to do a wrong thing, I know of none. And let no man fancy that such
submission shows a slavish spirit. Not so. St. Peter did not wish
to encourage a slavish spirit in Jews and Christians. He told them
that they were free: but that they were not to use that belief as a
cloak of maliciousness--of spiteful, bitter, and turbulent conduct.
And as a fact, those who have done most for true freedom, in all
ages, have not been the violent, noisy, bitter, rebellious spirits,
who have cried, 'We are the masters, who shall rule over us?' but the
God-fearing, patient, law-abiding men, who would obey every ordinance
of man for the Lord's sake, whether it seemed to them altogether just
or not, unless they saw it was ruinous not to themselves merely, but
to their country, and to their children after them.

It is because men in their own minds do not believe that Christ is
the ruler of the world, that they lose all hope of God's delivering
them, and break out into mad rebellion. It is because, again, men do
not believe that Christ is the ruler of the world, that, when their
rebellion has failed, they sink into slavishness and dull despair,
and bow their necks to the yoke of the first tyrant who arises; and
try to make a covenant with death and hell. Better far for them, had
they made a covenant with Christ, who is ready to deliver men from
death and hell in this world, as well as in the world to come.

But he who believes in Christ, in the living Christ, the ordering
Christ, the governing Christ, will possess his soul in patience. He
will not fret himself, lest he should do evil; because he can always
put his trust in the Lord, until the tyranny be overpast. He will
not hastily rebel: but neither will he truckle basely and cowardly
to the ways of this wicked world. For Christ the Lord hates those
ways, and has judged them, and doomed them to destruction; and he