or advancement unnecessary; for he exhorts even as many as be perfect," that they press forward and reach forth unto those things which are before: in his usual humble way identifying himself with those he is admonishing-"Let us be thus minded."

Again." Though he is confident that he that begun a good work in them," will accomplish it, yet they must still work out their salvation; but lest they might be tempted to value themselves on their exertions, they are instantly reminded who it is that "worketh in them to will and to do." Though they professed the Gospel, "their conversation must be such as becometh it." To accomplish his full desire, their love, already so great, must "abound more and more. Nor would he be satisfied with an ignorant or disorderly piety-their love must manifest itself more and more "in knowledge and judgment:" in knowledge, by a perpetual acquisition; in judgment, by a practical application of that knowledge.

How little, in the eyes of the sober Christian, does the renowned Roman, who, scarcely half a century_before, sacrificed his life to his appointment, at this very Philippi, appear, in comparison of the man who addressed this epistle to the same city! St. Paul was not less brave than Brutus, but his magnanimity was of a higher strain. Paul was exercised in a long series of sufferings, from which the sword of Brutus, directed by any hand but that of Paul himself, would have been a merciful deliverance. Paul, too, was a patriot, and set a proper value on his dignity as a Roman citizen. He too was a champion for freedom, but he fought for that higher species of liberty

"Unsung by poets, and by senators unpraised.”

Was it courage of the best sort, in the Roman enthusiast for freedom, to abandon his country to her evil destiny, at the very moment when she most needed his support? Was it true generosity or patriotism, after having killed his friend, to whom he owed his fortune and his life,* usurper though he was, voluntarily to leave this adored country a prey to inferior usurpers? Though Cæsar had robbed Rome of her liberty, should Brutus rob her of his own guardian virtues? Why not say to the Romans, as Paul did to the Philippians-Though I desire to depart, nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you! This would have been indeed patriotism, because it would have been disinterested. Was not Paul's the truer hero

* At the battle of Pharsalia.

ism? He also was in a strait between two events, life and death. He knew, what Brutus, alas! did not know, "that to die was gain;" but, instead of deserting his cause, by a pusillanimous self-murder, he submitted to live for its interest. The gloomy despair of the stoic, and the cheerful submission of the saint, present a lively contrast of the effects of the two religions on two great souls.

It is a coincidence too remarkable to be passed over in silence, that Paul was directed by a vision from heaven" to go to Philippi; that Brutus was summoned to the same city by his evil genius. The hero obeyed the phantom; the apostle was not disobedient to the heavenly vision;" to what different ends, let the concluding histories of the devoted suicide and the devoted martyr declare! Will it be too fanciful to add, that the spectre which lured the Roman to his own destruction, and the vision which in the same place invited the apostle to preach salvation to others, present no unapt emblem of the opposite genius of Paganism and Christianity.

CHAP. XVI.

St. Paul's respect for constituted authorities.

THE Gospel was never intended to dissolve the ancient ties between sovereign and subject, master and servant, parent and child, but rather to draw them closer, to strengthen a natural by a lawful and moral obligation. As the charge of disaffection was, from the first, most injurious to the religion of Jesus, it is obvious why the apostle was so frequent, and so earnest, in vindicating it from this calumny.

It is apparent from every part of the New Testament, that our Lord never intended to introduce any change into the civil government of Judea, where he preached, nor into any part of the world to which his religion might extend. As his object was of a nature specifically different, his discourses were always directed to that other object. His politics were uniformly conversant about his own kingdom, which was not of this world. If he spake of human governments at all, it was only incidentally, as circumstances led to it, and as it gave occasion to display or enforce some act of obedience. He discreetly entangled the Pharisees in the insidious net which they had spread for him, by di

recting, in answer to their ensnaring question, that the things which belonged even to the sovereign whom they detested, should be "rendered" to him.

St. Paul exhibited at once a striking proof of the soundness of his own principles, and of the peaceable character of Christianity, in his full and explicit exposition of the allegiance due to the ruling powers. His thorough conviction that human nature was, and would be, the same in all ages, led him to anticipate the necessity of impressing on his converts the duty of rescuing the new religion, not only from present reproach, but from that obloquy to which he foresaw that it would always be exposed.

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He knew that a seditious spirit had been alleged against his Lord. He knew, that as it was with the master so it must be with the servant. One was called a 'pestilent fellow;" another, "a stirrer-up of the people:" others were charged with "turning the world upside down." These charges, invented and propagated by the Jews, were greedily adopted by the persecuting Roman emperors, and their venal instruments; and have always been seized on and brought forward as specious pretences for exile, proscription, massacre.

