Or infidel.
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 mean time 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?
Conclusion.
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 confirmation 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 every thing 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.
The kingdom of Darkness, what.
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; (Matth. xii. 26) the kingdom of Satan; and (Matth. 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.
The Church not yet fully freed of darkness.