Let the mass of the people in
any nation lapse into the ignorance and barbarism of atheism, or
lose themselves in that supreme sophism called pantheism, the
grand error of ancient as well as of modern gentilism, and
liberty, social or political, except that wild kind of liberty,
and perhaps not even that should be excepted, which obtains among
savages, would be lost and irrecoverable.
But after all, this theory does not meet all the difficulties of
the case. It derives sovereignty from God, and thus asserts the
divine origin of government in the sense that the origin of
nature is divine; it derives it from God through the people,
collectively, or as society, and therefore concedes it a natural,
human, and social element, which distinguishes it from pure
theocracy. It, however, does not explain how authority comes
from God to the people. The ruler, king, prince, or emperor,
holds from God through the people, but how do the people
themselves hold from God? Mediately or immediately? If
mediately, what is the medium? Surely not the people themselves.
The people can no more be the medium than the principle of their
own sovereignty. If immediately, then God governs in them as he
does in the church, and no man is free to think or act contrary
to popular opinion, or in any case to question the wisdom or
justice of any of the acts of the state, which is arriving at
state absolutism by another process.
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