more divine right than a Merovingian, a Stuart, a Bourbon, from whom the sceptre has departed. Possession, in their view, provided always that the possessor will allow them to come in for a certain share of influence and reverence, is not only nine-tenths of the law, but a perfect right. The vicar of Bray is their type and representative. In this respect they are true waiters upon Providence, consistent adherents of the pure mystic theory, their conformity being less dishonest than it is commonly represented.

6. The doctrine of the divine right of kings to govern, and of the moral obligation of the people to obey and to submit, though apparently taught with great emphasis and precision in St. Paul's Epistles, and though generally inculcated by the Christian Fathers in the early days of Christianity, fell into total neglect, during the efforts of the Gregories, the Paschals, and the Innocents, to establish the universal monarchy of the Popedom. In those times, a divine right was claimed for the clergy, over kings as well as over the people. At the period, however, of the great Protestant rebellion, the doctrine of the divine right of princes was revived as a means of keeping the kings of Europe faithful to the Catholic creed. Their assistance was further secured by sharing with them a large proportion of the property and patronage of the church; an expedient which proved perfectly successful, except with Henry the Eighth of England, who was involved in a personal quarrel with the Pope, and in the four northern kingdoms of Scotland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, in which the nobility were at blows with their

sovereigns who remained faithful to the Holy See; and where the wealth of the church, seized upon by the rebellious nobles, made them great zealots in the Protestant cause.

The Protestant clergy were driven, in consequence, to adopt a similar policy. They surrendered up to their princes and supporters a great portion of the church revenues and patronage; and soon began to outbid the Catholics, in the zeal with which they preached the doctrine of the divine right of kings.*

* Calvin and Knox, though they acknowledged the divine right of civil government, maintained, and the more sturdy of their followers have maintained to this day, the entire independence of the church, or, to speak more plainly, the rightful subordination of the state to the Church, in all spiritual matters, which may easily be made to mean, all matters. In this opinion they coincide exactly with Bellarmine and the Jesuits; and have gone a good deal beyond the body of the modern Catholic doctors. But the greater part of the English Reformers, except those who were infected with Calvinism, as well as Luther, adopted the courtly creed of the divine right of princes to a much greater extent than did the Catholic clergy, maintaining the Erastian doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule the church as well as the people.

Luther, indeed, would willingly have stickled for the absolute independency and supreme power of the elect; but circumstances compelled him to modify his doctrine. "The sect of the Anabaptists was founded by Nicholas Storch, Mark Stubner, and Thomas Munzer, in 1521. It was founded upon the abuse of a doctrine which they had read in a book published by Luther, in 1520,' De Libertate Christiana,' in which he asserted, that a Christian man is master of every thing, and is subject to no one.'" Bayle's Dictionary, art. Anabaptist. "Luther, perceiving that many accused him of giving occasion to this rebellion (that is, the Anabaptist rebellion), by the book that he had written in the vulgar tongue, in defence of Evangelical liberty against the tyranny of those who overlaid it by human tradition, answered that accusation in a long discourse, in which he showed them

7. Though the doctrine of the divine right of kings was of mystical origin, the doctrine of the indefeasible right of kings, which by a different road reached the same point of unlimited despotism, originated in forensic and feudal ideas. Under the feudal system, the right of property and the right to govern were indissolubly connected; and hence by degrees these two rights came to be confounded together, as if they had been one and the same. According to the theory of the feudal system, which was, indeed, nothing but a legal fiction, the king was the source of all power, and also the source of all property; all titles, both those of honor and jurisdiction, and those of private possession, being traced back, if not historically, at least assumptively, to his gift. Certain jurisdictions were annexed to certain estates, and both became hereditary together. Hence sprang the idea that the king had the same right to rule that the subject had to the property he possessed; if not, indeed, a prior and superior right; and that it would be just as great a violation of justice, if not greater, to deprive the king of his crown, as to deprive the subject of his estate. Thus arose that strong feeling of loyalty which once reigned in European monarchies, and which, yet, is not wholly extinct; and

that the scripture enjoins obedience to princes and magistrates, even though they should abuse, the power which God had intrusted them with; that they ought to address themselves to God, and in the mean time, suffer with patience, in expectation of his good pleasure; and that the way of arms which they had taken up, would be the occasion of their damnation, if they refused to lay them down." Mainbourg's "History of Lutheranism," Book I., as cited by Bayle.

hence the political doctrines of Hobbes, who, though an innovator in philosophy, was a conservative in politics, and an enthusiastic lover of peace, greatly alarmed at the revolutionary spirit of his times. He attempted to supply a philosophical basis for these feudal notions of kingly right, and taught, that, men having once conferred absolute authority on a prince, as the only means of escaping out of an original and natural state of anarchy and private war, the right to govern thus conferred, like the original distribution of landed property, was morally indefeasible and for ever binding, and for precisely the same reason, to wit, the good of society. In more modern phrase, the right of the king to govern had become a vested right, which could not be disregarded without fatal consequences. Society, for its own benefit, had armed the prince with unlimited power, and for the sake of escaping the greater evils of perpetual anarchy, had consented beforehand to every thing he might do. Absolute power in the prince being essential to the welfare of society, no imaginable misconduct on his part could justify resistance to his authority, since the anarchy and universal war of men against each other, which must result from the overthrow of an established government, is a far greater evil than any isolated or temporary acts of oppression. The conclusion of Hobbes, though he was very little of a mystic, was precisely that of Luther. Princes are not responsible to their subjects, but only to God.

But though the right to rule was morally indefeasible, that is to say, not to be defeated without a

7. Though the doctrine of the divine right of kings was of mystical origin, the doctrine of the indefeasible right of kings, which by a different road reached the same point of unlimited despotism, originated in forensic and feudal ideas. Under the feudal system, the right of property and the right to govern were indissolubly connected; and hence by degrees these two rights came to be confounded together, as if they had been one and the same. According to the theory of the feudal system, which was, indeed, nothing but a legal fiction, the king was the source of all power, and also the source of all property; all titles, both those of honor and jurisdiction, and those of private possession, being traced back, if not historically, at least assumptively, to his gift. Certain jurisdictions were annexed to certain estates, and both became hereditary together. Hence sprang the idea that the king had the same right to rule that the subject had to the property he possessed; if not, indeed, a prior and superior right; and that it would be just as great a violation of justice, if not greater, to deprive the king of his crown, as to deprive the subject of his estate. Thus arose that strong feeling of loyalty which once reigned in European monarchies, and which, yet, is not wholly extinct; and

that the scripture enjoins obedience to princes and magistrates, even though they should abuse, the power which God had intrusted them with; that they ought to address themselves to God, and in the mean time, suffer with patience, in expectation of his good pleasure; and that the way of arms which they had taken up, would be the occasion of their damnation, if they refused to lay them down." Mainbourg's "History of Lutheranism,” Book I., as cited by Bayle.