Question XXX.



Whether or no passive obedience be a mean to which we are subjected in 

conscience, by virtue of a divine commandment; and what a mean 

resistance is. That flying is resistance.



Much is built, to commend patient suffering of ill, and to condemn all 

resistance of superiors, by royalists, on the place, 1 Pet. ii. 18, 

where we are commanded, being servants, to suffer buffets not only for 

ill-doing of good masters, but also undeservedly; and when we do well, 

we are to suffer of those masters that are evil; and so much more are we 

patiently without resistance to suffer of kings. But it is clear, the 

place is nothing against resistance, as in these assertions I clear: —



Assert. 1. — Patient suffering of wicked men, and violent resisting are 

not incompatible, but they may well stand together; so this consequence 

is the basis of the argument, and it is just nothing: to wit, servants 

are to suffer unjustly wounds and buffering of their wicked masters, and 

they are to bear it patiently; therefore, servants are in conscience 

obliged to non-resistance. Now, Scripture maketh this clear, — 1. The 

church of God is to bear with all patience the indignation of the Lord, 

because she hath sinned, and to suffer of wicked enemies which were to 

be trodden as mire in the streets (Micah vii. 9-12); but withal, they 

were not obliged to non-resistance and not to fight against these 

enemies, yea, they were obliged to fight against them also. If these 

were Babylon, Judah might have resisted and fought if God had not given 

a special commandment of a positive law, that they should not fight; if 

these were the Assyrians and other enemies, or rather both, the people 

were to resist by fighting, and yet to endure patiently the indignation 

of the Lord. David did bear most patiently the wrong that his own son 

Absalom, and Ahitophel, and the people inflicted on him, in pursuing him 

to take his life and the kingdom from him, as is clear by his gracious 

expressions (2 Sam. xv. 25, 26; xvi. 10-12; Psal. iii. 1-3); yea, he 

prayeth for a blessing on the people chat conspired against him (Psal. 

iii. 3); yet did he lawfully resist Absalom and the conspirators, and 

sent out Joab and a huge army in open battle against them, (2 Sam. xviii 

1-4, &c.,) and fought against them. And were not the people of God 

patient to endure the violence done to them in the wilderness by Og, 

king of Bashan; Sihon, king of Heshbon; by the Amorites, Moabites, &c.? 

I think God's law tyeth all men, especially his people, to as patient a 

suffering in wars. (Deut. viii. 16.) God then trying and humbling his 

people, as the servant is to endure patiently, unjustly inflicted 

buffets (1 Pet. ii. 18); and yet God's people at God's command did 

resist these kings and people, and did fight and kill them, and possess 

their land, as the history is clear. See the like Josh. xi. 18, 19. 2. 

One act of grace and virtue is not contrary to another; resistance is in 

the children of God an innocent act of self-preservation, as is patient 

suffering, and therefore they may well subsist in one. And so saith 

Amasa by the Spirit of the Lord, 1 Chron. xii. 18, "Peace, peace be unto 

thee, and peace to thy helpers, for God helpeth thee." Now, in that, 

David and all his helpers were resisters of king Saul. 3. The scope of 

the place (1 Pet. ii.) is not to forbid all violent resisting, as is 

clear he speaketh nothing of violent resisting either one way or other, 

but only he forbiddeth revengeful resisting of repaying one wrong with 

another, from the example of Christ, who, "when he was reviled, reviled 

not again; when he suffered, he threatened not;" therefore, the argument 

is a falacy, [2] ab eo quod docitur kata ti, ad illud quod dicitur 

aplos. Though therefore the master should attempt to kill an innocent 

servant, and invade him with a weapon of death suddenly, without all 

reason or cause, or unavoidably, Dr Ferne, (p. 3, sect. 2, p. 10,) in 

that case, doth free a subject from guiltiness if he violently resist 

his prince; therefore, the servant who should violently resist his 

master in the aforesaid case should, and might patiently suffer and 

violently resist, notwithstanding anything that royalists can conclude 

on the contrary. 4. No prince hath a masterly or lordly dominion over 

his subjects, but only a free, ingenuous, paternal and tutorly oversight 

for the good of the people. (Rom. xiii. 4.) The master, especially in 

the apostle Peter's time, had a dominion over servants as over their 

proper goods.



