A Short Treatise on Political Power
By John Ponet
Edited by Benjamin & Theodora Saunders
$26.95 $19.00
Published July 24, 2025
About this book
When rulers became tyrants, resistance became divine obligation.
There is a vital need to recover an approach to civil power which is grounded in natural law and Reformation political thought. There is a rich history of reflection within the Protestant tradition about the role of civil government, natural law and resistance to unjust rulers, and this has the potential to provide valuable guidance to Christians and the church today. John Ponet’s Short Treatise of Politike Power (1556) is one such text, an important work about the nature and limits of the role of civil government written during a turbulent period in English history. However, it is not widely available and there is no complete modern edition, until now.
Paperback | 273 pages | 6 x 9 | Published July 24, 2025 | ISBN 978-1-949716-68-9
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FROM THE BOOK
“John Ponet evidently wrote in a particular historical context, and his polemics were addressed to different problems than confront us today. His ideas cannot simplistically be marshalled to address today’s concerns, but need to be translated to our very different context. As Quentin Skinner famously quipped, when seeking answers to philosophical problems, “we must learn to do our own thinking for ourselves.” Nevertheless, Ponet’s Short Treatise has the potential to reinvigorate Protestant political theology today.
This republication of the Short Treatise joins a growing chorus of voices advocating for the recovery of a doctrine of natural law, which has long been neglected within Protestant thinking. Ponet’s account of natural law is a modest one, but he draws some perhaps surprisingly specific and robust implications for law and policy. Natural law is to be considered as encompassing the conditions necessary for human survival and flourishing, and limiting the power of civil rulers to infringe upon those conditions. Ponet shows a keen interest in material concerns and the impact of civil policy upon matters such as forced loans and the debasement of the coinage.
For Ponet, as for much of the medieval tradition, natural law consists of universal principles of morality and justice which are applicable across the realms of church and state. In our day there is a tendency to sharply separate the spheres of church and state, to limit the role of government in the church and vice versa. One regrettable result is that natural law is often considered to have little applicability within the church. Ponet’s treatise provides a valuable correction and supports a more robust view of the role of the church in relation to the state, even hinting at a constitutional role for the church in holding civil power to account. ”
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
I
From where political power originates, for what purpose it was ordained, and the right use and duties of the same
II
Whether kings, princes, and other governors have absolute power and authority over their subjects
III
Whether kings, princes and other political governors are subject to God’s laws and the positive laws of their countries
IV
In what things and how far subjects are bound to obey their princes and governors
V
Whether all the subjects’ goods belong to the emperor and king, that they may lawfully take them as their own
VI
Whether it is lawful to depose an evil governor and kill a tyrant
VII
What confidence is to be given to princes and rulers
VIII
An exhortation, or rather a warning, to the Lords and Commons
Praise for this work
“This is a well-introduced and well-edited modern edition of an important but forgotten political tract of John Ponet. Summoning an array of classical, biblical, patristic, Catholic and Protestant sources, Ponet outlined a provocative theory of natural law, constitutional democracy, and limited government that would become axiomatic for Protestant political thought. More powerfully, he set out a theory of rights, resistance, and revolution against political tyranny that helped to drive the early modern democratic revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic. In a day of growing political authoritarianism around the world, Ponet’s insights remain strikingly propitious.”
– JOHN WITTE, JR.
Faculty Director, Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University
US President John Adams once wrote that all the essential principles of liberty which were afterwards dilated upon by Sidney and Locke were first to be found in the political theology of John Ponet (1516-1556). That an English bishop should influence independence from England is not only ironic and intriguing, but indicative of the importance of this revolutionary treatise, both then and now. John Ponet was a central figure on Archbishop Cranmer’s bench of English Reformation bishops, and his importance is currently receiving a well overdue scholarly retrieval. In terms of political thought, his Short Treatise on Political Power offers a rich banquet of ideas which should stimulate reformation research and which may also resource some contemporary challenges facing reformed political theology and practice. Thus, Ben and Theodora Saunders are to be heartily commended for providing us with, not only an informative introduction to the former Bishop of Winchester, but most of all, an excellent modernisation of Ponet’s political powderkeg of a publication.
– MARK EARNGEY
Head of Church History and Lecturer in Christian Thought, Moore Theological College, Sydney
About the EDITOR
Benjamin B. Saunders (PhD, University of Queensland) is an associate professor at Deakin Law School, Australia; Theodora Saunders is a student and aspiring writer who lives in country Victoria, Australia.
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