Whether the Magistrate May Make Law

The author, a simple biblicist of Lancaster County, unlearned in the schools and long content with “it is written,” here ventures beyond his station. Having been assured by wiser men that right reason will lead the careful inquirer to the truth, he has resolved to take them at their word.

Prologue

Quaestio de terminis legis humanae: a question on the limits of human law, set out in the manner of the Schoolmen, from the premises of natural law.

It is often said in our day that the Lancastrian theonomist is a mere rustic, a man of one book who has not read the Philosopher, has not sat at the feet of the Angelic Doctor, and has no answer to the venerable tradition of lex naturalis. It is further said that the right authority may establish human laws with the use of sound reason for the good of the people and that natural law therefore licenses the magistrate to make laws beyond what God has written.

We propose to test this. We take up the tools the natural lawyers hand us (essence and end, the first precept, the definition of law, the definition of justice, and the doctrine of privation) and ask where right reason, rightly used, will lead. If it leads where they say, we shall concede. If it leads somewhere else, the reader may draw his own conclusion.

Concerning the limits of human law, there are five points of inquiry:

1. Whether natural reason suffices to know with certainty what the civil law ought to forbid?
2. Whether the magistrate may establish laws beyond God’s written law?
3. Whether the magistrate may establish penalties other than those God has established?
4. Whether a human statute that forbids what God has not forbidden is a law at all?
5. Whether the subject sins who disobeys a human statute that forbids what God has not forbidden?

Article 1. Whether natural reason suffices to know with certainty what the civil law ought to forbid?

We proceed thus to the First Article:

Objection 1. It would seem that natural reason suffices. For the Apostle says that “the Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires,” and that “the work of the law is written on their hearts” (Rom. 2:14–15). But what is written on the heart is known without a book. Therefore the lawgiver needs no book to know what to forbid.

Objection 2. Further, the first precepts of the natural law are self-evident, as the Angelic Doctor teaches (ST I-II q.94 a.2), and from self-evident principles reason draws certain conclusions. Therefore reason can conclude with certainty which acts the civil law ought to forbid.

Objection 3. Further, the natural lawyers commonly hold that the natural law is the proximate starting point for our knowledge of what God requires, since the eternal law cannot be known apart from it. But what is the starting point of all moral knowledge must suffice for the narrower knowledge of what the civil law ought to forbid.

On the contrary, the Angelic Doctor himself says: “On account of the uncertainty of human judgment, especially on contingent and particular matters, different people form different judgments on human acts; whence also different and contrary laws result. In order, therefore, that man may know without any doubt what he ought to do and what he ought to avoid, it was necessary for man to be directed in his proper acts by a law given by God, for it is certain that such a law cannot err” (ST I-II q.91 a.4).

I answer that, we must distinguish, as the Schoolmen are fond of doing. In the natural law there are first and common principles, such as “good is to be done and evil avoided,” and these are known to all. There are also secondary precepts, conclusions drawn from the first, and these are known with far less certainty.

Of these secondary precepts the Angelic Doctor confesses that the natural law “fails” in some, because “in some the reason is perverted by passion, or evil habit, or an evil disposition of nature.” He gives the example that theft, “although it is expressly contrary to the natural law, was not considered wrong among the Germans” (ST I-II q.94 a.4). He adds that the secondary precepts can be “blotted out from the human heart” by evil persuasion and corrupt custom (q.94 a.6).

Now consider what the lawgiver does. He does not merely hold an opinion about an act. He declares, for a whole people and for cases not yet arisen, that the act is evil and shall cost a man his goods, his liberty, or his life. To do this without certainty is to risk punishing the innocent, not once but by the hundreds. And the Doctor teaches elsewhere that judgment proceeding from suspicion, without sufficient ground, is unlawful (ST II-II q.60 a.3). If whole nations failed to see that theft is wrong, a lawgiver reasoning from nature alone has no assurance that what he forbids is a crime.

Therefore natural reason suffices to render man inexcusable, as Calvin says is its proper purpose (Institutes 2.2.22). It does not suffice to write a statute book. For that, man needs what Calvin calls “a written law to give us a clearer witness of what was more obscure in the natural law” (Institutes 2.8.1).

