The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny Part 3

Now, social despotism or state absolutism is not based on truth or reality. Society has certain rights over individuals, for she is a medium of their communion with G.o.d, or through which they derive life from G.o.d, the primal source of all life; but she is not the only medium of man's life. Man, as was said in the beginning, lives by communion with G.o.d, and he communes with G.o.d in the creative act and the Incarnation, through his kind, and, through nature. This threefold communion gives rise to three inst.i.tutions--religion or the church, society or the state, and property. The life that man derives from G.o.d through religion and property, is not derived from him through society, and consequently so much of his life be holds independently of society; and this const.i.tutes his rights as a man as distinguished from his rights as a citizen. In relation to society, as not held from G.o.d through her, these are termed his natural rights, which, she must hold inviolable, and government protect for every one, whatever his complexion or his social position. These rights--the rights of conscience and the rights of property, with all their necessary implications--are limitations of the rights of society, and the individual has the right to plead them against the state. Society does not confer them, and it cannot take them away, for they are at least as sacred and as fundamental as her own.

But even this limitation of popular sovereignty is not all. The people can be sovereign only in the sense in which they exist and act. The people are not G.o.d, whatever some theorists may pretend--are not independent, self-existent, and self-sufficing. They are as dependent collectively as individually, and therefore can exist and act only as second cause, never as first cause. They can, then, even in the limited sphere of their sovereignty, be sovereign only in a secondary sense, never absolute sovereign in their own independent right. They are sovereign only to the extent to which they impart life to the individual members of society, and only in the sense in which she imparts it, or is its cause. She is not its first cause or creator, and is the medial cause or medium through which they derive it from G.o.d, not its efficient cause or primary source. Society derives her own life from G.o.d, and exists and acts only as dependent on him. Then she is sovereign over individuals only as dependent on G.o.d. Her dominion is then not original and absolute, but secondary and derivative.

This third theory does not err in a.s.suming that the people collectively are more than the people individually, or in denying society to be a mere aggregation of individuals with no life, and no rights but what it derives from them; nor even in a.s.serting that the people in the sense of society are sovereign, but in a.s.serting that they are sovereign in their own native or underived right and might. Society has not in herself the absolute right to govern, because she has not the absolute dominion either of herself or her members. G.o.d gave to man dominion over the irrational creation, for he made irrational creatures for man; but he never gave him either individually or collectively the dominion over the rational creation. The theory that the people are absolutely sovereign in their own independent right and might, as some zealous democrats explain it, a.s.serts the fundamental principle of despotism, and all despotism is false, for it identifies the creature with the Creator. No creature is creator, or has the rights of creator, and consequently no one in his own right is or can be sovereign. This third theory, therefore, is untenable.

IV. A still more recent cla.s.s of philosophers, if philosophers they may be called, reject the origin of government in the people individually or collectively. Satisfied that it has never been inst.i.tuted by a voluntary and deliberate act of the people, and confounding government as a fact with government as authority, maintain that government is a spontaneous development of nature. Nature develops it as the liver secretes bile, as the bee constructs her cell, or the beaver builds his dam. Nature, working by her own laws and inherent energy, develops society, and society develops government. That is all the secret.

Questions as to the origin of government or its rights, beyond the simple positive fact, belong to the theological or metaphysical stage of the development of nature, but are left behind when the race has pa.s.sed beyond that stage, and has reached the epoch of positive science, in which all, except the positive fact, is held to be unreal and non-existent. Government, like every thing else in the universe, is simply a positive development of nature. Science explains the laws and conditions of the development, but disdains to ask for its origin or ground in any order that transcends the changes of the world of s.p.a.ce and time.

These philosophers profess to eschew all theory, and yet they only oppose theory to theory. The a.s.sertion that reality for the human mind is restricted to the positive facts of the sensible order, is purely theoretic, and is any thing but a positive fact. Principles are as really objects of science as facts, and it is only in the light of principles that facts themselves are intelligible. If the human mind had no science of reality that transcends the sensible order, or the positive fact, it could have no science at all. As things exist only in their principles or causes, so can they be known only in their principles and causes; for things can be known only as they are, or as they really exist. The science that pretends to deduce principles from particular facts, or to rise from the fact by way of reasoning to an order that transcends facts, and in which facts have their origin, is undoubtedly chimerical, and as against that the positivists are unquestionably right. But to maintain that man has no intelligence of any thing beyond the fact, no intuition or intellectual apprehension of its principle or cause, is equally chimerical. The human mind cannot have all science, but it has real science as far as it goes, and real science is the knowledge of things as they are, not as they are not.

