The History of the Reformation of the Church of Scotland

¹How will ye prove your division and difference (said Lethington,) and that the persons placed in Authority, may be resisted, and the Ordinance of God not transgressed, seeing that the Apostle saith, He that resisteth, resisteth the Ordinance of God.

¹How will ye prove your division and difference (said Lethington,) and that the persons placed in Authoritie, may be resisted, and the Ordinance of God not transgressed, seeing that the Apostle saith, He that resisteth, resisteth the Ordinance of God.

1. 1Let this be no•ed diligently.

My Lord said he, The plain words of the Apostle makes the difference, and the facts of many approved by God, prove my affirmative. First the Apostle affirms, That the powers are ordained of God, for the preservation of quiet and peaceable men, and for the punishment of malefactors; whereof it is plain, That the Ordinance of God and the power given unto man, is one thing, and the person clad with the Authority, is another; For Gods Ordinance is the conservation of mankind, The punishment of vice, and the maintenance of virtue, which in it self, is holy, just, constant, stable, and perpetual; but men clad with the Authority, are commonly profane and unjust; ye, they are mutable, transitory, and subject to corruption, as God threateneth by his Prophet David, ¹saying, I have said ye are gods, and every one of you the sons of the most high; but ye shall dye as man, and the Princes shall fall like others. Here I am assured, That the persons, ye soul and body are threatened with death; I think that so ye will not affirm, is the Authority, the Ordinance, and the Power, wherewith God endued such persons; for (as I have said) it is holy, so is the permanent will of God. And now, my Lord, that the Prince may be resisted, and yet the Ordinance of God not violated: It is evident that the people resisted Saul, when he had sworn by the living God that Jonathan should die;