f his duty.

81. So, then, the word of God and the law of Christ, which by so evident
difference separateth and distinguisheth ecclesiastical government from
the civil, forbiddeth the Christian magistrate to enter upon or usurp the
ministry of the word and sacraments, or the judicial dispensing of the
keys of the kingdom of heaven, to invade the church government, or to
challenge to himself the right of both swords, spiritual and corporal; but
if any magistrate (which God forbid) should dare to arrogate to himself so
much, and to enlarge his skirts so far, the church shall then straightway
be constrained to complain justly, and cry out, that though the Pope is
changed, yet popedom remaineth still.

82. It is unlawful, moreover, to a Christian magistrate to withstand the
practice and execution of ecclesiastical discipline (whether it be that
which belongs to a particular church, or the matter be carried to a class
or synod). Now the magistrate withstandeth the ecclesiastic discipline,
either by prohibitions and unjust laws, or, by his evil example, stirring
up and inciting others to the contempt thereof, or to the trampling it
under foot.

83. Surely the Christian magistrate (if at any time he give any grievous
scandal to the church), seeing he also is a member of the church, ought
nowise disdain to submit himself to the power of the keys; neither is this
to be marvelled at, for even as the office of the minister of the church
is nowise subordinate and subjected to the civil power, but the person of
the minister, as he is a member of the commonwealth, is subject thereto,
so the civil power itself, or the magistrate, as a magistrate, is not
subjected to ecclesiastical power; yet that man, who is a magistrate,
ought (as he is a member of the church) to be under the church's censure
of his manners, after the example of the emperor Theodosius, unless he
will despise and set at nought ecclesiastical discipline, and indulge the
swelling pride of the flesh.

84. If any man should again object that the magistrate is not indeed to
resist ecclesiastical government, yet that the abuses thereof are to be
corrected and taken away by him, the answer is ready. In the worst and
most troublesome times, or in the decayed and troubled estate of things,
when the ordinance of God in the church is violently turned into tyranny,
to the treading down of true religion, and to the oppressing of the
professors thereof, and when nothing almost i