, his fault is to be judged only by ecclesiastical persons according to ecclesiastical laws: and in such a case Justinian forbids civil men to be joined with ecclesiastical men in judgment (Novell., 83, ch. 1). They are ecclesiastical things or causes which are handled and examined by the High Commission in the process of deposing ministers: and a shame it is to ecclesiastical men if they can, without the help and joining of temporal men, judge and decide things of this quality.
4. As in the matters to be judged, so in the censures and punishments to be inflicted; ecclesiastical and civil men have in this Commission alike power and authority: for ecclesiastical men therein have power of fining, confining, warding, etc. common to them with the temporal men: and again, the temporal men have power of excommunication, suspension, deprivation, etc. common to them with the ecclesiastical men. For they all sit there as the king’s commissioners, and so nomine [by name] they exerce this jurisdiction: which Commission being alike discharged by them all, it is manifest that both temporal men take hold of the keys and ecclesiastical men take hold of the civil sword. And this monstruous confusion and mixture gives sufficient demonstration that such a form of judgement is not from the God of order.”
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Latin Article
1600’s
Voet, Gisbert – Ecclesiastical Politics (Amsterdam: Waesberge, 1663), vol. 2, pt. 1, bk. 3, tract 3, Of Certain Other Quasi-Practices
2. Of Quasi-Practices which have been Conceded by the Church or Civil Government 305
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On Laws & Punishment
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Laws & Guidance, Civil or Ecclesiastical, are Not to be for Private Interests
Quotes
1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
Lex Rex... (1644; Edinburgh: Ogle, 1843), p. 124
“It is poor hungry skill… to say that any laws are made for private interests and the good of some individuals. Laws are not laws if they be not made for the safety of the people.”
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Secondary Source
Kirsteen M. MacKenzie
The Solemn League & Covenant of the Three Kingdoms & the Cromwellian Union, 1643-1663 (Routledge, 2018), ch. 1, p. 36
“The pursuit of covenanted uniformity [in 1643] aimed to compensate for the withering cooperation within the Anglo-Scottish relationship and the emergence of a fully anglocentric approach to the relationship between the Three Stuart Kingdoms. The priorities of an Independent minority at Westminster became paramount characterised by the emergence of a private interest at the expense of the public interest.”
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The Magistrate Punishes Crime, Not as Sin, but as Civil Scandals Against Good Order, unto a Judicial Expiation of Positive Order
Quotes
1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
The Divine Right of Church Government... (1646)
pp. 550-51
“But Magistrates as Magistrates hold forth in their Law-abstinence from those same sins of adultery, incest, murder; But:
1. Not to the consciences of their subjects, but to the outer man as members of the commonwealth.
2. Not under the pain of eternal wrath and condemnation, before the judge of quick and dead: Magistrates as Magistrates have neither calling, office, place nor power to threaten or inflict eternal punishment; if Magistrates do persuade the equity of abstinence from adultery, incest, murder, in their statutes, or acts of parliament, from the Word of God, from the sixth and seventh command of the Decalogue, from the judgement and eternal punishment that follows these sins, they so persuade not as magistrates, but as divines, and as godly and Christian men…
3. Magistrates as Magistrates hold forth in their Law, abstinence from these sins, not as the ambassadors of Christ, craving subjection of conscience and divine-faith to those charges, but only external obedience: for though ministers as ministers crave faith and subjection of conscience to all commandments and inhibitions, as in Christ’s stead, 2 Cor. 5:19-20, yet the magistrate as the magistrate does not crave either faith or subjection of conscience; nor is he in Christ’s stead to lay divine bands on the conscience, to submit the soul and conscience to believe and abstain; he is the deputy of God as the God of Order, and as the Creator, and Founder, and another of human societies and of Peace, to exact external obedience, and to lay bands on your hands not to shed innocent blood, and on your body not to defile it with adultery, or incest, nor to violate the chastity of your brother… when the magistrate punishes spiritual sins, heresy, idolatry, he punishes them only with temporary punishment.”
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p. 600
“If any say [such as the Erastians], ‘Who can deny but the magistrate as the magistrate may command that which is obedience to Christ, and reward it, and forbid sin and punish it?’
Answer: But the magistrate as such forbids not sin as sin, for then as a magistrate he should forbid sin under the punishment of eternal wrath, which he cannot do as a magistrate, he only can forbid sin under the pain of his temporary punishment, which he can inflict, and as it disturbs societies and incorporations.”
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A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience… (1649)
Ch. 4, pp. 51-2
“But the sword is a means negatively to punish acts of false worship in those that are under the Christian Magistrate and profess Christian society, insofar as these acts come out to the eyes of men and are destructive to the souls of these in a Christian religion. Tis even so (and not otherwise punishable by the Magistrate), for he may punish omissions of hearing the doctrine of the Gospel and other external performances of worship, as these omissions by ill example or otherwise are offensive to the souls of these that are to lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty;
Nor does it follow that the sword is a kindly means to force outward performances, for the Magistrate as the Magistrate does not command these outward performances as service to God, but rather forbids the omissions of them as destructive to man.
