Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE RELATIONS OF THE SPIRITUAL AND CIVIL POWERS. We will now go on to my second proposition, that the relations of the Catholic Church to the Civil Powers have been fixed immutably from the beginning, because they arise out of the Divine constitution of the Church and out of the Civil Society of the natural order. I. Inasmuch as the natural and civil society existed before the foundation of the Christian Church, we will begin with it; and here my concessions; or rather my assertions, will, I hope, satisfy all but Csesarists. 1. The civil society of men has God for its Founder. It was created potentially in the creation of man; and from him has been unfolded into actual existence. The human family contains the first principles and laws Of authority, obedience, and order. These three conditions of society are of Divine origin; and they are the constructive laws of all civil or political society. 2. To the Civil Society of mankind supreme authority is given immediately by God; for a society does not signify mere number, but number organised by the laws and principles which its Divine Founder implanted in the human family. Sovereignty, therefore, is given by God immediately to human society; and mediately, or mcdiante societate, to the person or persons to whom society may commit its custody and its exercise. When once the supreme power or sovereignty has been committed by any society to a king, or to consuls, or to a council, as the case may be?for God has given no special form of Civil Government?though it be not held by those who receive it by any Divine right, as against the society which gave it, nevertheless it has both a Divine sanction and a Divine authority. For instance, it has the power of life and death. God alone could give to man this power …
