Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/429

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 411 some applause may be due to the superior sense and C IT A P. spirit of our ancestors, who had convinced themselves that i-eligion cannot abolish the unalienable rights of human nature". Perhaps the patience of the primitive church may be ascribed to its weakness, as well as to its virtue. A sect of unwarlike plebeians, without leadei's, without arms, without fortifications, must have encountered inevitable destruction in a rash and fruit- less resistance to the master of the Roman legions. But the christians, when they deprecated the wrath of Diocletian, or solicited the favour of Constantine, could allege, with truth and confidence, that they held the principle of passive obedience, and that in the space of three centuries their conduct had always been con- formable to their principles. They might add, that the throne of the emperors would be established on a fixed and permanent basis, if all their subjects, em- bracing the christian doctrine, should learn to suffer and to obey. In the general order of providence, princes and Dlvineright .,, ., ... PI ofConstan- tyrants are considered as the ministers oi heaven, ap- tine. pointed to rule or to chastise the nations of the earth. But sacred history affords many illustrious examples of the more immediate interposition of the Deity in the government of his chosen people. The sceptre and the sword were committed to the hands of Moses, of Joshua, of Gideon, of David, of the Maccabees ; the virtues of those heroes were the motive or the effect of the divine favour, the success of their arms was destined to achieve the deliverance or the triumph of the church. If the judges of Israel were occasional and temporary magistrates, the kings of Judah derivetl from the royal unction of their great ancestor, an he- reditary and indefeasible right, which could not be forfeited by their own vices, nor recalled by the ca- price of their subjects. The same extraordinary pro- " Buchanan is the earliest, or at least the most celebrated, of the re- formers, who has justified the theory of resistance. See his Dialogue de Jure Regni apud Scotos, tom. ii. p. 28. 30. edit. fol. Ruddiraan.