one should endeavour to ensnare you with little questions, and catch at your answers, to ground an accusation against you upon your own principles concerning the right of kings, and all this under a monarchy, would you be angry with him? You would have but very little reason. It is evident, that our Saviour's principles concerning government were not agreeable to the humour of princes. His answer too implies as much; by which he rather turned them away, than instructed them. He asked for the tribute-money. "Whose image and superscription is it?" says he. They tell him it was Cæsar's. "Give then to Cæsar," says he, "the things that are Cæsar's; and to God the things that are God's." And how comes it to pass that the people should not have given to them the things that are theirs?" Render to all men their dues," says St. Paul, Rom. xiii. So that Cæsar must not engross all to himself. Our liberty is not Cæsar's; it is a blessing we have received from God himself; it is what we are born to; to lay this down at Cæsar's feet, which we derive not from him, which we are not beholden to him for, were an unworthy action, and a degrading of our very nature. If one should consider attentively the countenance of a man, and inquire after whose image so noble a creature were framed, would not any one that heard him presently make answer, that he was made after the image of God himself? Being therefore peculiarly God's own, and consequently things that are to be given to him, we are entirely free by nature, and cannot without the greatest sacrilege imaginable be reduced into a condition of slavery to any man, especially to a wicked, unjust, cruel tyrant.* Our Saviour does not

* At the reading of this noble passage most persons will call to mind that speech of Hamlet, in which occurs the highest expressions of the excellence of humanity anywhere perhaps to be met with: "What a piece of work is man!" exclaims the philosophic Dane; "How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form, and in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a God! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" Afterwards, by way of epigrammatic point, he calls man the "quintessence of dust." And Locke, while pointing out the sources of all our knowledge, with a view to humble the pride of speculation, insists on the extremely narrow basis upon which all our philosophy and most dazzling theories ultimately rest. "This," says he, "is the first step a man makes towards the discovery of anything, and the groundwork whereon to build all those notions which ever he

take upon him to determine what things are God's and what Cæsar's; he leaves that as he found it. If the piece of money which they shewed him was the same that was paid to God, as in Vespasian's time it was; then our Saviour is so far from having put an end to the controversy, that he has but entangled it, and made it more perplexed than it was before for it is impossible the same thing should be given both to God and to Cæsar. But, you say, he intimates to them what things were Cæsar's; to wit, that piece of money, because it bore the emperor's stamp. And what of all that? How does this advantage your cause? You get not the emperor, or yourself, a penny by this conclusion. Either Christ allowed nothing at all to be Cæsar's but that piece of money that he then had in his hand, and thereby asserted the people's interest in everything else; or else, if (as you would have us understand him) he affirms all money that has the emperor's stamp upon it to be the emperor's own, he contradicts himself, and indeed gives the magistrate a property in every man's estate, whenas he himself paid his tributemoney with a protestation, that it was more than what either Peter or he were bound to do. The ground you rely on is very weak; for money bears the prince's image, not as a token of its being his, but of its being good metal, and that none may presume to counterfeit it. If the writing princes' names or setting their stamps upon a thing vest the property of it in them, it were a good ready way for them to invade all property. Or rather, if whatever subjects have be absolutely at their prince's disposal, which is your assertion, that piece of money was not Cæsar's because his image was stamped on it, but beshall have naturally in this world: all those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing here. In all that great extent, where the mind wanders in those remote speculations it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or reflection has offered for its contemplation." Essay on the Human Understanding, book ii. chap. i. §. 24. But this, which at first seems calculated to humble man, in reality greatly exalts his nature, since to the resemblance of God, which Milton, with poetic licence, discovers in his outward form, it adds the resemblance to be drawn from inward creative energy, the mind being the architect of its own ideas, and at the same time supplying in great part the materials out of which they are formed.-ED.

