ordained, but not their holding and using of it: this is nonsense, for how can a power be ordained, and the use of it be unlawful? For the abuse and use of tyrannical power is all one and reciprocal: an usurper cannot use his power but by usurpation. Again, is it not plain, that the abstract and the concrete, the act or habit, and the subject wherein it is, cannot have a contrary denomination? if drunkenness and theft, lying or murder, be of the devil; then the drunkard, the thief, the liar, and the murderer, are of the devil too: so if tyranny and usurpation, or the use or abuse of tyrants and usurpers be of the devil, then most the tyrants and usurpers also be of him: none can say, the one is of the devil, and the other of God. Wherefore it is altogether impertinent to use such a distinction, with application to tyrants or usurpers, as many do in their pleading for the owning of our oppressors; for they have no power, but what is the abuse of power. 3. As that authority which is God's ordinance must have his institution; so it must have his divine constitution from himself and by the people. Wherever then there is authority to be owned of men, there must be these two, constitution from God and constitution from the people. For the first, God hath a special interest in the constitution of authority, both immediately and mediately. Immediately, he declares such and such forms of government to be lawful and eligible, and does order whom, and who, and how people shall direct governors. And so, he confers royal graces, and endowments, and gifts for government on them, as on Joshua and Saul: so they become the Lord's anointed, placed and set on the throne of the Lord, 1 Chron. xxix. 23. and honoured with majesty, as his deputes and vicegerants, having their crown let on by God, Psal. xxi. 3. But in regard now he doth not by any special revelation determine, who shall be the governors in this or that place; therefore he makes this constitution by meditation of men, giving them rules how they shall proceed in setting them up. And seeing, by the law of nature, he hath enjoined government to be, but hath ordered no particular in it with application to singulars he hath committed it to the positive transaction of men, to be disposed according to certain general rules of justice. And it must needs be so; for first, without this constitution, either all or none would be magistrates: if he hath ordained civil power to be, and taken no order in whom it shall be, or how it shall be conveyed, any might pretend to it; and yet none would have it, more than another. If then he hath affixed it to a peculiar having and holding, by virtue whereof this man is enstated and entitled to the office, and not that man, there must be a law for constituting him in authority, which will discover in whom it is. 2. If it were not so, then resisting of a particular magistrate would not be a resisting of the ordinance of God,