§. 235. It is true, he has annexed two limitations to it, to no purpose:
First. He says it must be with reverence.
Secondly. It must be without retribution or punishment; and the reason he
gives is, "because an inferior cannot punish a superior."
First. How to resist force without striking again, or how to strike with
reverence, will need some skill to make intelligible. He that shall oppose an
assault only with a shield to receive the blows, or in any more respectful
posture, without a sword in his hand to abate the confidence and force of the
assailant, will quickly be at an end of his resistance, and will find such a
defence serve only to draw on himself the worse usage. This is as ridiculous a
way of resisting as Juvenal thought it of fighting: Ubi tu
pulsas, ego vapulo tantum. And the success of the combat will be
unavoidably the same he there describes it:
—Libertas pauperis hæc est;
Pulsatus rogat, & pugnis concisus, adorat,
Ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde reverti.
This will always be the event of such an imaginary resistance, where men
may not strike again. He, therefore, who may resist must be allowed to strike.
And then let our author, or anybody else, join a knock on the head or a cut on
the face with as much reverence and respect as he thinks fit. He that can
reconcile blows and reverence may, for aught I know, deserve for his pains a
civil, respectful cudgelling wherever he can meet with it.
Secondly. As to his second — "An inferior cannot punish a
superior" — that is true, generally speaking, whilst he is his
superior. But to resist force with force, being the state of war that levels
the parties, cancels all former relation of reverence, respect, and
superiority; and then the odds that remains is — that he who opposes the
unjust aggressor has this superiority over him, that he has a right, when he
prevails, to punish the offender, both for the breach of the peace and all the
evils that followed upon it. Barclay, therefore, in another place, more
coherently to himself, denies it to be lawful to resist a king in any case. But
he there assigns two cases whereby a king may unking himself. His words are:
"Quid ergo, nulline casus incidere possunt quibus populo sese erigere
atque in regem impotentius dominantem arma capere & invadere jure suo suaque
authoritate liceat? Nulli certe quamdiu rex manet. Semper enim ex divinis id
obstat, Regem honorificato, & qui potestati resistit, Dei ordinationi
resistit; non alias igitur in eum populo potestas est quam si id committat
propter quod ipso jure rex esse desinat. Tunc enim se ipse principatu exuit
atque in privatis constituit liber; hoc modo populus & superior efficitur,
reverso ad eum scilicet jure illo quod ante regem inauguratum in interregno
habuit. At sunt paucorum generum commissa ejusmodi quæ hunc effectum pariunt.
At ego cum plurima animo perlustrem, duo tantum invenio, duos, inquam, casus
quibus rex ipso facto ex rege non regem se facit & omni honore & dignitate
regali atque in subditos potestate destituit; quorum etiam meminit Winzerus.
Horum unus est, si regnum disperdat, quemadmodum de Nerone fertur, quod is
nempe senatum populumque Romanum atque adeo urbem ipsam ferro flammaque
vastare, ac novas sibi sedes quærere decrevisset. Et de Caligula, quod palam
denunciarit se neque civem neque principem senatui amplius fore, inque animo
habuerit, interempto utriusque ordinis electissimo, quoque Alexandriam
commigrare, ac ut populum uno ictu interimeret, unam ei cervicem optavit. Talia
cum rex aliquis meditatur & molitur serio, omnem regnandi curam & animum
ilico abjicit, ac proinde imperium in subditos amittit, ut dominus servi pro
derelicto habiti, dominium.
