resist them is to resist the ordination of God. They must be
obeyed for conscience' sake.

It would, perhaps, be rash to say that this doctrine had never
been broached before the seventeenth century, but it received in
that century, and chiefly in England, its fullest and most
systematic developments. It was patronized by the Anglican
divines, asserted by James I. of England, and lost the Stuarts
the crown of three kingdoms. It crossed the Channel, into
France, where it found a few hesitating and stammering defenders
among Catholics, under Louis XIV., but it has never been very
generally held, though it has had able and zealous supporters.
In England it was opposed by all the Presbyterians, Puritans,
Independents, and Republicans, and was forgotten or abandoned by
the Anglican divines themselves in the Revolution of 1688, that
expelled James II. and crowned William and Mary. It was ably
refuted by the Jesuit Suarez in his reply to a Remonstrance for
the Divine Right of Kings by the James I.; and a Spanish monk who
had asserted it in Madrid, under Philip II., was compelled by the
Inquisition to retract it publicly in the place where he had
asserted it. All republicans reject it, and the Church has never
sanctioned it. The Sovereign Pontiffs have claimed and exercised
the right to deprive princes of their principality, and to
absolve their subjects from the oath of fidelity. Whether the
Popes rightly claimed and exercised that power is not now the
question; but their having claimed and exercised it proves that
the Church does not admit the inamissibility of power and passive
obedience; for the action of the Pope was judicial, not
legislative. The Pope has never claimed the right to depose a
prince till by his own act he has, under the moral law or the