more striking illustration and confirmation of this remark than in the manner in which the passage of Scripture now before us has been very generally misinterpreted in opposite ways, by those who have forgotten or overlooked the circumstances of the country and age in which it was written, and of the persons to whom it was addressed, and applied it to the resolution of a question highly important in itself, and closely connected with the subject of this paragraph, yet originating in a state of things totally different from that which must have been present to the Apostle's mind when he wrote it, and to meet which must have been his direct and primary object in writing it.

Somewhat more than a century and a half ago, in consequence of the invasions made by the ill-principled and illadvised monarchs of the house of Stuart, on the civil and religious liberties of their country, and the resistance which their intolerable oppressions at last provoked from their much and long-enduring subjects, the question with regard to the limits of civil obedience excited a deep interest, and was agitated with much keenness and ability on both sides.

On the one hand, it was maintained by Milton and Vane, and Locke and Hoadly, with invincible argument and overwhelming eloquence, that, civil government being an institution exclusively intended for promoting the security and welfare of the community at large, whenever that end is obviously not obtained-when the power which was created for the purpose of protecting life and property, is habitually and notoriously exercised in endangering or destroying both -it is the right and the duty of every man, by all lawful and constitutional means, to have the government so altered as to gain its end; and if all other methods be found ineffectual to secure the necessary alteration, that the people have the right, as well as the power, to put down so intolerable a tyranny by force.

On the other hand, it was maintained by Barclay, and Hobbes, and Filmer, and Parker, and an almost innumerable

host of expectants or possessors of ecclesiastical preferment, that governors hold their situation by divine right, and are accountable only to God for the exercise of the authority with which he has invested them; that whatever they command must be cheerfully obeyed (some holding this without limitation, teaching that the command of the magistrate is the subject's ultimate rule-others, admitting as an exception what is directly opposed to a clearly expressed divine command),—that whatever they inflict must be patiently borne, however unjust, and that in no case can subjects resist or oppose magistrates without exposing themselves to eternal damnation.

The courtly divines who espoused these latter opinions loudly appealed to the authority of the New Testament; and the thirteenth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans was counted the very citadel of their cause. In the agitation of passion utterly forgetting, or warped by interest, studiously keeping out of view, that the circumstances of the Christians in kome, a small body, chiefly of the lower orders, many of them foreigners,―under a Heathen government, essentially absolute, over which they had and could have no control, and the circumstances of the British nation-with few exceptions making a profession of Christianity,-under a government administered by men professing Christianity, essentially free, on whose management the constitution gives the subjects the means of making an impression by petition or representation, and whose very existence depends on their will, were by no means parallel—from the passage before us they attempted to prove that the existing government was the ordinance of God, its administrators his appointed ministers, and that whosoever resisted them, violated the law of Christ, and drew down on himself the righteous vengeance of Heaven.

It is painful to reflect that one misinterpretation of Scripture ordinarily leads to another, and that, not only by him who misinterprets, but often also by those who oppose him. Instead of making their stand on the grand leading principles

of sound reason and well-interpreted Scripture, and asserting that the passage before us had no direct bearing on the limits of civil obedience, some of the able and noble-minded enemies of the doctrines of the divine right of monarchs to absolute authority-of passive obedience and non-resistance, set themselves to the vain and mischievous attempt to show that the Apostle does not here describe the Roman government, and enjoin the duties of Christians under it-that he has no reference to any existing government, but that he lays down the principles on which civil government should be constituted, and unfolds the duties which subjects owe to such a government. Following out these principles to their fair results, some of them arrived at the conclusion, that Christians are not morally bound to yield obedience to any government, unless it is constituted and administered in accordance with what they consider the principles of Divine revelation.

