Rulers greatly miscalculate when they reckon as obedience the apparent submission which without hypocrisy is given to their laws, by those who deny their power to legislate to be of Divine authority. That quiescence possesses neither of the features which together constitute an act an offering of genuine obedience. It proceeds neither from wrath, that is, from the fear of their wrath, nor from a conscientious sense of obligation to obey them. To do what unqualified rulers command, is one thing; to do that from a regard to their pretended authority may be another. The sentiment is wrong, that a thing may be done for wrath, which cannot be done for conscience' sake. The acts done under incompetent rulers, by those who disapprove of their claims, come from neither. Their observance of good laws administered by such rulers, is not maintained either from a dread of the power of those to inflict a penalty, or from an approving regard of their claims to authority, but proceeds from the fear of the wrath of God, and from conscience of duty to Him. Wicked commands cannot be obeyed at all. An act performed for wrath, is not lawfully done if not done for conscience' sake also; and no service that men do under an unlawful government should proceed from either of these, in reference to those in power. Such rulers act as if the doing of what they require were obedience to them; but, when their demands are lawful in themselves, the performance of them should neither be made nor received as obedience to them, but rendered as service to God: when they are unlawful, they should be wholly disregarded.
The doctrine is evil, that so long as _any_ law exists, it ought to be obeyed. If a law be good, what it requires ought certainly to be done. But though rulers demand obedience to every existing law, whether it be good or bad, yet when they give effect to those that are bad, they are chargeable with crime, and the people who yield are culpable. It is true, that bad laws should be changed: but most erroneous, that till they be regularly removed they should be obeyed. "It is criminal voluntarily to support, _for a single hour_, laws which are immoral, unscriptural, and anti-christian; and an oath promising such support cannot but be sinful. It is a grievous error to maintain, that it is a duty to obey and support any law, however wicked, so long as it remains in the statute-book. There is a law above all the laws of men, the authority of which remains for ever unchangeable; and when any _human laws_ are in opposition to the _divine_, it is our duty to obey God rather than man. Laws framed by men in opposition to the will of God, ought to receive no countenance or support, in any form whatever, from the followers of the Lamb."[279] There is the same reason for discontinuing to obey a bad law as there is for annulling it and substituting for it a better. Difficulties that might arise in consequence of a people refusing to obey an evil law before its abolition, afford no reason why it should be observed till removed in what is termed a constitutional way, but are chargeable on those who made it and gave it scope.