origin. Anything less will not command the assent of men sufficiently to
be immune from their evil passions. Let their minds but once turn to
resistance, and the bonds of social order will be broken. Complete
submission is the only safeguard against anarchy. So, a century later,
de Maistre could argue that unless the whole world became the subject of
Rome, the complete dissolution of Christian society must follow. So,
too, fifty years before, Hobbes had argued for an absolute dominion lest
the ambitions and desires of men break through the fragile boundaries of
the social estate.

The answer is clear enough; and, indeed, the case against the Nonjurors
is nowhere so strong as on its political side. Men cannot be confined
within the limits of so narrow a logic. They will not, with Bishop Ken,
rejoice in suffering as a doctrine of the Cross. Rather will oppression
in its turn arouse a sense of wrong and that be parent of a conscience
which provokes to action. Here was the root of Locke's doctrine of
consent; for unless the government, as Hume was later to point out, has
on its side the opinion of men, it cannot hope to endure. The fall of
James was caused, not as the Nonjurors were tempted to think, by popular
disregard of Divine personality, but by his own misunderstanding of the
limits to which misgovernment may go. Here their opponents had a
strong case to present; for, as Stillingfleet remarked, if William had
not come over there might have been no Church of England for the
Nonjurors to preserve. And other ingenious compromises were suggested.
Non-resistance, it was argued by Sherlock, applied to government in
general; and the oath, as a passage in the _Convocation Book_ of Overall
seemed to suggest, might be taken not less to a _de facto_ monarch than
to one _de jure_. Few, indeed would have taken the ground of Bishop
Burnet, and allotted the throne to William and Mary as conquerors of
the Kingdom; at least the pamphlet in which this uncomfortable doctrine