Assert. 2. — Neither suffering formally as suffering; and so neither can 

non-resisting passive fall under any moral law of God, except in two 

conditions: 1. In the point of Christ's passive obedience, he being the 

eternal God as well as man, and so lord of his own blood and life, by 

virtue of a special commandment imposed on him by his Father, was 

commanded to lay down his life, yea, and to be an agent as well as a 

patient in dying (Job. x. 18); yea, and actively he was to contribute 

something for his own death, and offer himself willingly to death (Matt 

xxviii. 20); and, knowing the hour that he was to depart out of this 

world unto the Father, (John xiii. 1,) would not only not fly — which is 

to royalists lawful, to us a special point of resistance (John xiv. 31; 

xviii. 4-7) — but upbraided Peter as the agent of Satan, who would 

dissuade him to die, (Matt xvi. 22, 23,) and would fight for him. And he 

doth not fetch any argument against Peter's drawing of his sword from 

the unlawfulness of self-defence and innocent resistance, (which he 

should have done if royalists plead with any colour of reason from his 

example, against the lawfulness of resistance and self-defence,) but 

from the absolute power of God. 2. From God's positive will, who 

commanded him to die. (Matt, xxvi 53, 54.) If therefore royalists prove 

anything against the lawfulness of resisting kings, when they offer 

(most unjustly) violence to the life of God's servants, from this one 

merely extraordinary and rare example of Christ, the like whereof was 

never in the world, they may, from the same example, prove it unlawful 

to fly, for Christ would not fly. (Psal. xl. 6, 7; Heb. x. 6-9; John 

xiv. 31; xviii. 4-7.) 1. They may prove that people sought by a tyrant 

to be crucified for the cause of God, are to reveal and discover 

themselves to an array of men who come to seek them. (John xiii. 1, 2; 

xviii. 4-7). 2. That martyrs are of purpose to go to the place where 

they know they shall be apprehended and put to death, for this Christ 

did, and are willingly to offer themselves to the enemy's army, for so 

did Christ (John xiv. 3; Mark iv. 41, 42; Matt xxvi. 46, 47); and so by 

his example, all the parliament, all the innocents of the city of 

London, and assembly of divines, are obliged to lay down arms and to go 

to their own death to prince Rupert, and the bloody Irish rebels. 3. By 

this example it is unlawful to resist the cut-throats of a king, for 

Cæsar in His own royal person — the high priest in person, came not out 

against Christ; yea, it is not lawful for the parliament to resist a 

Judas, who hath fled as a traitorous apostate from the truth and the 

temple of Christ. 4. It is not lawful for innocents to defend themselves 

by any violence against the invasion of superiors, in Dr Ferne's three 

cases in which he alloweth resistance: (1.) When the invasion is sudden. 

(2.) Unavoidable. (3.) Without all colour of law and reason. In the two 

last cases, royalists defend the lawfulness of self-defence. 5. If the 

example be pressed, — Christ did not this and that, he resisted not with 

violence, to save his own life, therefore, we are to abstain from 

resistance and such and such means of self-preservation; then, because 

Christ appealed not from inferior judges to the emperor Cæsar; who, no 

doubt, would have shown him more favour than the scribes and pharisees 

did, and because Christ conveyed not a humble supplication to his 

sovereign and father Cæsar, — then because he proffered not a humble 

petition to prince Pilate for his life, he being an innocent man, and 

his cause just, — because he neither procured an orator to plead his own 

just cause, nor did he so plead for himself, and give in word and writ, 

all lawful and possible defences for his own safety, but answered many 

things with silence, to the admiration of the judge, (Mark xv. 3-5,) and 

was thrice pronounced by the judge to be innocent (Luke xxii. 23); 

because, I say, Christ did not all these for his own life, therefore it 

is unlawful for Scotland and England to appeal to the king, to 

supplicate, to give in apologies, &c. I think royalists dare not say so. 

