the law, and repent us of our failings, and God accepteth it for the performance itself. And because God accepteth not the will for the deed, but only in the faithful; it is therefore faith that makes good our plea; and in this sense it is that faith only justifies. So that "faith" and obedience are both necessary to salvation; yet in several senses each of them is said to justify. 66 Having thus shown what is necessary to salvation, it is not hard to reconcile our obedience to God with our obedience to the civil sovereign; who is either Christian or infidel. If he be a Christian, he alloweth the belief of this article, that "Jesus is the Christ ;" and of all the articles that are contained in, or are by evident consequence deduced from it: which is all the faith necessary to salvation. And because he is a sovereign, he requireth odedience to all his own, that is, to all the civil laws; in which also are contained all the laws of Nature, that is, all the laws of God: for besides the laws of Nature, and the laws of the Church, which are part of the civil law (for the Church that can make laws is the commonwealth), there be no other laws divine. Whosoever therefore obeyeth his Christian sovereign, is not thereby hindered, neither from believing, nor from obeying God. But suppose that a Christian king should from this foundation "Jesus is the Christ," draw some false consequences, that is to say, make some superstructions of hay or stubble, and command the teaching of the same; yet seeing St. Paul says he shall be saved; much more shall he be saved, that teacheth them by his command; and much more yet, he that teaches not, but only believes his lawful teacher. And in case a subject be forbidden by the civil sovereign to profess some of those his opinions, upon what just ground can he disobey? Christian kings may err in deducing a consequence, but who shall judge? Shall a private man judge, when the question is of his own obedience? Or shall any man judge but he that is appointed thereto by the Church, that is, by the civil sovereign that representeth it? Or if the Pope, or an apostle judge, may he not err in deducing of a consequence? Did not one of the two, St. Peter or St. Paul, err in a superstructure, when St. Paul withstood St. Peter to his face? There can therefore be no contradiction between the laws of God and the laws of a Christian commonwealth. And when the civil sovereign is an infidel, every one of his own subjects that resisteth him, sinneth against the laws of God (for such are the laws of Nature), and rejecteth the counsel of the apostles, that admonisheth all Christians to obey their princes, and all children and servants to obey their parents and masters in all things. And for their "faith," it is internal and invisible; they have the license that Naaman had, and need not put themselves into danger for it. But if they do, they ought to expect their reward in heaven, and not complain of their lawful sovereign; much less make war upon him. For he that is not glad of any just occasion of martyrdom. has not the faith he professeth, but pretends it only, to set some colour upon his own contumacy. But what infidel king is so unreasonable, as knowing he has a subject, that waiteth for the second coming of Christ, after the present world shall be burnt, and intendeth then to obey him (which is the intent of believing that Jesus is the Christ), and in the meantime thinketh himself bound to obey the laws of that infidel king (which all Christians are obliged in conscience to do), to put to death or to persecute such a subject? And thus much shall suffice concerning the kingdom of God and policy ecclesiastical. Wherein I pretend not to advance any position of my own, but only to show what are the consequences that seem to me deducible from the principles of Christian politics (which are the Holy Scriptures), in con firmation of the power of civil sovereigns, and the duty of their subjects. And in the allegation of Scripture I have endeavoured to avoid such texts as are of obscure or controverted interpretation; and to allege none, but in such sense as is most plain and agreeable to the harmony and scope of the whole Bible; which was written for the re-establishment of the kingdom of God in Christ. For it is not the bare words, but the scope of the writer, that giveth the true light by which any writing is to be interpreted; and they that insist upon single texts, without considering the main design, can derive nothing from them clearly; but rather by casting atoms of Scripture, as dust before men's eyes, make everything more obscure than it is; an ordinary artifice of those that seek not the truth, but their own advantage. PART IV. OF THE KINGDOM OF DARKNESS. CHAPTER XLIV. Of Spiritual Darkness, from Misinterpretation of Scripture. BESIDES these sovereign powers, "divine" and "human," of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely (Eph. vi. 