[Endnote 28]. (1) "No one knows by nature that he owes any obedience to
God." (2) When Paul says that men have in themselves no refuge, he speaks as
a man: for in the ninth chapter of the same epistle he expressly teaches
that God has mercy on whom He will, and that men are without excuse, only
because they are in God's power like clay in the hands of a potter, who out
of the same lump makes vessels, some for honour and some for dishonour, not
because they have been forewarned. (3) As regards the Divine natural law
whereof the chief commandment is, as we have said, to love God, I have
called it a law in the same sense, as philosophers style laws those general
rules of nature, according to which everything happens. (4) For the love of
God is not a state of obedience: it is a virtue which necessarily exists in
a man who knows God rightly. (5) Obedience has regard to the will of a
ruler, not to necessity and truth. (6) Now as we are ignorant of the nature
of God's will, and on the other hand know that everything happens solely by
God's power, we cannot, except through revelation, know whether God wishes
in any way to be honoured as a sovereign.

(7) Again; we have shown that the Divine rights appear to us in the light of
rights or commands, only so long as we are ignorant of their cause: as soon
as their cause is known, they cease to be rights, and we embrace them no
longer as rights but as eternal truths; in other words, obedience passes
into love of God, which emanates from true knowledge as necessarily as
light emanates from the sun. (8) Reason then leads us to love God, but
cannot lead us to obey Him; for we cannot embrace the commands of God as
Divine, while we are in ignorance of their cause, neither can we rationally
conceive God as a sovereign laying down laws as a sovereign.


CHAPTER XVII.