But those new laws would never stand. They made them,
but they would not obey them when they were made, and they could not
make others obey them; because they had no real reverence for law,
and did not believe that law came from God, or that His Spirit would
give them understanding to make good laws. They talked loud about
the power and rights of the people, and that whatever the people
willed was right: but they said nothing about the power and rights
of the Lord God; they forgot that it is only what God has willed from
everlasting that is right; and so they made laws in the strength of
their own hearts, according to what was right in the sight of their
own eyes, to please themselves. How could they respect the laws,
when the laws were only copies of their own selfish fancies? So,
because they made them to please themselves, they soon broke them to
please themselves. And so came more lawlessness and riot, and
confusion worse confounded, till, of course, the strongest, and
cunningest, and most shameless got the upper hand; and they were
plunged, poor creatures! into the same pit of misery out of which
they had been trying to deliver themselves in their own strength, for
a sign and an example that the Lord is King, and not man at all, and
that the fear of the Lord is the only beginning of wisdom.
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