Sensible facts are not intelligible by themselves, because they do not exist by themselves; and if the human mind could not penetrate beyond the individual fact, beyond the mimetic to the methexic, or transcendental principle, copied or imitated by the individual fact, it could never know the fact itself. The error of modern philosophers, or philosopherlings, is in supposing the principle is deduced or inferred from the fact, and in denying that the human mind has direct and immediate intuition of it.

Something that transcends the sensible order there must be, or there could be no development; and if we had no science of it, we could never a.s.sert that development is development, or scientifically explain the laws and conditions of development. Development is explication, and supposes a germ which precedes it, and is not itself a development; and development, however far it may be carried, can never do more than realize the possibilities of the germ. Development is not creation, and cannot supply its own germ. That at least must be given by the Creator, for from nothing nothing can be developed. If authority has not its germ in nature, it cannot be developed from nature spontaneously or otherwise. All government has a governing will; and without a will that commands, there is no government; and nature has in her spontaneous developments no will, for she has no personality.

Reason itself, as distinguished from will, only presents the end and the means, but does not govern; it prescribes a rule, but cannot ordain a law. An imperative will, the will of a superior who has the right to command what reason dictates or approves, is essential to government; and that will is not developed from nature, because it has no germ in nature. So something above and beyond nature must be a.s.serted, or government itself cannot be a.s.serted, even as a development. Nature is no more self-sufficing than are the people, or than is the individual man.

No doubt there is a natural law, which is law in the proper sense of the word law; but this is a positive law under which nature is placed by a sovereign above herself, and is never to be confounded with those laws of nature so-called, according to which she is productive as second cause, or produces her effects, which are not properly laws at all. Fire burns, water flows, rain falls, birds fly, fishes swim, food nourishes, poisons kill, one substance has a chemical affinity for another, the needle points to the pole, by a natural law, it is said; that is, the effects are produced by an inherent and uniform natural force. Laws in this sense are simply physical forces, and are nature herself. The natural law, in an ethical sense, is not a physical law, is not a natural force, but a law impose by the Creator on all moral creatures, that is, all creatures endowed with reason and free-will, and is called natural because promulgated in natural reason, or the reason common and essential to all moral creatures. This is the moral law. It is what the French call le droit naturell, natural right, and, as the theologians teach us, is the transcript of the eternal law, the eternal will or reason of G.o.d. It is the foundation of all law, and all acts of a state that contravene it are, as St. Augustine maintains, violences rather than laws. The moral law is no development of nature, for it is above nature, and is imposed on nature. The only development there is about it is in our understanding of it.

There is, of course, development in nature, for nature considered as creation has been created in germ, and is completed only in successive developments. Hence the origin of s.p.a.ce and time. There would have been no s.p.a.ce if there had been no external creation, and no time if the creation had been completed externally at once, as it was in relation to the Creator. Ideal s.p.a.ce is simply the ability of G.o.d to externize his creative act, and actual s.p.a.ce is the relation of coexistence in the things created; ideal time is the ability of G.o.d to create existences with the capacity of being completed by successive developments, and actual time is the relation of these in the order of succession, and when the existence is completed or consummated development ceases, and time is no more. In relation to himself the Creator's works are complete from the first, and hence with him there is no time, for there is no succession. But in relation to itself creation is incomplete, and there is room for development, which may be continued till the whole possibility of creation is actualized. Here is the foundation of what is true in the modern doctrine of progress.

Man is progressive, because the possibilities of his nature are successively unfolded and actualized.

