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in licr formularies, but it would be difficult to derive any such injunction from Christianity. "We are told that St. Paul said, Wives, obey your husbandsbut he also said, Slaves, obey your masters. It was not St. PauPs business, nor was it consistent with his object, the propa­gation of Christianity, to incite any one to rebel­lion against existing laws. The apostles accep­tance of all social institutions as he found them, is no more to be construed as a disapproval of attempts to improve them at the proper time, than his declaration, The powers that be are ordained of God, gives his sanction to mili­tary despotism, and to that alone, as the Christian form of political government, or com­mands passive obedience to it. To pretend that Christianity was intended to stereotype existing forms of government and society, and protect them against change, is to reduce it to the level of Island sm or of Brahminism. It is precisely because Christianity has not done this, that it has been the religion of the progressive portion of mankind, and Islamism, Brahminism, &c., have been those of the stationary portions; or rather (for there is no such thing as a really stationary society) of the declining portions. There have been abundance of people, in all ages of Christianity, who tried to make it something of the same kind; to convert us into a sort of Christian