Part 32

_Knox._ Neither of these fights against my argument; for, albeit the king was neither present, nor yet had condemned him, the princes and chief councillors were there sitting in judgment. They represented the king's person and authority, hearing the accusation laid to the charge of the Prophet. Therefore he forewarns them of the danger, as I have already said, that, if he should be condemned and put to death, the king, the council, and the whole city of Jerusalem should be guilty of his blood, because he had committed no crime worthy of death. If ye think that they should all have been criminal, only because they all accused him, the plain text witnesses the contrary. The princes defended him, and so no doubt did a great part of the people; and yet he boldly affirms that they should be all guilty of his blood if he should be put to death. The Prophet Ezekiel gives the reason why all are guilty of a common corruption. He says, "I sought a man amongst them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none; therefore have I poured my indignation upon them." From this, my Lord, it is plain that God craves not only that a man do no iniquity in his own person, but also that he oppose himself to all iniquity, so far as in him lies.

_Lethington._ Then ye will make subjects control their princes and rulers.

_Knox._ And what harm should the commonwealth receive, if the corrupt affections of ignorant rulers were moderated, and so bridled by the wisdom and discretion of godly subjects that they should do wrong nor violence to no man?

_Lethington._ All this reasoning is not to the purpose; for we reason as if the Queen should become such an enemy to our religion, that she should persecute it, and put innocent men to death. This, I am assured, she never intended, and never will do. If I should see her again of that purpose, yea, if I should suspect any such thing in her, I should be as far forward in that argument as ye or any other within this realm. But there is not such a thing. Our question is, whether we may and ought to suppress the Queen's Mass? Or whether her idolatry shall be laid to our charge?

_Knox._ What ye may do by force, I dispute not; but what ye may and ought to do by God's express commandment, that I can tell. Idolatry ought not only to be suppressed, but the idolater ought to die the death, unless we will accuse God.

_Lethington._ I know that the idolater is commanded to die the death; but by whom?

_Knox._ By the people of God. The commandment was given to Israel, as ye may read, "Hear, Israel, says the Lord, the statutes and the ordinances of the Lord thy God," etc. Yea, a commandment was given, that, if it be heard that idolatry is committed in any one city, inquisition shall be taken; and, if it be found true, the whole body of the people shall then arise and destroy that city, sparing in it neither man, woman, nor child.

_Lethington._ But there is no commandment given to the people to punish their king if he be an idolater.

_Knox._ I find no privilege to offend God's Majesty granted to kings, by God, more than to the people.

_Lethington._ I grant that; but yet the people may not be judges to their king to punish him, albeit he be an idolater.

_Knox._ God is the Universal Judge, as well of the king as of the people. What His Word commands to be punished in the one, is not to be absolved in the other.

_Lethington._ We agree in that; but the people may not execute God's judgment. They must leave it to Himself. He will either punish it by death, by war, by imprisonment, or by some other plagues.

_Knox._ I know the last part of your reason to be true; but for the first, that the people, yea, or a part of the people, may not execute God's judgments against their king, he being an offender, I am assured ye have no other warrant except your own imagination, and the opinion of such as have more fear to offend princes than God.

_Lethington._ Why say ye so? I have the judgments of the most famous men within Europe, and of such as ye yourself will confess both godly and learned.

And with that he called for his papers. When these were produced by Mr. Robert Maitland, he began to read with great gravity the judgments of Luther, and Melanchthon, and the minds of Bucer, Musculus, and Calvin, as to how Christians should behave themselves in time of persecution: yea, the Book of Baruch was not omitted.

_Lethington._ The gathering of these things has cost more travail than I have taken these seven years in the reading of commentaries.

_Knox._ The more pity; and yet, let others judge what ye have profited your own cause. As for my argument, I am assured ye have weakened it in nothing; for your first two witnesses speak against the Anabaptists, who deny that Christians should be subject to magistrates, or that it is lawful for a Christian to be a magistrate. That opinion I no less abhor than ye do, or than does any other that lives. The others speak of Christians subject to tyrants and infidels, so dispersed that they have no other force but only to sob to God for deliverance. That such, indeed, should hazard any further than these godly men direct them, I cannot hastily counsel. But my argument has another ground; for I speak of the people assembled together in one body of one commonwealth, to whom God has given sufficient force, not only to resist, but also to suppress all kind of open idolatry. Such a people, I affirm yet again, are bound to keep their land clean and unpolluted.

