[[7]] 1 Pet. i. 11. The word for such a 'settlement of strangers,' paroecia, has become, by a suggestive history, our 'parish.'
[[8]] Cf. 2 Thess. ii. 6. 'That which restraineth' the outbreak of lawlessness is (almost certainly) the empire, and 'he that restraineth' (ver. 7) the emperor.
[[9]] Acts v. 29.
[[10]] 1 Pet. ii. 13-17.
DIVISION V. § 4. CHAPTER XIII. 8-10.
The summary debt.
Christians are willingly to pay tribute and tax as a debt, a thing due in God's sight to His ministers. But this obligation is a specimen of innumerable obligations which we owe to our 'neighbours'—debts only limited by human need. And the Christian is to take a wide view of his obligations, and to let there be no legitimate claim upon him unfulfilled, no debt unpaid, except the one which a man ought always to be paying and still to be owing, for it is infinite—the debt of love. Here, in loving each other man with the same real regard to his personal interests as we devote to our own, is the satisfaction of the moral law. All the particular 'commandments'—those of the Second Table, and any other there may be—are comprehended in this one. For love can do no harm to any other, and can therefore break no commandment.