RELIGION AND CIVIL LAW.
TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Summing up in your leader the various tele- | grams from Europe, you tell us of the resolute determination of the German Government to subordinate the ecclesiastical to the civil power. There is abundant evidence, and, as a purely political question, every lover of civil liberty must wish it success. Making great allowance for the difficulty of writing daily journal articles, I will not let the above assertion pass without censure, and I trust that not only you will forgive me, but .you will thank me for it. To affirm, the superiority of the civil over the religious power is to inflict an outrage on human reason, it is to abet tyranny in a monstrous sense and its most cruel form; it is to favor aiiarchy. The wisest men of antiquity—the Hebrews, the Christians—all uniformly and constantly subordinated the temporal to the religious authority. The consent of all people since the beginning of times prove the above to be a part of the law of nature. God gave His law first; men afterwards made their own laws, the latter never to be independent from the former, otherwise not to be sanctioned by the Supreme Ruler. Listen to the following testimonies :—Cicero, in his first book on laws, tells us. that, in order to establish a right legislation, it is necessary to re-ascend to that Sovereign law, born before all ages, before the making of any law and the founding of any city Again, in the second book of the same work, the Roman consul and the illustrious philosopher says: Where this law is ignored or trampled upon, where it is violated by the tyranny of a few or of the multitude, political society is vicious; there is even no more society. Unjust. enactments deserve the name of laws no more than plots of thieves." .The above quotation should suffice for the party of Prince Bismarck who would object to passages from Popes, from Councils, and even, from the Sacred Scripture. Let the violators of religious liberty—which is a part of the eternal law—be instructed by a final citation from Plato in regard to the sanction of that law by means of rewards in the next world. "He who reigns over us," says that great master in his treaty on laws, "having seen that all human actions havo for principle, virtue or vice, has prepared different abodes, according to the nature of our acts, leaving to our will the choice between those abodes. Souls which committed light offences do not go down so low as the perpetrators of fouler crimes. They wander on the surface of the earth (according to Socrates they are capable of expiation, and enter afterwards the region of bliss.) The more guilty are precipitated into the abyss called Hell, a place dreaded by the living and the dead, the very thought'of which disturbs the sleep of man. But the soul which, by.contiuual efforts of its will, progresses in virtue andforces itself from vice, is carried to an abodo happier and holier as that soul approached more closely to divine perfection.—l am, &c, • ■ ■ • A Christian.
[Our correspondent will perceive, on reflection, that if lie can find no other arguments in support of Ecclesiastical supremacy than the foregoing, it stands on a very shaky foundation indeed.—Ed. N.Z.T.]
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New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4360, 11 March 1875, Page 2
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555RELIGION AND CIVIL LAW. New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4360, 11 March 1875, Page 2
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