Note 810 — Chapter XII · (continued 2)

This book of Sherlock, printed in 1684, is the most able treatise on that side. His proposition is that "sovereign princes, or the supreme power in any nation, in whomsoever placed, is in all cases irresistible." He infers from the statute 13 Car. II. declaring it unlawful, under any pretence, to wage war, even defensive against the king, that the supreme power is in him; for he who is unaccountable and irresistible, is supreme. There are some, he owns, who contend that the higher powers mentioned by St. Paul meant the law, and that when princes violate the laws, we may defend their legal authority against their personal usurpations. He answers this very feebly. "No law can come into the notion and definition of supreme and sovereign powers; such a prince is under the direction, but cannot possibly be said to be under the government of the law, because there is no superior power to take cognisance of his breach of it, and a law has no authority to govern where there is no power to punish."—P. 114. "These men think," he says (p. 126), "that all civil authority is founded in consent, as if there were no natural lord of the world, or all mankind came free and independent into the world. This is a contradiction to what at other times they will grant, that the institution of civil power and authority is from God; and indeed if it be not, I know not how any prince can justify the taking away the life of any man, whatever crime he has been guilty of. For no man has power of his own life, and therefore cannot give this power to another; which proves that the power of capital punishments cannot result from mere consent, but from a superior authority, which is lord of life and death." This is plausibly urged, and is not refuted in a moment. He next comes to an objection, which eventually he was compelled to admit, with some discredit to his consistency and disinterestedness. "'Is the power of victorious rebels and usurpers from God? Did Oliver Cromwell receive his power from God? then it seems it was unlawful to resist him too, or to conspire against him; then all those loyal subjects who refused to submit to him when he had got the power in his hands were rebels and traitors.' To this I answer, that the most prosperous rebel is not the higher powers, while our natural prince, to whom we owe obedience and subjection, is in being. And therefore, though such men may get the power into their hands by God's permission, yet not by God's ordinance; and he who resists them does not resist the ordinance of God, but the usurpations of men. In hereditary kingdoms, the king never dies, but the same minute that the natural person of one king dies, the crown descends upon the next of blood; and therefore, he who rebelleth against the father, and murders him, continues a rebel in the reign of the son, which commences with his father's death. It is otherwise, indeed, where none can pretend a greater title to the crown than the usurper, for there possession of power seems to give a right."—P. 127.

Sherlock began to preach in a very different manner as soon as James showed a disposition to set up his own church. "It is no act of loyalty," he told the House of Commons, May 29, 1685, "to accommodate or compliment away our religion and its legal securities." Good Advice to the Pulpits.