t unto the higher
powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are
ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth
the ordinance of God, and they that resist shall receive to themselves
damnation," Rom. 13:1. And the princes are praised for condemning the
Anabaptists, who overthrow all civil ordinances and prohibit Christians
the use of the magistracy and other civil offices, without which no
state is successfully administered.

To Article XVII.

The confession of the seventeenth article is received, since from the
Apostles' Creed and the Holy Scripture the entire Catholic Church knows
that Christ will come at the last day to judge the quick and the dead.
Therefore they justly condemn here the Anabaptists, who think there
will be an end of punishments to condemned men and devils, and imagine
certain Jewish kingdoms of the godly, before the resurrection of the
dead, in this present world, the wicked being everywhere suppressed.

To Article XVIII.

In the eighteenth article they confess the power of the Free Will--viz.
that it has the power to work a civil righteousness, but that it has
not, without the Holy Ghost, the virtue to work the righteousness of
God. This confession is received and approved. For it thus becomes
Catholics to pursue the middle way, so as not, with the Pelagians, to
ascribe too much to the free will, nor, with the godless Manichaeans,
to deny it all liberty; for both are not without fault. Thus Augustine
says: "With sure faith we believe, and without doubt we preach, that
a free will exists in men. For it is an inhuman error to deny the free
will in man, which every one experiences in himself, and is so often
asserted in the Holy Scriptures." St. Paul says: "Having power over his
own will." 1 Cor. 7:37. Of the righteous the wise man says: "Who might
offend, and hath not offended? or done evil, and hath not done it?"
Eccles. 31:10. God said to Cain: "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be
accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto
thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him," Gen. 4:7.
Through the prophet Isaiah he says: "If ye be willing and obedient ye
shall eat the good of the land. But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall
be devoured with the sword." This also Jeremiah has briefly expressed:
"Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil, as thou couldest," Jer. 3:5.
We add also Ezek. 18:31ff.: "Cast away from you all your tr