and the Church has never sanctioned it. The
Sovereign Pontiffs have claimed and exercised the right to deprive
princes of their principality, 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 passive 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 constitution 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 asserted with the Apostle
there is no power but from God--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 constitution, if it sees proper to
do so.

That God, 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,