All this misinterpretation on both sides might have been avoided by attending to the object which the Apostle had in view in these remarks, and to the mode of thinking, prevalent among at least the Jewish converts to Christianity, which rendered the prosecution of that object necessary. We know that among the Jews the opinion, grounded on a mistaken apprehension as to the meaning, or rather reference, of a passage in the law of Moses* was prevalent, that no Gentile government could have legitimate authority over "the holy nation," Jehovah's " peculiar people "-that God was their king, that they were not bound to obey any subordinate authority which had not his express appointment, and that prudence, not conscience, was the ground of their submission to the Roman yoke; while some went yet farther, and held that it was unlawful to give any token of subjection to a heathen power.

The first Christians generally, and the members of the church of Rome in particular, were many of them converts

*Deut. xvii. 14, 15,

from Judaism; and it was not certainly a matter of course that they should lose these prejudices on embracing Christianity. On the contrary, it seems highly probable, though (as Dr. Paley remarks) "neither the Scripture, nor any subsequent history of the Church, furnish any direct attestation"* of the fact, that the notions which have in after ages been repeatedly revived, of the freedom of the saints from all secular authority, and their rightful dominion over the rest of mankind, like most other errors, prevailed to a certain extent in the primitive times. To such sentiments the Apostle Peter seems to allude when he exhorts Christians to conduct themselves "as free, and yet not using their liberty as a cloak of maliciousness" (sedition, as Dr. Paley interprets it), "but as the servants of God." t

Admitting the supposition, certainly a highly probable one, that some such sentiments were actually entertained, or the undoubted fact, that in the former opinions of many of the Christians at Rome, there was a natural source of such sentiments, nothing could be less expected on the part of the Apostle, than a dissertation on the fundamental principles of civil government, or on the precise limits within which obedience to a government, founded on these principles, should be confined. What we naturally look for in the circumstances of the case is a clear statement and powerful enforcement of the duty of the Roman Christians to the government under which they were placed, fitted to prevent or put down mistaken notions, which, if followed out to their practical consequences, might have led to results the most destructive to themselves, and the most disastrous to the Christian cause. The paragraph before us exactly answers this expectation. It "inculcates the duty-it does not describe the extent of it. It enforces the obligation by the proper sanctions of Christianity, without intending either to

* Paley's "Moral and Political Philosophy," Works, vol. i. p. 329. Lond. 1825.

+1 Peter ii. 16.

enlarge or contract, without considering indeed the limits by which it is bounden."*

It goes on a principle which pervades the whole of the Apostle's injunctions with regard to social ethics,—that Christianity does not interfere with existing civil relations. To the Christian spouse who might suppose cohabitation with an idolater unlawful, he says, "The unbelieving husband is sanctified to the wife," i. e. the believing wife; "and the unbelieving wife is sanctified to the husband,” i. e. the believing husband. And to the slave who might be apt to suppose that because he was the Lord's freeman he could be no man's slave, his instructions are in effect,-Let no man become a slave, if he can help it; let every slave who can lawfully obtain liberty, thankfully accept it; but while you are slaves, conscientiously perform the duties of bondservants.†

These remarks cast light on a great principle of right interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Though divinely intended and fitted to form parts of a permanent and universal "rule of faith and manners," by far the greater number of the books both of the Old Testament and the New were occasional in their origin. They were intended to answer an immediate as well as an ultimate purpose. They

*Paley. Buchanan, in his eloquent and well-reasoned dialogue, "De Jure Regni," very justly remarks, "nec ei contentio est cum eis qui malos magistratus coercendos putant, sed cum hominibus omne magistratus imperium detrectantibus; qui libertatem Christianam absurde interpretantes affirmabant indignum esse, ut qui a Dei Filio essent emancipati, a Dei Spiritu regerentur sub ullius hominis potestate essent." P. 150. Glasg. 1750. "The apostolic exhortation," says Robert Hall, “as addressed to a few individuals, and adapted to the local circumstances of Christians at that period, admits an easy solution, but to imagine it prescribes the duty of the Roman empire, and is intended to subject millions to the capricious tyranny of one man, is a reflection as well on the character of Paul as on Christianity itself." -Preface to Apology for the Freedom of the Press. Works, vol. iii. p. 72.

+ 1 Cor. vii. 21, 23; 1 Tim. vi. 1.