For example, a physician commands fasting; pastors after the example of James commands fasting when judgments are on us; the physician commands it insofar as eating troubles the common society of humors, members and temper of the body, and the physician forbids eating so as he will have no more to do with the patient if he will disobey and so trouble the temper of the body, which is the only object the physician works on. Pastors command fasting to be in sincerity for afflicting and humbling the soul under the mighty hand of God.
So the Magistrate forbids cutting of a vein or shedding of blood as a thing troubling the peace of human society, yet his command is not a direct means of preventing diseases in the body of a subject and for healthy living. But the physician commands to cut a vein and to shed blood for health and to prevent a disease, and sins neither against the Magistrate nor God in so doing: so does the Magistrate not directly command going to Church as a worship to God, so as his commands have influence on the conscience as the pastor’s commands have, but he commands going to church and hearing so as the omission of hearing hurts the society where of God has made him a civil and politic head.”
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Ch. 11, p. 139
“For we nowhere teach that the sword is a means of converting, but the just vengeance that is inflicted by the minister of God upon false teachers, as upon other evil-doers, so it is not destinated by God for spiritual gaining and reducing of heretics that may repent, but for judicial expiation of wrongs done to the flock and Christian society.”
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Ch. 27, ‘Whether our Darkness & Incapacity to Believe…’, p. 323-5 (356-8)
“…the Magistrate indeed forbids speaking of blasphemy and teaching of lies in the name of the Lord, but he forbids not teaching of lies, or abstinence from blaspheming, in a spiritual, but in a carnal, co-active, by force of the sword and external way, because he cannot punish the spiritual and internal ways and manner of external obedience, and therefore he cannot under pain of bodily censure command and forbid these ways of obedience; so the Magistrate forbids murder, but God, not the Magistrate, forbids murder, or commands abstinence from killing, out of mercy and love to our neighbor; for the Magistrate cannot punish heart-hatred of our neighbor, or rash anger, but insofar as it comes out to his senses, in striking, maiming, or opprobrious speeches; and these he can forbid and censure and punish.
So we say [that] the Magistrate is but a piece, or a bit of an ordinance (though both lawful and necessary, Rom. 13, for our good [v. 4]) to reform the outside and to work outward reformation; and when he commands the outward man and says, ‘Swear not, blaspheme not, speak not lies in the name of the Lord, kill not, steal not under the pain of feeling the stroke of the sword’: he commands not sinning. For though he forbid only external abstinence from sins that troubles the outward man, without any spiritual and internal right way of abstaining, he commands not sin and hypocrisy, per se, and kindly [in its kind], and properly.
1. Because the Magistrate, as the Magistrate, should and ought, as the Minister of God, give commandments to the outward man under pain of corporal punishment, not to the soul or to the inward man.
2. Because that external obedience, not to kill, not to steal, not to speak lies, is good, lawful external obedience, to man, and profitable in the State for the end that God has appointed it, which is the peaceable conversing one with another; that same abstinence from killing in an unrenewed man, who abstains not from killing for fear of God and love to his brethren, is a sinful abstinence and carnal repentance, by accident, and in relation to the Law of God; but the Magistrate neither commands abstinence from killing from an inward spiritual principle, nor forbids he the contrary: he commands not abstinence from false doctrine out of the love that the messenger owes to him who purchased the flock with his blood, nor forbids he such abstinence, but only he commands abstinence from speaking lies to the people of God.
3. If we distinguish obedience, there is first a necessary and good and lawful obedience. 2. There is an obedience complete and entire, and full, and sincere. Outward obedience, which the Magistrate commands, is good and lawful and [is] necessary obedience, and is, in the kind of external and necessary obedience (I mean) necessary for its end, [namely] the safety of the society, not hypocritical, unlawful or sinful. In this notion only it is commanded by the Magistrate, and the omission of it [is] unlawful and punishable by the sword of the deputy and Minister of God.
