face of his glory, or how else, is not much known to us, because it doth not concern us. But this lower world of man he governeth by the law of nature, and by a law of supernatural revelation, given by his Spirit or by messengers from heaven.

Q. 2. What is it that you call the law of nature?

A. In a large and improper sense, some call the inclinations, and forcing, or naturally moving, causes of any creatures, by the name of a law; and so they say that beasts and birds are moved by the law of their nature; and that stones sink downward, and the fire goeth upward, by the law of nature. But this is no law in the proper sense which we are speaking of, whatever you call it.

Q. 3. What is it then that you call a law?

A. Any signification of the will of the ruler, purposely given to the subject, that thereby he may know and be bound to his duty, and know his reward or punishment due. Or any signification of the ruler's will for the government of subjects, constituting what shall be due from them, and to them. A rule to live by, and the rule by which we must be judged.

Q. 4. What, then, is God's law of nature, made for man? A. It is the signification of God's governing will, by the nature of man himself, and of all other creatures known to man, in which God declareth to man his duty, and his reward or punishment.

Q. 5. How can a man know God's will, and our duty by his nature, and by all other works of God about us?

A. In some things, as surely as by words or writings; but in other things more darkly. I am sure that my nature is made to know and love truth and goodness, and to desire and seek my own felicity; my nature tells me that I was not made by myself, and do not live by myself, and therefore that I am not my own, but his that made me. All things show me that there is a God who must needs be greater, wiser, and better, than all his creatures, and therefore ought to be most honoured, feared, loved, and obeyed: I see multitudes of persons of the same nature with me, and therefore obliged to the same duty to God; I see much of God's work in them which is good, and therefore to be loved; and I see that we are all parts of one world, and made to be useful to one another: these, and many such things, the reason of man may discern in himself and other works of God.

Q. 6. But I thought the law of nature had been every man's

natural temper and disposition, which inclineth him to action, and you make it to be only a notifying sign of duty.

A. Figuratively, some call every inclination a law, but it is no such thing that we are speaking of, only a man's natural inclination, among other signs, may notify his duty. But I hope you cannot think that a man's vicious inclination is God's law; then you would make original sin, and the work of the devil, to be God's law. One man's sinful distemper of soul, and another man's bodily distemper (the fruit of sin) inclineth him to wrath, to lust, to idleness, to sinful sports, or drinking, or gluttony, and these are so far from being God's law of nature, that they are the contraries, and the law of Satan in our members, rebelling against the law of God. And though the good inclinations of our common nature (to justice, peace, temperance) be by some called the law of nature, it is not as they are inclinations, but as from them we may know our duty.

Q. 7. Hath God any natural officers under him in governing man? I pray you tell me how far man's power is of God?

A. God hath set up divers sorts of human governing powers under him in the world, which all have their place and order assigned them; some by nature, as entire; some by the law of nature, since the fall, and some by supernatural revelation, which is not to be here spoken to, but afterward.

Q. S. Because I have heard some say that God made no government, but men do it by consent for their necessity, I pray you show me what government God made by nature, and in what order?

A. Next to God's own governing right, which is the first, God hath made every man a governor of himself. For God made him with some faculties which must be ruled, (as the appetite, senses, and tongue, and other bodily members, yea, and passions too,) and with some which must rule the rest, as the understanding by guidance, and the will by command. And this self-governing power is so necessary and natural, that no man can take it from us, or forbid us the due exercise of it, any more than they can bind us to sin or to self-destruction.

Q. 9. Which is the next human power in order?

A. 2. The governing power of the husband over the wife, whose very nature, as well as original, shows that she was made to be subject, though under the law of love.

Q. 10. But is not this by consent, rather than by nature?
A. It is by consent that a woman is married: but when she

hath made herself a wife, nature maketh her a subject, unless madness, or disability, make the man unmeet for his place.

Q. 11. Which is the next sort of natural government?

A. 3. The parents' government of their children: nature maketh it the duty of parents to rule, and of children to obey. And though some have been so unnatural as to deny this, and say that children owe nothing but reverence and gratitude, yet there is no danger of the common prevalency of such a heresy, which the nature of all mankind confuteth, save that licentious youth will take advantage of it, to disobey their parents, to please their lusts.

Q. 12. What is the human government which God's law of nature hath instituted to man, since his fall and corruption?

A. 4. That is to be afterwards explained: but magistracy, or civil government, is certainly of natural institution, though it is uncertain how God would have governed man in such societies by man, if they had not sinned. The law of nature teacheth man the necessity of civil society, and of government therein, and therefore obligeth man thereto.

