to the civic reason in order to make it an enduring support. Now the theory of Divine Right was the expression of the same truth in forms suited to the seventeenth century. It may be that our debt of gratitude to the men of that age is no less great than that which all are willing to acknowledge to the great thinker of the last century. Nor should we be chary of giving their due to the protagonists in a struggle of which we are enjoying the fruits merely because their fundamental principles won ultimate triumph only through the defeat of the practical maxims deduced from them, or because their methods of argument lack the persuasive charm and their style is without the majestic flow which have given to Edmund Burke his unfading laurels. "It is most true that all available authority is Mystic in its conditions" says Carlyle'. Into the true nature of the bonds, which unite men in government and subjection Filmer and Leslie and Sacheverell perhaps had a deeper insight than the modern journalist or member of Parliament. In some form or other "loyalty to persons springs immortal in the human breast," and must always survive as the basis of society, and obedience for conscience sake remain the chief support of governments. The Divine Right of Kings is but the expression of truths concerning society and the state of deeper and more universal significance than the trivial banalities of modern politics. 1 French Revolution, II. 2. 2 Cardinal Newman, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (80). 3 "There can be no firmness without law; and no laws can be binding if there be no conscience to obey them; penalty alone could, can never, do it." Laud, Sermon Iv. (Works, 1. 112). CHAPTER X. True meaning of Divine Right. CONCLUSION. It will have appeared from the foregoing investigation that the theory of the Divine Right of Kings was something different in import and value from the collection of purely ridiculous propositions perversely preached by a servile church, which some have elected to represent it. It was able to gain currency by appealing to some of the deepest instincts of human nature. It gathered up into itself notions of the sanctity of the medicine man, of the priestly character of primitive royalty1, of the divinity of the Roman Emperors and perhaps of the sacredness of the tribunician power. Yet the doctrine of Divine Right owes much to the common sentiment of Christians as to obedience; and it 1 That this feeling had not died out in the seventeenth century is proved by the following words put into the mouth of Charles; On their denying his majesty his chaplains: "It may be, I am . esteemed by my deniers sufficient of myself to discharge my duty to God as a priest; though not to men as a prince. Indeed I think both offices, regal and sacerdotal, might well become the same person, as anciently they were under one name, and the united rights of primogeniture.' Eikon Basilike. This feeling is quite common at the time. found its most effective material in the practice and theory. It is as an anti-clerical weapon of independence 'An antithat the theory had its greatest value and fulfilled clerical its most noteworthy function. In opposition to the claims of the Pope to sovereignty by Divine Right, men must formulate the claims of the King to sovereignty by a right that is not inferior. Thus the doctrine is anti-clerical. Yet since it was directed against a theory of clericalism, it was inevitably formed or supported in the main by divines. And the form of the theory was necessary to its success. It would have failed in its object, had it attempted to give to Parliament rather than to the King the sovereignty which it denied to the Pope. Against the traditional splendours of the tiara it would have been vain to set up any lower dignity than the Crown. Indeed no such aim could have been conceived in imagination. It would have been an anachronism. The one country, in which the resistance to the Papal yoke was of purely popular origin, threw off allegiance to the Papacy only to fall under the dominion of a power equally ecclesias L The theory forms the necessary between and modern politics. tical in its aims and more galling in its incidence. In the sixteenth century it was well if a King had the strength to cast off the Papal yoke, without rivetting another clerical authority on the state. Certainly none but a King had the power. Politics are frankly secular religion is invoked as a expected to solve the Political theory has Again, we see that the theory was necessary as a transition stage between mediaeval and modern transition politics. It is a far cry from the conception exmediaval pressed in the Holy Roman Empire, that theology is the source of political theory, and that the State is an aspect of the Kingdom of Christ, to the modern view that politics and theology have little or no relation to one another. nowadays. Even where sentiment, theology is not problems of statesmanship. ceased to be anything but utilitarian, although it may be a question how far this change is an improvement and whether it is likely to be lasting. At any rate in some form or other utilitarianism governs political thought at the present day. But for this to be the case, a long course of development and conflict has been needful. Before political life can free itself from what may be called the theocratic stage, it must assert for itself a coequal right to exist with theology. It must claim that politics have a proper and necessary function to perform in the development of the human race, and that therefore their independent existence must be as much a part of the Divine plan for mankind, as is the science of theology or the organization of the Church. That the State is the realization of a true idea, and has a necessary place in the world, is the claim, which was explicitly or implicitly denied by the Papalist, and only made good through the theory of Divine Right. For it is only when the claim is put forward by Divine Right, that it can have any practical efficacy against a sovereign claiming as God's vicegerent the overlordship of all kings and princes. That secular politics are as truly God's ordinance and that political organizations have as much claim to exist with His approval as the controversies of Churchmen and the rules of the Canon Law, is the least that can be demanded by all supporters of Divine Right. ve an element In the middle ages all departments of thought The theory were conceived as subordinate to theology in such a in the Reway that the methods of theology fettered and formation. strangled free development in science or art or literature. The Reformation is the assertion of the claims of the human spirit to carry on independent work in all branches of inquiry and activity, under the consciousness that truth cannot contradict itself and that the results of every sort of labour carried on with appropriate means and for worthy objects will tend to unity at the last. Now in politics the rise and prevalence of the theory of the Divine Right is merely the same phenomenon. Theology had attempted unreasonably to dominate politics, and had committed men to an unphilosophical basis and an uncritical method. The only way to escape from the fetters imposed Its form by traditional methods, was to assert from the old necessary. standpoint of a Scriptural basis and to argue by the |