Secondly.-Magistrates must use their authority to the maintenance of godliness, honesty, and peace.-And subjects must obey them in their lawful commands and administrations.

Thirdly.-Magistrates must look to and provide for the public necessities, according to the nature of their offices.And subjects must cheerfully contribute to bear them out in doing so.

Fourthly. They must mutually pray for God's blessing to make the whole effectual.

First.-Magistrates must regard themselves as God's ministers, appointed for the maintenance of godliness, honesty, peace, and quietness. And subjects must reverence them as bearing God's authority towards them. • By

Magistrates must regard themselves as God's ministers. me,' says the sovereign Judge, 'kings reign, and princes decree justice; by me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.* Magistrates, you find, are God's deputies. There is no power but of God,' saith St. Paul; the powers that be are ordained of God.'t You may see what magistrates ought to be, in the direction given by the same Apostle, a little lower in the same chapter; when, insisting on the duties of submission and paying tribute, he calls magistrates, again and again, ministers of God; He is the minister of God for good. He is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. They are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.' Wherefore as God's ministers they must regard themselves; not set up to serve themselves but God's glory in the good of the people he hath committed to them. Magistrates are not set up over others by God's ordinance to swell up their hearts with pride and ambition, to indulge them in their own naturally wayward will, to fill their purses, or to encourage them in sloth, luxury, and extravagance; no, but to be ministers of God for the people's good, in ruling according to the wholesome laws of the constitution, to be nursing fathers and nursing mothers to them. Yet authority is a great temptation to a corrupted heart; and it will behove all who have been or are in authority and trust, in places of lower as well as of the highest consideration, to make diligent inquiry whether they Rom. xiii. 1.

* Prov. viii. 15, 16.

have humbly regarded themselves as the ministers of God; whether they have had in view to serve his glory in their places; whether they have executed their trust with a pure design of rendering their office effectually useful to the people under them; whether they have had no indirect aims to their own worldly honour; whether they have not exercised their authority to the indulgence of their own self-will; whether they have not had a sinful respect to their profit; in short, whether they have purely designed to glorify God in their office, and whether there has not been something or other in their conduct that would argue a want of such purity and simplicity of intention, and manifest an ambitious, proud, wilful, selfish aim.

It is worth while to consider the direction given to Moses respecting the choice of magistrates. This will show what sort of persons they ought to be. It may be found in the eighteenth chapter of Exodus, at the twenty-first verse; Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them.' Magistrates must be able men, such as have skill and ability for their employment; they must be such as fear God, who believe his eye is over them, and that they shall be accountable to him for their conduct: men who make a conscience of their office, and will neither neglect nor betray it. They must be men of truth, to be depended upon for their integrity, who will not be double-hearted, or act a bad part upon any consideration; and hating covetousness, persons not to be biassed by any regards of interest, and who are above seeking themselves in the execution of their trust. That is, in a word, they must be men who will be at pains to understand their duty, and mean only the glory of God and the good of the public in the discharge of it.

On the other part subjects must reverence magistrates as bearing God's authority. It is not enough to obey the lawful commands of magistrates; this is nothing in the sight of God, if it do not issue from a reverence of their authority in the heart. The word is, Honour the king.* It lies in the temper of the heart; the magistrate must be honoured because God has honoured him; God's authority must be seen resting upon him, and for the sake of that his person, as God's minister, must be

verence.

reverenced. Many a person will have some fear of the magistrate for wrath's sake, because he has the power of punishing; many are struck with the pomp and solemnity of his appearance; many are influenced to a kind of awe by the dignity of his station but none of this is honouring the magistrate as the minister of God. We then only properly honour the magistrate when we honour God in his person. That was true reverence in David, when he said concerning Saul, I will not put forth mine hand against my lord; for he is the Lord's anointed.' Saul was the Lord's anointed; that was the foundation of David's reWhat then shall we say of those in our days who have no reverence of magistrates? What account do they make of God's ordinance? or how will they answer it to him at his judgment? Yet there is a visible irreverence everywhere towards those in authority. A licentious spirit is gone out, which does not fear God, and so does not honour the king, and those who bear office under him.'+ It is a sinful irreverence to speak evil of the rulers of the people.' Then what place, what house, what tongue is exempt? How disrespectfully have you often heard persons in the highest as well as the lowest offices spoken of! what rash interpretations put upon all their public conduct! how have they been treated, as if there were no difference between them and us! What, because we are a free people, may we therefore set aside God's commandment, and forget that we owe reverence to those who represent God in the state, and are eminently distinguished by the mark of his authority? But it will be said, if they behaved in their office as they ought, they would be respected by us. This makes no difference in the matter; the reverence is due to the man because of his office, not to the office because of the man. Let the man be what he will, the office is still the same; and as long as he bears it, he must be reverenced because set in authority. The truth is, there is no reverence amongst us paid to magistrates because of their office if they behave well indeed they shall get some respect; but then, to what is that respect paid, to the office or to the man? If to the man, what has religion and the command of God to do in the case? To be plain, all honouring of magistrates for the Lord's sake seems in a manner out of doors; scarce Acts xxiii. 5.

