Which in English runs thus:
§. 237. "What, then, can there no case happen wherein the people may of
right, and by their own authority, help themselves, take arms, and set upon
their king, imperiously domineering over them? None at all whilst he remains a
king. 'Honour the king,' and 'he that resists the power, resists the ordinance
of God,' are Divine oracles that will never permit it. The people, therefore,
can never come by a power over him unless he does something that makes him
cease to be a king; for then he divests himself of his crown and dignity, and
returns to the state of a private man, and the people become free and superior;
the power which they had in the interregnum, before they crowned him king,
devolving to them again. But there are but few miscarriages which bring the
matter to this state. After considering it well on all sides, I can find but
two. Two cases there are, I say, whereby a king, ipso facto, becomes no king,
and loses all power and regal authority over his people, which are also taken
notice of by Winzerus. The first is, if he endeavour to overturn the government
— that is, if he have a purpose and design to ruin the kingdom and
commonwealth, as it is recorded of Nero that he resolved to cut off the senate
and people of Rome, lay the city waste with fire and sword, and then remove to
some other place; and of Caligula, that he openly declared that he would be no
longer a head to the people or senate, and that he had it in his thoughts to
cut off the worthiest men of both ranks, and then retire to Alexandria; and he
wished that the people had but one neck that he might dispatch them all at a
blow. Such designs as these, when any king harbours in his thoughts, and
seriously promotes, he immediately gives up all care and thought of the
commonwealth, and, consequently, forfeits the power of governing his subjects,
as a master does the dominion over his slaves whom he hath abandoned.