But if they say he would not resist, and yet might have done all these 

lawfully, because these be lawful means, and resistance with the sword 

unlawful, — because "He that taketh the sword, shall perish by the 

sword," — let me answer then, 1. They leave the argument from Christ's 

example, who was thus far subject to higher powers, that he would not 

resist, and plead from the unlawfulness of resistance; this is petitio 

principii. 2. He that taketh the sword without God's warrant, which 

Peter had not, but the contrary, he was himself a Satan to Christ, who 

would but counsel him not to die: but there is no shadow of a word to 

prove that violent resisting is unlawful, when the king and his Irish 

cut-throats pursue as unjustly; only Christ saith, when God may deliver 

extraordinarily by his angels, except it be his absolute will that his 

Son should drink the cup of death, then to take the sword, when God hath 

declared his will on the contrary, is unlawful; and that is all; though 

I do not question but Christ's asking for swords, and his arresting all 

his enemies to the ground (John xviii. 6) backward, is a justifying of 

self-defence. But hitherto it is clear, by Christ's example, that he 

only was commanded to suffer. Now the second case in which suffering 

falleth under a commandment, is indirectly and comparatively, when it 

cometh to the election of the witness of Jesus, that it is referred to 

them, either to deny the truth of Christ and his name, or then to suffer 

death. The choice is apparently evident; and this choice that 

persecutors refer us unto, is to us a commandment of God, that we must 

choose suffering for Christ, and refuse sinning against Christ. But the 

supposition must stand, that this alternative is unavoidable, that is 

not in our power to decline either suffering for Christ, or denying of 

Christ before men; otherwise no man is to expect the reward of a witness 

of Jesus, who having a lawful possible means of eschewing suffering, 

doth yet cast himself into suffering needlessly. But I prove that 

suffering by men of this world falleth not formally and directly under 

any divine positive law; for the law of nature, — whatever Arminians in 

their declaration, or this Arminian excommunicate think with them, (for 

they teach that God gave a commandment to Adam, to abstain from such and 

such fruit, with pain and trouble to sinless nature,) — doth not command 

suffering, or anything contrary to nature, as nature is sinless: I prove 

it thus: —



1. Whatever falleth under a positive commandment of God, I may say here, 

under any commandment of God, is not a thing under the free will and 

power of others, from whom we are not descended necessarily by natural 

generation, but that men of the world kill me, even these from whom I am 

not descended by natural generation (which I speak to exclude Adam, who 

killed all his posterity) is not in my free will, either as if they had 

my common nature in that act, or as if I were accessory by counsel, 

consent, or approbation to that act, for this is under the free will and 

power of others, not under my own free will; therefore, that I suffer by 

others is not under my free will, and cannot fall under a commandment of 

God; and certainly it is an irrational law (glorified be his name) that 

God should command Antipas either formally to suffer, or formally not to 

suffer death by these of the synagogue of Satan, (Rev. ii. 13,) because 

if they be pleased not to kill him, it is not in his free will to be 

killed by them; and if they shall have him in their power (except God 

extraordinarily deliver) it is not in his power, in an ordinary 

providence, not to be killed.



2. All these places of God's word, that recommendeth suffering to the 

followers of Christ, do not command formally that we suffer; therefore, 

suffering falleth not formally under any commandment of God. I prove the 

antecedent, because if they be considered, they prove only that 

comparatively we are to choose rather to suffer than to deny Christ 

before men, (Mat. x. 28, 32; Rev. ii. 13; Mat. x. 37; xvi. 24; xix. 29,) 

or then they command not suffering according to the substance of the 

passion, but according to the manner that we suffer, willingly, 

cheerfully, and patiently. Hence Christ's word to take up his cross, 

which is not a mere passion, but commendeth an act of the virtue of 

patience. Now no Christian virtue consisteth in a mere passion, but in 

laudable habits, and good and gracious acts, and the text we are now on 

(1 Pet. ii: 18, 19) doth not recommend suffering from the example of 

Christ, but patient suffering; and so the word upotassomenon, not 

simply enjoined, but en panti phobo in all fear, [3] (ver. 18,) and 

the words upopheron and upomeneis, to suffer with patience, as 2 Tim. 