That this my division shall not appear strange to you, ye should understand that God required one thing of Abraham and of his seed, when he and they were strangers and pilgrims in Egypt and Canaan; and another thing when they were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, and the possession of the land of Canaan was granted to them. At the first, and during all the time of their bondage, God craved no more than that Abraham should not defile himself with idolatry. Neither was he nor his posterity commanded to destroy the idols that were in Canaan or in Egypt. But when God gave them the possession of the land, He gave them this strait commandment, "Beware lest ye make league or confederacy with the inhabitants of this land: give not thy sons unto their daughters, nor yet give thy daughters unto their sons. But this shall ye do unto them, cut down their groves, destroy their images, break down their altars, and leave thou no kind of remembrance of those abominations, which the inhabitants of the land used before: for thou art a people holy unto the Lord thy God. Defile not thyself, therewith, with their gods."

Ye, my Lords, and all such as have professed the Lord Jesus within this realm, are bound to this same commandment. God has wrought no less miracle upon you, both spiritual and corporal, than He did upon the carnal seed of Abraham. For you yourselves cannot be ignorant in what estate your bodies and this poor realm were, not seven years ago. You and it were both in bondage to a strange nation; and what tyrants reigned over your conscience, God perchance may let you feel, because ye do not rightly acknowledge the benefit received. When our poor brethren before us gave their bodies to the flames of fire for the testimony of the truth, and when scarcely ten that rightly knew God could be found in a country-side, it would have been foolishness to have craved the suppressing of idolatry, either by the Nobility, or by the humble subjects. That would have done nothing but expose the simple sheep as a prey to the wolves. But since God has multiplied knowledge, and has given the victory to His truth, even in the hands of His servants, if ye suffer the land again to be defiled, ye and your Princess shall both drink the cup of God's indignation--she for her obstinate abiding in manifest idolatry in the great light of the Evangel of Jesus Christ, and ye for your permitting and maintaining her in it.

_Lethington._ In that point we will never agree; and where find ye, I pray you, that any of the Prophets or of the Apostles ever taught such a doctrine as that the people should be plagued for the idolatry of the prince; or that the subjects might suppress the idolatry of their rulers, or punish them for the same?

_Knox._ My Lord, we know what was the commission given to the Apostles. It was to preach and plant the Evangel of Jesus Christ where darkness had dominion before; and therefore it behoved them, first, to let them see the light before they should urge them to put to their hands to suppress idolatry. I will not affirm what precepts the Apostles gave to the faithful in particular, other than that they commanded all to flee from idolatry. But I find two things which the faithful did; the one was, they assisted their preachers, even against the rulers and magistrates; the other was, they suppressed idolatry wherever God gave them force, asking no leave of the Emperor, or of his deputies. Read the Ecclesiastical History, and ye shall find sufficient example. As to the doctrine of the Prophets, we know they were interpreters of the law of God; and we know they spake to the kings as well as to the people. I read that neither would hear them; and therefore came the plague of God upon both. But I cannot be persuaded that they flattered kings more than the people.

As I have said, God's laws pronounce sentence of death upon idolatry, without exception of any person. Idolatry is never alone; ever does it corrupt religion, and bring with it a filthy and corrupt life. How the Prophets could rightly interpret the law, and show the causes of God's judgments, which they ever threatened should follow idolatry, and the rest of abominations that accompany it--how they could reprove the vices, and not show the people their duty, I understand not. Therefore, I constantly believe that the doctrine of the Prophets was so sensible that the kings understood their own abominations, and the people understood what they ought to have done in punishing and repressing them. But because the most part of the people were no less rebellious to God than were their princes, the one and the other convened against God and against His servants. And yet, my Lord, the acts of some Prophets are so evident, that we may collect from them what doctrine they taught; for it were no small absurdity to affirm that their acts should repugn to their doctrine.

_Lethington._ I think ye refer to the history of Jehu. What will ye prove thereby?

_Knox._ The chief head that ye deny and I affirm--that the Prophets never taught that it appertained to the people to punish the idolatry of their kings. For the probation, I am ready to produce the act of a Prophet. Ye know, my Lord, that Elisha sent one of the children of the Prophets to anoint Jehu, who gave him commandment to destroy the house of his master Ahab for the idolatry committed by him, and for the innocent blood that Jezebel his wicked wife had shed. He obeyed, and put this into full execution; and for this God promised him the stability of the kingdom, to the fourth generation. Here is the act of one Prophet that proves that subjects were commanded to execute judgments upon their king and prince.

_Lethington._ There is enough to be answered thereto. Jehu was a king before he put anything in execution; and besides, the act is extraordinary, and not to be imitated.

_Knox._ My Lord, he was a mere subject and no king, when the Prophet's servant came to him; yea, and albeit his fellow-captains, hearing of the message, blew the trumpet, and said, "Jehu is king;" I doubt not that Jezebel both thought and said he was a traitor. So did many others that were in Israel and in Samaria. And as touching what ye allege--that the act was extraordinary, and is not to be imitated--I say that it had ground upon God's ordinary judgment, which commands the idolater to die the death. Therefore, I yet again affirm that it is to be imitated by all those that prefer the true honour, the true worship, and the glory of God to the affections of flesh, and of wicked princes.

