Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/420

368, to convince us, that human frailty will too often interpose itself, among persons of the holiest function. However, it may be offered in excuse for the clergy, that in the best societies there are some ill members, which a corrupted court and ministry will industriously find out, and introduce. Besides, it is manifest, that the greater number of those, who held and preached this doctrine, were misguided by equivocal terms, and by perfect ignorance in the principles of government, which they had not made any part of their study. The question originally put, and, as I remember to have heard it disputed in publick schools, was this, Whether under any pretence whatsoever it may be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate? which was held in the negative; and this is certainly the right opinion. But many of the clergy, and other learned men, deceived by dubious expression, mistook the object to which passive obedience was due. By the supreme magistrate, is properly understood the legislative power, which in all governments must be absolute and unlimited. But the word magistrate, seeming to denote a single person, and to express the executive power, it came to pass, that the obedience due to the legislature, was, for want of knowing or considering this easy distinction, misapplied to the administration. Neither is it any wonder, that the clergy, or other wellmeaning people, should fall into this errour, which deceived Hobbes himself so far, as to be the foundation of all the political mistakes in his books; where he perpetually confounds the executive with the legislative power, though all well-instituted states have ever placed them in different hands, as may be obvious to those, who know any thing