Development is a fact, and its laws and conditions may be scientifically ascertained and defined. All generation is development, as is all growth, physical, moral, or intellectual. But everything is developed in its own order, and after its kind. The Darwinian theory of the development of species is not sustained by science. The development starts from the germ, and in the germ is given the law or principle of the development. From the acorn is developed the oak, never the pine or the linden. Every kind generates its kind, never another. But no development is, strictly speaking, spontaneous, or the result alone of the inherent energy or force of the germ developed. There is not only a solidarity of race, but in some sense of all races, or species; all created things are bound to their Creator, and to one another. One and the same law or principle of life pervades all creation, binding the universe together in a unity that copies or imitates the unity of the Creator. No creature is isolated from the rest, or absolutely independent of others. All are parts of one stupendous whole, and each depends on the whole, and the whole on each, and each on each. All creatures are members of one body, and members one of another. The germ of the oak is in the acorn, but the acorn left to itself alone can never grow into the oak, any more than a body at rest can place itself in motion. Lay the acorn away in your closet, where it is absolutely deprived of air, heat, and moisture, and in vain will you watch for its germination. Germinate it cannot without some external influence, or communion, so to speak, with the elements from which it derives its sustenance and support.

There can be no absolutely spontaneous development. All things are doubtless active, for nothing exists except in so far as it is an active force of some sort; but only G.o.d himself alone suffices for his own activity. All created things are dependent, have not their being in themselves, and are real only as they partic.i.p.ate, through the creative act, of the Divine being. The germ can no more be developed than it could exist without G.o.d, and no more develop itself than it could create itself. What is called the law of development is in the germ; but that law or force can operate only in conjunction with another force or other forces. All development, as all growth, is by accretion or a.s.similation. The a.s.similating force is, if you will, in the germ, but the matter a.s.similated comes and must come from abroad.

Every herdsman knows it, and knows that to rear his stock he must supply them with appropriate food; every husbandman knows it, and knows that to raise a crop of corn, he must plant the seed in a soil duly prepared, and which will supply the gases needed for its germination, growth, flowering, boiling, and ripening. In all created things, in all things not complete in themselves, in all save G.o.d, in whom there is no development possible, for He is, as say the schoolmen, most pure act, in whom there is no unactualized possibility, the same law holds good. Development is always the resultant of two factors, the one the thing itself, the other some external force co-operating with it, exciting it, and aiding it to act.

Hence the praemotio physica of the Thomists, and the praevenient and adjuvant grace of the theologians, without which no one can begin the Christian life, and which must needs be supernatural when the end is supernatural. The principle of life in all orders is the same, and human activity no more suffices for itself in one order than in another.

Here is the reason why the savage tribe never rises to a civilized state without communion in some form with a people already civilized, and why there is no moral or intellectual development and progress without education and instruction, consequently without instructors and educators. Hence the value of tradition; and hence, as the first man could not instruct himself, Christian theologians, with a deeper philosophy than is dreamed of by the sciolists of the age, maintain that G.o.d himself was man's first teacher, or that he created Adam a full-grown man, with all his faculties developed, complete, and in full activity. Hence, too, the heathen mythologies, which always contain some elements of truth, however they may distort, mutilate, or travesty them, make the G.o.ds the first teachers of the human race, and ascribe to their instruction even the most simple and ordinary arts of every-day life. The G.o.ds teach men to plough, to plant, to reap, to work in iron, to erect a shelter from the storm, and to build a fire to warm them and to cook their food. The common sense, as well as the common traditions of mankind, refuses to accept the doctrine that men are developed without foreign aid, or progressive without divine a.s.sistance. Nature of herself can no more develop government than it can language. There can be no language without society, and no society without language. There can be no government without society, and no society without government of some sort.

But even if nature could spontaneously develop herself, she could never develop an inst.i.tution that has the right to govern, for she has not herself that right. Nature is not G.o.d, has not created us, therefore has not the right of property in us. She is not and cannot be our sovereign. We belong not to her, nor does she belong to herself, for she is herself creature, and belongs to her Creator. Not being in herself sovereign, she cannot develop the right to govern, nor can she develop government as a fact, to say nothing of its right, for government, whether we speak of it as fact or as authority, is distinct from that which is governed; but natural developments are nature, and indistinguishable from her. The governor and the governed, the restrainer and the restrained, can never as such be identical.

Self-government, taken strictly, is a contradiction in terms. When an individual is said to govern himself, he is never understood to govern himself in the sense in which he is governed. He by his reason and will governs or restrains his appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions. It is man as spirit governing man as flesh, the spiritual mind governing the carnal mind.

Natural developments cannot in all cases be even allowed to take their own course without injury to nature herself. "Follow nature" is an unsafe maxim, if it means, leave nature to develop herself as she will, and follow thy natural inclinations. Nature is good, but inclinations are frequently bad. All our appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions are given us for good, for a purpose useful and necessary to individual and social life, but they become morbid and injurious if indulged without restraint.

