sovereign whom his providence shall by whatever means set over him.

Thus, in our own country, at the glorious epoch of the Revolution, the famous Act of Settlement was the means which Providence employed to place the British sceptre in the hands which now wield it. That statute is confessedly the sole foundation of the sovereign's title; nor can any future sovereign have a just title to the crown, the law continuing as it is, whose claim stands not upon that ground. Yet it is not merely by virtue of that act that the subject's allegiance is due to him whose claim is founded on it. It is easy to understand, that the principle of the private citizen's submission must be quite a distinct thing from the principle of the sovereign's public title; and for this plain reason, the principle of submission, to bind the conscience of every individual, must be something universally known, and easy to be understood. The ground of the sovereign's public title, in governments in which the fabric of the constitution is in any degree complex and artificial, can be known only to the few who have leisure and ability and inclination for historical and political researches. In this country, how many thousands and ten thousands of the common people never heard of the Act of Settlement? of those to whom the name may be familiar, how many have never taken the pains to acquire any accurate knowledge of its contents? Yet not one of these is absolved from his allegiance, by his ignorance of his sovereign's title. Where, then, shall we find that general principle that binds the duty of allegiance equally on all, read or unread in the statute-book and in the history of their country? where shall we find it, but among those general rules

of duty which proceed immediately from the will of the Creator, and have been impressed upon the conscience of every man by the original constitution of the world?

This divine right of the first magistrate in every polity to the citizen's obedience is not of that sort which it were high treason to claim for the sovereigns of this country: it is quite a distinct thing from the pretended divine right to the inheritance of the crown: it is a right which the most zealous republicans acknowledged to be divine, in former times, before republican zeal had ventured to espouse the interests of atheism it is a right which in no country can be denied, without the highest of all treasons; - the denial of it were treason against the paramount authority of God.

*

These views of the authority of civil governors, as they are obviously suggested by the Mosaic history of the first ages, so they are confirmed by the precepts

"All kings but such as are immediately named by God himself have their power by human right only; though, after human composition and agreement, their lawful choice is approved of God, and obedience required to them by divine right." These are the words in which Bishop Hoadly states Hooker's sentiments. Hooker's own words are stronger and more extensive. But the sentiment, to the extent in which it is conveyed in these terms, the republican Bishop approved. See Hoadly's Defence of Hooker.

"Quod Dii nuncupantur, quicunque magistratum gerunt, ne in ea appellatione leve inesse momentum quis putet: ea enim significatur, mandatum a Deo habere, Divina auctoritate præditos esse, ac omnino Dei personam sustinere, cujus vices quodammodo agunt." - Calvin. Inst. lib. iv. cap. 20.

sect. 4.

"Resisti magistratui non potest, quin simul Deo resistatur." Calvin. Inst. lib. iv. cap. 20. sect. 23.

of the Gospel in which, if any thing is to be found clear, peremptory, and unequivocal, it is the injunction of submission to the sovereign authority, and, in monarchies, of loyalty to the person of the sovereign.

"Let every soul," says the apostle in my text, "be subject to the higher powers."

The word "powers" here signifies persons bearing power: any other meaning of it, whatever may be pretended, is excluded by the context.* The text,

* It has been a great point with republican divines to explain away the force of this text. But, for this purpose, they have never been able to fall upon any happier expedient, than to say that the word "powers," sσial, signifies not persons bearing power, but forms of government. Then, restraining the precept to such governments as are perfectly well administered, and finding hardly any government upon earth administered to their mind (for they never make allowance for the inevitable imperfection and infirmity of all things human), they get rid of the constraint of this Divine injunction, which, by this interpretation and this limitation, they render as nugatory as any of their own maxims; and find their conscience perfectly at ease, while they make free, in word and in deed, with thrones, dominions, and dignities. Whatever be the natural import of the word fea, the epithet which is joined to it in the text shows that it must be understood here of something which admits the degree of high and low. But of this, forms of government are incapable: every form is supreme where it is established; and since different forms of government cannot subsist at the same time among the same people, it were absurd to say of forms of government that one is higher than another. Again, in the third verse of this same chapter, the power (8σa) is said to bestow praise upon those who do good; in the fourth, to be "the minister of God;" and in the sixth, to receive tribute as the wages of a close attendance upon that ministry. None of these things can be said of forms of government, without a harshness of metaphor unexampled in the didactic parts of Holy Writ: but all these things may be said with great propriety of the persons governing.

In

indeed, had been better rendered-"Let every soul be subject to the sovereign powers." The word "sovereign" renders the exact meaning of that Greek word for which the English Bible in this place rather unhappily puts the comparative "higher :" in another passage it is very properly rendered by a word equivalent to sovereign, by the word "supreme.” "Let every soul be subject to the sovereign powers." The sovereignty particularly intended, in the immediate application of the precept to those to whom the epistle was addressed, was the sovereign authority of the Roman emperor. Nero was at the time the possessor of that sovereignty; and the apostle, in what he immediately subjoins to enforce his precept, seems to obviate an objection which he was well aware the example of Nero's tyranny might suggest. His reasoning is to this effect :-"The sovereignty, you will say, is often placed in unfit hands, and abused to the worst purposes: 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

In the twelfth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, the first preachers are warned that they are to be brought before synagogues, and magistrates, and powers (eosas). There the word evidently signifies persons bearing power. I will venture to add, that not a single instance is to be found in any writer, sacred or profane, of the use of the word seria to signify form of government; nor is that sense to be extracted by any critical chemistry from the etymology and radical meaning of the word.

would 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

* Hoc nobis si assidue ob animos et oculos obversetur, eodum decreto constitui etiam nequissimos reges, quo regum authoritas statuitur; nunquam in animum nobis seditiosæ illæ cogitationes venient, " tractandum esse pro meritis regem, nec æquum esse ut subditos ei nos præstemus, qui vicissim regem nobis se non præstat."— Calvin. Inst. iv. 20. sect. 27.

"Si in Dei verbum respicimus longius nos deducet, ut non eorum modo principum imperio subditi simus, qui probe, et qua debent fide, munere suo erga nos defunguntur, sed omnium, qui quoquo modo rerum potiuntur, etiamsi nihil minus præstent, quam quod ex officio erat principum."

"In eo probando insistamus magis, quod non ita facile in hominum mentes cadit, in homine deterrimo, honoreque omni indignissimo, penes quem modo sit publica potestas, præclaram illam et Divinam potestatem residere, quam Dominus justitiæ ac judicii sui ministris, verbo suo, detulit: proinde a subditis eadem in reverentia et dignitate habendum, quantum ad publicam obedientiam attinet, qua optimum regem, si deretur, habituri essent." — Calvin. Inst. iv. 20. 25.