But if we speak of an obedience complete, full and sincere, which is required from the whole man in order to the Law of God, then the outward obedience that the Magistrate demands is not complete, entire, nor sincere, but in relation to the Law of God, which requires entire obedience from the whole man, soul and body, it is not full, not entire, not sincere obedience, but an outside of obedience; but in this sense the Magistrate does not demand obedience to the Law of God, for he has to do with the outward man only and as a Magistrate has nothing to do with the soul and conscience: so then, though the Magistrate command to preach sound doctrine, forbid to preach lies in the name of the Lord, yet he commands not hypocrisy and sin; for this argument may as well prove [that] the Magistrate should neither forbid nor punish murder, nor command abstinence from murder to an unrenewed man, for an unrenewed man cannot but abstain from murder in a sinful way, and his abstinence from murder, in order to the spiritual Law of God, is no better ‘than the oblation of swine’s blood, and the cutting off of a dog’s head to God,’ Isa. 66. 1:2, as is all external obedience of either Tables of the Law, First or Second, without faith and spiritual, inward, moral principles and heart-obedience; and Mr. Williams cannot answer this argument but by the principles of Anabaptists, Familists and Enthusiasts, who say [that] all outward ordinances, ministry, preaching, sacraments, yea preachers and magistrates who command outward obedience to God are unlawful now under the New Testament.”
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Civil Punishments may be unto the Reformation of the Individual
Quote
1600’s
Samuel Bolton
The Arraignment of Error... (1646), p. 348
“2. It is to be dispensed charitably; and that has respect to the end of the censure: Punishment, as it is not the mere end of the making [of] any law; So neither is it to be the sole end in the execution of it. This seems too harsh to me—If the Magistrate’s power be ordained of God to be helpful in these cases, I see no reason why it should be so restrained; but in the exercise of it, he may aim at amendment rather than punishment; and to reform rather than to ruin.“
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What Should be Capital Crimes?
Quotes
1500’s
Scottish First Book of Discipline 1560
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1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience… (1649), p. 58
“…it was the magistrate’s duty to take away their head for sodomy, which certainly it was, and that by the very law of nature…”
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May a Christian be a Police Officer, having to Uphold Impure Laws?
Article
2000’s
Fentiman, Travis – ‘Upholding Impure Standards of Civil Law’ in ‘Theses on the Ethics of Civil Voting…’ on the page, ‘On Voting’
While the answer may depend on how bad the instituted laws are that one is told to enforce, and their circumstances, yet in some cases it is possible to uphold impure civil laws, without approving them, for the sake of public order.
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On Torture
Order of Contents
Quotes
Article
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Quotes
Order of
Rutherford
Riissen
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1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
Lex Rex... (1644; Edinburgh: Ogle, 1843)
p. 46
“…to punish, is to inflict malum disconveniens naturae, an evil contrary to nature; but, in appointing rulers and in agreeing to laws, they [the people] consent they shall be punished by another, upon supposition of transgression, as the child willingly going to school submits himself in that to school discipline, if he shall fail against any school law;”
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“Though the children of Ammon did a high injury to David, yet no injury can be recompensed in justice with the pressure of the constrained subjection of loyalty to a violent lord. If David had not had an higher warrant from God than an injury done to his messengers, he could not have conquered them. But the Ammonites were the declared enemies of the church of God, and raised forces against David when they themselves were the injurers and offenders.
And if David’s conquest will prove a lawful title by the sword to all conquerors, then may all conquerors lawfully do to the conquered people as David did; that is, they may ‘put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and cause them pass through the brick-kilne.’ But, I beseech you, will royalists say, that conquerors, who make themselves kings by their sword, and so make themselves fathers, heads, defenders, and feeders of the people, may use the most extreme tyranny in the world, such as David used against the children of Ammon, which he could not have done by the naked title of sword-conquest, if God had not laid a commandment of an higher nature on him to serve God’s enemies so?
I shall then say, if a conquering king be a lawful king, because a conqueror, then has God made such a lawful king both a father, because a king, and a tyrant, and cruel and lionhearted oppressor of those whom he has conquered; for God has given him royal power by this example (2 Sam. 12:30-31) to put these, to whom he is a father and defender by office, to torment, and also to be a torturer of them by office, by bringing their backs under such instruments of cruelty as ‘saws, and harrows of iron, and axes of iron.'”
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“Slavery of servants to lords or masters, such as were of old amongst the Jews, is not natural, but against nature.
1. Because slavery is malum naturae, a penal evil and contrary to nature, and a punishment of sin.
2. Slavery should not have been in the world, if man had never sinned, no more than there could have been buying and selling of men, which is a miserable consequent of sin and a sort of death, when men are put to the toiling pains of the hireling, who longs for the shadow, and under iron harrows and saws, and to hew wood, and draw water continually.”
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“Certainly, a king being a sinful man, and having no restraint on his power [such as by laws, checks and balances, self-defense of the citizenry, etc.] but reason, he may think it reason to allow rebels to kill, drown, hang, torture to death a hundred thousand protestants, men, women, infants in the womb and sucking babes, as is clear in Pharaoh, Manasseh and other princes.”
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Leonard Riissen
A Complete Summary of Elenctic Theology & of as Much Didactic Theology as is Necessary trans. J. Wesley White MTh thesis (Bern, 1676; GPTS, 2009), ch. 11, ‘Christ’, pp. 84-85, 112-13, 121-22
“Controversy – Is God able not only to deprive an innocent creature of life but also to condemn them to the eternal tortures of hell? We deny against certain Scholastics.