Q. 13. This seemeth to be but the effect of men's own perceived necessity, and so to be but their arbitrary choice.

A. Their necessity is natural, and the notice of it is natural, and the desire of remedy is natural, and the fitness of magistracy to its use is natural: therefore it is the law of God in nature that bindeth them to choose and use it; and if any country should choose to live without magistracy, they would sin against the law of nature, and their own good.

Q. 14. But I have heard that God hath made no law, what form of civil government shall be used, but left it to every country's choice.

A. God hath, by nature, made it necessary that there be magistracy; that is, some men in power over societies, to enforce the obedience of God's own common laws, and to make their subordinate laws about undeterminate, mutable matters to that end, for the honour of God, and the good of the society.

But, 1. Whether this government shall be exercised by one or many; 2. And who shall be the persons, God's law hath left undetermined to human liberty: the form and persons are chosen, neither by the said persons, nor by the people only, but by the mutual consent and contract of both. 3. And also by this contract, the degree of power, and order of the exercise, may be stated and limited: but for all that, when human consent hath

chosen the persons, the essential power of governing in subordination to God's laws, floweth, not from man, but immediately from God's law of nature.

Q. 15. But what if these sorts of government prove cross to one another, and reason commandeth one thing, a husband another, a parent another, and the magistrate another, which must be obeyed?

A. Each have their proper work and end, which none of the other can forbid. Self-government is the reasonable management of our own faculties and actions in obedience to God, for our own salvation, and no king, or other, can take this from us : and if they forbid us any necessary duty to God, or necessary means of our salvation, they do it without authority, and are not to be therein obeyed.

A husband's power to govern his wife is for the necessary ends of their relation, which the king hath no power to forbid. A parent's power to rule his children is for the necessary education of them, for the welfare of soul and body, and the king hath no power to forbid it. Should he forbid parents to feed their children, or teach them God's laws, or to choose for them orthodox, fit tutors, pastors, and church communion where God is lawfully worshipped, and should he command the children to use the contrary, it is all null and powerless.

But it belongeth to the magistrates only (though not to destroy any of the three former governments, which are all before his in nature and time, yet) to govern them all, by directing the exercise of them in lawful things to the common good.

Q. 16. How far doth the law of nature assure us of God's rewards and punishments?

A. As it assureth us that perfect man owed God perfect obedience, trust, and love, so it certifieth us, 1. That this performed, must needs be acceptable to God, and tend to the felicity of the subject, seeing God's love is our felicity. 2. And that sinning against God's law deserveth punishment. 3. And that governing justice must make such a difference between the obedient and the sinner as the ends of government require. 4. And seeing that before man's obedience, or sin, God made man's soul of a nature not tending to its own mortality, we have cause to expect that man's rewards and punishments should be suitable to such immortal souls. For though he can make brutes immortal, and can annihilate man's soul, or any creature, yet we see that he keeps so close to his natural establishments

that we have no reason to think that he will cross them here, and annihilate souls to shorten their rewards or punishments.

Q. 17. But doth nature tell us what kind of rewards and punishments men have?

A. The faculties of the soul being made in their nature to know God in our degree, to love him, to please him, and to rest and rejoice herein, and this in the society of wise, and good, and blessed joyful fellow-creatures, whom also our nature is made to love, it followeth that the perfections of this nature, in these inclinations and actions, is that which God did make our nature for, to be obtained by the obeying of his laws,

And sin being the injurious contempt and forsaking of God, and the most hurtful malady of the soul, and of societies, and to others, it followeth that those that have finally forsaken God, be without the happiness of his love and glory, and under the sense of their sin and his displeasure; and that their own sin will be their misery, as diseases are to the body; and that the societies and persons that by sin they injured or infected, will somewhat contribute to their punishment. Happiness to the good, and misery to the bad, the light and law of nature teacheth man to expect, but all that I have taught you is much more surely and fully known by supernatural revelation.

CHAP. VI.

Of Supernatural Revelation of God's Will to Man, and of the Holy Scriptures, or Bible.

Q. 1. WHAT do you call supernatural revelation?

A. All that revelation of God's mind to man, which is made by him extraordinarily, above what the common works of nature do make known: though, perhaps, God may use it in some natural second causes, in a way unknown to us.*

Q. 2. How many ways hath God thus revealed his will to man?

A. Many ways. 1. By some voice and signs of his presence, which we do not well know what creature he used to it, whether angels, or only at present caused that voice and glory. So he

* Matt. xi. 25, 27; Luke x. 22; Deut. xxix. 29; Matt. xvi. 17; 1 Cor. ii. 10,