* * * * *

Sir Joseph Jekyl.

[Sidenote:  Commons do not state the limits of submission.]

[Sidenote:  To secure the laws, the only aim of the Revolution.]

“In clearing up and vindicating the justice of the Revolution, which was the second thing proposed, it is far from the intent of the Commons to state the limits and bounds of the subject’s submission to the sovereign.  That which the law hath been wisely silent in, the Commons desire to be silent in too; nor will they put any case of a justifiable resistance, but that of the Revolution only:  and they persuade themselves that the doing right to that resistance will be so far from promoting popular license or confusion, that it will have a contrary effect, and be a means of settling men’s minds in the love of and veneration for the laws; to rescue and secure which was the ONLY aim and intention of those concerned in that resistance.”

* * * * *

Dr. Sacheverell’s counsel defended him on this principle, namely,—­that, whilst he enforced from the pulpit the general doctrine of non-resistance, he was not obliged to take notice of the theoretic limits which ought to modify that doctrine.  Sir Joseph Jekyl, in his reply, whilst he controverts its application to the Doctor’s defence, fully admits and even enforces the principle itself, and supports the Revolution of 1688, as he and all the managers had done before, exactly upon the same grounds on which Mr. Burke has built, in his Reflections on the French Revolution.

* * * * *

Sir Joseph Jekyl.

[Sidenote:  Blamable to state the bounds of non-resistance.]

[Sidenote:  Resistance lawful only in case of extreme and obvious necessity.]

“If the Doctor had pretended to have stated the particular bounds and limits of non-resistance, and told the people in what cases they might or might not resist, he would have been much to blame; nor was one word said in the articles, or by the managers, as if that was expected from him; but, on the contrary, we have insisted that in NO case can resistance be lawful, but in case of EXTREME NECESSITY, and where the Constitution can’t otherwise be preserved; and such necessity ought to be plain and obvious to the sense and judgment of the whole nation:  and this was the case at the Revolution.”

* * * * *

The counsel for Doctor Sacheverell, in defending their client, were driven in reality to abandon the fundamental principles of his doctrine, and to confess that an exception to the general doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance did exist in the case of the Revolution.  This the managers for the Commons considered as having gained their cause, as their having obtained the whole of what they contended for.  They congratulated themselves and the nation on a civil victory as glorious and as honorable as any that had obtained in arms during that reign of triumphs.