51�Թ�

Bonaparte gave his followers important positions, reminded soldiers of their oath of "passive obedience" and crushed parliamentarian revolts and rural insurrections.

In preaching passive obedience to the monarch, Sacheverell was in essence preaching against the principle that the monarch is not above the law.

It taught a doctrine of passive obedience, which its disciples nobly observed in the worst periods of persecution.

The ancient civilisations, and especially that of Rome, had been by no means deficient in those habits; but it was in the midst of the dissolution of an old society, and of the ascendancy of barbarians, who exaggerated to the highest degree their personal independence, that the Church proposed to the reverence of mankind a life of passive obedience as the highest ideal of virtue.

In this respect there is an analogy between the monastic and the military spirit, both of which promote and glorify passive obedience, and therefore prepare the minds of men for despotic rule; but, on the whole, the monastic spirit is probably more hostile to freedom than the military spirit, for the obedience of the monk is based upon humility, while the obedience of the soldier coexists with pride.