break forth, unless prevented, to the disturbance of the peace and quiet thereof:  Be it therefore enacted, &c.  Here your Lordships may see the reason that inclined those legislators to express themselves in such a manner against resistance. They had seen the regal rights swallowed up under the pretence of popular ones:  and it is no imputation on them, that they did not then foresee a quite different case, as was that of the Revolution, where, under the pretence of regal authority, a total subversion of the rights of the subject was advanced, and in a manner effected.  And this may serve to show that it was not the design of those legislators to condemn resistance, in a case of absolute necessity, for preserving the Constitution, when they were guarding against principles which had so lately destroyed it.”

[Sidenote:  Non-resistance oath not repealed because (with the restriction of necessity) it was false, but to prevent false interpretations.]

“As to the truth of the doctrine in this declaration which was repealed, I’ll admit it to be as true as the Doctor’s counsel assert it,—­that is, with an exception of cases of necessity:  and it was not repealed because it was false, understanding it with that restriction; but it was repealed because it might be interpreted in an unconfined sense, and exclusive of that restriction, and, being so understood, would reflect on the justice of the Revolution:  and this the legislature had at heart, and were very jealous of, and by this repeal of that declaration gave a Parliamentary or legislative admonition against asserting this doctrine of non-resistance in an unlimited sense.”

[Sidenote:  General doctrine of non-resistance godly and wholesome; not bound to state explicitly the exceptions.]

“Though the general doctrine of non-resistance, the doctrine of the Church of England, as stated in her Homilies, or elsewhere delivered, by which the general duty of subjects to the higher powers is taught, be owned to be, as unquestionably it is, a godly and wholesome doctrine,—­though this general doctrine has been constantly inculcated by the reverend fathers of the Church, dead and living, and preached by them as a preservative against the Popish doctrine of deposing princes, and as the ordinary rule of obedience,—­and though the same doctrine has been preached, maintained, and avowed by our most orthodox and able divines from the time of the Reformation,—­and how innocent a man soever Dr. Sacheverell had been, if, with an honest and well-meant zeal, he had preached the same doctrine in the same general terms in which he found it delivered by the Apostles of Christ, as taught by the Homilies and the reverend fathers of our Church, and, in imitation of those great examples, had only pressed the general duty of obedience, and the illegality of resistance, without taking notice of any exception,” &c.