elf in nature,
like the law of generation, for instance, and therefore proceeding from
God as first cause, but it proceeds from God 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 class 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, constituted, and clothed with their authority
by the direct and express appointment of God 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 God, is amissible. Their
doctrine is known in history as the doctrine of "the divine right of
kings, and passive obedience." All power, says St. Paul, is from God,
and the powers that be are ordained of God, and to resist them is to
resist the ordination of God. 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, asserted 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 asserted it
in Madrid, under Philip II., was compelled by the Inquisition to
retract it publicly in the place where he had asserted it. All
republicans reject it,