Note, 1. Religion and loyalty must go together. As men, it is our duty
to honour our Creator, to worship and reverence him, and to be always
in his fear; as members of a community, incorporated for mutual
benefit, it is our duty to be faithful and dutiful to the government
God has set over us, Rom. xiii. 1, 2. Those that are truly religious
will be loyal, in conscience towards God; the godly in the land will be
the quiet in the land; and those are not truly loyal, or will be so no
longer than is for their interest, that are not religious. How should
he be true to his prince that is false to his God? And, if they come in
competition, it is an adjudged case, we must obey God rather than men.
2. Innovations in both are to be dreaded. Have nothing to do, he does
not say, with those that change, for there may be cause to change for
the better, but those that are given to change, that affect change for
change-sake, out of a peevish discontent with that which is and a
fondness for novelty, or a desire to fish in troubled waters: Meddle
not with those that are given to change either in religion or in a
civil government; come not into their secret; join not with them in
their cabals, nor enter into the mystery of their iniquity. 3. Those
that are of restless, factious, turbulent spirits, commonly pull
mischief upon their own heads ere they are aware: Their calamity shall
rise suddenly. Though they carry on their designs with the utmost
secresy, they will be discovered, and brought to condign punishment,
when they little think of it. Who knows the time and manner of the ruin
which both God and the king will bring on their contemners, both on
them and those that meddle with them?