Many of the Protestant Reformers were afterwards accused, or suspected, of the same factious disposition; and if a similar accusation has not been boldly produced, it has been insidiously implied, against some of the most faithful friends of the government, and of the ecclesiastical constitution of our own country; as if a more than ordinary degree of religious activity rendered their fidelity to the state suspicious, and their hostility to the church certain. We do not deny, that though Christianity has never been the cause, it has often been made the pretence for disaffection. Religion has been made the handle of ambition by Popery, and of sedition by some of the Puritan Reformers. ruptions in both cases was stamped upon the very face of those who so used it. Nothing, however, can be more unfair, than eagerly to charge religious profession with such dangers, which yet the instances alluded to have given some of our high churchmen a plausible plea for always doing. This plea, though in certain cases justly furnished, has been most unjustly used by being applied to instances to which it is completely inapplicable.

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For the truth is, that a factious spirit is so far from having any natural connection with the religion of the Gospel, that it stands in the most direct opposition to it. St. Paul, in taking particular care to vindicate Christianity from any

such aspersion, shows that obedience to constituted authorities is among the express commands of our Saviour. He might have added to the strength of his assertion, by adducing his example also; for, in order to be enabled to comply with a law of government, Christ did, what he had never done to supply his own necessities-he wrought a miracle.

The apostle knowing the various shifts of men, from their natural love of gain, to evade paying imposts, is not content with a general exhortation on this head, but urges the duty in every conceivable shape, and under every variety of name, as if to prevent the possibility of even a verbal subterfuge-tribule, custom, fear, love, honor, fidelity in payment; and then, having exhausted particulars, he sums them up in a general—owe no man any thing. Thus he leaves not only no public opening, but no secret crevice to fiscal fraud.*

Perhaps it is an evidence, in this instance, rather of the sagacious, than of the prescient, spirit which governed St. Paul, that there is as much tendency to it now, as when the apostle first published his prohibitory letter. The known principles of human nature, as we have just observed, might lead us to expect it alike in all ages. At the same time, we cannot be too mindful of that command of inspiration, which, by enjoining us to render to all their dues, has enlarged the sphere of civil duty to the very utmost limit of human actions. And it is no little credit to Christianity, that intimations are so frequently repeated, by all the apostles to all classes of society, that their having become Christians was the very reason why all their lawful obligations should be the more scrupulously discharged.

St. Peter and St. Paul preach the same doctrine, but most judiciously apply their injunctions to the different modes of government under which their several converts lived. St. Peter, who wrote to the strangers scattered through Pontus, Asia, &c. where the governments were arbitrary, orders them first to obey the king as supreme. St. Paul, ad

dressing the people of Rome, where it is well known the emperor and the senate did not always act in concurrence, with his usual exquisite prudence makes choice of an ambiguous expression, the higher powers, without specifically determining what those powers were.

Loyalty is a cheap quality, where a good government makes a happy people. It is then an obligation, without being a virtue. That every man should be obedient to the existing powers, is a very easy injunction to us, who are * Romans, xiii.

living under the mildest government, and the most virtuous king. When Paul enjoined his beloved disciple "to put the people in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, and to obey magistrates," had the episcopal Titus been acting under the merciful government of the imperial Titus, Paul might have been denied any merit in giving this authoritative mandate, or the bishop in obeying it: it might have been urged, that the injunctions were accommodated to a sovereign whose commands it would be unreasonable to dispute.

The submission which St. Paul practised and taught was a trial of a higher order, but though hard, it was not too hard for his principles. To enjoin and to practise implicit obedience, where Nero was the supreme authority, furnished him with a fair occasion for exhibiting his sincerity on this point. Never let it be forgotten for the honor of Christianity, and of the apostle who published it, that Paul chose to address his precepts of civil obedience to the Christians at Rome, under the most tyrannical of all their tyrants. He commands them to submit for conscience sake, to a sovereign, who, their enemy, Tacitus, gives the relation,— made the martyrdom of the Christians his personal diversion; who burnt them alive by night in the streets, that the flames might light him to the scene of his licentious pleasures.

In the first three centuries, till the Roman government became Christian, there is not, we believe, an instance upon record, of any insurrection against legitimate authority. Tertullian, in his "Apology," challenges the Pagans to produce a single instance of sedition, in which any of the Christians had been concerned; though their numbers were become so great, as to have made their opposition formidable, while the well-known cruel and vengeful principle of their oppressors would have rendered it desperate. Even that philosophical politician Montesquieu acknowledged, that in those countries where Christianity had even imperfectly taken root, rebellions have been less frequent than in other places.

Nor did St. Paul indemnify himself for his public submission, by privately villifying the lawful tyrant: the emperor is not only not named, but is not pointed at. There is not

one of those sly inuendos, which the artful subverters of states know how to employ, when they would undermine the stability of law, without incurring its penalty. He betrays no symptom of an exasperating spirit, lurking behind the shelter of prudence, and the screen of legal security.