be said that the Christian Church is pledged to one side or the
other--she leaves them open. Individual Christians take one side or
the other. The Christian society recognises that the differences are
due to diversities of temperament and national character, and to the
varying conditions under which human societies live, and therefore
that they may be best left to human experience to solve.
In this class of questions would come the problem debated since the
time of Herodotus, but to which no general answer is really possible,
What is the best form of government? On this problem the Church is, so
to speak, frankly opportunist. Here we may quote the view of
S. Augustine, as stated in the _De Civitate Dei_[411]: 'The Heavenly
City, in its wanderings on earth, summons its citizens from among all
nations ... being itself indifferent to whatever differences there may
be in the customs, laws, and institutions by which earthly peace is
sought after or preserved, not rescinding or destroying any of them,
but rather keeping and following after them as different means adopted
by different races for obtaining the one common end of earthly peace,
provided only they are no obstacle to the religion by which men are
taught the worship of the one supreme and true God.' In the same
spirit, in his dialogue _De libero Arbitrio_[412], he dwells on the
mutable character of human law. That law is temporal, which, 'though
just, may yet be justly changed from time to time,' i.e. as the
conditions change. Thus, a Democracy is best adapted to a grave and
temperate people, public-spirited and willing to make sacrifices for
the common good; while it is better for a more corrupt, more easily
flattered people, greedy of private gain, to be under an Aristocracy
or a Monarchy. Or if we wish for a more modern statement of the
traditional view of the Christian Church, we shall find it in an
encyclical letter[413] of Leo XIII: 'The right of sovereignty in
itself is not necessarily united with any particular form of
government: it can rightly assume, now one form, now another, provided
only that each of these forms does in very deed secure useful results
and the common good.' It will be noticed that two qualifications are
introduced, the one by S. Augustine, the other by Pope Leo, limiting
their acceptance of all forms of government. It is possible for
Christian citizens to take an active part in every _de facto_
government which (1) does not hinder the free and peaceable practice
of the Christian religion, and (2) whose real aim is the common good,
and which does, in fact, work for the advantage of its subjects. Not
all governments, even in the nineteenth century, satisfy these tests.
In the same way, there have been the widest differences between
Christian thinkers on the most important questions, in which
autocratic and democratic leanings shew themselves, such, for
instance, as that of the origin of sovereignty, i.e. of that rule of
man over man, which is the foundation of civil society. The view
indicated, though not worked out by S. Augustine[414], that the rule
of man over man had its origin in the Fall, and was therefore part of
the secondary, not the primary condition of mankind, is used by
Gregory VII as a weapon of assault on the temporal power, by Bossuet
as a safe ground on which to rest the duty of obedience to an absolute
Monarchy. The other side is taken by S. Thomas Aquinas. He finds the
origin of temporal rule in the social nature of man, accepting and
making his own the Aristotelian account of man as by nature a being
fitted for a common life. Thus, in a state of innocence, there would
have been no slavery indeed, but government, with its recognition of
the differences in ability and knowledge among men, and of the
consequent duty incumbent on the wise and experienced of using their
faculties for the common good. Political rule would thus be, not a
consequence of sin, but a result of man's inherently social nature.
Differences such as these among those who equally start from
fundamentally Christian presuppositions can only be taken to shew that
we are wrong in supposing that the Christian Church is bound up with
either of the two great political leanings which have appeared in
civil communities in all ages of the world, and which have their
ground in human nature itself. 'In every country of civilized man,
acknowledging the rights of property, and by means of determined
boundaries and common laws, united into one people or nation, the two
antagonist powers or opposite interests of the State ... are those of
permanence and of progression[415].' The Church recognises these
diverse powers or interests as natural, and therefore accepts the fact
of their existence, without identifying herself with either of them.
II. But it would surely be a mistake to suppose that because the
Church is neutral on certain questions of Politics, that therefore she
has no direct teaching to give on the vital questions which arise with
regard to the organized common life of mankind. In the rebound from
the minimizing views of the function of the State, which were
associated in England with the Ricardian School of Economics and the
philosophic Radicalism of J. S. Mill, men are ready to go all lengths
in exalting the position of the State as the moral guide of social
life. The tendency is to assign the whole sphere of public morals to
the State, and 'private' morals to the individual, acting, if he
pleases, under the guidance of one or other of the Christian bodies.