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cause of right it belonged to him before it was coined. So that nothing can be more manifest, than that our Saviour in this place never intended to teach us our duty to magistrates, (he would have spoken more plainly if he had,) but to reprehend the malice and wickedness of the hypocritical Pharisees. When they told him that Herod laid wait to kill him; did he return an humble, submissive answer? Go, tell that fox," says he, &c. intimating, that kings have no other right to destroy their subjects, than foxes have to devour the things they prey upon. Say you, "He suffered death under a tyrant?" How could he possibly under any other? other? But from hence you conclude, that he asserted it to be the right of kings to commit murder and act injustice. You would make an excellent moralist. But our Saviour, though he became a servant, not to make us so, but that we might be free; yet carried he himself so with relation to the magistracy, as not to ascribe any more to them than their due. Now, let us come at last to inquire what his doctrine was upon this subject. The sons of Zebedee were ambitious of honour and power in the kingdom of Christ, which they persuaded themselves he would shortly set up in the world; he reproves them so, as withal to let all Christians know what form of civil government he desires they should settle amongst themselves. "Ye know," says he, "that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them; but it shall not be so among you, but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." Unless you had been distracted, you could never have imagined that this place makes for you: and yet you urge it, and think it furnishes you with an argument to prove that our kings are absolute lords and masters over us and ours. May it be our fortune to have to do with such enemies in war, as will fall blindfold and naked into our camp instead of their own! as you constantly do, who allege that for yourself that of all things in the world makes most against you. The Israelites asked God for a king, such a king as other nations round about them had. God dissuaded them by many arguments, whereof our Saviour here gives

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us an epitome: "You know that princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them." But yet, because the Israelites persisted in their desire of a king, God gave them one, though in his wrath. Our Saviour, lest Christians should desire a king, such a one at least as might rule, as he says the princes of the Gentiles did, prevents them with an injunction to the contrary: "But it shall not be so among you." What can be said plainer than this? That stately, imperious sway and dominion, that kings use to exercise, shall not be amongst you, what specious titles soever they may assume to themselves, as that of benefactors, or the like. "But he that will be great amongst you," (and who is greater than the prince?)" let him be your servant." So that the lawyer, whoever he be, that you are so smart upon, was not so much out of the way, but had our Saviour's own authority to back him, when he said, that Christian princes were indeed no other than the people's servants; it is very certain that all good magistrates are so. Insomuch that Christians either must have no king at all; or if they have, that king must be the people's servant. Absolute lordship and Christianity are inconsistent. Moses himself, by whose ministry that servile economy of the old law was instituted, did not exercise an arbitrary, haughty power and authority, but bore the burden of the people, and carried them in his bosom, as a nursing father does a sucking child, Numb. xi. And what is that of a nursing father but a ministerial employment? Plato would not have the magistrates called lords, but servants and helpers of the people: nor the people servants, but maintainers of their magistrates, because they give meat, drink, and wages to their kings themselves. Aristotle calls the magistrates, keepers and ministers of the laws. Plato, ministers and servants. The apostle calls them ministers of God. But they are ministers and servants of the people, and of the laws, nevertheless for all that; the laws and the magistrates were both created for the good of the people; and yet this is it that you call "the opinion of the fanatic mastiffs in England." I should not have thought the people of England were mastiff dogs, if such a mongrel cur as thou art did not bark at them so currishly. The master, if it

shall please ye, of St. Lupus,* complains it seems, that the mastiffs are mad (fanatics). Germanus heretofore, whose colleague that Lupus of Triers was, deposed our incestuous king Vortigern by his own authority. And therefore St. Lupus despises thee, the master not of a Holy Wolf, but of some hunger-starved thieving little wolf or other, as being more contemptible than that master of vipers, of whom Martial makes mention, who hast by relation a barking she-wolf at home too, that domineers over thee most wretchedly; at whose instigations, as I am informed, thou hast wrote this stuff. And therefore it is the less wonder, that thou shouldst endeavour to obtrude an absolute regal government upon others, who hast been accustomed to bear a female rule so servilely at home thyself. Be therefore, in the name of God, the master of a wolf, lest a she-wolf be thy mistress; be a wolf thyself, be a monster made up of a man and a wolf; whatever thou art, the English mastiffs will but make a laughingstock of thee. But I am not now at leisure to hunt for wolves, and will put an end therefore to this digression. You that but a while ago wrote a book against all manner of superiority in the church, now call St. Peter the prince of the apostles. How inconstant you are in your principles! But what says Peter? "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme, or to governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and the praise of them that do well: for so is the will of God," &c. This epistle Peter wrote, not only to private persons, but those strangers scattered and dispersed through Asia; who, in those places where they sojourned, had no other right than what the laws of hospitality entitled them to. Do you think such men's case to be the same with that of natives, freeborn subjects, nobility, senates, assemblies of estates, parliaments? nay, is not the case far different of private persons, though in their own country; and senators, or magistrates, without whom kings themselves cannot possibly subsist? But let us suppose that St. Peter had directed his epistle to the natural-born subjects, and those not private persons *Lupus in Latin signifies a wolf.