such a degree, as will require more of the good old principles of loyalty and of religion to withstand it, than appear to be left amongst us?
What legal remedies can be provided against these mischief, or whether any at all, are considerations the farthest from my thoughts. No government can be free, which is not administered by general stated laws; and these cannot comprehend every case which wants to be provided against; nor can new ones be made for every particular case as it arises: and more particular laws, as well as more general ones, admit of infinite evasions: and legal government forbids any but legal methods of redress, which cannot but be liable to the same sort of imperfections, besides the additional one of delay: and whilst redress is delayed, however unavoidably, wrong subsists. Then there are very bad things, which human authority can scarce provide against at all, but by methods dangerous to liberty; nor fully but by such as would be fatal to it. These things show, that liberty, in the very nature of it, absolutely requires, and even supposes, that people be able to govern themselves in those respects in which they are free; otherwise their wickedness will be in proportion to their liberty, and this greatest of blessings will become a curse.
III. These things show likewise that there is but one adequate remedy to the forementioned evils, even that which the apostle prescribes in the last words of the text, to consider ourselves, "as the servants of God," who enjoins dutiful submission to civil authority as his ordinance; and to whom we are accountable for the use we make of the liberty which we enjoy under it. Since men cannot live out of society, nor in it, without government, government is plainly a divine appointment; and consequently submission to it, a most evident duty of the law of nature. And we all know in how forcible a manner it is put upon our conscience in Scripture. Nor can this obligation be denied formally upon any principles, but such as subvert all other
