The Fifth Commandment extends to other areas of authority in society. Zacharius Ursinus, the principle author of the Heidelburg Catechism wrote in his seventeenth-century commentary, “The design or end of this commandment is the preservation o civil order, which God has appointed in the mutual duties between inferiors and their superiors. Superiors are all those whom god has placed over others, for the purpose of governing and defending them. Inferiors are those whom God has placed under others, that they may be governed and defended by them.” By learning to respect parental authority, one learns to respect the authority or other superiors,
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