Reply to Objection 1. The Apostle says the work of the law written on the heart bears witness, with conscience “accusing or even excusing” (Rom. 2:15). A witness is not a statute book, and an accusing conscience is not a sentencing judge. The same Gentiles who had the law on their hearts are, a few verses earlier, “filled with all manner of unrighteousness” and “give approval to those who practice them” (Rom. 1:29–32). The heart that accuses can also approve.

Reply to Objection 2. We grant that the first precepts are self-evident. But no penalty is self-evident, and no list of crimes is self-evident. The Doctor himself teaches that while “the law of nature has it that the evil-doer should be punished,” the manner of punishment is not a conclusion but a “determination” (ST I-II q.95 a.2). By his own account, then, reason cannot deduce the penalty. It must be supplied by someone. The only question is by whom.

Reply to Objection 3. Whatever is first in the order of discovery, Scripture is first in the order of certainty. The Second London Baptist Confession, which not a few of them profess, calls Holy Scripture “the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience” (1689 LBC 1.1). The magistrate’s obedience is obedience, and the confession names its rule.

Article 2. Whether the magistrate may establish laws beyond God’s written law?

We proceed thus to the Second Article:

Objection 1. It would seem that he may. For the natural lawyers teach that, from the natural law given to man in nature, the right authority may establish human laws by sound reason for the good of the community. But to establish a law is to forbid what was not forbidden before. Therefore the magistrate may forbid what God’s written law does not forbid.

Objection 2. Further, the Angelic Doctor teaches that it was useful for laws to be framed by men, because some are “prone to vice” and must be “restrained from evil by force and fear” (ST I-II q.95 a.1). But Scripture does not name every vice. Therefore human law must supply what Scripture omits.

Objection 3. Further, the common good is served by many ordinances unknown to Moses, since circumstances change and new occasions arise. Therefore the magistrate must be able to forbid new things.

Objection 4. Further, the human law does not invent evils but only publishes what the natural law already forbids. Therefore no innocent man is harmed by it, and the magistrate who makes it adds nothing to God’s law but its application.

Objection 5. Further, the Lancastrian himself allows the judge to reason from the parapet to the balcony. But this is human reason determining particulars. Therefore if reason may determine particulars in the judge, it may do so in the lawgiver.

On the contrary, it is written: “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it” (Deut. 4:2). And again: “The LORD is our judge; the LORD is our lawgiver; the LORD is our king” (Isa. 33:22). And again: “There is only one lawgiver and judge” (James 4:12).

I answer that, we must first consider what it is to make a law. Law, the Doctor says, “is a rule and measure of acts” (ST I-II q.90 a.1). To make a law, then, is to fix a measure beforehand: to declare, for all persons and for cases not yet arisen, that a certain act is evil and shall bear a certain penalty. The Doctor himself, following the Philosopher, observes that the lawgiver judges “in the abstract and of future events,” while the judge judges “of things present” (ST I-II q.95 a.1 ad 2). To legislate is to adjudicate in advance. With this in view, we may reach our conclusion from the natural law’s own principles, without first appealing to the texts above.

First, from the knowledge the lawgiver requires. He who judges one case needs certainty about one act. He who makes law judges every case at once, including cases he cannot foresee. He therefore needs greater certainty than any judge. But the Doctor confesses that in the secondary precepts, “the more we descend into detail, the more frequently we encounter defects.” His own example: it is right to return goods held in trust, yet it would be wrong to return a sword to a man who means to use it against his country (ST I-II q.94 a.4). A precept that holds “in the majority of cases” fails in particulars. Therefore any rule framed by human reason, applied universally, will condemn some men who have done no evil. The speed limit binds the careful driver with the reckless. The fence ordinance fines the household with no children. The license law fines the farmer whose milk harmed no one. Only a Lawgiver who knows every case can frame a rule that fails in none.

Second, from the definition of justice. Justice, according to the jurists and the Doctor, is “the constant and perpetual will to render to each one his right” (Digest 1.1.10; ST II-II q.58 a.1). Punishment is the due of fault, not of innocence. A human law that, by the first argument, must catch some innocent men renders to them what is not their due, which by definition is injustice.

