A Survey of the Fourth Chapter

[Conscience exempted from human authority, where there is an antecedent obligation from divine authority.]

In the fourth chapter we have no concern. The hypothesis whose confutation he hath undertaken, as it is in itself false, so it is rather suited to promote what he aims at than what he opposeth; and the principles which himself proceedeth on do seem to some to border on, if not to be borrowed from his, and those which are here confuted. And thence it is that the foundations which he lays down in the entrance of this discourse are as destructive of his own pretensions as of those against which they are by himself improved: for it is granted and asserted by him that there are actions and duties in and about which the consciences of men are not to be obliged by human authority, but have an antecedent obligation on them from the authority of God himself; “so that disobedience unto the contrary commands of human authority is no sin, but an indispensable duty.” And although he seems at first to restrain things of this nature unto things natural, and of an essential rectitude, — that is, to the prime dictates of the law of nature, — yet he expressly extends it in instances unto the belief of the truth of the gospel, which is a matter of mere and pure revelation. And hereon he adds the formal and adequate reason of this exemption of conscience from human authority, and its obligation unto duty, before its consideration without it and against it; “which is, not because subjects are in any thing free from the authority of the supreme power on earth, but because they are subject to a superior in heaven; and they are then only excused from the duty of obedience to their sovereign, when they cannot give it without rebellion against God: so that it is not originally any right of their own that exempts them from a subjection to the sovereign power in all things, but it is purely God’s right of governing his own creatures that magistrates then invade when they make edicts to violate or control his laws.”

It is about religion and the worship of God that we are discoursing. Now, in these things no man ever thought that it was originally a right of subjects, as subjects, abstracting from the consideration of the authority of God, that should exempt them from a subjection to the sovereign power; for though some of the ancients discourse at large that it is of natural right and equity that every one should worship God as he would himself, yet they founded this equity in the nature of God and the authority of his commands. This exemption, then, ariseth merely, as our author observes, because they are subject to a superior power in heaven, which excuseth them 454from the duty of obedience to their superiors on earth, when they cannot give it without rebellion against God: whence it undeniably follows, that that supreme power in heaven exempted these things from all inferior powers on earth. Extend this, now, unto all things wherein men have, and ought to have, a regard unto that superior power in heaven, as it must be extended, or the whole is ridiculous (for that heavenly supremacy is made the formal reason of the exemption here granted), and all that our author hath been so earnestly contending for in the preceding chapters falls to the ground: for no man pleads exemption from subjection unto, yea, from giving active obedience unto, the authority and commands of the magistrate, even in things religious, but merely on the account of his subjection to the authority of God in heaven; and, where this is so, he is set at liberty by our author from all contrary commands of men. This is Bellarmine’s “Tutissimum est,” which, as King James observed, overthrows all that he had contended for in his five books De Justificatione.⁸⁸   See vol. xiv., p. 204 of Owen’s works. — Ed.