er the chosen people might lawfully give tribute to
Caesar, he replied by asking the questioners, not whether Caesar could
make out a pedigree derived from the old royal house of Judah, but
whether the coin which they scrupled to pay into Caesar's treasury came
from Caesar's mint, in other words, whether Caesar actually possessed
the authority and performed the functions of a ruler.

It is generally held, with much appearance of reason, that the most
trustworthy comment on the text of the Gospels and Epistles is to be
found in the practice of the primitive Christians, when that practice
can be satisfactorily ascertained; and it so happened that the times
during which the Church is universally acknowledged to have been in the
highest state of purity were times of frequent and violent political
change. One at least of the Apostles appears to have lived to see four
Emperors pulled down in little more than a year. Of the martyrs of the
third century a great proportion must have been able to remember ten
or twelve revolutions. Those martyrs must have had occasion often to
consider what was their duty towards a prince just raised to power by
a successful insurrection. That they were, one and all, deterred by the
fear of punishment from doing what they thought right, is an imputation
which no candid infidel would throw on them. Yet, if there be any
proposition which can with perfect confidence be affirmed touching the
early Christians, it is this, that they never once refused obedience
to any actual ruler on account of the illegitimacy of his title. At
one time, indeed, the supreme power was claimed by twenty or thirty
competitors. Every province from Britain to Egypt had its own Augustus.
All these pretenders could not be rightful Emperors. Yet it does not
appear that, in any place, the faithful had any scruple about submitting
to the person who, in that place, exercised the imperial functions.
While the Christian of Rome obeyed Aurelian, the Christian of Lyons
obeyed Tetricus, and the Christian of Palmyra obeyed Zenobia. "Day and
night," such were the words which the great Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage,
addressed to the representative of Valerian and Gallienus,--"day and
night do we Christians pray to the one true God for the safety of our
Emperors." Yet those Emperors had a few months before pulled down their
predecessor Aemilianus, who had pulled down his predecessor Gallus,
who had climbed to power on the ruins of the house