iii. 11; 1 Cor. x. 13, and upomenein; is to suffer patiently, I Cor. 

xiii.7, love panta upomenei suffereth all things; Heb. xii. 17, if 

you suffer correction; 1 Tim. v. 5, she continueth patiently in prayers; 

Heb. xii. 2, Christ endureth the cross patiently (Rom. xv. 5; viii. 25; 

Luke viii. 15; xxi. 29). The derivations hence signify patience; so do 

all our interpreters, Beza, Calvin, Marloratus, and popish expositors, 

as Lorinus, Estius, Carthusian, Lyra, Hugo Cardinalis, expound it of 

patient suffering; and the text is clear, it is suffering like Christ, 

without rendering evil for evil, and reviling for reviling.



3. Suffering simply, according to substance of the passion, (I cannot 

say action,) is common to good and ill, and to the wicked, yea to the 

damned in hell, who suffer against their will, and that cannot be joined 

according to its substance as an act of formal obedience and subjection 

to higher powers, kings, fathers, masters, by force of the fifth 

commandment, and of the place, Rom. xiii. 1 2 Which, according to its 

substance, wicked men suffer, and the damned in hell also against their 

will.



4. Passive obedience to wicked emperors can but be enjoined (Rom. xiii.) 

but only in the manner, and upon supposition, that we must be subject to 

them, and must suffer against our wills all the ill of punishment that 

they can inflict; we must suffer patiently, and because it is God's 

permissive will that they punish us unjustly; for it is not God's ruling 

and approving will (called voluntas signi) that they should, against the 

law of God and man, kill us, and persecute us; and therefore neither 

Rom. xiii., nor 1 Pet. ii., nor any other place in God's word, any 

common divine, natural, national or any municipal law, commandeth 

formally obedience passive, or subjection passive, or non-resistance 

under the notion of passive obedience; yea, to me, obedience passive (if 

we speak of obedience, properly called, as relative essentially to a 

law) is a chimera, a dream, and repugnantia in adjecto; and therefore I 

utterly deny that resistance passive, or subjection passive, doth 

formally fall under either commandment of God affirmative or negative; 

only the unlawful manner of resistance by way of revenge, or for defence 

of popery and false religion, and out of impatient toleration of 

monarchy or any tyranny, is forbidden in God's word; and certainly all 

the words used Rom. xiii., as they fall under a formal commandment of 

God, are words of action, not of any chimerical passive obedience, as we 

are not to resist actively God's ordinance, as his ordinance, (ver. 1, 

2,) that is, to resist God actively. We are to do good works, not evil, 

if we would have the ruler no terror to us (ver. 3). We must not do ill 

if we would be free of vengeance's sword (ver. 7); we are to pay tribute 

and to give fear and honour to the ruler, all which are evidently 

actions, not passive subjection; and if any passive subjection be 

commanded, it is not here, nor in the first commandment, commanded, but 

in the first commandment under the hand of patience and submission under 

God's hand in suffering, or in the third commandment under the hand of 

rather dying for Christ than denying his truth before men. Hence I argue 

here (Rom. xiii; 1 Pet. ii.; Tit. iii.) is nothing else but an 

exposition of the fifth commandment; but in the fifth commandment only 

active obedience is formally commanded, and the subordination of 

inferiors to superiors is ordained, and passive obedience is nowhere 

commanded, but only modus rei, the manner of suffering, and the occasion 

of the commandment, here it is thought that the Jews converted under 

this pretext, that they were God's people, believed that they should not 

be subject to the Romans. A certain Galilean made the Galileans believe 

that they should not pay tribute to strangers, and that they should call 

none lord, out the God of heaven; as Josephus saith, (Antiq. Judaic. l. 

