so will we hearken unto thee; only the Lord thy God be with thee, as he was with Moses; whosoever he be that doth rebel against thy commandment, and will not hearken unto thy words in all that thou commandest him, he shall be put to death._ And the parable of the bramble (Judges ix. 14, 15): _Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou and reign over us. And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon._ The sense of which words is, that we must acquiesce to their sayings, whom we have truly constituted to be kings over us, unless we would choose rather to be consumed by the fire of a civil war. But the regal authority is more particularly described by God himself, in 1 Sam. viii. 9, &c.: _Show them the right of the king that shall reign over them, &c. This shall be the right of the king that shall reign over you; he will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariots, &c. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, &c. And he will take your vineyards, and give them to his servants, &c._ Is not this power absolute? And yet it is by God himself styled the _king’s right_. Neither was any man among the Jews, no not the _high-priest_ himself, exempted from this obedience. For when the king, namely, Solomon, said to Abiathar the priest (1 Kings ii. 26, 27): _Get thee to Anathoth unto thine own fields; for thou art worthy of death; but I will not at this time put thee to death, because thou barest the ark of the Lord God before David my father, and because thou hast been afflicted in all wherein my father was afflicted. So Solomon thrust out Abiathar from being priest unto the Lord_; it cannot by any argument be proved, that this act of his displeased the Lord; neither read we, that either Solomon was reproved, or that his person at that time was any whit less acceptable to God. ------- CHAPTER XII. OF THE INTERNAL CAUSES TENDING TO THE DISSOLUTION OF ANY GOVERNMENT.