In truth the doctrine of passive obedience, as taught at Oxford in the reign of Charles the Second, can be deduced from the Bible only by a mode of interpretation which would irresistibly lead us to the conclusions of Barclay and Penn.
It was not merely by arguments drawn from the letter of Scripture that the Anglican theologians had, during the years which immediately followed the Restoration, laboured to prove their favourite tenet.

They had attempted to show that, even if revelation had been silent, reason would have taught wise men the folly and wickedness of all resistance to established government.

It was universally admitted that such resistance was, except in extreme cases, unjustifiable.

And who would undertake to draw the line between extreme cases and ordinary cases?
Was there any government in the world under which there were not to be found some discontented and factious men who would say, and perhaps think, that their grievances constituted an extreme case?
If, indeed, it were possible to lay down a clear and accurate rule which might forbid men to rebel against Trajan, and yet leave them at liberty to rebel against Caligula, such a rule might be highly beneficial.

But no such rule had even been, or ever would be, framed.