_Lethington._ We are not bound to imitate extraordinary examples, unless we have the like commandment and assurance.

_Knox._ I grant that, if the example repugn to the law, and if an avaricious and deceitful man desired to borrow gold, silver, raiment, or any other necessaries from his neighbour, and withhold the same, he might allege that he might do so and not offend God, because the Israelites did so to the Egyptians, at their departure from Egypt. The example would serve no purpose unless the like cause, and the like commandment to that which the Israelites had, could be produced; because, their act repugned to this commandment of God, "Thou shalt not steal." But where the example agrees with the law, and is, as it were, the execution of God's judgments expressed in it, I say that the example approved by God stands to us in place of a commandment. God of His nature is constant, and immutable; He cannot condemn in the subsequent ages that which He has approved in His servants before us. In His servants before us, by His own commandment, He has approved when subjects have not only destroyed their kings for idolatry, but also rooted out their whole posterity, so that none of that race were afterwards left to empire over the people of God.

_Lethington._ Whatsoever they did was done at God's commandment.

_Knox._ That fortifies my argument. You admit that subjects punish their princes by God's commandment for idolatry and wickedness committed by them.

_Lethington._ We have not the like commandment.

_Knox._ That I deny. The commandment, "The idolater shall die the death," is perpetual, as ye yourself have granted. You doubted only who should be executors against the king; and I said the people of God. I have sufficiently proven, I think, that God has raised up the people, and by His Prophet has anointed a king to take vengeance upon the king and upon his posterity. Since that time, God has never retreated[237] that act; and, therefore, to me it remains for a constant and clean commandment to all people professing God, and having the power to punish vice, as to what they ought to do in the like case. If the people had enterprised anything without God's commandment, we might have doubted whether they had done well or evil. But, seeing that God did bring the execution of His law again into practice, after it had fallen into oblivion and contempt, what reasonable man can now doubt of God's will, unless we are to doubt of all things which God does not renew to us by miracles, as it were, from age to age. I am assured that the answer of Abraham to the rich man who, being in hell, desired that Lazarus or some of the dead should be sent to his brethren and friends, to inform them of his incredible pain and torments, and to warn them so to behave themselves that they should not come to that place of torment--that answer shall confound such as crave further approbation of God's will than is already expressed within His holy Scriptures. Abraham said, "They have Moses and the Prophets; if they will not believe them, neither will they believe albeit one of the dead should rise." Even so, my Lord, I say that such as will not be taught what they ought to do, by commandment of God once given and once put in practice, will not believe or obey, albeit God should send angels from heaven to instruct that doctrine.

[237] Repudiated; withdrawn.

_Lethington._ Ye have but produced one example.

_Knox._ One sufficeth. But, God be praised, we do not lack others. The whole people conspired against Amaziah, king of Judah, after he had turned away from the Lord, followed him to Lachish and slew him, and took Uzziah and anointed him king instead of his father. The people had not altogether forgotten the league and covenant made betwixt their king and them, at the inauguration of Joash, his father, that the king and the people should be the people of the Lord, and then should they be his faithful subjects. When first the father, and afterwards the son, declined from that covenant, they were both punished to the death, Joash by his own servants, and Amaziah by the whole people.

_Lethington._ I doubt whether they did well or not.

_Knox._ It shall be free for you to doubt as ye please; but where I find execution according to God's laws, and God Himself does not accuse the doers, I dare not doubt of the equity of the cause. Further, it appears to me that God gave sufficient approbation and allowance to their act; for He blessed them with victory, peace, and prosperity, for the space of fifty-two years thereafter.

_Lethington._ But prosperity does not always prove that God approves the acts of men.

_Knox._ Yes; when the acts of men agree with the law of God, and are rewarded according to God's own promise, expressed in His law, I say that the prosperity succeeding the act is most infallible assurance that God has approved that act. God has promised in His law that, when His people shall exterminate and destroy such as decline from Him, He will bless them, and multiply them, as He has promised to their fathers. Amaziah turned from God; for so the text doth witness; and it is plain that the people slew their king; and it is as plain that God blessed them. Therefore, yet again I conclude that God approved their act, and it, in so far as it was done according to His commandment, was blessed according to His promise.

_Lethington._ Well, I think the ground is not so sure that I durst build my conscience thereupon.

