In truth, “if God is not the author of law, there is no law really binding.” We may, for the love of God, obey existing powers, even though they be illegitimate; but this submission has its limits. It must cease the moment that the human law prescribes anything contrary to the law of God. As for people without faith, we would in vain seek for a motive powerful enough to induce them to submit to anything displeasing to them.
II.—MODERN LIBERTY.
The people of our generation consider themselves more free, more unrestrained, than those who have gone before them. It is not to our generation, however, that the glory accrues of having first thrown off the yoke. Our moderns themselves acknowledge that they have had predecessors, and they agree with us in declaring that “the new spirit” made its appearance in the world about the XVIth century.[46]
In truth, the only yoke which has been cast off since then is that of God, which seemed too heavy. All at once thought pronounced itself freed from the shackles of ecclesiastical authority; but, at the outset, it was far from intended to deny the idea of a divine right superior to all human right.
Despite the historical falsehoods which have found utterance in our day, it was chiefly princes who propagated Protestantism; and, most often, they attained their end only by violence. When successful, they added to their temporal title a religious one; they made themselves bishops or popes, and thus became all the more powerful over their subjects. There was no longer any refuge from the abuse of power of the rulers of this world; for it was the interest of these despots to call themselves the representatives of God. By means of this title they secularized dioceses, convents, the goods of the church, and even the ministers of their new religion. This term was then used to express in polite language an idea of spoliation and of hypocritical and uncurbed tyranny.
The moderns have gone farther: they have attempted to secularize law itself. This time, again, the word hides a thought which, if it were openly expressed, would shock; the law has become atheistical, and not all the opposition which the harshness of this statement has aroused can prevent it from still expressing a truth. The inexorable logic of facts leads directly from the Reformation to the Revolution. Princes themselves sowed the seeds of revolt which will yet despoil them of their power and their thrones; while as for the people, they have gained nothing. They are constantly tyrannized over; but their real masters are unknown, and their only resource against the encroachments or the abuse of power is an appeal to arms.
It is not, then, true that liberty finds greater space in the modern world than in the ancient Christian world. To prove this, I need but a single fact which has direct relation with my subject.
While Europe was still enveloped in “the darkness of the Middle Ages,” Catholic theologians freely taught, from all their chairs, that “an unjust law is no law”—“Lex injusta non est lex.” Now, are there, at the present day, many pulpits from which this principle, the safeguard of all liberty and of all independence, the protector of all rights, and the defence of the helpless, might be proclaimed with impunity? Do we not see the prohibitions, the lawsuits, the appels comme d’abus which the boldness of such a maxim would call forth?
Human governments have changed in form, but their tyranny has not ceased to grow; and the free men of the olden society have become the slaves in a new order of things—they have even reached a point at which they know not even in what liberty consists.