Each has its special object, and naturally seeks it exclusively, and thus generates discord and war in the individual, which immediately find expression in society, and also in the state, if the state be a simple natural development. The Christian maxim, Deny thyself, is far better than the Epicurean maxim, Enjoy thyself, for there is no real enjoyment without self-denial. There is deep philosophy in Christian asceticism, as the Positivists themselves are aware, and even insist.

But Christian asceticism aims not to destroy nature, as voluptuaries pretend, but to regulate, direct, and restrain its abnormal developments for its own good. It forces nature in her developments to submit to a law which is not in her, but above her. The Positivists pretend that this asceticism is itself a natural development, but that cannot be a natural development which directs, controls, and restrains natural development.

The Positivists confound nature at one time with the law of nature, and at another the law of nature with nature herself, and take what is called the natural law to be a natural development. Here is their mistake, as it is the mistake of all who accept naturalistic theories.

Society, no doubt, is authorized by the law of nature to inst.i.tute and maintain government. But the law of nature is not a natural development, nor is it in nature, or any part of nature. It is not a natural force which operates in nature, and which is the developing principle of nature. Do they say reason is natural, and the law of nature is only reason? This is not precisely the fact. The natural law is law proper, and is reason only in the sense that reason includes both intellect and will, and n.o.body can pretend that nature in her spontaneous developments acts from intelligence and volition. Reason, as the faculty of knowing, is subjective and natural; but in the sense in which it is coincident with the natural law, it is neither subjective nor natural, but objective and divine, and is G.o.d affirming himself and promulgating his law to his creature, man. It is, at least, an immediate partic.i.p.ation of the divine by which He reveals himself and His will to the human understanding, and is not natural, but supernatural, in the sense that G.o.d himself is supernatural. This is wherefore reason is law, and every man is bound to submit or conform to reason.

That legitimate governments are inst.i.tuted under the natural law is frankly conceded, but this is by no means the concession of government as a natural development. The reason and will of which the natural law is the expression are the reason and will of G.o.d. The natural law is the divine law as much as the revealed law itself, and equally obligatory. It is not a natural force developing itself in nature, like the law of generation, for instance, and therefore proceeding from G.o.d as first cause, but it proceeds from G.o.d as final cause, and is, therefore, theological, and strictly a moral law, founding moral rights and duties. Of course, all morality and all legitimate government rest on this law, or, if you will, originate in it. But not therefore in nature, but in the Author of nature. The authority is not the authority of nature, but of Him who holds nature in the hollow of His hand.

V. In the seventeenth century a cla.s.s of political writers who very well understood that no creature, no man, no number of men, not even, nature herself, can be inherently sovereign, defended the opinion that governments are founded, const.i.tuted, and clothed with their authority by the direct and express appointment of G.o.d himself. They denied that rulers hold their power from the nation; that, however oppressive may be their rule, that they are justiciable by any human tribunal, or that power, except by the direct judgment of G.o.d, is amissible. Their doctrine is known in history as the doctrine of "the divine right of kings, and pa.s.sive obedience." All power, says St. Paul, is from G.o.d, and the powers that be are ordained of G.o.d, and to resist them is to resist the ordination of G.o.d. They must be obeyed for conscience' sake.

It would, perhaps, be rash to say that this doctrine had never been broached before the seventeenth century, but it received in that century, and chiefly in England, its fullest and most systematic developments. It was patronized by the Anglican divines, a.s.serted by James I. of England, and lost the Stuarts the crown of three kingdoms.

