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LAW OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE
the blood of the prophets," (v. 30.—"serpents—"generation of vipers,"—"how can he escape the damnation of hell?" &c. (v. 33.) Nay, Herod himself, the tetrarch of Galilee, was not exempted from the severity of our Lord's censure, when there was a proper occasion to declare it; for, though our Lord lived, for the most part, under Herod's temporal jurisdiction, that is, in Galilee, yet he openly, characterised the crafty, base, and self-interested, disposition of the tetrarch, by expressly calling him a fox,[1]
- ↑ "The message, our Lord here sends to Herod," (says a sensible and learned commentator, the Rev. Mr. Francis Fox, in his edition of the New Testament, with references set under the text in words at length,) "is no breach of that command which forbids the speaking evil of the ruler of the people, and consequently is no blemish (says he) in our Lord's example. For our Lord here acts as a prophet, as one who had received an extraordinary commission from God: and those, who were truly prophets, were, in the execution of their commission, above the greatest men and most powerful princes, whom they were not to spare when God sent them to reprove for sin." All this is certainly true with respect to the real authority of Christ to censure Herod, and that his applying so harsh and severe an expression to the tetrarch "is no blemish in our Lord's example:" but yet this is not, I apprehend, the proper method of reconciling the seeming difficulty, which arises from this example, of our Lord's applying a severe and reproachful epithet to a chief ruler, (in calling Herod a fox,) when it is compared with that precept of the law, which forbids the speaking evil of the ruler of the people; for, though our Lord had ample superiority and authority to reprove whomsoever he pleased, even the greatest ruler upon earth, yet, with respect to his own personal behaviour, as a man among men, he claimed no authority to dispense with the positive precepts of the Mosaic law, on account of his own real dignity, or superiority over the rest of mankind, but strictly obeyed the law in all things, and publicly declared his strict conformity thereto. "Think not," (said he,) "that I come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Matth. v. 17.
"By the law and the prophets" (says the same ingenious commentator above cited) "are meant the great rules of life, delivered in the writings of Moses and the prophets, or in the Old Testament, more especially the duties of the moral or natural law;" (from whence those, respecting our behavior to rulers, cannot with propriety be excluded ;) "These, our Lord assures us, he did not come to destroy or dissolve: It was not his design to free men from the obligation they were under to practise the moral laws of God, but
