A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian Politics

3. The christian religion bindeth subjects to obedience upon sorer penalties than magistrates can inflict; even upon pain of God's displeasure, and everlasting damnation, Rom. xiii. 2, 3. And how great a help this is to government it is so easy to discern, that the simpler sort of atheists do persuade themselves, that kings devised religion to keep people in obedience with the fears of hell. Take away the fears of the life to come, and the punishment of God in hell upon the wicked, and the world will be turned into worse than a den of serpents and wild beasts; adulteries, and murders, and poisoning kings, and all abomination, will be freely committed, which wit or power can think to cover or bear out! Who will trust that man that believeth not that God doth judge and punish?

4. The christian religion doth encourage obedience and peace with the promise of the reward of endless happiness (cæteris paribus); heaven is more than any prince can give. If that will not move men, there is no greater thing to move them. Atheism and infidelity have no such motives.

5. Christianity teacheth subjects to obey not only good rulers but bad ones, even heathens themselves, and not to resist when we cannot obey. Whereas among heathens, princes ruled no longer than they pleased the soldiers or the people; so that Lampridius marvelled that Heliogabalus was no sooner butchered, but suffered to reign three years: Mirum fortasse cuipiam videatur Constantine venerabilis, quod hæc clades quam retuli loco principum fuerit; et quidem prope triennio, ita ut nemo inventus fuerit qui istum a gubernaculis Romanæ majestatis abduceret, cum Neroni, Vitellio, Caligulæ cæterisque hujusmodi nunquam tyrannicida defuerit.103

6. Christianity and godliness do not only restrain the outward acts, but rule the very hearts, and lay a charge upon the thoughts, which the power of princes cannot reach. It forbiddeth to curse the king in our bedchamber, or to have a thought or desire of evil against him; it quencheth the first sparks of disloyalty and disorder; and the rule of the outward man followeth the ordering of the heart; and therefore atheism, which leaveth the heart free and open to all desires and designs of rebellion, doth kindle that fire in the minds of men, which government cannot quench; it corrupteth the fountain; it breaketh the spring that should set all a going; it poisoneth the heart of commonwealths.104

7. Christianity and godliness teach men patience, that it may not seem strange to them to bear the cross, and suffer injuries from high and low; and therefore that impatience which is the beginning of all rebellion being repressed, it stayeth the distemper from going any further.

8. Christianity teacheth men self-denial as a great part of their religion;105 and when selfishness is mortified, there is nothing left to be a principle of rebellion against God or our superiors. Selfishness is the very predominant principle of the ungodly; it is only for themselves that they obey when they do obey; no wonder therefore if the author of Leviathan allow men to do any thing when the saving of themselves requireth it. And so many selfish persons as there be in a kingdom, so many several interests are first sought, which for the most part stand cross to the interests of others: the godly have all one common centre; they unite in God, and therefore may be kept in concord; for God's will is a thing that may be fulfilled by all as well as one; but the selfish and ungodly are every one his own centre, and have no common centre to unite in, their interests being ordinarily cross and inconsistent.

9. Christianity teacheth men by most effectual arguments, to set light by the riches and honours of the world, and not to strive for superiority; but to mind higher things, and lay up our treasure in a better world, and to condescend to men of low degree. It forbiddeth men to exalt themselves lest they be brought low; and commandeth them to humble themselves that God may exalt them; and he that knoweth not that pride and covetousness are the great disquieters of the world, and the cause of contentions, and the ruin of states, knoweth nothing of these matters. Therefore if it were but by the great urging of humility and heavenly-mindedness, and the strict condemning of ambition and earthly-mindedness, christianity and godliness must needs be the greatest preservers of government, and of order, peace, and quietness in the world.106

10. Christianity teacheth men to live in the love of God and man. It maketh love the very heart, and life, and sum, and end of all other duties of religion. Faith itself is but the bellows to kindle in us the sacred flames of love. Love is the end of the gospel, and the fulfilling of the law. To love all saints with a special love, even with a pure heart and fervently, and to love all men heartily with a common love; to love our neighbour as ourselves; and to love our very enemies; this is the life which Christ requireth, upon the penalty of damnation; and if love thus prevail, what should disturb the government, peace, or order of the world?