Third, from the end of the office. Every nature, as the natural lawyers rightly insist, is ordered to its proper end. The Philosopher calls the ruler “the guardian of justice” (Nicomachean Ethics V.6). The end of the magistrate’s office, then, is to render justice: to punish evil. But a guardian keeps what is given him; he does not author it. The keeper of the vineyard does not plant it.

Fourth, from the doctrine of privation. A privation, we are told, is “the want of a good that ought to be present in a thing given its nature,” as when a child is born without eyes. A magistrate who punishes the innocent is not acting according to his nature as magistrate. He is a magistrate deprived of the very good his office exists to supply, an eye that does not see. By the natural lawyer’s own metaphysics, he is a deformed magistrate.

Fifth, from the end of man. The natural lawyers rightly teach that man also has a nature ordered to an end, and that whatever frustrates that end is contrary to the natural law. What, then, is man’s end? The Creator declared it at his making: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion” (Gen. 1:26). And he blessed them: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” (Gen. 1:28). Observe that the inclination the natural lawyers place among the first, the begetting of children, is here joined to dominion in a single command. The Doctor himself devotes a whole question to man’s dominion in the state of innocence (ST I q.96). Man is, by nature, a dominion-taking creature: he works the ground, builds, trades, and keeps.

Dominion requires that a man may use what is his: his land, his labor, his cow and her milk, his tools and his trade. A magistrate who makes laws beyond God’s law draws a boundary around man’s dominion that God did not draw. He does not merely wrong one man; he frustrates the end for which man was made. By the natural lawyer’s own principle, such a statute is contrary to nature.

Therefore right reason concludes that the magistrate may not establish laws beyond God’s written law. His office is to judge by the law, not to make it. When a statute fines a man for selling raw milk to willing neighbors, or fines another $35,000 for selling rifles, the natural lawyer must ask the question his own system requires: what evil was punished? If none can be named from God’s law, it is written that “to impose a fine on a righteous man is not good” (Prov. 17:26), and reason agrees.

Reply to Objection 1. The argument assumes what it must prove, that “the right authority” has authority to do this. We grant with the Doctor that the magistrate’s authority is not invented by the consent of men but given by God, for “there is no authority except from God” (Rom. 13:1). But for that very reason it reaches only as far as God gives it, and the Apostle names what he gives: the ruler is “God’s servant for your good… an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:4). He received a sword to punish evil, not a pen to define it. Moreover, the natural lawyers themselves grant that human law is fallible while divine law is infallible. To enforce a fallible law with the sword is to stake a neighbor’s goods and life on a conclusion that may be false.

Reply to Objection 2. We grant the Doctor’s reason: men are restrained “from evil” by fear. But this proves that the sword is for evildoers, which is our conclusion, not theirs. Fear placed on the innocent is not restraint but terror, and the Apostle says rulers are “not a terror to good conduct, but to bad” (Rom. 13:3). The Doctor himself teaches that human law ought not to forbid every vice, “but only the more grievous vices” (ST I-II q.96 a.2), which is to say that even he did not think the magistrate should forbid all that reason might find objectionable. That Scripture does not forbid an act in the civil law is not an omission to be supplied but a liberty to be kept.

Reply to Objection 3. New circumstances do not create new sins; they create new cases. A new case is judged by the existing law, applied to its facts by a judge, as the law of the goring ox (Ex. 21:28–36) governs the negligent owner of any dangerous thing. To decide such cases in advance, by statute, is not to judge but to pre-judge, and that belongs to the one Lawgiver.

Reply to Objection 4. A statute does not forbid an evil; it forbids an act, defined in advance. And the act and the evil are not the same, as the Doctor’s sword shows. Where an act is evil in every case, as murder is, God has named it. Where an act is evil only in some cases, as driving fast is, a statute against the act catches the innocent with the guilty, and only a judge hearing the facts can tell them apart. Moreover, if human law only publishes what nature forbids, someone must decide what nature forbids. When the natural lawyers disagree, as they do, that someone is whoever holds the sword.

