504 History of Methodism 



Nor is it difficult to perceive that the only safe principle for a con- 

 scientious man to adopt in order to acknowledge the supremacy of 

 the laws is that they are the laws of the existing government. The 

 perplexity would be endless if, in order to secure his allegiance, he 

 must institute and decide the inquiry, Who possesses de jure the 

 civil power? The fact is that almost all the governments that now 

 exist, or of which there remains any record in history, were origi- 

 nally founded in usurpation or conquest. There never was in any 

 one family any long, regular succession in the Roman Empire. Their 

 line of princes was continually broken, either by private assassi- 

 nations or public rebellions. John the Baptist recognized the au- 

 thority of a usurper when he said to the soldiers of Augustus : 

 " Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content 

 with your wages." The Saviour recognized the authority of a 

 usurper when he said of the tribute-money of Tiberius: " Render 

 unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things 

 that are God's." The Apostle Paul, in writing to the Christians at 

 Rome, and then under the government of one of the most arbitrary 

 and cruel tyrants, uses such language as the following : " Let every 

 soul be subject to the higher powers; whoso resisteth the power, 

 resisteth the ordinance of God. Therefore, ye must needs be 

 subject, not only for truth, but for conscience' sake." The lan- 

 guage of the Bible to Christians everywhere is, "Submit your- 

 selves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be 

 to the king as supreme or unto governors." The Bible, however, 

 nowhere advocates the doctrine of " passive obedience and non- 

 resistance" to such an extent as to forbid all hope of relief from a 

 wicked and tyrannical government, or to condemn the efforts of an 

 intelligent and oppressed people in rising in their majesty to shake 

 off a tyrannical yoke. The fact that the Bible establishes the au- 

 thority of a government when thus revolutionized recognizes the 

 right of revolution. There are rights of the people which are 

 superior to the rights of their rulers, and which, when abused, jus- 

 tify the people in throwing themselves back upon those principles 

 of self-preservation which underlie all human laws, which are writ- 

 ten deep and indelibly on the fleshly tables of the human heart, and 

 are inseparably intertwined with the bone and sinew of an oppressed 

 and injured community. Yet this unquestionable right of the peo- 

 ple ought to be exercised with great prudence and discretion. It was 

 a weighty remark of Fox, then the first nobleman of the British 

 Empire, that "the doctrine of resistance is a principle which we 



