Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/172

164 from what you understand. I will therefore give two descriptions of passive obedience; the first, as it is falsely charged by the whigs; the other, as it is really professed by the tories; at least by nineteen in twenty of all I ever conversed with.

THE doctrine of passive obedience is, to believe that a king, even in a limited monarchy, holding his power only from God, is only answerable to him: that such a king is above all law; that the cruellest tyrant must be submitted to in all things; and if his commands be ever so unlawful, you must neither fly nor resist, nor use any other weapons than prayers and tears. Although he should force your wife and daughter, murder your children before your face, or cut off five hundred heads in a morning for his diversion; you are still to wish him a long, prosperous reign, and to be patient under all his cruelties, with the same resignation as under a plague or a famine; because to resist him, would be to resist God, in the person of his vicegerent. If a king of England should go through the streets of London in order to murder every man he met, passive obedience commands them to submit. All laws made to limit him signify nothing, although passed by his own consent, if he thinks fit to break them. God will indeed call him to a severe account; but the whole people, united to a man, cannot presume to hold his hands, or offer him the least active disobedience: the people were certainly created for him, and not he for the people. His next heir, although worse than what I have described, although a fool or a madman, has a divine indefeasible right to