HUGH MILLER 73 



and her government were all monarchical ; and if, at 

 first, she was moderate in her tone of adulation, it was 

 easy to see that, led largely by interest, she would 

 begin to assert the divine origin of the powers of the 

 king, with the deduction of ' no bishop, no king ' and of 

 passive obedience, which made itself heard from the 

 pulpits of Laud, Montagu, and Mainwaring, and in the 

 treatise of Filmer. 



Passing from the more servile ranks of the clergy to 

 those of the laity it appeared as the party cry of a class. 

 To many it has often appeared strange how such an 

 absurd and illogical doctrine could become even the shib- 

 boleth of a political party. Yet at bottom the doctrine of 

 the divine right of the king was not very unfavourable to 

 the divine right of squires, and king and cavaliers were 

 bound together by obvious ties of interest in the main- 

 tenance of the royal prerogative against the rising tide 

 of political opposition. Holy Alliances in recent times 

 have not found this doctrine strange to them, and a 

 high elevation of the prerogative and the mitre was the 

 very breath of existence to a church whose being 

 depended on the stability of the throne. Passive 

 obedience was a convenient cry for those who never 

 dreamed that the breath of the king could unmake 

 them as a breath had made. Never till James vn. 

 began to oppress the clergy did they begin to see what 

 was logically involved in their abject protestations of 

 loyalty, and in their professions of turning the right cheek 

 to the royal smiter. Only when the seven bishops were 