Reply to Objection 5. The judge and the lawgiver do not reason in the same way. The judge reasons about one act that has already happened, established “on the evidence of two witnesses or of three” (Deut. 19:15), and asks whether it falls under a law God has given. If a guest fell from an unrailed balcony through the owner’s neglect, the judge asks whether this is the negligence the parapet law condemns. The lawgiver reasons about every act that might happen, with no witnesses because there is no deed, and declares in advance that a railing of less than so many inches is a crime. The first applies God’s measure to a fact. The second invents a measure and imposes it on men who have done nothing. Here the Doctor’s own distinction serves us: the judge judges “of things present,” the lawgiver “of future events” (ST I-II q.95 a.1 ad 2). And it is precisely in future and contingent particulars that, by his own confession, human reason most often fails.

Article 3. Whether the magistrate may establish penalties other than those God has established?

We proceed thus to the Third Article:

Objection 1. It would seem that he may. For the Angelic Doctor teaches that “the law of nature has it that the evil-doer should be punished; but that he be punished in this or that way, is a determination of the law of nature” (ST I-II q.95 a.2), and such determinations belong to human law. His modern followers agree that human law must determine the means by which the law is particularized, such as the punishment for those who murder.

Objection 2. Further, penalties must suit times and peoples. The Doctor speaks approvingly of the “diversity of positive laws among various people” (ST I-II q.95 a.2 ad 3). Therefore no single set of penalties binds all nations.

Objection 3. Further, the judicial law of Moses is abrogated “insofar as it pertains to the distinct Jewish nation,” as the confessions teach and the natural lawyers affirm. Therefore its penalties do not bind, and the magistrate must determine his own.

On the contrary, it is written: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Gen. 9:6). This was spoken to Noah, the father of all nations, long before there was a Jewish nation to abrogate. And again: “You shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer, who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death” (Num. 35:31).

I answer that, a determination is needed only where the higher law leaves a matter undetermined. The Doctor’s own illustration makes this plain. Human law determines the natural law, he says, as “an artisan needs to determine the general form of a house to some particular shape” (ST I-II q.95 a.2). Very good. But where the architect has already drawn the shape, the builder who redraws it is not determining the plan. He is contradicting it.

Now justice in punishment consists in proportion: a penalty answering to the fault, neither more nor less. Who knows that proportion with certainty? Not the magistrate, whose judgment, by the first article, is uncertain in particulars. It is God, “for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed” (1 Sam. 2:3). Where God has weighed an act and named its penalty, the proportion is known. To substitute another is to put a fallible measure in place of an infallible one.

Consider the very example the natural lawyers choose: murder. They say human law must determine the means of punishment for those who murder. But God has already determined it, for all mankind, in the covenant with Noah, and has forbidden any ransom in its place. A magistrate who substitutes a fine, or a term of years, does not particularize God’s law. He overrules it.

Therefore the magistrate may not establish penalties other than those God has established. To fix a penalty by statute is to sentence every future offender before his case is heard, and that, by the second article, belongs to the one Lawgiver. Where God has named a penalty, the judge applies it. Where God has named a range, as with the stripes “not more than forty” (Deut. 25:3), the judge chooses within it, which is adjudication, not legislation.

Reply to Objection 1. The Doctor speaks of determinations where the natural law is silent as to manner. In the case of murder, God has not been silent. A determination of what God has already determined is not a determination but an amendment.

Reply to Objection 2. The “diversity of positive laws among various people” is precisely what the Doctor, in the first article, names as the fruit of uncertain human judgment: “different and contrary laws” (ST I-II q.91 a.4). What he calls a defect in one question cannot become a virtue in another. If one nation hangs the thief and another fines him, both cannot be rendering what is due.

Reply to Objection 3. Grant, for the sake of argument, that the judicial law expired with the Jewish polity. The same confessions retain its “general equity” (WCF 19.4; 1689 LBC 19.4). Now the equity of a penalty is its proportion to the fault. If a penalty was just for Israel, it is just for every nation, since justice does not change at the border. On this the pagan Cicero is more orthodox than the moderns: “There will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge” (De Re Publica III.33).

Article 4. Whether a human statute that forbids what God has not forbidden is a law at all?

We proceed thus to the Fourth Article:

Objection 1. It would seem that it is a law. For the Apostle says, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom. 13:1). But one is subject to an authority by obeying its laws. Therefore whatever the governing authorities enact is law.

Objection 2. Further, the Angelic Doctor teaches that even unjust laws may bind a man “in order to avoid scandal or disturbance” (ST I-II q.96 a.4). But what binds has the force of law.

