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THE POLITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN: Maxwell explains different methodological aspects of this doctrine of divine immediacy whereby civil government is established. The first is communicated by God through special revelation to Moses who received his grant of power as did Joshua, Saul, and David. Such a divine process did not require human consent. The Apostles were similarly “immediately instituted, constituted, designed to, and invested with Power from above.” 61 Kings receive their authority directly and “immediately from God,” though the process incorporates human interposition by way of “designation of the person.” Human involvement appears only incidental; God is “the proper donor and immediate Author.” Popular consent is not the cause and origin of a king’s authority. 62 Maxwell marshalled a series of Old and New Testament passages to prove God’s immediate constitution of kings: Proverbs 8:15 exclaims that “By me Kings reign,” Romans 13:2 clarified that “The Powers that are, are ordained of God,” John 19 stated that “All Power is given from above,” while Psalm 62:11 asserted that “God hath spoken it once, twice have I heard it, all Power belongeth unto the Lord.” “The Royal Power and Sovereignty of the King is from God primarily, formally, immediately.” Nevertheless, “The designation or deputation of the Person, is by election, succession, conquests, &c.” Zadok the High Priest was installed similarly by God though “the designation of the Person was from Salomon.” The process is equated with how “a Father begetteth the Child, but God infuseth the Soul,” or how a woman chooses her husband “but the marital power and dominion is onely from God.” A woman can no more “conferre or transferre that power which was never fixed in her, nay by God and nature she is ruled by her Husband.” 63 Maxwell also claimed that the fall did not diminish Adam’s singular authority, but instead, only heightened its necessity. It was in this “state of innocency and perfection God Almighty did establish government, and fix it in Adam before his wife was created, or a subject borne.” Man’s “decayed and corrupted state” speaks even more to the need for superiors and subordinates, as well as monarchy; “after the fall it is declared transmissible from Adam to the first borne, Gen. 4.” 64 Even before the creation of Eve, Cain, and Abel, “God fixed Government in the person of Adam . . . that it should be transmitted to the first born.” 65 61 Ibid., 20. 62 Ibid., 22. 63 Ibid., 23. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., 89-90. The Law of Establishing Kings: Deuteronomy 17 Royalists generally read Deuteronomy 17, or the law of the king, as emphasising God’s prerogative in choosing Israel’s Kings. The people are only allowed to establish a king over them that God chose. According to Maxwell, the institution of Israel’s first king must be filtered through the text of Deuteronomy 17. In other words, “the practice interprets the Letter of the Law, . . . Practice is the best Commentary of Law: and it is no lesse a ruled case, that the first president is a ruling case to all following in that kind.” In order to understand the proper political use of Deuteronomy 17, we must first recall the procedure of establishing Saul as King. 1 Samuel 12:13 reveals that the people indeed chose Saul, but God constituted him, and “did vindicate as proper and peculiar to himselfe, the designation of the person of the King, and the investing of him in royall power and Sovereigntie.” The people’s role was “to admit and accept of their King by God so designed and constituted, and to yield all reverence, obedience, and maintenance necessary.” 66 Resistance to Kings is Unlawful: 1 Samuel 8:1-22, Romans 13:1-7, and 1 Peter 2:13-17 Royalist understood Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-17 as commanding complete and absolute obedience to kings and magistrates. “Damnation” follows resistance because one resists God’s ordinance. Maxwell claimed that the Romans passage was parallel to the claim of obedience required in 1 Thessalonians 4:8, though he leaves out the preceding commentary on purity and holiness. “He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man but God.” Similarly, when the Israelites complained against the leadership of Moses and Aaron “They murmure not against you but me.” Israel’s lament of Samuel’s judgeship was a protest against the rule and authority of God himself. 67 Ferne also endorses unqualified obedience to magistrates in The resolving of conscience. He mined the Scriptures for failed and disastrous methods of resistance which resulted in God’s swift and calamitous judgment. One example is taken from Numbers 16:3, which details the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram who found support in “two hundred and fifty Princes of the Congregation, gathering the people against Moses and Aaron, . . . and perishing in their sinne.” Ferne does not narrate how God brought about an earthquake to swallow up the entire households and 66 Ibid., 41-42. 67 Ibid., 53. 16
