What they call abstract
principles, or abstract forms of reason, without which there were
no logic, are not abstract, but the real, living God himself.
Hence government, like man himself, participates of the divine
being, and, derived from God through the people, it at the same
time participates of human reason and will, thus reconciling
authority with freedom, and stability with progress.
The people, holding their authority from God, hold it not as an
inherent right, but as a trust from Him, and are accountable to
Him for it. It is not their own. If it were their own they
might do with it as they pleased, and no one would have any right
to call them to an account; but holding it as a trust from God,
they are under his law, and bound to exercise it as that law
prescribes. Civil rulers, holding their authority from God
through the people, are accountable for it both to Him and to
them. If they abuse it they are justiciable by the people and
punishable by God himself.
Here is the guaranty against tyranny, oppression, or bad
government, or what in modern times is called the responsibility
of power. At the same time the state is guarantied against
sedition, insurrection, rebellion, revolution, by the elevation
of the civic virtues to the rank of religious, virtues, and
making loyalty a matter of conscience. Religion is brought to
the aid of the state, not indeed as a foreign auxiliary, but as
integral in the political order itself.
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