But it behoves us Churchmen, not only to assert the spiritual liberties of the Church, but also to realize a great deal more fully than we do, the divine authority of the civil ministers and civil laws in their own department. The State {126} exists to embody and represent in the world the divine justice, which is to be the basis of the government of men. Its ministers--magistrates, legislators, officers of justice--are 'God's ministers': laws which are passed by the State in fulfilment of its divine mission--laws intended to maintain the health and prosperity of the people as a whole--have a divine sanction; and we Churchmen can only be what the Church should be, 'the soul of the world,' if we make it a matter of conscience, a great deal more deliberately than it is at present with most of us, to aid vigorously in the administration of the good laws which already exist, national and municipal, and to promote intelligently and enthusiastically the purposes of civil government by helping towards better laws; so that our government, as a whole, may become a continually completer image of the equitable and impartial righteousness of God. [1] Cf. 2 Pet. i. 7, 'In your love of the brethren supply love,' i.e. let the temper bred inside the closer bond of Christian fellowship extend itself universally. [2] Deut. xvii. 15, 'Thou mayest not put a foreigner over thee, which is not thy brother.' [3] Acts xviii. 2. 'Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome,' cf. Suetonius, Claud. 25. 'The Jews who had been persistently breaking into disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus (Christ?) he expelled from Rome.' We cannot certainly explain these words, but St. Paul knew all about the occurrence from Priscilla and Aquila, whom the expulsion had brought across his path at Corinth. [4] Acts xvii. 7. [5] 1 Thess. iv. 11; v. 14; 2 Thess. iii. 6. [6] Jer. xxix. 7; cf. 1 Tim. ii. 2. [7] 1 Pet. i. 11. The word for such a 'settlement of strangers,' _paroecia_, has become, by a suggestive history, our 'parish.' [8] Cf. 2 Thess. ii. 6. 'That which restraineth' the outbreak of lawlessness is (almost certainly) the empire, and 'he that restraineth' (ver. 7) the emperor. [9] Acts v. 29. [10] 1 Pet. ii. 13-17. {127} DIVISION V. § 4. CHAPTER XIII. 8-10. _The summary debt._