poses. It is placed in the hands of sensual, rapacious men, of capricious women, and of ill-conditioned boys. It is in such sort abused, as to be made the instrument of lust and ambition, of avarice and injustice. You, yourselves, my brethren, experience the abuse of it in your own persons. It may seem to you, that power derived from the Author of all good, could never be so misplaced, nor be permitted to be so misused; and you may perhaps be ready to conclude, that the father of lies once at least spake truth, when he claimed the disposal of earthly sceptres as his own prerogative. Such reasonings, saith the apostle, are erroneous. No king, however he might use, or abuse, authority, ever reigned but by the appointment of God's providence. There is no such thing as power, but from God. To Him, whatever powers, good or bad, are at any time subsisting in the world, are subordinate. He has good ends of his own, not always to be foreseen by us, to be effected by the abuse of power, as by other partial evils; and to his own secret purpose, he directs the worst actions of tyrants, no less than the best of

godly princes. Man's abuse therefore of his delegated authority, is to be borne with resignation like any other of God's judgments. The opposition of the individual to the sovereign power, is an opposition to God's providential arrangements; and it is the more inexcusable, because the well-being of mankind is the general end for which government is ordained, and this end of government, under all its abuses, is generally answered by it. For the good of government is perpetual and universal; the mischiefs resulting from the abuse of power, temporary and partial. Insomuch, that in governments which are the worst administered, the sovereign power is, for the most part, a terror, not to good works, but to the evil; and, upon the whole, far more beneficial than detrimental to the subject. But this general good of government cannot be secured upon any other terms, than the submission of the individual to what may be called its extraordinary evils.'"*

To bring this argument to bear, let me adopt language suitable to the circumstances of our own country. The providential rulers * Horsley-Sermon on Rom. xiii. 1.

of our state, that is to say, the King, Lords, and Commons, in parliament assembled, have enacted a great variety of laws. As subjects, we are bound to yield obedience, under the sanction of temporal penalties. But by what scriptural authority is it, that we are called upon to obey an act of parliament? There are no acts of parliament in the Bible. They all rest upon human authority. Obedience, we see, is indispensable, on pain of present suffering in body or estate: but is there any scriptural ground for such obedience? Is there any religion in submission? Am I at liberty to say, 'As a Christian I have nothing to do with such carnal elements. Christianity is between me and my God. The commandments of men, though binding upon my person and property as a citizen, cannot have any weight upon my conscience?' No, truly; for hear what the Apostle says, Ye must be subject, not only for wrath, not only for personal safety from temporal penalties, not only for social or political expediency, but also for conscience sake. A man's conscience is open only unto God; yet we see here, that every Christian is bound to obey

the commandments of men in authority, for conscience sake. Why? Because God in his providence has appointed the ruler, (whatever the form of government may be,) and God in his word has said, Obey the ruler.

Again let me strengthen my position, not by the great name, but by the weighty arguments of Bishop Horsley. "It is true, that in the world, taken as it now is, and hath been for many ages, cases happen, in which the sovereign power is conferred by the act of the people, and in which that act alone can give the sovereign a just title. Not only in elective monarchies, upon the natural demise of the reigning prince, is the successor raised to the throne by the suffrage of the people; but in governments of whatever denomination, if the form of government undergo a change, or the established rule of succession be set aside by any violent or necessary revolution, the act of the nation itself is necessary to erect a new sovereignty, or to transfer the old right to the new possessor.

But it is no just inference, that the obligation upon the private citizen to submit himself to the authority thus raised, arises

wholly from the act of the people conferring it, or from their compact with the person on whom it is conferred. In all these cases, the act of the people is only the means which Providence employs to advance the new sovereign to his station. The obligation to obedience proceeds secondarily only from the act of man, but primarily from the will of God, who hath appointed civil life for man's condition, and requires the citizen's submission to the sovereign whom his providence shall, by whatever means, set over him."

I am well aware how readily and plausibly, and yet, for the most part, how very unreasonably, an argumentum ad hominem is got up, and the testimony of such a man as Horsley evaded, by an unworthy sneer at his interested motives, or the prejudices of his high-church and monarchical education. But you will remember that (so far as great names are concerned) similar sentiments on this subject have been left on record by Milton, Calvin,* and others; men of no ordinary minds, and certainly of very different associations and prejudices from Horsley.

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Quasi vero Deus non ita regat populum, ut