But it is no longer by virtue of the promulgation of Moses that we are bound by the moral obligations contained in the old law. He who is our Judge, our Legislator, our King,[75] has come himself to give us a more perfect law: “Mandatum novum do vobis” (Joan. 13). According to the expression of Suarez, Jesus Christ has made known more perfectly the natural law in completing it by new precepts. Jesus Christ has done still more: he has founded a new kingdom—the church, the mystical body, of which he is the head. He has, therefore, appointed interpreters and guardians of his law, who have the mission to proclaim it to those who know it not; to pardon in his name those who, having violated it, confess and repent; and, finally, to distribute the numberless succors of divine grace—all which have for their object to help us to observe the law as perfectly as possible, and consequently to enable us ourselves to approach perfection. The new precepts added by Christ to those of the natural law are those which enjoin upon us the use of the sacraments and which determine their form; these articles of the new law—if we may be allowed so to term them—are all as obligatory as those of the natural law, because they have God himself for their author. Behold how S. Thomas sums up the whole of the new law, or the law of grace, which Christ came to bring us: “It comprises,” says he, “the precepts of the natural law, the articles of faith, and the sacraments of grace.”

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the Christian law is that it was not written. Jesus Christ spoke his commandments, and, his word being divine, it engraved them upon the hearts of his apostles and disciples;[76] but the Incarnate Word had nothing written during the time he spent upon earth. The first Gospel appeared at least eight years after the death of Jesus Christ. If to this observation we add the common belief of theologians, according to which it was only from the coming of the Holy Ghost—that is to say, from the day of Pentecost and after the Ascension—that the law of Christ became obligatory, we arrive at this conclusion: that the means of oral teaching was expressly chosen by the Word for the transmission of his law and his will.

Nothing throws greater light upon the sovereign importance of the church and its hierarchy; nothing manifests better the extreme necessity of a permanent infallibility residing somewhere in the mystical body of Christ. The Council of the Vatican, conformably to the tradition of all Christian ages, has defined that “the Roman Pontiff enjoys the plenitude of that infallibility with which it was necessary for the church to be provided in defining doctrine touching faith or morals.”

These last words show that the Pope is the unfailing interpreter of the natural law, and the judge, from whom there is no appeal of its violations.

The decisions given by the Sovereign Pontiff upon human laws are not recognized at the present day by the powers of the earth. But neither is God recognized; and thus it is that, little by little violence has overrun the world and law has vanished. Europe is returning to a worse than primitive barbarism; and Catholics are no longer alone in saying it.

At the epoch at which the bishops were gathered together at Rome for the last council, a publicist of great merit, an Englishman and a Protestant, speaking in the name of his co-religionists, addressed an appeal to the Pope entreating him to labor for the re-establishment of the rights of the people.

The rights of the people, or the law of nature, said Mr. Urquhart, is the Ten Commandments applied to society. After having cited Lord Mansfield, who says that this right “is considered to form part of the English law,” and that “the acts of the government cannot alter it,” Mr. Urquhart fears not to add “that it is against their governments that nations should protect this right.” And why did this Protestant appeal to Rome? Because, in sight of the unjust wars which ravage Europe, he hoped that the Ecumenical Council “would lay down a rule enabling Catholics to distinguish the just from the unjust; so that the Pope might afterwards exercise juridical power over communities, nations, and their sovereigns.”[77]

The rule exists; for the natural or divine law engraven by God from the beginning upon the hearts of all men, and more expressly revealed in the Decalogue, was the subject of the teaching of Christ. The juridical power and the tribunal from which there is no appeal equally exist; but the voice of the judge is no longer listened to by those who govern human society. But it is not this which is important, and Mr. Urquhart is right—it is the nations which should invoke against their new tyrants the only efficacious protection; it is the people who should first bend before the beneficent authority of the infallible master of the moral law; there would then be no further need of the consent of governments.

XIII.—CONCLUSION.

I said, in beginning the last paragraph, that it was addressed to Catholics by right of corollary from the preceding considerations. It is certain, indeed, that if all Catholics were truly instructed and well convinced of the truths that I have endeavored to set forth as briefly and clearly as I could, a great step in the right path would already have been taken.