elong to Zadok, who was chief of the family of Eleazar. And so all
this flowed, not from Solomon's, but from God's own authority.

_Sect._ 11. The Bishop remembereth another example in Hezekiah too,
telling us that he removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut
down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent, when the children
of Israel did burn incense unto it. Now, we wish from our hearts that from
this example all Christian kings may learn to remove and destroy the
monuments of idolatry out of their dominions. And if it be said that in so
doing kings take upon them to govern by their princely authority an
ecclesiastical or spiritual cause, it is easily answered, that when they
destroy idolatrous monuments, they do nothing by their own authority, but
by the authority of God's law, which commanded to abolish such monuments,
and to root out the very names of idols; which commandment is to be
executed by the action of temporal power.

_Sect._ 12. Finally, saith the Bishop, the kings of the Jews, 1 Kings
xxiii.; 2 Chron. xix.; have in the temple propounded the law of the Lord
to the people, renewed the covenant of religion, pulled down profane
altars, broken down idols, slain idolatrous priests, liberated their
kingdom from abomination, purged the temple, 2 Chron. xxxiv., xxxv.; 1
Maccab. iv. 59; proclaimed the keeping of the passover, and of the feast
of dedication, Esth. ix. 26 ; and have also instituted new feasts. For all
which things they are in the Scriptures much praised by the Holy Spirit, 2
Chron. xxix. 2; xxxiv. 2, &c.

_Ans._ True it is, Josias did read the law of the Lord to the people in
the temple, and made a covenant before the Lord; but, 1. he prescribed
nothing at his own pleasure; only he required of the people to walk after
the Lord, and to keep his commandments. 2. Neither did he this work by
himself, but did convocate a council of the prophets, priests and elders
of Israel, for the advancing of that reformation, 2 Kings xxiii. 1. 3. And
if he had done it by himself, yet we are to remember that the reformation
of a church generally and greatly corrupted, craveth the more immediate
intermeddling of princes, and a great deal more than can be ordinarily and
orderly done by them in a church already reformed. The slaying of the
idolatrous priests had also the warrant and authority of the law of God,
which appointed a capital punishment for blasphemers,(927) or such as, in
contempt of God