_A._ Let us examine his words a little nearer. First, concerning passive obedience. When a thief hath broken the laws, and according to the law is therefore executed, can any man understand that this suffering of his is in obedience to the law? Every law is a command to do, or to forbear: neither of these is fulfilled by suffering. If any suffering can be called obedience, it must be such as is voluntary; for no involuntary action can be counted a submission to the law. He that means that his suffering should be taken for obedience, must not only not resist, but also not fly, nor hide himself to avoid his punishment. And who is there amongst them that discourse of passive obedience, when his life is in extreme danger, that will voluntarily present himself to the officers of justice? Do not we see that all men, when they are led to execution, are both bound and guarded, and would break loose if they could, and get away? Such is their passive obedience. Christ saith (Matth. xxiii, 2, 3): _The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' chair; all therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do_: which is a doing an active obedience. And yet the Scribes and Pharisees appear not by the Scripture to have been such godly men, as never to command any thing against the revealed will of God. _B._ Must tyrants also be obeyed in every thing actively? Or is there nothing wherein a lawful King’s command may be disobeyed? What if he should command me with my own hands to execute my father, in case he should be condemned to die by the law? _A._ This is a case that need not be put. We never have read nor heard of any King or tyrant so inhuman as to command it. If any did, we are to consider whether that command were one of his laws. For by disobeying Kings, we mean the disobeying of his laws, those his laws that were made before they were applied to any particular person; for the King, though as a father of children, and a master of domestic servants, yet he commands the people in general never but by a precedent law, and as a politic, not a natural person. And if such a command as you speak of were contrived into a general law (which never was, nor never will be), you were bound to obey it, unless you depart the kingdom after the publication of the law, and before the condemnation of your father. _B._ Your author says further, in refusing active obedience to the King, that commanded anything contrary to God’s law, we must be very well assured that the thing is so contrary. I would fain know how it is possible to be assured.