But among all the reproaches which the Whigs have flung upon their adversaries, there is none hath done them more service than that of _passive obedience_, as they represent it, with the consequences of non-resistance, arbitrary power, indefeasible right, tyranny, popery, and what not? There is no accusation which has passed with more plausibility than this, nor any that is supported with less justice. In order therefore to undeceive those who have been misled by false representations, I thought it would be no improper undertaking to set this matter in a fair light, which I think has not yet been done. A Whig asks whether you hold passive obedience? you affirm it: he then immediately cries out, "You are a Jacobite, a friend of France and the Pretender;" because he makes you answerable for the definition he has formed of that term, however different it be from what you understand. I will therefore give two descriptions of passive obedience; the first as it is falsely charged by the Whigs; the other as it is really professed by the Tories, at least by nineteen in twenty of all I ever conversed with. Passive Obedience as charged by the Whigs. _The doctrine of passive obedience is to believe that a king, even in a limited monarchy, holding his power only from God, is only answerable to Him. That such a king is above all law, that the cruellest tyrant must be submitted to in all things; and if his commands be ever so unlawful, you must neither fly nor resist, nor use any other weapons than prayers and tears. Though he should force your wife or daughter, murder your children before your face, or cut off five hundred heads in a morning for his diversion, you are still to wish him a long prosperous reign, and to be patient under all his cruelties, with the same resignation as under a plague or a famine; because to resist him would be to resist God in the person of His vicegerent. If a king of England should go through the streets of London, in order to murder every man he met, passive obedience commands them to submit. All laws made to limit him signify nothing, though passed by his own consent, if he thinks fit to break them. God will indeed call him to a severe account, but the whole people, united to a man, cannot presume to hold his hands, or offer him the least active disobedience. The people were certainly created for him, and not he for the people. His next heir, though worse than what I have described, though a fool or a madman, has a divine undefeasible right to succeed him, which no law can disannul; nay though he should kill his father upon the throne, he is immediately king to all intents and purposes, the possession of the crown wiping off all stains. But whosoever sits on the throne without this title, though never so peaceably, and by consent of former kings and parliaments, is an usurper, while there is any where in the world another person who hath a nearer hereditary right, and the