20, c. 2, and de bell. Judaic. i 7, c. 29,) yea and Hieron. (Com. in 

Tit.,) saith, At this time the sect of the Galileans were on foot. It is 

like the Jews were thought to be Galileans, and that their liberty, 

purchased in Christ, could not consist with the order of master and 

servant, king and subject. And to remove this, Paul established 

magistracy, and commandeth obedience in the Lord; and he is more to 

prove the office of the magistrate to be of God than any other thing, 

and to show what is his due, than to establish absoluteness in Nero to 

be of God; yea, to me, every word in the text speaketh limitedness of 

princes, and crieth down absoluteness: — (1.) No power of God, (2.) no 

ordinance of God, who is a terror to evil, but a praise to good works, 

(3.) no minister of God for good, &c. can be a power to which we submit 

ourselves on earth, as next unto God, without controlment. That passive 

obedience falleth formally under no commandment of God, I prove thus: 

All obedience liable to a divine commandment, doth commend morally the 

performer of obedience, as having a will conformed to God's moral law, 

and deformity betwixt the will of him who performeth not obedience, 

involveth the non-obedient in wrath and guiltiness. But non-passive 

subjection to the sword of the judge doth not morally commend him that 

suffereth not punishment; for no man is formally a sinner against a 

moral law because he suffereth not the ill of punishment, nor is he 

morally good, or to be commended, because he suffereth ill of 

punishment, but because he doth the ill of sin. And all evil of 

punishment unjustly inflicted hath God's voluntas beneplaciti, the 

instrumental and hidden decree of God, which ordereth both good and ill, 

(Ephes. i. 11.) for its rule and cause, and hath not God's will or 

approbation called, voluntas signi, for its rule, both is contrary to 

that will. I am sure Epiphanius, (l. 1, tom. 3, heres. 40,) Basilius (in 

Psal. xxxii.), Nazianzen Orat. (ad subd. et imperat.), Hilar. (li. ad 

Constant.), and Augustine, all citeth these words, and saith the same. 

If, then, passive subjection be not commanded, non-subjection passive 

cannot be forbidden, and this text, Rom. xiii., and 1 Pet. ii. cannot a 

whit help the bad cause of royalists. All then must be reduced to some 

action of resisting; arguments for passive subjection, though there were 

shipfuls of them, they cannot help us.



Assert. 3. — By the place, 1 Pet. 31, the servant unjustly buffeted is 

not to buffet his master again, but to bear patiently as Christ did, 

who, when he was reviled, did not revile again. Not because the place 

condemneth resistance for self-defence, but because buffeting again is 

formally re-offending — not defending: defending is properly a warding 

off a blow or stroke. If my neighbour come to kill me, and I can by no 

means save my life by flight, I may defend myself; and all divines say I 

may rather kill ere I be killed, because I am nearer, by the law of 

nature, and dearer to myself and my own life than to my brother; — but 

if I kill him, out of malice or hatred, the act of defending, by the 

unlawful manner of doing, becometh an act of offending and murder; 

whence the mind of the blood-shedder will vary the nature of the action 

from whence this corollary doth naturally issue, that the physical 

action of taking away the life maketh not murder nor homicide, and so 

the physical action of offending my neighbour is not murder. 1. Abraham 

may kill his son, — he for whom the cities of refuge were ordained, and 

did kill his brother, yet, not hating him, he was not, by God's law, 

judged a murderer; and, 2. It necessarily hence followeth, that an act 

which is physically an act of offending my brother, yea even to the 

taking away of his life, is often morally and legally an act of lawful 

self-defence: an offending of another, necessitated from the sole 

invention of self-defence, is no more but an act of innocent self-

defence. If David, with his men, had killed any of Saul's men in a set 

battle, David and his men only intending self-defence, the war on 

David's part was mere defensive; for physical actions of killing, 

indifferent of themselves, yet imperated by a principle of natural self-

defence, and clothed with this formal end of self-defence, or according 

to the substance of the action, the act is of self-defence. If, 

therefore, one shall wound me deadly, and I know it is my death, after 

that, to kill the killer of myself, I being only a private man, must be 

no act of sell-defence, but of homicide; because it cannot be imperated 

by a sinless dictate of a natural conscience, for this end of self-

defence, after I know I am killed. Any mean not used for preventing 

death must be an act of revenge, not of self-defence, for it is 

physically unsuitable for the intended end of self-defence. And so, for 

a servant buffeted to buffet again, is of the same nature, — the second 

buffet not being a conducible mean to ward the first buffet, but a mean 

to procure heavier strokes, and, possibly, killing, it cannot be an act 

of self-defence; for an act of self-detence must be an act destinated ex 

natura rei, only for defence; and if it be known to be an act of sole 

offending, without any known necessary relation of a mean to self-

defence as the end, it cannot be properly an act of self-defence.



