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Here our apostle answers an objection, which he foresaw the Christian Jews ready to make against this duty of subjection, namely, "that they were a free people, as Jews, and ought to preserve their liberty, and own no governors that were not of their own nation: and as Christians they looked upon themselves as Christ's freemen:" whereas Christian liberty exempts no man from the duty of civil subjection: the liberty Christ has purchased for believers is a freedom from sin and Satan, from sinful servitude: Christ makes all his subjects free, but it is with a freedom from spirtual bondage, and not from civil subjection; consequently, to plead our Christian liberty in bar to that obedience which we owe our superiors and governors, either civil or ecclesiastical, is to use our liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, and as a covering for that disobedience which is hateful to God, and injurious to mankind, as being destructive of order and government, which is the beauty and the bond of human society.