eing their lawful
sovereign, seeing it is most common for the greatest usurpers and
tyrants to stamp their image upon the coin of the nations they tyrannize
over. And though it be granted that the _Jews_ had, by this time,
consented to _Caesar's_ usurpation, yet that could not legitimate his
title, nor warrant their subjection to him for conscience sake, seeing
they could not consent to his authority, but in express contradiction to
the many plain and positive scripture precepts, given by God unto them,
as has been seen above. It is, therefore, violence done to the text (as
also opposite to the sentiments of some eminent divines on the place),
to say that it contains a command to pay tribute to _Caesar_; and it
would appear from Luke xxiii, 2, that the _Jews_ themselves did not
understand it so. It may be further observed, that this is not the only
instance where our Lord, in infinite wisdom, declined to give direct
answers to the ensnaring questions of his malicious enemies. See John
viii, 3-12; Matth. xxi, 23-28; John xviii, 19-21, where are questions of
a similar nature, proposed with the same hellish intention, and all
answered by him in like manner. In each of which, _Seceders_ might, on
as good ground as in the answer to the question anent tribute, say that
Christ did shift and dissemble the truth. But the least insinuation of
such a charge cannot be made from any of these answers, without the
greatest blasphemy.

A _fourth_ text used by them for maintaining their erroneous scheme, is
Rom. xiii, 1-8. Without animadverting upon every part of their
explication of this place of holy writ, it is sufficient to observe: 1.
That the power here spoken of by the apostle, is not a _physical_, but a
_moral_ power; a power that is lawful and warranted, in regard of
matter, person, title or investiture. A legitimacy in each of these must
go to the making of a moral power; and an illegitimacy in any of these
is an illegitimacy in the very being and constitution, and so a nullity
to the power as moral, a making it of no authority. As the text speaks
only of this moral power, so it excludes every unlawful power (see Mr.
_Gee_ on magistracy, on this text). 2. That the _being_ of God, or the
ordination God here spoke of, is not a being of God _providentially_
only, but such a _being of_ God as contains in it his institution and
appointment, by the warrant of his law and precept; so that the
magistrates to whom the apostle enjoins o