To this I answer, that both these assertions are false. For Christians, or men of what religion soever, if they tolerate not their king, whatsoever law he maketh, though it be concerning religion, do violate their faith, contrary to the divine law, both “natural” and “positive”: nor is there any judge of heresy amongst subjects, but their own civil sovereign. For “heresy is nothing else but a private opinion obstinately maintained, contrary to the opinion which the public person, that is to say, the representant of the commonwealth, hath commanded to be taught.” By which it is manifest, that an opinion publicly appointed to be taught, cannot be heresy; nor the sovereign princes that authorize them, heretics. For heretics are none but private men, that stubbornly defend some doctrine prohibited by their lawful sovereigns.
But to prove that Christians are not to tolerate infidel or heretical kings, he allegeth a place in Deut. 17:15, where God forbiddeth the Jews, when they shall set a king over themselves, to choose a stranger: and from thence inferreth that it is unlawful for a Christian to choose a king that is not a Christian. And it is true, that he that is a Christian, that is, he that hath already obliged himself to receive our Saviour, when He shall come, for his king, shall tempt God too much in choosing for king in this world one that he knoweth will endeavour, both by terror and persuasion, to make him violate his faith. But it is, saith he, the same danger to choose one that is not a Christian for king, and not to depose him when he is chosen. To this I say, the question is not of the danger of not deposing, but of the justice of deposing him. To choose him, may in some cases be unjust; but to depose him when he is chosen is in no case just. For it is always violation of faith, and consequently against the law of Nature, which is the eternal law of God. Nor do we read that any such doctrine was accounted Christian in the time of the apostles; nor in the time of the Roman emperors, till the Popes had the civil sovereignty of Rome.