It crossed the Channel, into France, where it found a few hesitating and stammering defenders among Catholics, under Louis XIV., but it has never been very generally held, though it has had able and zealous supporters. In England it was opposed by all the Presbyterians, Puritans, Independents, and Republicans, and was forgotten or abandoned by the Anglican divines themselves in the Revolution of 1688, that expelled James II. and crowned William and Mary. It was ably refuted by the Jesuit Suarez in his reply to a Remonstrance for the Divine Right of Kings by the James I.; and a Spanish monk who had a.s.serted it in Madrid, under Philip II., was compelled by the Inquisition to retract it publicly in the place where he had a.s.serted it. All republicans reject it, and the Church has never sanctioned it. The Sovereign Pontiffs have claimed and exercised the right to deprive princes of their princ.i.p.ality, and to absolve their subjects from the oath of fidelity. Whether the Popes rightly claimed and exercised that power is not now the question; but their having claimed and exercised it proves that the Church does not admit the inamissibility of power and pa.s.sive obedience; for the action of the Pope was judicial, not legislative. The Pope has never claimed the right to depose a prince till by his own act he has, under the moral law or the const.i.tution of his state, forfeited his power, nor to absolve subjects from their allegiance till their oath, according to its true intent and meaning, has ceased to bind. If the Church has always a.s.serted with the Apostle there is no power but from G.o.d--non est potestas nisi a Deo--she has always through her doctors maintained that it is a trust to be exercised for the public good, and is forfeited when persistently exercised in a contrary sense. St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Suarez all maintain that unjust laws are violences rather than laws, and do not oblige, except in charity or prudence, and that the republic may change its magistrates, and even its const.i.tution, if it sees proper to do so.

That G.o.d, as universal Creator, is Sovereign Lord and proprietor of all created things or existences, visible or invisible, is certain; for the maker has the absolute right to the thing made; it is his, and he may do with it as he will. As he is sole creator, he alone hath dominion; and as he is absolute creator, he has absolute dominion over all the things which he has made. The guaranty against oppression is his own essential nature, is in the plenitude of his own being, which is the plenitude of wisdom and goodness. He cannot contradict himself, be other than he is, or act otherwise than according to his own essential nature. As he is, in his own eternal and immutable essence, supreme reason and supreme good, his dominion must always in its exercise be supremely good and supremely reasonable, therefore supremely just and equitable. From him certainly is all power; he is unquestionably King of kings, and Lord of lords. By him kings reign and magistrates decree just things. He may, at his will, set up or pull down kings, rear or overwhelm empires, foster the infant colony, and make desolate the populous city. All this is unquestionably true, and a simple dictate of reason common to all men. But in what sense is it true? Is it true in a supernatural sense? Or is it true only in the sense that it is true that by him we breathe, perform any or all of our natural functions, and in him live, and move, and have our being?

Viewed in their first cause, all things are the immediate creation of G.o.d, and are supernatural, and from the point of view of the first cause the Scriptures usually speak, for the great purpose and paramount object of the sacred writers, as of religion itself, is to make prominent the fact that G.o.d is universal creator, and supreme governor, and therefore the first and final cause of all things. But G.o.d creates second causes, or substantial existences, capable themselves of acting and producing effects in a secondary sense, and hence he is said to be causa causarum, cause of causes. What is done by these second causes or creatures is done eminently by him, for they exist only by his creative act, and produce only by virtue of his active presence, or effective concurrence. What he does through them or through their agency is done by him, not immediately, but mediately, and is said to be done naturally, as what he does immediately is said to be done supernaturally. Natural is what G.o.d does through second causes, which he creates; supernatural is that which he does by himself alone, without their intervention or agency. Sovereignty, or the right to govern, is in him, and he may at his will delegate it to men either mediately or immediately, by a direct and express appointment, or mediately through nature. In the absence of all facts proving its delegation direct and express, it must be a.s.sumed to be mediate, through second causes. The natural is always to be presumed, and the supernatural is to be admitted only on conclusive proof.

The people of Israel had a supernatural vocation, and they received their law, embracing their religious and civil const.i.tution and their ritual directly from G.o.d at the hand of Moses, and various individuals from time to time appear to have been specially called to be their judges, rulers, or kings. Saul was so called, and so was David. David and his line appear, also, to have been called not only to supplant Saul and his line, but to have been supernaturally invested with the kingdom forever; but it does not appear that the royal power with which David and his line were invested was inamissible. They lost it in the Babylonish captivity, and never afterwards recovered it. The Asmonean princes were of another line, and when our Lord came the sceptre was in the hands of Herod, an Idumean Or Edomite. The promise made, to David and his house is generally held by Christian commentators to have received its fulfilment in the everlasting spiritual royalty of the Messiah, sprung through Mary from David's line.

