which is not justified by example and is abhorrent from English customs. With this single exception any act overt or covert is allowable against the tyrant. He is an enemy of the state and therefore those moral restrictions which bind society have no force in our dealings with him. We may flatter him, or employ any art, in order to lure him on to his destruction.[1]
It need not be pointed out how accurately John had learned the historical lessons of the Old Testament. All through the controversial literature relating to church and state, the hierarchical party, as we have said, like the English puritans of a later age, rely on the precedents furnished by Hebrew history,[2] and pass by, or explain spiritually, those passages of the Christian Scriptures which insist with such emphasis on the universal duty of obedience to the temporal ruler. The doctrine that the powers that be are ordained of God was held only with the reservation that God acted through the instrumentality of the church. Christianity in fact hardly influenced their political doctrine, except in so far as it considered life on earth as merely the preparation for another life hereafter, the 'road,' via, according to the expressive and constantly recurring phrase, that leads to the eternal 'home,' patria. Hence a new goal was set to human aspirations, and the nature of the civil state lost in worth by comparison of the supreme interests which lay beyond its cognisance. Nor did John of Salisbury at all reädjust or discriminate the various factors in this
- ↑ It is a most curious coïncidence that another Johannes Parvus, Jean Petit, made this doctrine conspicuous in relation to the murder of the duke of Orleans in 1407. His arguments are identical: see M. Creighton, History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation 1. 372-376; 1882. The position was condemned in a general way by the council of Constance, 1415-1416.
- ↑ Thomas Aquinas, whose writings indeed stand apart from controversy, inverts this position. In the Old Testament, he says, where men looked only for temporary promises, the priests were subject to the king; but the New elevates the priesthood higher because in it men are directed to eternal goods: De regimine principum i. 14 Opp. 17. 166, ed. Venice 1593 folio; with the volumes and folios of which the edition of Antwerp 1612 agrees.