However much we may welcome the freer recognition of corporate
responsibility, and the nobler conception of the State as having a
moral end; yet we cannot help perceiving that certain limitations are,
as by a self-acting law, imposed on its moral influence.
(1) The State has been called the 'armed conscience of the
community[416].' Looked at on the moral side, as a guide of the
conscience of individuals, its arms are its defect. But that defect is
not remediable: it is inevitable. For the State has to deal with
various grades of character, responding to a vast complexity of
motives, which may be roughly classified under three heads, those of
duty, self-interest, fear of punishment. To some 'you ought' is a
sufficient appeal, to others 'you had better,' while to a third class
the only effective appeal is 'you must.' Now the State in order to
perform its most elementary business, that of securing the conditions
of an ordered and civilized life, has to deal first of all with those
who are only susceptible of the lowest motive, the dread of
punishment. And in dealing with them, it must of necessity use
coercive force[417]. But the force-associations which thus grow up
around all State-action weaken and enervate its appeal to the higher
motives, those of duty and rational self-interest. The very suspicion
of compulsion taints the act done from duty.
Again, there can be little doubt of the vast influence exercised on
morals by human law and institutions. It is well known to those who
are at all acquainted with the life of the poor in large towns, that
in many cases conscience is mainly informed by positive law. But all
that human law can do is to secure a minimum of morality[418]. No
doubt it is true that indirectly positive law can do something more
than this, because good citizens will abstain from all actions which,
in however remote a degree, are likely to bring them into collision
with the law. But in the main it is true to say that what law can
secure is the observance on pain of punishment of a minimum moral
standard, which itself shifts with the public opinion of society,
rising as it rises, falling as it falls.
Certainly the State is sacred: it is 'of God': it is no necessary
evil: but a noble organ of good living. But yet there are these
natural limitations to the effective exercise of its functions, as a
moral guide. Firstly, it has to use force, and, therefore, its appeal
to the higher motive is weakened. Secondly, it can only secure a
minimum of morality, shifting with the general morality of the
community.
Now it is exactly at these points that the Church steps in to
supplement the moral action of the State, not as one part supplements
another part of a single whole, but rather as a higher supplements a
lower order.
It is in its appeal to the higher motives that the State is weak: it
is in its appeal to the higher motives that the Church is strong. If
there have been times when the Church has allowed herself to claim or
to assume temporal power, or without assuming it, to be so closely
implicated with the secular authority that Church and State appeared
to men as one body interested in and maintaining the existing order,
if she has used the weapons of persecution, or handed men over to the
secular arm, then has she so far weakened and loosened her own hold on
the higher motives which move men to action. She may have become
apparently more powerful, but it has always been at the cost, perhaps
unperceived at the time, of some sacrifice of her own spirituality,
and of the loftiness of that moral appeal in which her true strength
lies. 'There is something in the very spirit of the Christian Church
which revolts from the application of coercive force[419].'
And so, alongside of the moral minima of the secular law, the
Christian Church maintains moral maxima, moral ideals, or rather a
moral ideal, 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect[420].' 'Till we all come unto a perfect man, unto
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ[421].' It is not
that the law is undervalued, or condemned, but that Christians are
urged to bring their conduct under principles which will carry them
far beyond the mere obedience to law. It is sufficient to quote from
the Sermon on the Mount, 'Blessed are the meek.... Blessed are ye,
when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of
evil against you falsely, for my sake.... I say unto you, that ye
resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,
turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law,
and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also[422].'
The law and institutions of a people rest upon and give expression to
a group of moral principles and ideals: they are not the only
realization of those principles and ideals, but one; art and
literature would be others; further, they realize them mainly on the
negative side, in the mode of prohibition. As that group of principles
and ideals changes, they change, sometimes for the better, sometimes
for the worse. At first sight it seems as if there was no essential
difference in this respect between the laws and institutions of a
nation, and the manners and institutions of the Christian Church,
except that the one gives a more positive and constructive expression
to the moral standard of the time than the other. But there is this
difference, that the Christian Church has its moral standard in the
past, in the life of the Son of Man; it too recognises change, as age
succeeds age, but the new duties are regarded not as new, but as newly
brought forth out of an already existing treasure, as the completer
manifestation under new conditions of the meaning of the life of
Christ. On the threshold of Christian morality there lies that by
which all its subsequent stages may be tested, and which is the
measure of advance or retrogression. It is this permanent element,
preceding the element of change and of development, in Christian
morality, which gives it its authority as against the moral product of
one nation or one age.