12), that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world ; (Matt. xii. 26), “the kingdom of Satan ;" and (Matt. ix. 34), "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called (Eph. ii. 2), "the prince of the power of the air ;" and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world (John xvi. 11), "the prince of this world; " and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful (who are the "children of the light"), are called the❝ children of darkness." For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a "confederacy of deceivers, that to obtain dominion over men in this present world endeavour by dark and erroneous doctrines to extinguish in them the light both of Nature and of the Gospel, and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come." As men that are utterly deprived from their nativity of the light of the bodily eye have no idea at all of any such light; and no man conceives in his imagination any greater light than he hath at some time or other perceived by his outward senses: so also is it of the light of the Gospel, and of the light of the understanding, that no man can conceive there is any greater degree of it than that which he hath already attained unto. And from hence it comes to pass that men have no other means to acknowledge their own darkness but only by reasoning from the unforeseen mischances that befall them in their ways. The darkest part of the kingdom of Satan is that which is without the Church of God; that is to say, amongst them that believe not in Jesus Christ. But we cannot say that therefore the Church enjoyeth, as the land of Goshen, all the light which to the performance of the work enjoined us by God is necessary. Whence comes it that in Christendom there has been, almost from the time of the apostles, such justling of one another out of their places, both by foreign and civil war; such stumbling at every little asperity of their own fortune, and every little eminence of that of other men, and such diversity of ways in running to the same mark, felicity, "if it be not night amongst us, or at least a mist? We are therefore yet in the dark, The enemy has been here in the night of our natural ignorance, and sown the tares of spiritual errors; and that, first, by abusing and putting out the light of the Scriptures: for we err, not knowing the Scriptures. Secondly, by introducing the demonology of the heathen poets, that is to say, their fabulous doctrine concerning demons, which are but idols, or phantasms of the brain, without any real nature of their own, distinct from human fancy; such as are dead men's ghosts, and fairies, and other matter of old wives' tales. Thirdly, by mixing with the Scripture divers relics of the religion, and much of the vain and erroneous philosophy of the Greeks, especially of Aristotle. Fourthly, by mingling with both these, false or uncertain traditions, and feigned or uncertain history. And so we come to err, "by giving heed to seducing spirits," and the demonology of such as speak lies in hypocrisy ;" or as it is in the original (1 Tim. iv. 1, 2), "of those that play the part of liars, with a seared conscience," that is, contrary to their own knowledge. Concerning the first of these, which is the seducing of men, by the abuse of Scripture, I intend to speak briefly in this chapter. : The greatest and main abuse of Scripture, and to which almost the rest are either consequent or subservient, is the wresting of it, to prove that the kingdom of God, mentioned so often in the Scripture, is the present Church, or multitude of Christian men now living, or that being dead, are to rise again at the last day whereas the kingdom of God was first instituted by the ministry of Moses, over the Jews only; who were therefore called His peculiar people; and ceased afterward, in the election of Saul, when they refused to be governed by God any more, and demanded a king after the manner of the nations; which God himself consented unto, as I have more at large proved before in chapter xxxv. After that time, there was no other kingdom of God in the world, by any pact or otherwise, than He ever was, is, and shall be king of all men, and of all creatures, as governing according to His will, by His infinite power. Nevertheless, He promised by His prophets to restore this His government to them again, when the time He hath in His secret counsel appointed for it shall be fully come, and when they shall turn unto Him by repentance and amendment of life. And not only so, but He invited the Gentiles to come in and enjoy the happiness of His reign, on the same conditions of conversion and repentance; and He promised also to send His Son into the world, to expiate the sins of them all by His death, and to prepare them by His doctrine to receive Him at His second coming. Which second coming not yet being, the kingdom of God is not yet come, and we are not now under any other kings by pact, but our civil sovereigns; saving