men, there it is hard to imagine any thing but a state of war: for
wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to
administer justice, it is still violence and injury, however coloured
with the name, pretences, or forms of law, the end whereof being to
protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to
all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, war is made
upon the sufferers, who having no appeal on earth to right them, they are
left to the only remedy in such cases, an appeal to heaven.
Sec. 21. To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but
to heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where
there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great
reason of men's putting themselves into society, and quitting the state
of nature: for where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which
relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is
excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power. Had there been
any such court, any superior jurisdiction on earth, to determine the
right between Jephtha and the Ammonites, they had never come to a state
of war: but we see he was forced to appeal to heaven. The Lord the Judge
(says he) be judge this day between the children of Israel and the
children of Ammon, Judg. xi. 27. and then prosecuting, and relying on
his appeal, he leads out his army to battle: and therefore in such
controversies, where the question is put, who shall be judge? It cannot
be meant, who shall decide the controversy; every one knows what Jephtha
here tells us, that the Lord the Judge shall judge. Where there is no
judge on earth, the appeal lies to God in heaven. That question then
cannot mean, who shall judge, whether another hath put himself in a state
of war with me, and whether I may, as Jephtha did, appeal to heaven in
it? of that I myself can only be judge in my own conscience, as I will
answer it, at the great day, to the supreme judge of all men.