Assert. 4. — When the matter is lighter, as in paying tribute, or 

suffering a buffet of a rough master, though unjustly, we are not to use 

any act of re-offending. For, though I be not absolute lord of my own 

goods, and so may not at my sole pleasure give tribute and expend monies 

to the hurting of my children, where I am not, by God's law or man's 

law, obliged to pay tribute; and though I be not an absolute lord of my 

members, to expose face, and cheeks, and back, to stripes and whips at 

my own mere will, yet have we a comparative dominion given to us of God 

in matters of goods, and disposing of our members, (I think I may except 

the case of mutilation, which is a little death,) for buffets, because 

Christ, no doubt to teach us the like, would rather give of his goods, 

and pay tribute where it was not due, than that this scandal be in the 

way of Christ, that Christ was no loyal subject to lawful emperors and 

kings. And (1 Cor. ix.) Paul would rather not take stipend, though it 

was due to him, than hinder the course of the gospel. And the like is 1 

Cor. vi., where the Corinthians were rather to suffer loss in their 

goods than to go to law before infidel judges, and by the like to 

prevent greater inconveniences, and mutilation, and death. The Christian 

servant hath that dominion over his members, rather to suffer buffets 

than to ward off buffets with violent resis- tance. But it is no 

consequence, that innocent subjects should suffer death of tyrants, and 

servants be killed by masters, and yet that they shall not be allowed, 

by the law of nature, to defend themselves, by re-offending, when only 

self-defence is intended, because we have not that dominion over life 

and death. And therefore, as a man is his brother's murderer, who, with 

froward Cain, will not be his brother's keeper, and may preserve his 

brother's life, without loss of his own life, when his brother is 

unjustly preserved; so, when he may preserve his own life, and doth not 

that which nature's law alloweth him to do, (rather to kill ere he be 

killed,) he is guilty of self-murder, because he is deficient in the 

duty of lawful self-defence. But I grant, to offend or kill is not of 

the nature of defensive war, but accidental thereunto; and yet killing 

of cutthroats, sent forth by the illegal commandment of the king, may be 

intended as a mean, and a lawful mean, of self-defence. Of two ills of 

punishment, we have a comparative dominion over ourselves, — a man may 

cast his goods into the sea to redeem his life; so, for to redeem peace, 

we may suffer buffets, but because death is the greatest ill of 

punishment, God hath not made it eligible to us when lawful seif-defence 

is at hand. But, in defending our own life against tyrannical power, 

though we do it by offending and killing, we resist no ordinance of God, 

only I judge killing of the king in self-defence not lawful, because 

self-defence must be national on just causes.



Let here the reader judge Barclay, (1. 3, c. 8, p. 159, con. Monar.) "If 

the king (saith he) shall vex the commonwealth, or one part thereof, 

with great and intolerable cruelty, what shall the people do? They have 

(saith he) in that case a power to resist and defend themselves from 

injury; but only to defend themselves, nor to invade the prince, nor to 

resist the injury, or to recede from reverence due to the prince."[1]