only, that Christian men are already in the kingdom of grace, inasmuch as they have already the promise of being received at His coming again. Consequent to this error, that the present Church is Christ's kingdom, there ought to be some one man, or assembly, by whose mouth our Saviour, now in heaven, speaketh, giveth law, and which representeth His person to all Christians: or divers men, or divers assemblies, that do the same to divers parts of Christendom. This power regal under Christ, being challenged, universally by the Pope, and in particular commonwealths by assemblies of the pastors of the place (when the Scripture gives it to none but to civil sovereigns), comes to be so passionately disputed, that it putteth out the light of Nature, and causeth so great a darkness in men's understanding, that they see not who it is to whom they have engaged their obedience. Consequent to this claim of the Pope to be vicar-general of Christ in the present Church (supposed to be that kingdom of His to which we are addressed in the Gospel), is the doctrine, that it is necessary for a Christian king to receive his crown by a bishop; as if it were from that ceremony that he derives the clause of Dei gratiâ in his title; and that then only he is made king by the favour of God, when he is crowned by the authority of God's universal vicegerent on earth; and that every bishop, whosoever be his sovereign, taketh at his consecration an oath of absolute obedience to the Pope. Consequent to the same, is the doctrine of the fourth Council of Lateran, held under Pope Innocent the Third (chap. iii. De Hæreticis), "that if a king at the Pope's admonition, do not purge his kingdom of heresies, and being excommunicate for the same, do not give satisfaction within a year, his subjects are absolved of the bond of their obedience." Where, by heresies are understood all opinions which the Church of Rome hath forbidden to be maintained. And by this means, as often as there is any repugnancy between the political designs of the Pope, and other Christian princes, as there is very often, there ariseth such a mist amongst their subjects, that they know not a stranger that thrusteth himself into the throne of their lawful prince, from him whom they had themselves placed there; and in this darkness of mind are made to fight one against another, without discerning their enemies from their friends, under the conduct of another man's ambition. From the same opinion, that the present Church is the kingdom of God, it proceeds that pastors, deacons, and all other ministers of the Church, take the name to themselves of the " clergy;" giving to other Christians the name of "laity," that is, simply "people." For clergy signifies those whose maintenance is that revenue, which God having reserved to himself during His reign over the Israelites, assigned to the tribe of Levi (who were to be His public ministers, and had no portion of land set them out to live on as their brethren), to be their inheritance. The Pope therefore, pretending the present Church to be, as the realm of Israel, the kingdom of God, challenging to himself and his subordinate ministers the like revenue, as the inheritance of God, the name of clergy was suitable to that claim. And thence it is that tithes and other tributes paid to the Levites, as God's right, amongst the Israelites, have a long time been demanded, and taken of Christians, by ecclesiastics, jure divino, that is, in God's right. By which means the people everywhere were obliged to a double tribute; one to the state, another to the clergy; whereof, that to the clergy, being the tenth of their revenue, is double to that which a king of Athens, and esteemed a tyrant, exacted of his subjects for the defraying of all public charges for he demanded no more but the twentieth part, and yet abundantly maintained therewith the commonwealth. And in the kingdom of the Jews, during the sacerdotal reign of God, the tithes and offerings were the whole public revenue. : From the same mistaking of the present Church for the kingdom of God, came in the distinction between the "civil" and the " canon laws the civil law being the acts of "sovereigns" in their own dominions, and the canon law being the acts of the Pope in the same dominion. Which canons, though they were but canons, that is, "rules propounded," and but voluntarily received by Christian princes, till the translation of the empire to Charlemagne; yet afterwards, as the power of the Pope increased, became "rules commanded," and the emperors themselves, to avoid greater mischiefs, which the people blinded might be led into, were forced to let them pass for laws. From hence it is, that in all dominions where the Pope's ecclesiastical power is entirely received, Jews, Turks, and Gentiles, are in the Roman Church tolerated in their religion, as far forth, as in the exercise and profession thereof they offend not against the civil power: whereas in a |