And, on the other hand, have we not close to us, in France, a fearful sign and proof from God that without the fear of God no people can be free? Three times in the last sixty years have the French risen up against evil rulers, and driven them out. And have they been the better for it? They are at this very moment in utter slavery to a ruler more lawless than ever oppressed them before. And why? Because they did not believe that law came from God, and that the powers that be are ordained by Him. Therefore, whenever they were oppressed, they did not try to right themselves by lawful ways, according to the old English God-fearing custom, but to break down the old law by riot and bloodshed, and then to set up new laws of their own. But those new laws would never stand. They made them, but they would not obey them when they were made, and they could not make others obey them; because they had no real reverence for law, and did not believe that law came from God, or that His Spirit would give them understanding to make good laws. They talked loud about the power and rights of the people, and that whatever the people willed was right: but they said nothing about the power and rights of the Lord God; they forgot that it is only what God has willed from everlasting that is right; and so they made laws in the strength of their own hearts, according to what was right in the sight of their own eyes, to please themselves. How could they respect the laws, when the laws were only copies of their own selfish fancies? So, because they made them to please themselves, they soon broke them to please themselves. And so came more lawlessness and riot, and confusion worse confounded, till, of course, the strongest, and cunningest, and most shameless got the upper hand; and they were plunged, poor creatures! into the same pit of misery out of which they had been trying to deliver themselves in their own strength, for a sign and an example that the Lord is King, and not man at all, and that the fear of the Lord is the only beginning of wisdom. And very much the same sad fate had happened to the Romans a little before St. Paul’s time. They gave up their ancient respect for law; they broke the laws, and ran into all kinds of violence, and riot, and filthy sin; and therefore God took away their freedom from them, because they were not fit for it, and delivered them over into the hand of one cruel tyrant after another; and perhaps the cruellest of them all was the man who was emperor of Rome in St. Paul’s time. Therefore it was that St. Paul says to them: Love each other, and obey the laws, “knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.”