Objection 3. Further, a statute is made by one who has care of the community and is duly promulgated. But this is the form of law. Therefore it is a law.

On the contrary, Augustine says, “A law that is not just seems to be no law at all” (De Libero Arbitrio I.5), and the Doctor twice repeats it with approval (ST I-II q.95 a.2; q.96 a.4). And it is written: “Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute?” (Ps. 94:20). And again: “Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees” (Isa. 10:1).

I answer that, we need only apply the Doctor’s own definition. Law is “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated” (ST I-II q.90 a.4). Let us test the statute against each part.

Is it an ordinance of reason? By the first article, reason cannot know with certainty that the forbidden act is evil, and by the second, a rule framed by human reason and applied to all must condemn some who have done no evil. A statute that reason forbids is not an ordinance of reason.

Is it for the common good? The common good is not a good floating above the members of the community; it is their good, held in common. A statute that punishes an innocent member takes his goods or liberty without fault. It injures a part of the community in the name of the whole, which is the logic of every tyrant.

Is it made by one who has care of the community? By the reply to the first objection of the second article, God gave the magistrate a sword to punish evil, not authority to define it. The lawgiver here claims what was never given him.

Is it promulgated? Yes. It is printed, posted, and enforced. Of the four parts of the definition, it possesses one.

Therefore such a statute is not a law. In the Doctor’s words, “if in any point it deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law” (q.95 a.2), and such enactments “are acts of violence rather than laws” (q.96 a.4). The Reformers denied the pope the power to bind men by “doctrines and commandments of men” beyond Scripture (1689 LBC 21.2). The same reasoning denies it to the magistrate who would take the pope’s place.

Reply to Objection 1. The Apostle defines the authority to which he commands subjection, and he defines it by its end, as the natural lawyers rightly insist we must: the ruler is “God’s servant for your good… an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:4). A ruler who punishes the righteous is acting outside the office the text describes. One may submit to him, as the Lollards bore their penalties with patience, without calling his commands law.

Reply to Objection 2. The Doctor grants that such an enactment binds only “to avoid scandal or disturbance, for which cause a man should even yield his right.” This is a counsel of prudence, not a judgment of justice. The enactment binds by accident, not by its own nature, which is to concede that by its own nature it is no law.

Reply to Objection 3. Promulgation is the least part of law, and the easiest to counterfeit. A robber also announces his terms. Augustine tells of the pirate who, asked by Alexander what he meant by seizing the sea, answered: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who do it with a great fleet are styled emperor.” And he concludes: “Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?” (City of God IV.4).

Article 5. Whether the subject sins who disobeys a human statute that forbids what God has not forbidden?

We proceed thus to the Fifth Article:

Objection 1. It would seem that he sins. For the Angelic Doctor teaches that just human laws “have the power of binding in conscience, from the eternal law whence they are derived” (ST I-II q.96 a.4). But what binds in conscience cannot be broken without sin.

Objection 2. Further, the commandment to honor father and mother extends to all superiors, “and especially such as, by God’s ordinance, are over us in place of authority, whether in family, church, or commonwealth” (Westminster Larger Catechism, Q.124). But to disobey the magistrate is to dishonor him. Therefore it is a sin against the fifth commandment, even where the act forbidden is not otherwise evil.

Objection 3. Further, some matters must be settled one way or another, though neither way is evil in itself, as which side of the road men shall drive upon. Such things the Doctor calls determinations (ST I-II q.95 a.2). Once the magistrate has determined them, to depart from his determination is to endanger one’s neighbor. Therefore it is a sin.

Objection 4. Further, the Apostle Peter commands, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution” (1 Pet. 2:13). But he who disobeys a statute is not subject to it. Therefore he sins.

On the contrary, it is written: “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’… according to human precepts and teachings?” (Col. 2:20–22). And the confession of our Baptist brethren teaches: “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his Word, or not contained in it” (1689 LBC 21.2).

I answer that, an act may be evil in one of two ways: either in itself, by its own nature, or because it has been forbidden by one who has the right to forbid it. The orthodox call the first a natural right and the second a positive right. An act of the first kind is commanded because it is good. An act of the second kind is good because it is commanded, as circumcision was.

