 In the seventeenth century most Protestants and some Catholics inferred from these texts that subjects always have a religious duty to obey their rulers, reconciling this with the text “We ought to obey God, rather than men”  (Acts 5:29)  by means of a doctrine of “passive  obedience”.[5]  Some of the Fathers and the Carolingian writers held a similar position, but most scholastic authors, under the influence of ideas drawn partly from Aristotle and partly from the law texts, held that under some circumstances disobedience and rebellion may be justified.