nature, or more honourable to the gospel, than the directions which it gives on this subject; and we must perceive a peculiar propriety in the frequency and earnestness with which they are urged, when we consider the danger in which the primitive christians were of supposing, that they were liberated from the ordinary restraints of the rest of mankind. But if we shall go beyond this, and assert that the scriptures have prohibited resistance to rulers in every case, and that the great body of a nation consisting of christians, in attempting to curb the fury of their rulers, or to deprive them of the power which they have grossly abused, are guilty of that crime against which the apostle denounces damnation, we represent the beneficent religion of Jesus as sanctioning despotism, and entailing all the evils of political bondage upon mankind; and we tread in the steps of those enemies to christianity, who, under the colour of paying a compliment to its pacific, submissive, tolerant, and self‑denying maxims, have represented it as calculated to produce a passive, servile spirit, and to extinguish courage, patriotism, the love of civil liberty, the desire of self‑preservation, and every kind of disposition to repel injuries, or to obtain the redress of the most intolerable grievances. {311} The example of the primitive christians is not binding upon others any farther than it is conformable to the scriptures; and the circumstances in which they were placed were totally different from those of the protestants in Scotland, and in other countries, at the time of the Reformation. The fathers often indulge in oratorical exaggerations when speaking of the numbers of the christians; nor is there any satisfactory evidence that they ever approached near to a majority of the Roman empire, during the time that they were exposed to persecution.