s they represent it, with the consequences of
non-resistance, arbitrary power, indefeasible right, tyranny, popery, and
what not? There is no accusation which has passed with more plausibility
than this, nor any that is supported with less justice. In order
therefore to undeceive those who have been misled by false
representations, I thought it would be no improper undertaking to set
this matter in a fair light, which I think has not yet been done. A Whig
asks whether you hold passive obedience? you affirm it: he then
immediately cries out, "You are a Jacobite, a friend of France and the
Pretender;" because he makes you answerable for the definition he has
formed of that term, however different it be from what you understand. I
will therefore give two descriptions of passive obedience; the first as
it is falsely charged by the Whigs; the other as it is really professed
by the Tories, at least by nineteen in twenty of all I ever conversed
with.

Passive Obedience as charged by the Whigs.

_The doctrine of passive obedience is to believe that a king, even in a
limited monarchy, holding his power only from God, is only answerable to
Him. That such a king is above all law, that the cruellest tyrant must be
submitted to in all things; and if his commands be ever so unlawful, you
must neither fly nor resist, nor use any other weapons than prayers and
tears. Though he should force your wife or daughter, murder your children
before your face, or cut off five hundred heads in a morning for his
diversion, you are still to wish him a long prosperous reign, and to be
patient under all his cruelties, with the same resignation as under a
plague or a famine; because to resist him would be to resist God in the
person of His vicegerent. If a king of England should go through the
streets of London, in order to murder every man he met, passive obedience
commands them to submit. All laws made to limit him signify nothing,
though passed by his own consent, if he thinks fit to break them. God
will indeed call him to a severe account, but the whole people, united to
a man, cannot presume to hold his hands, or offer him the least active
disobedience. The people were certainly created for him, and not he for
the people. His next heir, though worse than what I have described,
though a fool or a madman, has a divine undefeasible right to succeed
him, which no law can disannul; nay though he should kill his father upon
the throne, he is immediate