crime
to make him King; yet what was the whole history of the Jewish nation
and of the Christian Church but a record of cases in which Providence
had brought good out of evil? And what theologian would assert that, in
such cases, we ought, from abhorrence of the evil, to reject the good?

On these grounds a large body of divines, still asserting the doctrine
that to resist the Sovereign must always be sinful, conceived that
William was now the Sovereign whom it would be sinful to resist.

To these arguments the nonjurors replied that Saint Paul must have meant
by the powers that be the rightful powers that be; and that to put any
other interpretation on his words would be to outrage common sense,
to dishonour religion, to give scandal to weak believers, to give an
occasion of triumph to scoffers. The feelings of all mankind must be
shocked by the proposition that, as soon as a King, however clear
his title, however wise and good his administration, is expelled by
traitors, all his servants are bound to abandon him, and to range
themselves on the side of his enemies. In all ages and nations, fidelity
to a good cause in adversity had been regarded as a virtue. In all ages
and nations, the politician whose practice was always to be on the side
which was uppermost had been despised. This new Toryism was worse than
Whiggism. To break through the ties of allegiance because the Sovereign
was a tyrant was doubtless a very great sin: but it was a sin for which
specious names and pretexts might be found, and into which a brave
and generous man, not instructed in divine truth and guarded by divine
grace, might easily fall. But to break through the ties of allegiance,
merely because the Sovereign was unfortunate, was not only wicked, but
dirty. Could any unbeliever offer a greater insult to the Scriptures
than by asserting that the Scriptures had enjoined on Christians as a
sacred duty what the light of nature had taught heathens to regard
as the last excess of baseness? In the Scriptures was to be found the
history of a King of Israel, driven from his palace by an unnatural son,
and compelled to fly beyond Jordan. David, like James, had the right:
Absalom, like William, had the possession. Would any student of the
sacred writings dare to affirm that the conduct of Shimei on that
occasion was proposed as a pattern to be imitated, and that Barzillai,
who loyally adhered to his fugitive master, was resisting the ordinance
of God, an