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4 - The Unaccountable Sovereign

Rival Theological Accounts of Law and Political Agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2019

David P. Henreckson
David P. Henreckson
Affiliation:
Dordt College, Iowa
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Summary

Away with those mousetraps of yours, unless they catch blind shrew-mice. Has anyone ever been so impious or impudent, if he held to any religion, who thought a people so bound and tied to kings that it is obligated to let kings carry it off to strange gods … ? There is no sane man that does not proclaim that the people can and ought to make good its promises and fulfill all the obligations of the covenant with God. But in this matter there is no need at all for the people to have power and jurisdiction over the prince; it was not comprehended in the covenant, nor does God exact it—that the people by force and arms lead back into the way a king who hunts after devious paths and insane errors.

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The Immortal Commonwealth
Covenant, Community, and Political Resistance in Early Reformed Thought
 , pp. 110 - 126
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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