11. Christianity teacheth men to be exact in justice, distributive and commutative; and to do to others as we would they should do to us: and where this is followed kings and states will have little to molest them, when gens sine justitia est sine remige navis in unda.

12. Christianity teacheth men to do good to all men as far as we are able, and to abound in good works, as that for which we are redeemed and new made; and if men will set themselves wholly to do good, and be hurtful and injurious to none, how easy will it be to govern such!

13. Christianity teacheth men to forbear and to forgive, as ever they will be forgiven of God, and the strong to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please themselves, but one another to their edification; not to be censorious, harsh, or cruel, nor to place the kingdom of God in meats, and drinks, and days, but in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; to bear one another's burdens, and to restore them with the spirit of meekness that are overtaken in a fault, and to be peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and hypocrisy, and to speak evil of no man; and where this is obeyed, how quietly and easily may princes govern!107

14. Christianity setteth before us the perfectest pattern of all this humility, meekness, contempt of worldly wealth and greatness, self-denial and obedience, that ever was given in the world. The eternal Son of God incarnate, would condescend to earth and flesh, and would obey his superiors after the flesh, in the repute of the world; and would pay tribute, and never be drawn to any contempt of the governors of the world, though he suffered death under the false accusation of it. He that is a christian, endeavoureth to imitate his Lord: and can the imitation of Christ, or of his peaceable apostles, be injurious to governors? Could the world but lay by their serpentine enmity against the holy doctrine and practice of christianity, and not take themselves engaged to persecute it, nor dash themselves in pieces on the stone which they should build upon, nor by striving against it provoke it to fall on them and grind them to powder, they never need to complain of disturbances by christianity or godliness.108

15. Christianity and true godliness containeth, not only all those precepts that tend to peace and order in the world, but also strength, and willingness, and holy dispositions for the practising of such precepts. Other teachers can speak but to the ears, but Christ doth write his laws upon the heart; so that he maketh them such as he commandeth them to be: only this is the remnant of our unhappiness, that while he is performing the cure on us, we retain a remnant of our old diseases, and so his work is yet imperfect: and as sin in strength is it that setteth on fire the course of nature, so the relics of it will make some disturbance in the world, according to its degree; but nothing is more sure than that the godliest christian is the most orderly and loyal subject, and the best member (according to his parts and power) in the commonwealth; and that sin is the cause, and holiness the cure of all the disorders and calamities of the world.

16. Lastly, Consult with experience itself, and you will find, that all this which I have spoken, hath been ordinarily verified.109 What heathenism tendeth to, you may see even in the Roman government (for there you will confess it was at the best). To read of the tumults, the cruelties, the popular unconstancy, faction, and injustice; how rudely the soldiers made their emperors, and how easily and barbarously they murdered them, and how few of them from the days of Christ till Constantine did die the common death of all men, and escape the hands of those that were their subjects; I think this will satisfy you, whither men's enmity to christianity tendeth: and then to observe how suddenly the case was altered, as soon as the emperors and subjects became christian (till in the declining of the Greek empire, some officers and courtiers who aspired to the crown did murder the emperors): and further to observe, that the rebellious doctrines and practices against governors, have been all introduced by factions and heresies, which forsook christianity so far before they incurred such guilt; and that it is either papal usurpation (which is in its nature an enemy to princes) that hath deposed and trampled upon emperors and kings, or else some mad enthusiastics that overrun religion and their wits, that at Munster, (and in England some lately,) by the advantage of their prosperity, have dared to do violence against sovereignty; but the more any men were christians and truly godly, the more they detested all such things; all this will tell you that the most serious and religious christians, are the best members of the civil societies upon earth.

