in general, denotes something that suffers the action of another, called an agent or active power.

In grammar, the verb or word that expresses this passion is termed a passive verb: which, in the learned languages, has a peculiar termination; as amor, doceor, &c., in Latin; that is an r added to the actives, amo, doceo: and, in the Greek, the inflection is made by changing ω into ος; as τυράννου τυράννου, &c. But in the modern languages, the passive inflection is performed by means of auxiliary verbs, joined to the participle of the past tense; as, "I am praised," in Latin laudor, and in Greek εὐαγγελιζομαι; or, "I am loved," in Latin amor, and in Greek φιλέσθαι. Thus it appears that the auxiliary verb am, serves to form the passives of English verbs: and the same holds of the French; as, Je suis loué, "I am praised;" j'ai été loué, "I have been praised," &c. See GRAMMAR.

PASSIVE Title, in Scots Law. See LAW, Part III. No clxxx. 30.

PASSIVE Obedience, a political doctrine which has been much misrepresented, and is, of course, very obnoxious to the friends of freedom. Some nonjurors, in the end of the last and in the beginning of the passing century, imagining that monarchy is the only lawful form of government, and that hereditary monarchy is the only lawful species of that government, have coupled with passive obedience the ridiculous notion of a divine, hereditary, indefeasible right of certain families to govern with despotic sway all other families of the same nation. The absurdity of this notion needs not to be dwelt upon; but it may not be improper, to observe, that it has nothing to do with passive obedience.

As taught by the ablest reasoners, who think that they are supported by the holy scripture, passive obedience is as much a duty under republican as under monarchical governments; and it means no more, but that private individuals are bound by the most solemn moral ties not to resist the supreme power wheresoever placed in any nation. The supreme power can only be the legislature; and no man or body of men, who have not the power of enacting and abrogating laws can, on this principle, claim passive obedience from any subject. Whether the principle be well or ill founded, the absurdity which commonly attaches to the phrase passive obedience, originates from the mistaken loyalty of the adherents of the house of Stuart, who to aggravate the illegality of the revolution, were wont to represent James II. as supreme over both houses of parliament, and of course over all law. That such reveries were foolish, we need no farther evidence than the statute-book, which shows, that in the office of legislation, the king, lords, and commons, are co-ordinate; and that when any one of these powers shall take upon itself to counteract the other two, the duty of passive obedience will oblige the subject to support the legislature. That resistance to the legislature, if lawful on any occasion, can be so only to oppose the most violent tyranny, has been shown by Mr Hume with great cogency of argument, and is indeed a proposition self-evident. That it can never be lawful on any occasion, Bishop Berkeley endeavoured to prove by a chain of reasoning which it would be difficult to break. We enter not into the controversy, but refer our readers to Hume's Essays and Berkeley's Passive Obedience and Nonresistance, or, as it was intitled by a late editor, The Measure of Submission to Civil Government. We shall only observe, that there is a great difference between Passive and passive obedience; and that many who consider themselves as bound on no account whatever to resist the supreme power, would yet suffer death rather than do an immoral action in obedience to any law of earthly origin.

Passive Prayer, among the mystic divines, is a total suspension or ligature of the intellectual faculties; in virtue whereof, the soul remains of itself, and as to its own power, impotent with regard to the producing of any effects. The passive state, according to Fenelon, is only passive in the same sense as contemplation is, i.e., it does not exclude peaceable, disinterested acts, but only unquiet ones, or such as tend to our own interest. In the passive state, the soul has not properly any activity, and sensation, of its own: it is a mere infinite flexibility of the soul, to which the feeblest impulse of grace gives motion.