_Knox._ I pray God that your conscience have no worse ground than this, whenever ye shall begin work like that which God, before your own eyes, has already blessed. And now, my Lord, I have but one example to produce, and then I will put an end to my reasoning, because I weary of standing. (Commandment was given that he should sit down; but he refused it, and said, "Melancholious reasons would have some mirth intermixed.") My last example, my Lord, is this, Uzziah the king, not content of his royal estate, malapertly took upon him to enter within the temple of the Lord, to burn incense upon the altar of incense; and Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him fourscore priests of the Lord, valiant men. These withstood Uzziah the king, and said to him, "It pertaineth thee not, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but to the priests, the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to offer incense. Go forth of the sanctuary, for thou hast transgressed, and you shall have no honour of the Lord God." From this, my Lord, I conclude that subjects not only may, but ought to withstand and resist their princes, whenever they do anything that expressly repugns to God's law or holy ordinance.

_Lethington._ They that withstood the king were not simple subjects. They were the priests of the Lord, and figures of Christ. We have none such priests this day, to withstand kings if they do wrong.

_Knox._ I grant that the High Priest was the figure of Christ, but I deny that he was not a subject. I am assured that he, in his priesthood, had no prerogative above those that had gone before him. Now, Aaron was subject unto Moses, and called him his lord. Samuel, being both prophet and priest, subjected himself to Saul, after he was inaugurated by the people. Zadok bowed before David; and Abiathar was deposed from the priesthood by Solomon. These all confessed themselves subjects to the kings, albeit therewith they ceased not to be figures of Christ. Ye say that we have no such priests this day, but I might answer that neither have we such kings this day as then were anointed at God's commandment, and sat upon the seat of David, and were no less the figure of Christ Jesus in their just administration, than were the priests in their appointed office. Such kings, I am assured, we have not now, more than have we such priests. Christ Jesus, being anointed in our nature by God, His Father, as King, Priest, and Prophet, has put an end to all external unction. And yet, I think, ye will not say that God has now diminished His graces for those whom He appoints ambassadors betwixt Him and His people, more than He does from kings and princes. Therefore, I see not why the servants of Jesus Christ may not also justly withstand kings and princes that this day no less offend God's Majesty than Uzziah did, unless ye will say that we, in the brightness of the Evangel, are not straitly bound to regard God's glory or His commandments, as were the fathers that lived under the dark shadows of the law.

_Lethington._ Well, I will dip no further into that head. But how resisted the priests the king? They only spake to him, without further violence intended.

_Knox._ That they withstood him, the text assures me; but that they did nothing but speak, I cannot understand. The plain text affirms the contrary. They caused him hastily to depart from the sanctuary, yea, he was compelled to depart. This manner of speaking, I am assured, imports in the Hebrew tongue another thing than exhorting, or commanding by word.

_Lethington._ They did that after he was espied to be leprous.

_Knox._ They withstood him before; but their last act confirms my proposition so evidently, that such as will oppose themselves to it must needs oppose themselves to God. My assertion is, that kings have no privilege to offend God's Majesty more than had the people; and that, if they do so, they are no more exempted from the punishment of the law than is any subject; yea, and that subjects may not only lawfully oppose themselves to their kings, whenever they do anything that expressly repugns to God's commandment, but also that they may execute judgment upon them according to God's law. If the king be a murderer, adulterer, or idolater, he should suffer according to God's law, not as a king, but as an offender, and this history clearly proves that the people may put God's laws into execution. As soon as the leprosy appeared in his forehead, he was not only compelled to depart out of the sanctuary, but he was also removed from all public society and administration of the kingdom, and was compelled to dwell in a house apart, even as the law commanded. He got no greater privilege in that case than any other of the people should have done; and this was executed by the people; for there is no doubt that more than the priests alone were witnesses of his leprosy. We do not find that any oppose themselves to the sentence of God pronounced in His law against the leprous; and therefore, yet again say I that the people ought to execute God's law even against their princes, when their open crimes deserve death by God's law, but especially when they are such as may infect the rest of the multitude. And now, my Lords, I will reason no longer, for I have spoken more than I intended.

_Lethington._ And yet I cannot tell what can be concluded.

_Knox._ Albeit ye cannot, I am assured of what I have proven, to wit:--1. That subjects have delivered an innocent from the hands of their king, and therein offended not God. 2. That subjects have refused to strike innocents when a king commanded, and in doing so denied no just obedience. 3. That such as struck at the commandment of the king before God were reputed murderers. 4. That God has not only of one subject made a king, but also has armed subjects against their natural kings, and commanded them to take vengeance upon them according to His law. 5. That God's people have executed God's law against their king, having no further regard to him in that behalf, than if he had been the most simple subject within this realm. Therefore, albeit ye will not understand what should be concluded, I am assured not only that God's people may, but also that they are bound to do the same where the like crimes are committed, and when He gives unto them the like power.