ROYALISTS, REPUBLICANS, FIFTH MONARCHISTS AND LEVELLERS possessions of the three rebel leaders, or how He sent fire to consume the two-hundred and fifty coconspirators who were officiating at the altar. He simply concludes that those involved “indeed were publicke, but there was no cause for it; Moses and Aaron did not deserve it.” He seems to infer a parallel to Parliament’s “rise in arms” against King Charles I, which he did not deserve. 68 1 Samuel 8:1-22 depicts Israel’s demand for a king bearing characteristics and policies similar to those of the surrounding nations, which includes Samuel’s itemised list of expected oppressive acts and decrees. Despite the projected tyranny, Ferne claimed there was no cause for armed resistance. Samuel is simply reminding the people “how they should be oppressed under Kings, yet all that violence and injustice that should be done unto them is no just cause of resistance.” The only “remedy” they can resort to is “crying to the Lord.” As a matter of fact, the prophets even rebuked “the Kings of Israel and Judah for Idolatrie, cruelty, oppression,” but did not “call upon the Elders of the people for this duty of Resistance.” 69 Filmer made a similar claim in Patriarcha, stating that “the Unlimited Jurisdiction of Kings is so amply described by Samuel,” who “was to teach the People a duitiful Obedience to their King, even in those things which themselves did esteem Mischievous and Inconvenient.” Samuel was merely guiding them as to “what a Subject must Suffer; yet not so that it is Right for Kings to do Injury, but it is Right for Kings to go Unpunished by the People if they do it.” Similar to Ferne’s assessment, 1 Samuel 8 provided Filmer with “no Remedy . . . against Tyrants, but in Crying and praying unto God in that Day.” 70 Apart from the 1 Samuel passage, Ferne read Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:12 as offering a “clear resolution upon the point” of resistance. The “King is the Supreme, as S. Peter calls him; or the higher power, as S. Paul” indicates. Peter’s “distinction comprehends all that are in authoritie, The King as supreme, and those that are sent by him,” which includes the “two Houses of Parliament.” Nevertheless, “by the Oath of Supremacy it is acknowledged, That there is no power above him without or within this Realm; and that he is in all Causes and over all Persons Supreme.” Parliament in its representative capacity lacks the authority to resist. 71 Ferne even reminded readers of the political and tyrannical context of Rome’s rulers through the Romans 68 Ferne, The resolving of conscience, 9. 69 Ibid., 9-10. 70 Filmer, Patriarcha, 81. 71 Ferne, The resolving of conscience, 10. and 1 Peter passages to further prove the unlawfulness of resistance. Rome’s government embodied “a standing and continuall great Senate, which not long before had the supreme power in the Romane State,” and whose character “might challenge more by the Fundamentalls of that State, then our great Councel (I think) will, or can.” Furthermore, the “Supreme” which Peter refers to and the “higher power” which Paul mentions is none other than the authority of the “Emperour,” which no one was authorised to resist. “Were not the Kings then not onely conceived to be inclined so and so, but even actually were enemies to Religion, had overthrown Laws and Liberties?” The tyrannical habits of the kings of Rome certainly seemed to be just cause for resistance. Nevertheless, England’s king was hardly as tyrannical as those of Rome. Ferne argues that if that great body of representative officials did not resist Rome, how can Parliament resist the king? 72 Finally, Ferne states that one cannot condition obedience to only those “rulers” who “are not a terrour to good works but evil” and “a minister of God to thee for good.” He explains that “the consideration of those times leaves no place for such exception, because the Powers then (which the Apostle forbids to resist) were nothing so, but subverters of that which was good and just.” This command against resistance is “not temporary and fit for those times,” as some have suggested, but “perpetuall, from that order, that good, for which the Powers are ordained of God, which will be of force as long as there is government, and will alwayes be reasons against resistence.” It is impossible to resist “the abuse of the power” without resisting the power itself. If the Roman Emperors of that first century were “absolute Monarchs” and the “people and Senate” did not resist them, then “resistence can be no more made against the Kings of England, then it could against those Emperours.” 73 Concluding Comments The arguments presented here by some leading constitutional and absolute Royalists would reemerge during the Commonwealth and Interregnum periods. Royalists extended the structure of the family by way of similitude to monarchy, even in its most absolute form. To draw such a correspondence, they presupposed that monarchy was relationally linked to family authority and governance. Royalists also consistently read the Genesis account of the creation of the first couple as more than a description of events, but as a civil principle; either Adam’s created nature embodied sovereign rule over his immediate family turned subjects or God’s curse upon 72 Ibid., 11. 73 Ibid., 11-12. 17
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