They denied that rulers hold their
power from the nation; that, however oppressive may be their
rule, that they are justiciable by any human tribunal, or that
power, except by the direct judgment of God, is amissible. Their
doctrine is known in history as the doctrine of "the divine right
of kings, and passive obedience." All power, says St. Paul, is
from God, and the powers that be are ordained of God, and to
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.
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