they have removed priests from their office; that they have constituted others. Sacrifices indeed they have not offered; for that was hereditary to Aaron and his sons. But it is manifest, as in Moses’ lifetime, so throughout all ages, from king Saul to the captivity of Babylon, that the priesthood was not a maistry, but a ministry. [Sidenote: The same were united in the priests, after the captivity.] 17. After their return from Babylonian bondage, the _covenant_ being renewed and signed, _the priestly kingdom_ was restored to the same manner it was in from the death of Joshua to the beginning of the kings; excepting that it is not expressly set down, that the returned Jews did give up the right of sovereignty either to Esdras, by whose direction they ordered their state, or to any other beside God himself. That reformation seems rather to be nothing else, than the bare promises and vows of every man, to observe those things which were written in the book of the law. Notwithstanding, (perhaps not by the people’s intention), by virtue of the _covenant_ which they then renewed, (for the covenant was the same with that which was made at Mount Sinai), that same state was a _priestly kingdom_; that is to say, the supreme civil authority and the sacred were united in the priests. Now, howsoever through the ambition of those who strove for the priesthood, and by the interposition of foreign princes, it was so troubled till our Saviour Jesus Christ’s time, that it cannot be understood out of the histories of those times, where that authority resided; yet it is plain, that in those times the power _of interpreting God’s word_ was not severed from the supreme civil power. [Sidenote: Among the Jews, the denial of the Divine providence and idolatry, were the only treasons against the Divine Majesty: in all other things they ought to obey their princes.]