II. Having done with the first part of my last direction, I shall say but this little of the second; let christians see that they be christians indeed, and abuse not that which is most excellent to be a cloak to that which is most vile. 1. In reading politics, swallow not all that every author writeth in conformity to the polity that he liveth under. What perverse things shall you read in the popish politics (Contzen, and abundance such)! What usurpation on principalities, and cruelties to christians, under the pretence of defending the church, and suppressing heresies!

2. Take heed in reading history that you suffer not the spirit of your author to infect you with any of that partiality which he expresseth to the cause which he espouseth. Consider in what times and places all your authors lived, and read them accordingly with the just allowance. The name of liberty was so precious, and the name of a king so odious to the Romans, Athenians, &c., that it is no wonder if their historians be unfriendly unto kings.

3. Abuse not learning itself to lift you up with self-conceitedness against governors! Learned men may be ignorant of polity; or at least unexperienced, and almost as unfit to judge, as of matters of war or navigation.

4. Take heed of giving the magistrate's power to the clergy, and setting up secular, coercive power under the name of the power of the keys: and it had been happy for the church if God had persuaded magistrates in all ages to have kept the sword in their own hands, and not have put it into the clergy's hands, to fulfil their wills by:110 for, 1. By this means the clergy had escaped the odium of usurpation and domineering, by which atheistical politicians would make religion odious to magistrates for their sakes. 2. And by this means greater unity had been preserved in the church, while one faction is not armed with the sword to tread down the rest: for if divines contend only by dint of argument, when they have talked themselves and others aweary they will have done; but when they go to it with dint of sword, it so ill becometh them, that it seldom doth good, but the party often that trusteth least to their reason, must destroy the other, and make their cause good by iron arguments. 3. And then the Romish clergy had not been armed against princes to the terrible concussions of the christian world, which histories at large relate, if princes had not first lent them the sword which they turned against them. 4. And then church discipline would have been better understood, and have been more effectual; which is corrupted and turned to another thing, and so cast out, when the sword is used instead of the keys, under pretence of making it effectual: none but consenters are capable of church communion: no man can be a christian, or godly, or saved against his will; and therefore consenters and volunteers only are capable of church discipline: as a sword will not make a sermon effectual, no more will it make discipline effectual: which is but the management of God's word to work upon the conscience. So far as men are to be driven by the sword to the use of means, or restrained from offering injury to religion, the magistrate himself is fittest to do it. It is noted by historians as the dishonour of Cyril of Alexandria, (though a famous bishop,) that he was the first bishop that like a magistrate used the sword there, and used violence against heretics and dissenters.

5. Above all, abuse not the name of religion for the resistance of your lawful governors: religion must be defended and propagated by no irreligious means. It is easy before you are aware, to catch the fever of such a passionate zeal as James and John had, when they would have had fire from heaven to consume the refusers and resisters of the gospel: and then you will think that any thing almost is lawful, which doth but seem necessary to the prosperity of religion. But no means but those of God's allowance do use to prosper, or bring home that which men expect: they may seem to do wonders for awhile, but they come to nothing in the latter end, and spoil the work, and leave all worse than it was before.

Direct. XL. Take heed of mistaking the nature of that liberty of the people, which is truly valuable and desirable, and of contending for an undesirable liberty in its stead.111 It is desirable to have liberty to do good, and to possess our own, and enjoy God's mercies, and live in peace: but it is not desirable to have liberty to sin, and abuse one another, and hinder the gospel, and contemn our governors. Some mistake liberty for government itself; and think it is the people's liberty to be governors: and some mistake liberty for an exemption from government, and think they are most free, when they are most ungoverned, and may do what they list: but this is a misery, and not a mercy, and therefore was never purchased for us by Christ. Many desire servitude and calamity under the name of liberty: optima est reipublicæ forma, saith Seneca, ubi nulla libertas deest, nisi licentia pereundi. As Mr. R. Hooker saith, lib. viii. p. 195, "I am not of opinion, that simply in kings the most, but the best limited, power is best, both for them and the people: the most limited is that which may deal in fewest things: the best, that which in dealing is tied to the soundest, perfectest, and most indifferent rule, which rule is the law: I mean not only the law of nature and of God, but the national law consonant thereunto: happier that people whose law is their king in the greatest things, than that whose king is himself their law."

