duty of fervants to their mafters, of children to their parents, of wives to their husbands:

Servants, be fubject to your masters.". "Children, obey your parents in all things." "Wives, fubmit yourselves unto your own hufbands." The fame concife and abfolute form of expreffion occurs in all these precepts; the same filence, as to any exceptions or diftinctions; yet no one doubts but that the commands of mafters, parents, and husbands, are often fo immoderate, unjuft, and inconfiftent with other obligations, that they both may and ought to be refifted. In letters or differtations written profeffedly upon feparate articles of morality, we might with more reafon have looked for a precise delineation of our duty, and fome degree of modern accuracy in the rules which were laid down for our direction: but in thofe fhort collections of practical maxims which compofe the conclufion, or some fmall portion, of a doctrinal or perhaps controverfial epiftle, we cannot be surprised to find the author more folicitous to impress the duty, than curious to enumerate exceptions.

The confideration of this diftinction is alone fufficient to vindicate these paffages of Scripture from any explanation which may be put upon them, in favour of an unlimited paffive obe

dience.

dience. But if we be permitted to affume a fuppofition, which many commentators proceed upon as a certainty, that the first Christians privately cherished an opinion, that their conver fion to Christianity entitled them to new immunities, to an exemption as of right (however they might give way to neceffity) from the authority of the Roman fovereign, we are furnished with a ftill more apt and fatisfactory interpretation of the Apoftles' words. The two paffages apply with great propriety to the refutation of this error; they teach the Chriftian convert to obey the magiftrate "for the Lord's "fake,"-"not only for wrath, but for con"fcience fake;"-" that there is no power but "of God;"-"that the powers that be," even the prefent rulers of the Roman empire, though heathens and ufurpers, feeing they are in poffeffion of the actual and neceffary authority of civil government," are ordained of God;" and, confequently, entitled to receive obedience from thofe who profess themselves the peculiar fervants of God, in a greater (certainly not in a lefs) degree, than from any others. They briefly defcribe the office of civil governors, "the punishment "of evil doers, and the praise of them that do "well;" from which defcription of the ufe of government,

government, they justly infer the duty of. fubjection, which duty being as extenfive as the reafon upon which it is founded, belongs to Chriftians no less than to the heathen members of the community. If it be admitted, that the two Apostles wrote with a view to this parti cular question, it will be confeffed, that their words cannot be transferred to a question totally different from this, with any certainty of carrying along with us their authority and intention. There exifts no refemblance between the cafe of a primitive convert, who difputed the jurif diction of the Roman government over a dif ciple of Chriftianity, and his who, acknowledging the general authority of the state over all its fubjects, doubts whether that authority be not, in fome important branch of it, fo ill conAituted, or abused, as to warrant the endeavours of the people to bring about a reformation by force. Nor can we judge what reply the Apostles would have made to this fecond question, if it had been propofed to them, from any thing they have delivered upon the firft; any more than, in the two confultations above defcribed, it could be known beforehand what I would fay in the latter, from the answer which I gave the former.

to

The

The only defect in this account is, that neither the Scriptures, nor any fubfequent history of the early ages of the church, furnish any direct atteftation of the existence of fuch difaffected fentiments amongst the primitive converts. They fupply indeed fome circumstances, which render probable the opinion, that extravagant notions of the political rights of the Christian state were at that time entertained by many profelytes to the religion. From the queftion propofed to Chrift, "Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæfar?” it may be prefumed that doubts had been started in the Jewish fchools concerning the obligation, or even the lawfulness, of fubmiffion to the Roman yoke. The accounts delivered by Jofephus, of various infurrections of the Jews of that and the following age, excited by this principle, or upon this pretence, confirm the prefumption. Now, as the Chriflians were at firft chiefly taken from the fews, confounded with them by the reft of the world, and, from the affinity of the two religions, apt to intermix the doctrines of both, it is not to be wondered at, that a tenet, fo flattering to the felf-importance of those who embraced it, should have been communicated to the new inftitution. Again, the teachers of Christianity, amongst the privileges which their religion

religion conferred upon its profeffors, were wont to extol the "liberty into which they were call66 ed,"- " in which Christ had made them free." This liberty, which was intended of a deliverance from the various fervitude, in which they had heretofore lived, to the domination of finful paffions, to the fuperftition of the Gentile idolatry, or the incumbered ritual of the Jewish difpenfation, might by fome be interpreted to fignify an emancipation from all restraint which was impofed by an authority merely human. At least they might be reprefented by their enemies as maintaining notions of this dangerous tendency. To fome error or calumny of this kind, the words of St. Peter feem to allude: "For fo is the will of God, that with well-doing

66

ye may put to filence the ignorance of foolish

inen as free, and not ufing your liberty for

a cloak of malicioufnefs (i. e. fedition), but as "the fervants of God." After all, if any one think this conjecture too feebly fupported by testimony, to be relied upon in the interpretation of fcripture, he will then revert to the confiderations alleged in the preceding part of this chap

ter.

After fo copious an account of what we apprehend to be the general defign and doârine

VOL. II.

M

of