The Christian Church is supernaturally const.i.tuted and supernaturally governed, but the persons selected to exercise powers supernaturally defined, from the Sovereign Pontiff down to the humblest parish priest are selected and inducted into office through human agency. The Gentiles very generally claimed to have received their laws from the G.o.ds, but it does not appear, save in exceptional cases, that they claimed that their princes were designated and held their powers by the direct and express appointment of the G.o.d. Save in the case of the Jews, and that of the Church, there is no evidence that any particular government exists or ever has existed by direct or express appointment, or otherwise than by the action of the Creator through second causes, or what is called his ordinary providence. Except David and his line, there is no evidence of the express grant by the Divine Sovereign to any individual or family, cla.s.s or caste of the government of any nation or country. Even those Christian princes who professed to reign "by the grace of G.o.d," never claimed that they received their princ.i.p.alities from G.o.d otherwise than through his ordinary providence, and meant by it little more than an acknowledgment of their dependence on him, their obligation to use their power according to his law and their accountability to him for the use they make of it.

The doctrine is not favorable to human liberty, for it recognizes no rights of man in face of civil society. It consecrates tyranny, and makes G.o.d the accomplice of the tyrant, if we suppose all governments have actually existed by his express appointment. It puts the king in the place of G.o.d, and requires us to worship in him the immediate representative of the Divine Being. Power is irresponsible and inamissible, and however it may be abused, or however corrupt and oppressive may be its exercise, there is no human redress. Resistance to power is resistance to G.o.d. There is nothing for the people but pa.s.sive obedience and unreserved submission. The doctrine, in fact, denies all human government, and allows the people no voice in the management of their own affairs, and gives no place for human activity.

It stands opposed to all republicanism, and makes power an hereditary and indefeasible right, not a trust which he who holds it may forfeit, and of which he may be deprived if he abuses it.

CHAPTER VI.

ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT--CONCLUDED.

VI. The theory which derives the right of government from the direct and express appointment of G.o.d is sometimes modified so as to mean that civil authority is derived from G.o.d through the spiritual authority.

The patriarch combined in his person both authorities, and was in his own household both priest and king, and so originally was in his own tribe the chief, and in his kingdom the king. When the two offices became separated is not known. In the time of Abraham they were still united. Melchisedech, king of Salem, was both priest and king, and the earliest historical records of kings present them as offering sacrifices. Even the Roman emperor was Pontifex Maximus as well as Imperator, but that was so not because the two offices were held to be inseparable, but because they were both conferred on the same person by the republic. In Egypt, in the time of Moses, the royal authority and the priestly were separated and held by different persons. Moses, in his legislation for his nation, separated them, and inst.i.tuted a sacerdotal order or caste. The heads of tribes and the heads of families are, under his law, princes, but not priests, and the priesthood is conferred on and restricted to his own tribe of Levi, and more especially the family of his own brother Aaron.

The priestly office by its own nature is superior to the kingly, and in all primitive nations with a separate, organized priesthood, whether a true priesthood or a corrupt, the priest is held to be above the king, elects or establishes the law by which is selected the temporal chief, and inducts him into his office, as if he received his authority from G.o.d through the priesthood. The Christian priesthood is not a caste, and is transmitted by the election of grace, not as with the Israelites and all sacerdotal nations, by natural Generation. Like Him whose priests they are, Christian priests are priests after the order of Melchisedech, who was without priestly descent, without father or mother of the priestly line. But in being priests after the order of Melchisedech, they are both priests and kings, as Melchisedech was, and as was our Lord himself, to whom was given by his Father all power in heaven and in earth. The Pope, or Supreme Pontiff, is the vicar of our Lord on earth, his representative--the representative not only of him who is our invisible High-Priest, but of him who is King of kings and Lord of lords, therefore of both the priestly and the kingly power.

Consequently, no one can have any mission to govern in the state any more than in the church, unless derived from G.o.d directly or indirectly through the Pope or Supreme Pontiff. Many theologians and canonists in the Middle Ages so held, and a few perhaps hold so still. The bulls and briefs of several Popes, as Gregory VII., Innocent Ill., Gregory IX., Innocent IV., and Boniface VIII., have the appearance of favoring it.

