Calvinism - pagina 19

1

There

no cause

is

for surprise

if,

answer to

in

this ques-

even though apparently most contradictory, the funda-

tion,

mental doctrine of the Calvinists For, from sovereignity of God. that

66i

Constitutional Libo'ties.

895-]

is

cited: even the absolute

this confession,

authority and power in the earth

all

is

follows

it

not inherent, but

imposed; so that by nature there can no claim to authority be entered either by prince or people. God Almighty himself alone

is

sovereign.

comparison with himself.

In

He

es-

teems every creature as nothing, whether born in the royal Authority of one creature palace or in the beggar's hut. over another arises, fers

it,

not to abandon

He

for his honor.

upon

first

whom

he

is

wills,

it

of

all,

from the

fact that

himself, but to allow

it

God

con-

to be used

sovereign, and he confers his authority

—

at

one time to kings and princes, at

another to nobles and patricians, and sometimes to the whole nation at once.

ment

American democracy

is

as useful an instru-

for the manifestation of his sovereign glory as

despotism.

The

question

a king, but whether both,

is

Russian

not whether the people rule, or

when they

rule,

do

it

by

virtue of

Him. This passes sentence upon a twofold wrong. First, upon the sovereignty of the people in the sense in which

Hugo every

Grotius and Mirabeau proclaimed

man by

being born of a

woman

it.

The

idea that

has a claim to a part

of the political authority, and that the state has

its rise in

the collection of these atomic parts, puts a limit to the sovereignty of God;

it

locates the source of sovereignty in

man

mighty arm of God, and leads to the In like manner by this destruction of all moral authority. confession is condemned \k\& droit divin in the sense in which as such,

and not

in the

was pushed by the friends of the Stuarts, and the legitimists France, and by the Prussian Junkerthum. The words of "The Charles I. on the gallows to his father confessor:

it

in

the government;

it

be-

longs not to them; a king and his subjects are totally

dif-

people are not entitled to a part

in

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