I answer, 1. Let Barclay or the Prelate, (if he may carry Barclay's 

books) or any, difference these two, — the people may resist a tyrant, 

but they may not resist the injuries inflicted by a tyrant's officers 

and cutthroats. I cannot imagine how to conciliate these two; for to 

resist the cruelty of a king is but to hold off the injury by 

resistance. 2. If this Nero waste the commonwealth insufferably with his 

cruelty, and remain a lawful king, to be honoured as a king, who may 

resist him, according to the royalists' way? But, from Rom. xiii, they 

resist the ordinance of God. Resisting is not a mere suffering, nor is 

it a moral resisting by alleging laws to be broken by him. We had never 

a question with royalists about such resisting. Nor is this resisting 

non-obedience to unjust commandments; that resisting was never yet in 

question by any except the papists, who in good earnest, by consequent, 

say, It is better to obey men than God. 3. It is then resisting by 

bodily violence. But if the king have such an absolute power given him 

by God, as royalists fancy, from Rom. xiii. 1,2; 1 Sam. viii. 9-11, I 

know not how subjects have any power given them of God to resist the 

power from God, and God's ordinance. And if this resisting extend not 

itself to defensive wars, how shall the people defend themselves from 

injuries, and the greatest injuries imaginable, — from an army of cut-

throats and idolaters, in war coming to destroy religion, set up 

idolatry, and root out the name of God's people, and lay waste the 

mountain of the Lord's house? And if they may defend themselves by 

defensive wars, how can wars be without offending? 4. The law of nature 

teacheth to repel violence with violence, when one man is oppressed, no 

less than when the commonwealth is oppressed. Barclay should have given 

either Scripture or the law of nature for his warrant here. 5. Let us 

suppose a king can be perjured, how are the estates of the kingdom, who 

are his subjects, by Barclay's way, not to challenge such a tyrant of 

his perjury? He did swear he should be meek and clement, and he is now 

become a furious lion. Shall the flock of God be committed to the 

keeping of a furious lion?



Dr Ferne (p. 3, sect. 2, p. 9,) addeth, "Personal defence is lawful 

against sudden and illegal invasion, such as Elisha practised, even if 

it were against the prince, to ward blows, and to hold the prince's 

hand, but not to return blows; but general resistance by arms cannot be 

without many unjust violences, and doth immediately strike at the order, 

which is the life of the commonwealth.



Ans. — 1. If it be natural to one man to defend himself against the 

personal invasion of a prince, then is it natural and warrantable to ten 

thousand, and to a whole kingdom; and what reason to defraud a kingdom 

of the benefit of self-defence more than one man? 2. Neither grace nor 

policy destroyeth nature; and how shall ten or twenty thousand be 

defended against cannons and muskets, that killeth afar off, except they 

keep towns against the king, (which Dr Ferne and others say had been 

treason in David, if he had kept Keilah against king Saul,) except they 

be armed to offend, with weapons of the like nature to kill rather than 

be killed, as the law of nature teacheth. 3. To hold the hands of the 

prince is no less resisting violence than to cut the skirt of his 

garment, which royalists think unlawful, and is an opposing of external 

force to the king's person. 4. It is true, wars merely defensive cannot 

be but they must be offensive; but they are offensive by accident, and 

intended for mere defence, and they cannot be without wars sinfully 

offensive, nor can any wars be in rerum natura now, (I except the wars 

commanded by God, who only must have been sinful in the manner of 

doing,) but some innocent must be killed; but wars cannot for that be 

condemned. 5. Neither are offensive wars against those who are no powers 

and no ordinances of God, such as are cut-throat Irish, condemned 

prelates and papists now in arms, more destructive to the order 

established by God than acts of lawful war are, or the punishing of 

robbers. And by all this, protestants in Scotland and England should 

remain in their houses unarmed, while the papists and Irish come on them 

armed, and cut their throats, and spoil, and plunder at will.



Nor can we think that resistance to a king, in holding his hands, can be 

natural; if he be stronger, it is not a natural mean of self-

preservation. Nature hath appointed innocent and offending violence, 

against unjust violence, as a means of self-preservation. Goliath's 

sword is no natural means to hold Saul's hands, for a sword hath no 

fingers; and if king Saul suddenly, without colour of law or reason, or 

inevitably, should make personal invasion on David to kill him, Dr Ferne 

saith he may resist; but resisting is essentially a re-action of 

violence. Show us Scripture or reason for violent holding a king's hands 

in an unjust personal invasion, without any other re-action of offence. 

Walter Torrils killed king W. Rufus as he was shooting at a deer; the 

Earl of Suffolk killed Henry VIII. at tilting: there is no treasonable 

intention here, and so no homicide. Defensive wars are offensive, ex 

eventu et effectu, not ex causa, or ex intentione.



