to Sancroft and Halifax, this was only because His
Majesty was too gracious to use the whole power which he derived from
heaven. But the great body of Tories, though, in the heat of conflict,
they might occasionally use language which seemed to indicate that they
approved of these extravagant doctrines, heartily abhorred despotism.
The English government was, in their view, a limited monarchy. Yet how
can a monarchy be said to be limited if force is never to be employed,
even in the last resort, for the purpose of maintaining the limitations?
In Muscovy, where the sovereign was, by the constitution of the state,
absolute, it might perhaps be, with some colour of truth, contended
that, whatever excesses he might commit, he was still entitled to
demand, on Christian principles, the obedience of his subjects. But here
prince and people were alike bound by the laws. It was therefore James
who incurred the woe denounced against those who insult the powers
that be. It was James who was resisting the ordinance of God, who was
mutinying against that legitimate authority to which he ought to have
been subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake, and who
was, in the true sense of the words of Jesus, withholding from Caesar
the things which were Caesar's.

Moved by such considerations as these, the ablest and most enlightened
Tories began to admit that they had overstrained the doctrine of passive
obedience. The difference between these men and the Whigs as to the
reciprocal obligations of Kings and subjects was now no longer a
difference of principle. There still remained, it is true, many
historical controversies between the party which had always maintained
the lawfulness of resistance and the new converts. The memory of the
blessed Martyr was still as much revered as ever by those old Cavaliers
who were ready to take arms against his degenerate son. They still spoke
with abhorrence of the Long Parliament, of the Rye House Plot, and of
the Western insurrection. But, whatever they might think about the past,
the view which they took of the present was altogether Whiggish: for
they now held that extreme oppression might justify resistance, and they
held that the oppression which the nation suffered was extreme. [412]

It must not, however, be supposed that all the Tories renounced, even at
that conjuncture, a tenet which they had from childhood been taught to
regard as an essential part of Christianity, which they