It is exactly this authority which has enabled the Church to appeal
with such force to duty as precedent to right, and to love as higher
than justice. We can best illustrate this steady appeal to higher
motives by tracing the steps by which Christian teachers have brought
out, one by one, the different aspects of the relations of governors
and governed looked at in the light of Christian anthropology and
Christian sociology. The first principles governing the attitude of
individual Christians towards the various organizations of human
society are laid down in the words of Christ, 'Render unto Caesar the
things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are
God's[423].' The command, taken in connection with its context,
involves two principles, first, the recognition of the claims of civil
society, and, secondly, their limitation by a higher order of claims,
where they come into conflict with the first. The passage in the
Epistle to the Romans[424], in which S. Paul deals with the duties of
Christians towards 'the powers that be,' is a commentary on his
Master's teaching. It shews the connection of the first of these
principles with the second, by tracing it back to its ground in the
will of God. It brings it into relation to love, the central motive of
the Christian character. Briefly summarized, the stages of S. Paul's
argument are as follows: (1) he shews that all power is of Divine
origin: 'there is no power but of God.' Thus those who wield secular
power are ministers of God. (2) The administration of earthly rewards
and punishments by the secular power makes for good, and for this
reason God uses it in His governance of the world. Therefore temporal
authority is to be obeyed 'not only for wrath, but also for conscience
sake,' i.e. not merely to avoid earthly punishment, but as a duty. (3)
This duty may be regarded as one application of the general maxim of
justice, 'Render to all their dues.' But (4) all these scattered dues
are to a Christian summed up under one vast debt, always in process of
payment, but never completely paid. 'Owe no man anything, but to love
one another.' 'Love is the fulfilling of the law.' These passages of
the New Testament put in the clearest light the duty of obedience to
civil authority. They lay down its theological ground in the
derivation of all power from God; and its moral ground by shewing that
such obedience is one form of justice, and justice itself one aspect
of love. They thus give to the commands of those wielding authority in
human society the firmest sanctions. If on the one side Christianity
seems to set up conscience, as the guardian of the things of God,
against positive law, it gives on the other a Divine sanction and
consecration to the whole order of things connected with the State by
shewing its ministerial relation to, its defined place and function
in, God's ordering of the world.
This was the side of our Lord's saying which needed enforcing on the
Christians of S. Paul's time. The civil authority was the Roman Empire
with its overwhelming force and its almost entire externality to
Christianity. The danger, then, was the spirit of passionate revolt
against the secular power. Men who were filled with the new wine of
the Spirit, who were turning the world upside down, found it hard to
submit to the decrees of an alien power, wielded by heathen: they
pleaded their Christian liberty; they could not understand that such a
power was 'ordained of God.' The early Christian Fathers found it
sufficient, even when the Roman Empire was gradually becoming
Christian, to bring home to consciences the teaching of S. Paul. There
was no need then to emphasize in words the other side of our Lord's
saying. There was little danger of undue subservience to the civil
power being regarded with anything but disapproval: the danger was of
men not giving it the obedience which was its due. 'We honour the
Emperor,' says Tertullian[425], 'so far as we may, and so far as
honour is due to him, as the first after God ... as one who has only
God for his superior.' 'If the Emperor demands tribute,' says
Ambrose[426], 'we do not refuse it: the lands of the Church pay
tribute; if the Emperor wishes for our lands, he has the power to take
them--none of us will resist him ... we render to Caesar what is
Caesar's.' S. Augustine, with his Stoical leaning and his Roman sense
of order, was little inclined to encourage men to resist, in any case,
established powers. 'What matters it under whose rule a man lives who
is to die, provided only his rulers do not force him to do impious and
unjust things[427]?' Only in one passage of S. Chrysostom[428], among
the writers of the first four centuries, is a gloss given to S. Paul's
words, 'There is no power but of God,' which distinguishes the
delegation of power in general from God, and the delegation of power
by God to any particular ruler, and so suggests the possibility of a
_de facto_ ruler to whom obedience was not due.