Yet no doubt but the lawgivers are as such, above the law as an authoritative instrument of government, but under it as a man is under the obligation of his own consent and word: it ruleth subjects in the former sense; it bindeth the summam potestatem in the latter.

Direct. XLI. When you have done all that you can in just obedience, look for your reward from God alone. Let it satisfy you that he knoweth and approveth your sincerity. You make it a holy work if you do it to please God; and you will be fixed and constant, if you take heaven for your reward (which is enough, and will not fail you); but you make it but a selfish, carnal work, if you do it only to please your governors, or get preferment, or escape some hurt which they may do you, and are subject only in flattery, or for fear of wrath, and not for conscience sake. And such obedience is uncertain and unconstant; for when you fail of your hopes, or think rulers deal unjustly or unthankfully with you, your subjection will be turned into passionate desires of revenge. Remember still the example of your Saviour, who suffered death as an enemy to Cæsar, when he had never failed of his duty so much as in one thought or word. And are you better than your Lord and Master? If God be all to you, and you have laid up all your hopes in heaven, it is then but little of your concernment (further than God is concerned in it) whether rulers do use you well or ill, and whether they interpret your actions rightly, or what they take you for, or how they call you; but it is your concernment that God account you loyal, and will judge you so, and justify you from men's accusations of disloyalty, and reward you with more than man can give you. Nothing is well done, especially of so high a nature as this, which is not done for God and heaven, and which the crown of glory is not the motive to.

I have purposely been the larger on this subject, because the times in which we live require it, both for the settling of some, and for the confuting the false accusations of others, who would persuade the world that our doctrine is not what it is; when through the sinful practices of some, the way of truth is evil spoken of, 2 Pet. ii. 2.

Tit. 2. A fuller resolution of the cases, 1. Whether the laws of men do bind the conscience? 2. Especially smaller and penal laws?

The word conscience signifieth either, 1. In general according to the notation of the word, The knowledge of our own matters; conscire; the knowledge of ourselves, our duties, our faults, our fears, our hopes, our diseases, &c. 2. Or more limitedly and narrowly, The knowledge of ourselves and our own matters in relation to God's law and judgment; Judicium hominis de seipso prout subjicitur judicio Dei, as Amesius defineth it.

2. Conscience is taken, 1. Sometimes for the act of self-knowing. 2. Sometimes for the habit. 3. Sometimes for the faculty, that is, for the intellect itself, as it is a faculty of self-knowing. In all these senses it is taken properly. 4. And sometimes it is used (by custom) improperly, for the person himself, that doth conscire; or for his will (another faculty).

3. The conscience may be said to be bound, 1. Subjectively, as the subjectum quod, or the faculty obliged. 2. Or objectively, as conscire, the act of conscience, is the thing ad quod, to which we are obliged.

And upon those necessary distinctions I thus answer to the first question.

Prop. 1. The act or the habit of conscience is not capable of being the subject obliged; no more than any other act or duty: the act or duty is not bound, but the man to the act or duty.

2. The faculty or judgment is not capable of being the object, or materia ad quam, the thing to which we are bound. A man is not bound to be a man, or to have an intellect, but is made such.

3. The faculty of conscience (that is, the intellect) is not capable of being the immediate or nearest subjectum quod, or subject obliged. The reason is, Because the intellect of itself is not a free-working faculty, but acteth necessarily per modum naturæ further than it is under the empire of the will; and therefore intellectual and moral habits are by all men distinguished.

4. All legal or moral obligation falleth directly upon the will only: and so upon the person as a voluntary agent; so that it is proper to say, The will is bound, and The person is bound.

