a just title to all that was due to an usurper, idolater and murderer.  That the Jewish coin did bear Caesar’s image, could be no evidence of his being 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 obedience, are such as are set up according to the preceptive ordination and will of God, as is evinced not only by the author referred to above, and other divines, but what sufficiently appears from the context, where the subjection enjoined, and resistance forbidden, with their respective reasons, are what can only be