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244 244 by the light of nature and by revelation, to instruct men in the duties of fidelity, justice, and regard to common good, and enforce the practice of these virtues, without which there could have been no peace or quiet amongst mankind; and to preserve, in different ways, a sense of religion, as well as virtue, and of God's authority over us. For if we could suppose men to have lived out of government, they must have run wild, and all knowledge of divine things must have been lost from among them. But by means of their uniting under it, they have been preserved in some tolerable security from the fraud and violence of each other; order, a sense of virtue, and the practice of it, has been, in some measure, kept up; and religion, more or less pure, has been all along spread and propagated. So that I make no scruple to affirm, that civil government has been, in all ages, a standing publication of the law of nature, and an enforcement of it; though never in its perfection, for the most part greatly corrupted, and, I suppose, always so in some degree.

And, considering that civil government is that part of God's government over the world, which he exercises by the instrumentality of men, wherein that which is oppression, injustice, cruelty, as coming from them, is, under his direction, necessary discipline, and just punishment; considering, that "all power is of God," Rom. xiii. 1, all authority is properly of divine appointment; men's very living under magistracy might naturally have led them to the contemplation of authority in its source and origin; the one supreme, absolute authority of Almighty God, by which he "doth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth," Dan. iv. 35; which he now exerts, visibly and invisibly, by different instruments, in different forms of administration, different methods of discipline and punishment; and which he will continue to exert hereafter, not only over mankind, when this mortal life shall be ended, but throughout his