"Day and night," such were the words which the great Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, addressed to the representative of Valerian and Gallienus,--"day and night do we Christians pray to the one true God for the safety of our Emperors." Yet those Emperors had a few months before pulled down their predecessor Aemilianus, who had pulled down his predecessor Gallus, who had climbed to power on the ruins of the house of his predecessor Decius, who had slain his predecessor Philip, who had slain his predecessor Gordian.

Was it possible to believe that a saint, who had, in the short space of thirteen or fourteen years, borne true allegiance to this series of rebels and regicides, would have made a schism in the Christian body rather than acknowledge King William and Queen Mary?
A hundred times those Anglican divines who had taken the oaths challenged their more scrupulous brethren to cite a single instance in which the primitive Church had refused obedience to a successful usurper; and a hundred times the challenge was evaded.

The nonjurors had little to say on this head, except that precedents were of no force when opposed to principles, a proposition which came with but a bad grace from a school which had always professed an almost superstitious reverence for the authority of the Fathers, [457] To precedents drawn from later and more corrupt times little respect was due.

But, even in the history of later and more corrupt times, the nonjurors could not easily find any precedent that would serve their purpose.

In our own country many Kings, who had not the hereditary right, had filled the throne but it had never been thought inconsistent with the duty of a Christian to be a true liegeman to such Kings.