6. Luke xxiii. 34.
POLITICAL WRITINGS 309 hatred: for He said, Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do.^ If the Lord of heaven and earth, through Whom all things were created, served the unworthy, asked mercy for His furious persecutors, and, as it were, shewed Himself as their Physician at His Advent: (for physicians also, better both in art and health, serve the sick: how much more ought not a man to disdain, with his whole mind, and his whole good will, with his whole love to serve even a bad master! Behold, a better serveth an inferior, but for a season. Understand what I have said of the master and slave, to be true also of powers and kings, of all the exalted stations of this worid. For sometimes they are good powers, and fear God; sometimes they fear not God. Julian was an infidel Emperor, an apostate, a wicked man, an idolater; Christian soldiers served an infidel Emperor; when they came to the cause of Christ, they acknowledged Him only Who was in heaven. If he called upon them at any time to worship idols, to offer incense; they preferred God to him: but whenever he commanded them to deploy into line, to march against this or that nation, they at once obeyed. They distinguished their everlasting from ieir temporal master; and yet they were, for the sake of their everlasting Master, submissive to their temporal master.
But will it be thus always, that the ungodly have power over the righteous? It will not be so. See what this Psalm saith: For God will not leave the rod of the ungodly upon the lot of the righteous. The rod of the ungodly is felt for a season upon the lot of the righteous; but it is not left there, it will not be there for ever. A time will
6. Luke xxiii. 34.