5. Improperly and remotely it may be said, The intellect (or faculty of conscience) is bound, or the tongue, or hand, or foot is bound; as the man is bound to use them.

6. Though it be not proper to say, That the conscience is bound, it is proper to say, That the man is bound to the act and habit of conscience, or to the exercise of the faculty.

7. The common meaning of the phrase, that we are bound in conscience, or that conscience is bound, is that we are bound to a thing by God, or by a divine obligation, and that it is a sin against God to violate it; so that divines use here to take the word conscience in the narrower theological sense, as respect to God's law and judgment doth enter the definition of it.

8. Taking conscience in this narrower sense, to ask, Whether man's law as man's do bind us in conscience, is all one as to ask, Whether man be God.112

9. And taking conscience in the large or general sense, to ask, Whether man's laws bind us in conscience subjectively, is to ask, Whether they bind the understanding to know our duty to man? And the tenor of them will show that, while they bind us to an outward act, or from an outward act, it is the man that they bind to or from that act, and that is, as he is a rational, voluntary agent; so that a human obligation is laid upon the man, on the will, and on the intellect, by human laws.

10. And human laws, while they bind us to or from an outward act, do thereby bind us as rational free agents, knowingly to choose or refuse those acts; nor can a law which is a moral instrument any otherwise bind the hand, foot, or tongue, but by first binding us to choose or refuse it knowingly, that is, conscientiously, so that a human bond is certainly laid on the mind, soul, or conscience, taken in the larger sense.

11. Taking conscience in the stricter sense, as including essentially a relation to God's obligation, the full sense of the question plainly is but this, Whether it be a sin against God to break the laws of man? And thus plain men might easily understand it. And to this it must be answered, That it is in two respects a sin against God to break such laws or commands as rulers are authorized by God to make; 1. Because God commandeth us to obey our rulers: therefore he that (so) obeyeth them not, sinneth against a law of God. God obligeth us in general to obey them in all things which they are authorized by him to command; but their law determineth of the particular matter; therefore God obligeth us (in conscience of his law) to obey them in that particular. 2. Because by making them his officers, by his commission he hath given them a certain beam of authority, which is divine as derived from God; therefore they can command us by a power derived from God: therefore to disobey is to sin against a power derived from God. And thus the general case is very plain and easy, How man sinneth against God in disobeying the laws of man, and consequently how (in a tolerable sense of that phrase) it may be said, that man's laws do or do not bind the conscience, (or rather, bind us in point of conscience,) or by a divine obligation. Man is not God; and therefore, as man, of himself can lay no divine obligation on us. But man being God's officer, 1. His own law layeth on us an obligation derivatively divine (for it is no law which hath no obligation, and it is no authoritative obligation which is not derived from God). 2. And God's own law bindeth us to obey man's laws.

Quest. II. But is it a sin to break every penal law of man?

Answ. 1. You must remember that man's law is essentially the signification of man's will; and therefore obligeth no further than it truly signifieth the ruler's will.

2. That it is the act of a power derived from God; and therefore no further bindeth, than it is the exercise of such a power.

3. That it is given, 1. Finally for God's glory and pleasure, and for the common good (comprehending the honour of the ruler and the welfare of the society ruled). And therefore obligeth not when it is, (1.) Against God. (2.) Or against the common good. 2. And it is subordinate to God's own laws, (in nature and Scripture,) and therefore obligeth not to sin, or to the violation of God's law.113

4. You must note that laws are made for the government of societies as such universally; and so are fitted to the common case, for the common good. And it is not possible but that a law which prescribeth a duty which by accident is so to the most, should meet with some particular subject to whom the case is so circumstantiated as that the same act would be to him a sin: and to the same man it may be ordinarily a duty, and in an extraordinary case a sin. Thence it is that in some cases (as Lent fasts, marriages, &c.) rulers oft authorize some persons to grant dispensations in some certain cases: and hence it is said, that necessity hath no law.