Let us turn to the other side of religious opinion. If the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, furnished the popular side with arguments in support of every doctrine they professed, the same authority was called in for the maintenance and defence of the High Church and Loyalist party. Laud and his friends were by no means without Scriptural defence. For instance, the most rigid rule of conduct advanced by the divines of Charles the Second’s reign was that of passive obedience, together with the corollary that resistance to the King’s authority was a mortal sin. This doctrine seems to us absurd, we who inherit the training of two hundred years in the belief that all power is conferred by the people and may be withdrawn by the people. But, in fact, the doctrine was perfectly logical if one admitted that the English monarchy was an Oriental despotism such as that of Solomon or any other Eastern king. I have before me a sermon preached on February 6, 1668, in Ripon Cathedral, by the Dean, in which the doctrine is boldly advanced and upheld. The text is from 1 Kings viii. 66, and relates how, after the great and solemn function of the dedication with the blood of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep—surely there is here a superfluity of ciphers—and after a great feast, the people went away blessing the King. One would think this a weak text for the support of such a doctrine, but the learned Dean bolsters it up with an abundance of instances and texts. Thus “St. Paul says that Kings are, not by God’s sufferance but by his ordinance, and therefore, even supposing them never so bad, they are not to be resisted. You may take up the Buckles of Patience; but you must not take up Arms against them; for Rebellion is such rank Poison to the Soul, that the least Scruple of it is Damnable, the very intention of it in the Heart is Mortal.” In our passive obedience we may, if times are bad, console ourselves with the imitation of “Jeremiah in Prison; Daniel in the Lion’s Den; Amos struck through the Temples; Zachariah murdered between the Porch and the Altar; our Blessed Saviour living under Herod and Tiberius and crucified under Pontius Pilate; His Disciples under Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and Domitian; Christian Bishops, under Heathen Persecutors; none of whom ever reviled their Princes or resisted them.” One might object that in these cases resistance would have been useless. But he goes on, “Who questioned Saul for slaying the Priests and revolting to Idolatry? Who questioned Joram a Parricide and murderer of his nobles? Or Joash for his Idolatry and slaying the High Priest? Did the Sanhedrim do it? Who questioned Theodosius for murdering six Thousand innocent Persons? Who questioned Constance, or Valeros, or Julian the Apostate?” Again, one objects the people had not the power to question. Again, “Mephibosheth said of David, ‘My Lord the King is an Angel of God. Do therefore what is good in thine eyes.’”