* 1 Sam. xxiv. 11. † 1 Pet. ii. 13, 14, 17.

any one thinks of them as ministers of God; hence they have lost their authority, their hands are weakened, they have no hold upon our consciences, and there remains chiefly the form without the power of governors.

If there be any one national vice in this kingdom, any one that overtops all the rest, it is want of reverence for authority. How familiarly are we come to think and speak of our governors! how free are we to censure all their proceedings! how ready, as has appeared lately all over the land, to take the redress of our calamities out of our governors' hands, and to do ourselves right, as we think it! To go no further than this very place for an exemplification of the spirit that prevails, what religious reverence has been paid to our magistracy? There is indeed some fear of their power, some respect to their fortunes; but where is the reverence due to them as ministers of God, while one and another is at every turn speaking so irreverently of them, and not seldom even to them? It is in no degree better, I am very confident, elsewhere. It cannot be otherwise: as Christian piety has decayed, a licentious undutiful spirit hath taken place in our hearts; and as we have forgotten to fear God, we have learnt to disregard man. So it is in fact, all regard to authority is generally departed, whoever will may see it; methinks we can hardly help seeing it whether we will or no. Yet the consequences are above all things to be dreaded. your leave I will mention two of them.

With

The first is, when a nation has cast off regard to governors, it has actually rejected God's ordinance, which government was above shown to be. Governors being God's ministers in the state, to cast off regard to their authority is to fly directly in God's face as to the point of government, and to reject that very method which he hath established for national peace and prosperity. Now as far as this is our case, it is plain he must be provoked at us as a people. When the Israelites would have a king, they did not mean to cast off all regard to authority, yet it was a slight put upon God's majesty, and therefore he gave them. a king in his anger. But when a people will own no authority, but flatly oppose the ordinance of God, this is a higher insult offered to him, an avowed rejection of his institution; nor can they reasonably expect but that his hand shall be against them

to punish and consume them till they be no more a people. And,

Secondly. When a nation has lost regard to authority, the only cement of society is gone, and they must fall in pieces of course, be eaten up by domestic confusions, or be made an easy prey to an enemy from abroad. Can any society subsist without somewhat to tie it together? But when regard to authority is gone, there is no longer any tie subsisting, by which the people are bound to their governors. The outward form of the constitution may remain for a season, but the life of it is no more. There is an actual spirit of rebellion in that people; they will do as they list, nothing but force can restrain them. If force do restrain them, they are slaves; if it do not, they will sooner or later be devoured one of another.

Upon these considerations, the truth of which is but too sadly made out to us in part by the hand of God on the side of our enemies against us, as well as by the uncommon confusions among those who are at the head of our affairs, is there not just cause to conclude we are in greater danger from ourselves than from all others; and that the fears of those who discern the face of the times with an eye to God's providence, and the natural consequence of national vices, are but too justly grounded? The remedy is indeed at hand, if we had the grace to make use of it. If religion revived, conscience would grow up with it, and then there would be found such a religious regard to government as would quickly make this whole people as one man; whose strength thus compacted by the supply of all the members, would, by the blessing of God, soon render us capable of maintaining our ground against all that should rise up against us. Wherefore, for the sake of our sinking country, let us return unto the Lord; let us pray him to send out his Spirit among us; let us contend earnestly for the revival of religion; and let us be patterns to all men of that fear of God and honour of his ministers, the want of which must unavoidably issue in our ruin, present and eternal.

Secondly.-Magistrates must use their authority for the maintenance of godliness, honesty, quietness, and peace. For the maintenance of all these they are God's ministers, and for the sake of supporting them to his glory he has imparted of his au