Arguments
1. All the ways of God should be mercy and truth to those who keep covenant (Ps. 25:10).
2. Anyone approaching God should believe that He will reward their obedience with a reward not condemn them (Heb. 11:6).
3. In an innocent creature there can be no consciousness of guilt or the just judgment of God, which is the meaning of punishment.
4. No glory to God could arise from this but rather the dishonor of a tyrannical lord.
5. The righteousness of God demands that He acquit the holy, but it does not permit him to condemn someone who has not merited it (Ps. 18:26-27, Gen. 18:25, Ps. 7:11).
Objections
1. He can reduce the innocent to nothing. Reply. Then he only takes away what He gave, but punishment would be to do injury to someone while existing.
2. He acts this way with Christ. Reply. He was our surety, who took our debts on Himself.
3. God can impute to us the sin of Adam. Reply. That is imputed to be ours which is truly ours just as the children of slaves are slaves and the sons of citizens are citizens and are reputed to be such.
4. We are permitted to kill innocent creatures. Reply. 1. Not rational ones. 2. Irrational ones (bruta) for our use (2 Pet. 2:12). 3. It is one thing to kill, another to give to the living the highest punishment according to one’s pleasure.”
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Article
2000’s
Kayser, Phillip – ‘Torture: a Biblical Critique’ (2010)
Kayser demonstrates that torture is contrary to numerous principles in Scripture.
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Prayers for the Civil Government
Quote
1800’s
John ‘Rabbi’ Duncan
‘Just a Talker’, p. 44
“O Lord, bless our sinful, godless, Sabbath-breaking Privy Council. Thou knowest that Thou art not honored there, for they profane thy holy day by their meetings for state business.”
“O Lord, bless the high courts of parliament now assembled. Thou knowest that Thou art not honored there, where potsherd warreth with potsherd. Do Thou be there to over-rule their deliberation”
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Bibliography
Historical
On the Post-Reformation
Book
Mulier, Haitsma – Bibliography of Dutch Seventeenth Century Political Thought. An Annotated Inventory, 1581–1710 (Amsterdam/Maarssen: APA-Holland University Press, 1986)
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Latin Articles
1600’s
Alsted, Johann H.
ch. 15, ‘Magistrate’ in Distinctions through Universal Theology, taken out of the Canon of the Sacred Letters & Classical Theologians (Frankfurt: 1626), pp. 65-68
ch. 28, ‘On the Political Magistrate’ in Theological Common Places Illustrated by Perpetual Similitudes (Frankfurt, 1630), pp. 163-68
Wendelin, Marcus Friedrich – ch. 29, ‘Of the Political Magistrate’ in Christian Theology (Hanau, 1634; 2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1657), bk. 1, ‘Knowledge of God’, pp. 623-38
Rutherford, Samuel – ch. 19, ‘On the Magistrate’ in The Examination of Arminianism ed. Matthew Nethenus (1639-1643; Utrecht, 1668), pp. 728-53
Voet, Gisbert – Select Theological Disputations (Amsterdam: Jansson, 1667), vol. 4
5. ‘On the Court of Many & of Oneself’, pt. 1 62
6. pt. 2 75-91
…
18. ‘On the Political Magistrate’ 206
19. ‘On the Kingly Right of the Hebrews, on 1 Sam. 8:11-19’ 211-31
50. ‘A Syllabus of Questions on the Decalogue’, ‘On the 5th Commandment’
‘On magistrates & subjects in general’ 796
‘On magistrates & their subordinates, or on officials in specific’ 796
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French Book
1600’s
Rivet, Andrew – Instruction for a Christian Prince, through Dialogues Between a Young Prince & his Tutor, along with a Meditation on the Vow of David, the 101st Psalm (Leiden, 1642) Index
“In 1632 Rivet unexpectedly left the University of Leiden because the stadholder Frederik Hendrik, impressed by Rivet’s scholarly qualities and international orientation, wanted his presence at the court in The Hague, seeing in Rivet the ideal educator and governor for his five-year old son, Prince William II…
The marriage of William II to Mary, the oldest daughter of Charles II, in London in 1641, at which wedding Rivet (almost sixty-nine years old) was present, marked the end of his educational task at the court in the Hague. As a summary of his teaching, he wrote the Instruction du Prince Chrestien. It contained seventeen dialogues in which he discussed the duties of a prince toward God and his subjects, including precepts for the personal lifestyle of a prince.” – Willem van Asselt in Theology of the French Reformed Churches (RHB, 2014), pp. 266-7
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“But let us remember that, while Christ forgives the sins of men, he does not overturn political order, or reverse the sentences and punishments appointed by the laws.”
John Calvin
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Related Pages