But it may be asked, if no passive subjection at all be commanded as due 

to superiors. — Ans. None properly so called, that is, purely passive, 

only we are, for fear of the sword, to do our duty. We are to suffer ill 

of punishment of tyrants, ex hypothesi, that they inflict that ill on us 

some other way, and in some other notion than we are to suffer ill of 

equals; for we are to suffer of equals not for any paternal authority 

that they have over us, as certainly we are to suffer ill inflicted by 

superiors. I demand of royalists, If tyrants inflicting evil of 

punishment upon subjects unjustly be powers ordained of God: if to 

resist a power in tyrannical acts be to resist God. Since we are not to 

yield active obedience to all the commandments of superiors, whether 

they be good or ill, by virtue of this place, Rom. xiii. how is it that 

we may not deny passive subjection to all the acts of violence 

exercised, whether of injustice, whether in these acts of violence 

wherein the prince in actu exercito and formally, punisheth not in God's 

stead, or in these wherein he punisheth tyrannically, in no formal or 

actual subordination to God, we owe passive subjection? I desire an 

answer to these.



Assert. 5. — Flying from the tyranny of abused authority, is a plain 

resisting of rulers in their unlawful oppression and perverting of 

judgment.



All royalists grant it lawful, and ground it upon the law of nature, 

that those that are persecuted by tyrannous princes may flee, and it is 

evident from Christ's commandment, "If they persecute you in one city, 

flee to another," Matt. x. 23, and by Matt. xxiii. 34. Christ fled from 

the fury of the Jews till his hour was come; Elias, Uriah, (Jer. xxvi. 

20,) and Joseph and Mary fled; the martyrs did hide themselves in caves 

and dens of the earth (Heb. xi. 37, 38); Paul was let down through a 

window in a basket at Damascus. This certainly is resistance; for look, 

what legal power God hath given to a tyrannous ruler, remaining a power 

ordained of God, to summon legally, and set before his tribunal the 

servants of God, that he may kill them, and murder them unjustly, that 

same legal power he hath to murder them; for it it be a legal power to 

kill the innocent, and such a power as they are obliged in conscience to 

submit unto, they are obliged in conscience to submit to the legal power 

of citing; for it is one and the same power. 1 Now if resistance to the 

one power be unlawful, resistance to the other must be unlawful also; 

and if the law of self-defence, or command of Chnst, warrant me to 

disobey a tyrannous power commanding me to compear to receive the 

sentence of death, that same law far more shall warrant me to resist and 

deny passive subjection in submitting to the unjust sentence of death. 

2. When a murderer, self-convicted, fleeth from the just power of a 

judge lawfully citing him, he resisteth the just power ordained of God 

(Rom. iii.); therefore, by the same reason, if we flee from a tyrannous 

power, we resist that tyrannous power, and so, by royalists' around, we 

resist the ordinance of God by flying Now, to be disobedient to a just 

power summoning a malefactor, is to hinder that lawful power to be put 

forth in lawful acts; for the judge cannot purge the land of blood if 

the murderer flee. 3. When the king of Israel sendeth a captain and 

fifty lictors to fetch Elisha, these come instructed with legal power 

from the king; if I may lay fetters on their power by flight, upon the 

ground of self-preservation, the same warrant shall allow me to oppose 

harmless violence for my own safety. 4. Royalists hold it unlawful to 

keep a stronghold against the king, though the fort be not the king's 

house, and though that David should not have offended if he had kept 

Keilah against Saul: Dr Ferne and royalists say it had been unlawful 

resistance. What more resistance is made to royal power by walls 

interposed than by seas and miles of earth interposed? Both are physical 

resistance, and violent in their kind.







[1] Populo quidem hoc casu resitendi ac tuendi se ab injuria potestas 

competit. sed tuendi se tantum, non autem principem invadendi, et 

resistendi injuriæ illatæ, non recedendi a debita reverentia — non vim 

præteritam ulciscendi jus habet.



______



[2] Unconfirmed.



[3] Rutherford has en panti to phobo but the third word to is not in 

the Septuaginta and is here considered spurious.