Now the act forbidden by such a statute is not evil in itself. If it were, it would fall under God’s moral law, and the statute would forbid nothing God has not forbidden, contrary to the supposition. Therefore if it is evil at all, it is evil only because the magistrate forbade it. That is, it would have to be evil by a positive right belonging to the magistrate.

But consider what this grants him. When Ockham taught that the moral precepts are good only because God commands them, the orthodox, with the Doctor and with Turretin, rejected him. Even God, they said, commands the moral law because it is good, founded on his own nature. And when they allowed that some things are good merely because commanded, they allowed it to God alone, who is Creator and Lord of all and owes no account to any creature. To say that a man’s command can make an indifferent act sinful is to give the magistrate a power the orthodox thought too great even to make the ground of God’s moral law. It is Ockham’s voluntarism, moved from the throne of God to the statehouse.

An indifferent act can become binding on conscience only by the command of one who is Lord of the conscience. “God alone is Lord of the conscience.” Therefore such a statute binds no conscience, and he who disobeys it, as such, does not sin. The Doctor agrees: “Man is bound to obey secular princes in so far as this is required by the order of justice. Wherefore if the prince’s authority is not just but usurped, or if he commands what is unjust, his subjects are not bound to obey him, except perhaps accidentally, in order to avoid scandal or danger” (ST II-II q.104 a.6 ad 3). He teaches also that a subject is not bound to obey his superior in matters where he is not subject to him (q.104 a.5). And the magistrate’s sphere, as we have seen, is the punishment of evil (Rom. 13:4).

This does not mean every disobedience is wise. A man may comply with such a statute for prudence, to avoid scandal or danger, as Christ paid the temple tax while declaring that “the sons are free” (Matt. 17:24–27). But this binds by accident, not by conscience. And if in disobeying a statute a man harms his neighbor, he sins, but against God’s law, not man’s.

Reply to Objection 1. The Doctor speaks of just laws, derived from the eternal law. By the foregoing articles, a statute forbidding what God has not forbidden is not just and is not law. What is not law cannot bind as law.

Reply to Objection 2. We honor the magistrate as the catechism requires: with reverence, with prayer for him (1 Tim. 2:1–2), with paying what is truly owed, and with patience under his penalties. But honor is not unlimited obedience. A son honors his father by obeying him in the sphere God gave the father, not by obeying him when he orders his son to abandon his own household. The magistrate’s sphere is defined by his commission, and to obey him outside it is not honor but the confusion of his office with God’s.

Reply to Objection 3. Such matters are settled by custom, not by statute. The Doctor himself teaches that custom “has the force of a law” (ST I-II q.97 a.3), and custom arises from the free acts of the people, not from the sword. Men drive on one side because others do, and they adopt it willingly, since no one wishes to be struck. The man who drives against the custom into oncoming traffic endangers his neighbor, and if he harms him, he is judged under God’s law, as the owner of the goring ox was (Ex. 21:29). But the evil is in the endangering and the harm, not in departing from a statute. The man who drives on the wrong side of an empty road at three in the morning has harmed no one. The custom needed no statute to establish it and needs no statute to protect it.

Reply to Objection 4. Peter immediately defines the institution: governors “sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Pet. 2:14). He then adds, “Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God” (2:16). Subjection, as Peter goes on to explain, is to endure unjust suffering patiently and not to repay evil for evil (2:19–23). It is not to grant that the magistrate’s word binds the conscience. The Lollards were subject in this sense: they bore the fire and did not take up the sword, yet they never confessed that the bishop’s decree was God’s law.

Corollary

From the foregoing it follows that the natural lawyer must choose. Either the reasoning of these articles is sound, in which case right reason, with the Scriptures the natural lawyers themselves receive, has concluded by their own principles that God’s written law suffices for the civil order and that the magistrate may not add to it. Or the reasoning is unsound, in which case he must show where it fails. But to show where it fails, he must appeal to some measure outside of reason that tells us which of reason’s conclusions are permitted. The author knows of only one such measure, and it is written.

Should the learned find these conclusions unwelcome, the author can only plead that he was assured right reason would lead him to the truth, and he has followed it with all the care he could manage. Let the reader understand.