At one period the greater part of the medieval kingdoms and princ.i.p.alities were fiefs of the Holy See, and recognized the Holy Father as their suzerain. The Pope revived the imperial dignity in the person of Charlemagne, and none could claim that dignity in the Western world unless elected and crowned by him, that is, unless elected directly by the Pope or by electors designated by him, and acting under his authority. There can be no question that the spiritual is superior to the temporal, and that the temporal is bound in the very nature of things to conform to the spiritual, and any law enacted by the civil power in contravention of the law of G.o.d is null and void from the beginning. This is what Mr. Seward meant by the higher law, a law higher even than the Const.i.tution of the United States. Supposing this higher law, and supposing that kings and princes hold from G.o.d through the spiritual society, it is very evident that the chief of that society would have the right to deprive them, and to absolve their subjects, as on several occasions he actually has done.

But this theory has never been a dogma of the Church, nor, to any great extent, except for a brief period, maintained by theologians or canonists. The Pope conferred the imperial dignity on Charlemagne and his successors, but not the civil power, at least out of the Pope's own temporal dominions. The emperor of Germany was at first elected by the Pope, and afterwards by hereditary electors designated or accepted by him, but the king of the Germans with the full royal authority could be elected and enthroned without the papal intervention or permission.

The suzerainty of the Holy See over Italy, Naples, Aragon, Muscovy, England, and other European states, was by virtue of feudal relations, not by virtue of the spiritual authority of the Holy See or the vicarship of the Holy Father. The right to govern under feudalism was simply an estate, or property; and as the church could acquire and hold property, nothing prevented her holding fiefs, or her chief from being suzerain. The expressions in the papal briefs and bulls, taken in connection with the special relations existing between the Pope and emperor in the Middle Ages, and his relations with other states as their feudal sovereign, explained by the controversies concerning rights growing out of these relations, will be found to give no countenance to the theory in question.

These relations really existed, and they gave the Pope certain temporal rights in certain states, even the temporal supremacy, as he has still in what is left him of the States of the Church; but they were exceptional or accidental relations, not the universal and essential relations between the church and the state. The rights that grew out of these relations were real rights, sacred and inviolable, but only where and while the relations subsisted. They, for the most part, grew out of the feudal system introduced into the Roman empire by its barbarian conquerors, and necessarily ceased with the political order in which they originated. Undoubtedly the church consecrated civil rulers, but this did not imply that they received their power or right to govern from G.o.d through her; but implied that their persons were sacred, and that violence to them would be sacrilege; that they held the Christian faith, and acknowledged themselves bound to protect it, and to govern their subjects justly, according to the law of G.o.d.

The church, moreover, has always recognized the distinction of the two powers, and although the Pope owes to the fact that he is chief of the spiritual society, his temporal princ.i.p.ality, no theologian or canonist of the slightest respectability would argue that he derives his rights as temporal sovereign from his rights as pontiff. His rights as pontiff depend on the express appointment of G.o.d; his rights as temporal prince are derived from the same source from which other princes derive their rights, and are held by the same tenure. Hence canonists have maintained that the subjects of other states may even engage in war with the Pope as prince, without breach of their fidelity to him as pontiff or supreme visible head of the church.

The church not only distinguishes between the two powers, but recognizes as legitimate, governments that manifestly do not derive from G.o.d through her. St. Paul enjoins obedience to the Roman emperors for conscience' sake, and the church teaches that infidels and heretics may have legitimate government; and if she has ever denied the right of any infidel or heretical prince, it has been on the ground that the const.i.tution and laws of his princ.i.p.ality require him to profess and protect the Catholic faith. She tolerates resistance in a non-Catholic state no more than in a Catholic state to the prince; and if she has not condemned and cut off from her communion the Catholics who in our struggle have joined the Secessionists and fought in their ranks against the United States, it is because the prevalence of the doctrine of State sovereignty has seemed to leave a reasonable doubt whether they were really rebels fighting against their legitimate sovereign or not.

No doubt, as the authority of the church is derived immediately from G.o.d in a supernatural manner, and as she holds that the state derives its authority only mediately from him, in a natural mode, she a.s.serts the superiority of her authority, and that, in case of conflict between the two powers, the civil must yield. But this is only saying that supernatural is above natural. But--and this is the important point--she does not teach, nor permit the faithful to hold, that the supernatural abrogates the natural, or in any way supersedes it.

Grace, say the theologians, supposes nature, gratia supponit naturam.

The church in the matter of government accepts the natural, aids it, elevates it, and is its firmest support.

