lured the Roman to his own destruction, and the vision which in the same place invited the Apostle to preach salvation to others, present no unapt emblem of the opposite genius of Paganism and Christianity?

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CHAP. XVI.

SAINT PAUL'S RESPECT FOR CONSTITUTED

AUTHORITIES.

THE Gospel was never intended to dissolve the ancient ties between sovereign and subject, master and servant, parent and child, but rather to draw them closer, to strengthen a natural by a lawful and moral obligation. As the charge of disaffection was from the first most injurious to the religion of Jesus, it is obvious why the Apostle was so frequent, and so earnest, in vindicating it from this calumny.

It is apparent from every part of the New Testament, that our Lord never intended to introduce any change into the civil government of Judea, where he preached, nor into any part of the world to which his religion might extend. As his object was of a nature specifically different, his discourses were always directed to that other object. His politics were uniformly conversant about his own kingdom, which was not of this world. If he spake of human governments at all, it was only incidentally, as circumstances led to it, and as it gave occasion to display or enforce some act of obedience. He discreetly entangled the Pharisees in the insi

dious net which they had spread for him, by directing, in answer to their ensnaring question, that the things which belonged even to the sovereign whom they detested, should be "rendered" to him.

Saint Paul exhibited at once a striking proof of the soundness of his own principles, and of the peaceable character of Christianity, in his full and explicit exposition of the allegiance due to the ruling powers. His thorough conviction that human nature was, and would be, the same in all ages, led him to anticipate the necessity of impressing on his converts the duty of rescuing the new religion, not only from present reproach, but from that obloquy to which he foresaw that it would always be exposed.

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He knew that a seditious spirit had been alleged against his Lord. He knew, that as it was with the Master, so it must be with the servant. One was called a "pestilent fellow;" another "a stirrer-up of the people;" others were charged with "turning the world upside down." These charges, invented and propagated by the Jews, were greedily adopted by the persecuting Roman emperors, and their venal instruments; and have always been seized on and brought forward as specious pretences for exile, proscription, massacre.

Many of the Protestant Reformers have since been accused, or suspected, of the same factious disposition; and if a similar accusation

has not been boldly produced, it has been insidiously implied, against some of the most faithful friends of the government, and of the ecclesiastical constitution of our own country ; as if a more than ordinary degree of religious activity rendered their fidelity to the state suspicious, and their hostility to the church certain. We do not deny, that though Christianity has never been the cause, it has often been made the pretence for disaffection. Religion has been made the handle of ambition by Popery, and of sedition by some of the Puritan Reformers. Corruption in both cases was stamped upon the very face of those who so used it. Nothing, however, can be more unfair, than eagerly to charge religious profession with such dangers, which yet the instances alluded to have given some of our high-churchmen a plausible plea for always doing. This plea, though in certain cases justly furnished, has been most unjustly used by being applied to instances to which it is completely inapplicable.

For the truth is, that a factious spirit is so far from having any natural connection with the religion of the Gospel, that it stands in the most direct opposition to it. Saint Paul, in taking particular care to vindicate Christianity from any such aspersion, shows that obedience to constituted authorities is among the express commands of our Saviour. He might have added to the strength of his assertion, by ad

ducing his example also; for in order to be enabled to comply with a law of Government, Christ did, what he had never done to supply his own necessities - he wrought a miracle. And we have here a proof that he did not conform to the law in this instance only; for when the tax-gatherers enquired of Peter whether his master paid tribute, he simply answered, Yes: this affirmative making it clear that it was the custom of Jesus to pay whatever taxes were usually paid by others.

The Apostle, knowing the various shifts of men, from their natural love of gain, to evade paying imposts, is not content with a general exhortation on this head, but urges the duty in every conceivable shape, and under every variety of name, as if to prevent the possibility of even a verbal subterfuge - tribute, custom, fear, love, honour, fidelity in payment; and then, having exhausted particulars, he sums them up in a general-owe no man any thing; thus he leaves not only no public opening, but no secret crevice to fiscal fraud.*

Perhaps it is an evidence, in this instance, rather of the sagacious, than of the prescient, spirit which governed Saint Paul, that there is as much tendency to it Now as when the Apostle first published his prohibitory letter. The known principles of human nature, as we have

* Romans, xiii.