PREFACE.

NON-RESISTANCE and passive obedience, in the sense to which they are generally limited, are but two sides of the same doctrine, (the former speaking of it negatively, as not opposing force to force, the latter positively, as taking patiently whatever may be laid upon one,) and, together, are only a particular application of a general principle. In religion, it is faith; under misfortune, it is resignation; under trial, it is patient waiting for the end; amid provocation, it is gentleness; amid affronts, meekness; amid injuries, it is endurance; towards enemies, non-requital; towards railing, it is "not answering again;" to parents, it is filial obedience; to superiors, respect; to authorities, unquestioning submission; towards Civil Government, it is obedience upon principle, not only when it costs nothing, (as obedience to it ordinarily does not, and so can hardly be called the fulfilment of a duty,) but when it costs something.

On this, (as on almost every other subject of morals) our standard in this superficial age is for the most part lax and low; not simply (as of course it ever must be) in the selfish and profane, but in the current notions of the day. Maxims are received as indisputable, which betray a mixture of Heathenism with Christianity, and which proceed upon no principle even of heathen morality. As a warning against this, it has been wished, in the fol

lowing Sermon, to point out how deeply the principle itself lies in Holy Scripture, how largely it extends, how it was acted upon by the Church, in her healthy state, and how God has uniformly blessed those who acted upon it, and has chastised those who abandoned it. But though the circumstances of the day required it to be illustrated by the events, for which that day is so memorable, and that the lesson of those events should be inculcated, it was not intended to consider the doctrine prominently in its political bearings, much less to confine it to what politicians of these days would consider as such. For the temptations to offend against this law, in the extreme degree of rebellion, are happily very rare, while yet the principle itself may be broken very frequently. Over-eagerness to have what is really wrong redressed, when we are the sufferers; taking matters into men's own hands; combinations to use a moral compulsion upon Governors to abrogate what is really oppressive;-in short, a scheming, contriving activity of any sort, is, in itself, opposed to this principle, and likely to tend, more or less, to its overt breach. It is in the strong conviction that the enemies of the Church have no power to hurt her, any more than the lions whose mouths God had shut, while Daniel was in their den, to hurt His Prophet, but that those over-anxious for her, or who would help her by human contrivances, may injure her very seriously, that the warnings held out by God's dealings in such cases have been insisted on.

With regard to the special instance of the English revolution of 1688, the question is now happily one of practical importance, only, as relates to men's feelings and principles, not to any political mode of acting. We are now enabled by the distance of time, and God's intervening mercies, to look at that action in its real character, without dread of involving ourselves in practical consequences

--

which we would gladly avoid. Now, it were absurd or hypocrisy to suppose that the title of the present family to the Crown is in the least affected by the character of the Act of 1688. It were to confuse the abstract question of the original right of succession with the Christian duty of submission and allegiance. Our Lord bade the Pharisees pay tribute to the Cæsar, and not to prevaricate about the origin of their right. Further, the extinction of the unhappy line which were then in possession of the throne ;the circumstance, that the family now placed upon it, were not the immediate successors of that family, but came in in a more orderly way; their long undisputed possession of it;-happily can leave no doubt in any mind that they are to be acknowledged, as well as obeyed, as "the powers that be.” If, in ordinary cases, possession for a long period constitutes right, much more, where God's law requires men to submit quietly to "the powers that be," without defining how they came to be such. It was not in a legitimate way that the Emperors, whom S. Paul and S. Peter commanded men to obey, came to the throne, nor had they even prescription to plead; yet, as far as the subjects were concerned, “the powers that be were ordained of God." No one again can doubt that our early wars with France were wrong, on the ground that they were ambitious, covetous wars, independently of the question as to our title to the crown disputed; they were aggressions against "the powers that be:" our Sovereigns have admitted the principle by relinquishing the title; nor could any one doubt that the French were right in obeying their then king, and opposing ours. The contrary would be looked on as absurd. As absurd would it be, to think that the king of Sardinia has any Christian title to be Sovereign of this kingdom, though in the natural order of things, the crown would have descended upon him. It is idle, too, to argue, that but for the revolution of

1688, the present family would never have been placed upon the throne. Who knows it, or has any right to affirm it? All we know, is, that it would not have been there placed, in the way in which it was. But who can say

that it might not have been raised upon it in some other way, as, indeed, that act had no apparent connection with it? The principle, which the elevation of the present family involves, is not the right of subjects to depose their Sovereign, but the right of the existing authority to pass over the individual next in succession, as disqualified, as a parent may disinherit his son. This principle often exercised would indeed make a monarchy almost elective, but it is a civil question, and has no connection with the duties of subjects. This sort of arguing about what might have been the consequence of a different line of action 150 years ago, is worse than idle; it is Atheistic; for it implies that every thing else must have taken the same course which it since has, i. e. that fate, not God's Providence, governs the world. As for those who, having been for a long period employed in sowing disloyalty, have now discovered that the doctrine of Non-resistance is disloyal, while one rejoices that they can in any way propagate loyalty, (though it be "out of envy and strife,") it were enough to answer with the Christians against whom the like charge was made: "We are defamed as disloyal to the Emperor ;—yet they, who had sworn by the genii of the Cæsars,' who had offered victims and vows for their welfare, who had often condemned the Christians, have been found their enemies. The Christian is the enemy of no one, much less of the Emperor." (Tertull. ad Scap. init.) On the principles of Non-resistance, whence is resistance or disturbance to arise? It is, truly, the story of " the wolf and the lamb."

But to those of more earnest mind, who recognize the Providence of God, and believe that the tracks of past