of right among those who believed not, those words above cited do sufficiently declare: _Man, who made me a judge or divider between you?_ And it is confirmed by reason. For seeing Christ was sent to make _a covenant_ between God and men; and no man is obliged to perform obedience before the contract be made; if he should have judged of questions of _right_, no man had been tied to obey his sentence. But that the discerning of right was not committed to Christ in this world, neither among the faithful nor among infidels, is apparent in this; that that right without all controversy belongs to princes, as long as it is not by God himself derogated from their authority. But it is not derogated before the day of judgment; as appears by the words of St. Paul, speaking of the day of judgment (1 Cor. xv. 24): _Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and power._ Secondly, the words of our Saviour reproving James and John, when they had said (Luke ix. 54): _Wilt thou that we call for fire from heaven, that it may consume them?_ (namely the Samaritans, who had denied to receive him going up to Jerusalem): and replying (verse 56), _The Son of man is not come to destroy souls, but to save them_; and those words: _Behold I send you as sheep among wolves_; _Shake off the dust of your feet_; and the like; and those words, _God sent not his Son into the world, to judge the world, but that the world through him might be saved_; and those: _If any man hear my words, and keep them not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world_, &c.: do all show, that he had no power given him to condemn or punish any man. We read indeed, that _the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son_; but since that both may, and must be understood of the day of future judgment, it doth not at all repugn what hath been said before. Lastly, that he was not sent to make new laws, and that therefore by his office and mission he was no legislator properly so called, nor Moses neither, but a bringer and publisher of his Father’s laws, (for God only, and neither Moses nor Christ, was a king by covenant), is collected hence; that he said, _I came not to destroy_, (to wit, the laws before given from God by Moses, which he presently interprets), _but to fulfil_; and, _He that shall break one of the least of these commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven_. Christ therefore had not a royal or sovereign power committed to him from his Father in this world, but councillary and doctrinal only; which himself signifies, as well then when he calls his apostles not hunters, but fishers of men; as when he compares the kingdom of God to a grain of mustard-seed, and to a little leaven hid in meal. [Sidenote: What the promises of the new covenant are on both parts.]