Chapter XIV.—We
Should Obey God Rather Than the Authors of Sedition.
It is right and holy therefore, men and brethren, rather
to obey God than to follow those who, through pride and sedition, have
become the leaders of a detestable emulation. For we shall incur
no slight injury, but rather great danger, if we rashly yield ourselves
to the inclinations of men who aim at exciting strife and
tumults, so as to draw us
away from what is good. Let us be kind one to another after the
pattern of the tender mercy and benignity of our Creator. For it
is written, “The kind-hearted shall inhabit the land, and the
guiltless shall be left upon it, but transgressors shall be destroyed
from off the face of it.” And
again [the Scripture] saith, “I saw the ungodly highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon: I passed by, and, behold, he was not; and I diligently sought his place, and could not find it. Preserve innocence, and look on equity: for there shall be a remnant to the peaceable man.”