Page:The ethics of Hobbes (IA ethicsofhobbes00hobb).pdf/393

15) "Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house, or that city, shake off the dust of your feet. It shall be easier for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city." Whereby it is manifest, that all that the apostles could do by their authority, was no more than to renounce communion with them, and leave their punishment to God Almighty, in the day of judgment. Likewise the comparisons of the kingdom of heaven to the seed, Matth. xiii. 3, and to the leaven, Matth. xiii. 33, doth intimate unto us that the increase thereof ought to proceed from internal operation of God's word preached, and not from any law or compulsion of them that preach it. Moreover our Saviour himself saith (John xviii. 36), "That" his "kingdom is not of this world"; and consequently his magistrates derive not from him any authority of punishing men in this world. And therefore also, Matth. xxvi. 52, after St. Peter had drawn his sword in his defence, our Saviour saith "Put up thy sword into his place. For all that take the sword, shall perish by the sword." And, verse 54, "How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say, that it must be so?" showing out of the Scriptures, that the kingdom of Christ was not to be defended by the sword.

10. But concerning the authority of the apostles or bishops over those who were already converted and within the church, there be that think it greater than over them without. For some have said, (Bellarmin. "Lib. de Rom. Pont. cap. 29,") "Though the law of Christ deprive no prince of his dominion, and Paul did rightly appeal unto Caesar, whilst kings were infidels and out of the church; yet when they became Christians, and of their own accord underwent the laws of the gospel, presently as sheep to a shepherd, and as members to the head, they became subject to the prelate of the ecclesiastical hierarchy." Which,