But this attitude of the early Christian teachers was a very different
thing from that attitude of the English Caroline divines, which gave
so fatal a bent to the teaching of the English Church of the
seventeenth century in the sphere which lies on the borderland of
Theology and Politics. What the early Fathers taught their Christian
followers was that it was their duty to obey in secular matters the
powers lawfully set over them. What the English divines taught was the
Divine right of princes and the subjects' duty of non-resistance. In
the great battle which was being fought out in England between
arbitrary power and freedom, they threw the whole weight of the
English Church on the side of the former. It was a fatal error as a
matter of policy, for it was the losing side. But, what is hardly
sufficiently realized, it was most untrue to the tradition of the
Church, and of the Church in England.
It was contrary to the tradition of the Church. For after the rise of
Christianity to the high places of the world, followed by the break-up
of the Roman Empire, and the formation of the mediaeval States, weakly
knit together by personal ties, and with uncertain claims on the
allegiance of their subjects, two new aspects of the relations of
governors and governed had been brought out in Christian teaching.
First, stress was laid on the duty of those holding power. Emperors
and kings, magistrates and officers, who were Christians, had a claim
for guidance and instruction in the exercise of their various
functions. The claim was met by shewing them that, whatever the
earthly source of authority may be, all just power is of God, and
therefore must be regarded, not as a privilege, nor as a personal
right, but as a _trust_ to be undertaken for the good of others, and
as a ministry for God and man. Thus a government which has for its aim
anything else than the common good is, properly speaking, not a
government at all. Whether its form is monarchical or not, it is
simply a tyranny[429]. Secondly, the Middle Age theologians
supplemented S. Paul's teaching by shewing the possible right of
resistance to an unlawful government, or to one that failed to perform
its duties. Such right of resistance might arise in two cases: (1)
that of unjust acquisition of power, (2) that of its unjust use.
Unjust acquisition might take place in two ways: (_a_) when an
unworthy person acquired power, but by legitimate means: in this case
it was the duty of subjects to submit, because the form of power came
from God; (_b_) when power was acquired by force or fraud: in this
case, subjects had the right to depose the ruler, if they had the
power, supposing, however, that the illegitimate assumption of power
had not been legitimated by subsequent consent. Unjust use might also
take place in two ways: (_a_) when the ruler commanded something
contrary to virtue, in which case it was a duty to disobey; or (_b_)
when he went outside his rights, in which case subjects were not bound
to obey, but it was not necessarily their duty to disobey. And so
cases might arise in which it was lawful to enfranchise oneself, even
from a legitimate power. 'Some who have received power from God, yet
if they abuse it, deserve to have it taken from them. Both the one and
the other come of God[430].'
Nor was the political teaching of the Caroline divines in agreement
with the tradition of the Church in England. It is not necessary to go
back to the great Archbishops who led, in earlier days, the struggle
for English freedom. It is sufficient to recur to the teaching of the
greatest of English post-Reformation theologians, at once soaked
through and through with the spirit of Catholic antiquity, and in
complete agreement with the English Reformation settlement. Richard
Hooker had no sympathy with that doctrine of Divine right which his
mediaeval masters looked upon as a quasi-heretical doctrine[431]. He
found the first origin of government in the consent of the governed,
and he anticipates Hobbes and Locke in his account of the 'first
original conveyance, when power was derived from the whole into
one[432].' Further, he points out that the king's power is strictly
limited (except in the case of conquest or of special appointment by
God), not only by the original compact, but also by after-agreement
made with the king's consent or silent allowance[433]. And men are not
bound in conscience to obey such usurpers 'as in the exercise of their
power do more than they have been authorized to do[434].' But on the
other hand, he maintains strongly, as against those who thought that
human laws could in no sort touch the conscience, the duty of civil
obedience in agreement with the law of God, and the sacredness, the
'Divine institution,' of duly-constituted authority, whether 'God
Himself doth deliver, or men by light of nature find out the kind
thereof.'
Thus, the main points which have been brought out by Christian
teaching as to the relation of Christian citizens to the civil
authority are: (1) first and foremost, the duty of obedience for
conscience' sake, a duty which stands on the same level, and is
invested with the same sanctions as the most sacred claims; (2) the
duty, in case of the civil authority issuing commands contrary to
virtue or religion, of disobedience on the same grounds as those which
lead to obedience in the former case; (3) the duty of those wielding
authority to use it for the common good, and so as not to hinder, if
they cannot promote, the Christian religion; (4) the right, which may
be said in certain extreme cases to rise almost to a duty, of
resistance to the arbitrary or unconstitutional extension of authority
to cases outside its province.