be at an end of his resistance,
and will find such a defence serve only to draw on himself the worse
usage. This is as ridiculous a way of resisting, as juvenal thought it
of fighting; ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum. And the success of the
combat will be unavoidably the same he there describes it:

/*[4]
-----Libertas pauperis haec est:
Pulsatus rogat, et pugnis concisus, adorat,
Ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde reverti.
*/

This will always be the event of such an imaginary resistance, where men
may not strike again. He therefore who may resist, must be allowed to
strike. And then let our author, or any body else, join a knock on the
head, or a cut on the face, with as much reverence and respect as he
thinks fit. He that can reconcile blows and reverence, may, for aught I
know, desire for his pains, a civil, respectful cudgeling where-ever he
can meet with it.

Secondly, As to his second, An inferior cannot punish a superior; that
is true, generally speaking, whilst he is his superior. But to resist
force with force, being the state of war that levels the parties,
cancels all former relation of reverence, respect, and superiority: and
then the odds that remains, is, that he, who opposes the unjust
agressor, has this superiority over him, that he has a right, when he
prevails, to punish the offender, both for the breach of the peace, and
all the evils that followed upon it. Barclay therefore, in another
place, more coherently to himself, denies it to be lawful to resist a
king in any case. But he there assigns two cases, whereby a king may
un-king himself. His words are,

Quid ergo, nulline casus incidere possunt quibus populo sese erigere
atque in regem impotentius dominantem arma capere & invadere jure suo
suaque authoritate liceat? Nulli certe quamdiu rex manet. Semper enim ex
divinis id obstat, Regem honorificato; & qui potestati resistit, Dei
ordinationi resisit: non alias igitur in eum populo potestas est quam si
id committat propter quod ipso jure rex esse desinat. Tunc enim se ipse
principatu exuit atque in privatis constituit liber: hoc modo populus &
superior efficitur, reverso ad eum sc. jure illo quod ante regem
inauguratum in interregno habuit. At sunt paucorum generum commissa
ejusmodi quae hunc effectum pariunt. At ego cum plurima animo
perlustrem, duo tantum invenio, duos, inquam, casus quibus rex ipso
facto ex rege non regem se facit & omni honore & dignitate regali atque
in su