the supreme authority in the person of a prince, from whom our liberties are in no imaginable danger, whatever they may be from ourselves; and whose mild, and strictly legal government, could not but make any virtuous people happy.
A free government, which the good providence of God has preserved to us through innumerable dangers, is an invaluable blessing. And our ingratitude to him in abusing of it, must be great in proportion to the greatness of the blessing, and the providential deliverances by which it has been preserved to us. Yet the crime of abusing this blessing receives further aggravation from hence, that such abuse always is to the reproach, and tends to the ruin of it. The abuse of liberty has directly overturned many free governments, as well as our own, on the popular side; and has, in various ways, contributed to the ruin of many which have been overturned on the side of authority. Heavy, therefore, must be their guilt, who shall be found to have given such advantages against it, as well as theirs who have taken them.
Lastly, The consideration that we are the servants of God, reminds us that we are accountable to him for our behaviour in those respects, in which it is out of the reach of all human authority, and is the strongest enforcement of sincerity; as "all things are naked, and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do," Heb. iv. 13. Artificial behaviour might perhaps avail much towards quieting our consciences, and making our part good in the short competitions of this world; but what will it avail ua considered as under the government of God? Under his government " there is no darkness nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves," Job xxxiv. 22. He has indeed instituted civil government over the face of the earth, "for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise,"—the apostle does not say the rewarding, but—"for the praise of them that do well," 1 Pet. ii. 1 4. Yet as the worst answer these ends in some measure, the best
