Perceiving that none of the company was disposed to enter the lists with the Reformer, Maitland again returned to the charge, and engaged to defend the uncontrollable authority of rulers. “Well,” said he, “I am somewhat better provided in this last head, than I was in the other two. Mr Knox, yesterday we heard your judgment upon the 13th to the Romans; we heard the mind of the apostle well opened; we heard the causes why God has established powers upon earth; we heard the necessity that mankind has of the same; and we heard the duty of magistrates sufficiently declared. But in two things I was offended, and I think some more of my lords that then were present: The one was, ye made difference betwixt the ordinance of God, and the persons that are placed in authority; and ye affirmed, that men might resist the persons, and yet not offend God’s ordinance: The other was, that subjects were not bound to obey their princes if they commanded unlawful things, but that they might resist their princes, and were not ever bound to suffer.” Knox said that the secretary had given a correct statement of his sentiments. “How will you prove your division and difference,” said Maitland, “and that the person placed in authority may be resisted, and God’s ordinance not transgressed, seeing that the {118} apostle says, ‘He that resists the power, resists the ordinance of God?’” Knox replied, that the difference was evident from the words of the apostle, and that his affirmative was supported by approved examples. For the apostle asserts, that the powers ordained of God are for the preservation of quiet and peaceable men, and for the punishment of malefactors; whence it is plain, that God’s ordinance is wholly intended for the preservation of mankind, the punishment of vice, and the maintenance of virtue; but the persons placed in authority are often corrupt, unjust, and oppressive. Having referred to the conduct of the people of Israel in rescuing Jonathan from the hands of Saul, which is recorded with approbation, and to the conduct of Doeg, in putting to death the priests at the command of that monarch, which is recorded with disapprobation in scripture, he proceeded thus: “And now, my lord, in answer to the place of the apostle, I say, that ‘the power’ in that place is not to be understood of the unjust commandment of men, but of the just power wherewith God has armed his magistrates to punish sin and to maintain virtue. As if any man should enterprise to take from the hands of a lawful judge a murderer, an adulterer, or any other malefactor that by God’s law deserved the death, this same man resisted God’s ordinance, and procured to himself vengeance and damnation, because that he stayeth God’s sword to strike. But so it is not, if that men, in the fear of God, oppose themselves to the fury and blind rage of princes; for so they resist not God, but the devil, who abuses {119} the sword and authority of God.”――“I understand sufficiently,” said Maitland, “what