VII. St. Augustine, St. Gregory Magnus, St. Thomas, Bellarmin, Suarez, and the theologians generally, hold that princes derive their power from G.o.d through the people, or that the people, though not the source, are the medium of all political authority, and therefore rulers are accountable for the use they make of their power to both G.o.d and the people.

This doctrine agrees with the democratic theory in vesting sovereignty in the people, instead of the king or the n.o.bility, a particular individual, family, cla.s.s, or caste; and differs from it, as democracy is commonly explained, in understanding by the people, the people collectively, not individually--the organic people, or people fixed to a given territory, not the people as a mere population--the people in the republican sense of the word nation, not in the barbaric or despotic sense; and in deriving the sovereignty from G.o.d, from whom is all power, and except from whom there is and can be no power, instead of a.s.serting it as the underived and indefeasible right of the people in their "own native right and might." The people not being G.o.d, and being only what philosophers call a second cause, they are and can be sovereign only in a secondary and relative sense. It a.s.serts the divine origin of power, while democracy a.s.serts its human origin. But as, under the law of nature, all men are equal, or have equal rights as men, one man has and can have in himself no right to govern another; and as man is never absolutely his own, but always and everywhere belongs to his Creator, it is clear that no government originating in humanity alone can be a legitimate government. Every such government is founded on the a.s.sumption that man is G.o.d, which is a great mistake--is, in fact, the fundamental sophism which underlies every error and every sin.

The divine origin of government, in the sense a.s.serted by Christian theologians, is never found distinctly set forth in the political writings of the ancient Greek and Roman writers. Gentile philosophy had lost the tradition of creation, as some modern philosophers, in so-called Christian nations, are fast losing it, and were as unable to explain the origin of government as they were the origin of man himself.

Even Plato, the profoundest of all ancient philosophers, and the most faithful to the traditionary wisdom of the race, lacks the conception of creation, and never gets above that of generation and formation.

Things are produced by the Divine Being impressing his own ideas, eternal in his own mind, on a pre-existing matter, as a seal on wax.

Aristotle teaches substantially the same doctrine. Things eternally exist as matter and form, and all the Divine Intelligence does, is to unite the form to the matter, and change it, as the schoolmen say, from materia informis to materia formata. Even the Christian Platonists and Peripatetics never as philosophers a.s.sert creation; they a.s.sert it, indeed, but as theologians, as a fact of revelation, not as a fact of science; and hence it is that their theology and their philosophy never thoroughly harmonize, or at least are not shown to harmonize throughout.

Speaking generally, the ancient Gentile philosophers were pantheists, and represented the universe either as G.o.d or as an emanation from G.o.d.

They had no proper conception of Providence, or the action of G.o.d in nature through natural agencies, or as modern physicists say, natural laws. If they recognized the action of divinity at all, it was a supernatural or miraculous intervention of some G.o.d. They saw no divine intervention in any thing naturally explicable, or explicable by natural laws. Having no conception of the creative act, they could have none of its immanence, or the active and efficacious presence of the Creator in all his works, even in the action of second causes themselves. Hence they could not a.s.sert the divine origin of government, or civil authority, without supposing it supernaturally founded, and excluding all human and natural agencies from its inst.i.tution. Their writings may be studied with advantage on the const.i.tution of the state, on the practical workings of different forms of government, as well as on the practical administration of affairs, but never on the origin of the state, and the real ground of its authority.

The doctrine is derived from Christian theology, which teaches that there is no power except from G.o.d, and enjoins civil obedience as a religious duty. Conscience is accountable to G.o.d alone, and civil government, if it had only a natural or human origin, could not bind it. Yet Christianity makes the civil law, within its legitimate sphere, as obligatory on conscience as the divine law itself, and no man is blameless before G.o.d who is not blameless before the state. No man performs faithfully his religious duties who neglects his civil duties, and hence, the law of the church allows no one to retire from the world and enter a religious order, who has duties that bind him or her to the family or the state; though it is possible that the law is not always strictly observed, and that individuals sometimes enter a convent for the sake of getting rid of those duties, or the equally important duty of taking care of themselves. But by a.s.serting the divine origin of government, Christianity consecrates civil authority, clothes it with a religious character, and makes civil disobedience, sedition, insurrection, rebellion, revolution, civil turbulence of any sort or degree, sins against G.o.d as well as crimes against the state.