Introduction
Francois du Jon (1545-1602), Latinized as Franciscus Junius, was a
significant Reformed Protestant voice in the era of late
sixteenth-century confessionalization. (1) He is perhaps best known as a
professor of theology at Leiden University from 1592-1602. The faculty
of Leiden University frequently had the task of solving theological
conundrums for the church and sometimes for the state. While the Dutch
Reformed Church (NL: Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk, 1571-1795) and the
Dutch Republic (NL: Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Provincien, LAT:
Foederatae Belgii Provinciae, 1581-1795) were both still in their
infancy, it was not uncommon for theological, civil, and legal paroxysms
to rock both church and state simultaneously. It is in this context of
the almost concentric overlap between a rising republic and a rising
national church that the question of the role of the Mosaic polity
surfaced. After all, the Dutch Republic, forged as it was in the fires
and blood of a religious rebellion against Roman Catholic Spain, was a
proud but young Reformed Protestant republic. Thus at some level, if
Scripture alone is the authority in the Church for faith and morals and
if all of Scripture is inspired and profitable for every good work (2
Tim. 3:16-17), how does it apply in the realm of the Christian State?
Because such a thorny question required both legal and theological
acumen, it was a prickly question indeed, layered with many variegated
barbs, such as: What role, if any, should the Mosaic law play in the
development of a civil legal code? How much of the Mosaic polity applies
in light of the promulgation of the gospel in which Christ fulfilled the
law? How does the Mosaic law relate to or reflect the natural law? How
much of the case law is mutable or immutable? On what grounds? What are
the roles of the church and state respectively? What are the proper
limits of each in the exposition and institution of morals? What is the
relationship between right and law? Is there a difference between a
universal or common right and a specific or particular right? How does
this impact legislation? Can we distinguish between law for human beings
and law for Christian human beings? How is the classic Christian
distinction of the Mosaic law into ceremonial law, judicial law, and
moral laws coordinated to eternal law, natural law, and human law? How
binding is the Mosaic case law? Do the Mosaic capital punishments still
apply? How does the Mosaic law regarding the capital offense of idolatry
apply to sixteenth-century heresy trials, if at all?
As you can imagine, such a project has many moving parts in order
to answer these and related questions. In the Dutch Reformed context of
the last decade of the sixteenth century, for a person to even attempt
an answer to such a question, he must first have unquestioned ability in
the original languages of the Bible, deep familiarity with Scripture,
trusted academic training and expertise in Christian theology, grounding
and proficiency in the study of law and rights, pastoral sensibility,
and impeccable creedal and confessional credentials. Perhaps most of
all, he would have to have had the wisdom to know when to stop. That is
quite a tall order for one person. Following by way of introduction is a
brief account of how Junius was uniquely equipped for such a momentous
task in the late sixteenth-century Dutch Reformed context.
A Brief Overview of Junius' Life
Junius was born in Bourges, France, into a family of minor nobility
with all of the attendant social and educational advantages of one of
such rank. At the age of twelve, Junius matriculated at the academy of
Bourges and studied law under the Huguenot jurist, Francois Douaren
(1509-1559) who is recognized as a major voice in articulating the mos
gallicus school of applying the fruits of Italian humanism to the legal
code of Justinian. (2) Junius also studied under the renowned French
humanist, Huguenot, and jurist Hugues Doneau (1527-1591). Doneau, or
Latinized Hugo Donellus, was perhaps best known for his application of
French humanism to a study of Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis,
specifically the Digesta. Junius would imbibe of these studies deeply,
and the maturation of these studies is evidenced in the marginalia and
citations of the classical Greco-Roman legal tradition of the
translation below.
With the Franco-Ottoman alliance beginning in 1536 against the Holy
Roman Empire and by extension various allied city-states in Italy, there
were frequent French diplomatic envoys crossing from Toulon to Istanbul.
In 1560, due to his facility in Greek and law, Junius secured a
diplomatic position as an aide to the French ambassador to the court of
Suleiman I (1494-1567). Junius, however, did not journey to
Constantinople because he literally missed the boat, or rather the
entourage that departed from Lyon heading to the Mediterranean coast for
passage to Constantinople. For the next two years, he lived instead in
Lyons studying and attending lectures on the Greek and Roman classics.
It was also during this time that he was nearly persuaded to become an
atheist after hearing lectures on Cicero's De natura deorum and in
confronting Epicurus' arguments against God's providence. In a
state of despair, he read the first half of chapter 1 of John's
gospel and was overwhelmed by the sense of "the divinity of the
argument as well as the majesty and authority of what was written."
(3) From this point on, Junius resolutely committed himself in devotion
to God to a study of Scripture.
Shortly thereafter, Junius decided to enter the French Reformed
Church, and just shy of his seventeenth birthday, in the midst of the
Huguenot wars in France, Junius arrived in Geneva on March 17, 1562, to
study under Calvin and Beza. Although of noble birth, his income was
severed due to the revolt in France as well as to the murder of his
Protestant father, reducing him to the severest poverty while he studied
for three years. In April of 1565 and almost twenty years of age, he
accepted a call to pastor a Walloon church in Antwerp, Belgium.
It was during this period in Antwerp that Junius took part in
shepherding the Belgic Confession through the ecclesiastical channels in
the Reformed church for formal recognition at the Synod of Antwerp.
Although prepared in 1561 primarily by Guido de Bres with the assistance
of H. Modestus and G. Wingen, Junius was tasked with a slight
modification and abridgment of Article 16 of the Belgic Confession. (4)
Junius also played an active role in distributing copies of the Belgic
Confession to Geneva and other Reformed churches for feedback and for
reaching a broader consensus. In 1566, the Synod of Antwerp was the
first synodical body to adopt the Belgic Confession, followed by the
Synod of Wesel (1568), and the Synod of Emden (1571).
In early 1566, King Philip II of Spain allowed the inquisition to
come to the Netherlands. Throughout the Netherlands, there was a general
uproar that resulted in iconoclastic excess, of which Junius did not
take part or encourage. There is a famous period picture of unknown
authorship of Junius preaching at night to his Antwerp congregation in a
room lit through the windows by the fires of Walloon Protestant martyrs
in the public square. (5) Junius also made his political voice known in
a published appeal to the King of Spain on behalf of the Walloon
churches that was printed in French (1565) as well as in German (1566).
(6) One of the accords William of Orange reached with Philip II of Spain
on September 2, 1566, only protected ministers and preachers who were
natives of the Low Countries. (7) As a result, Junius fled to Limburg.
Still exposed to threats from Roman Catholics and Anabaptists, he fled
again to Heidelberg. The year 1568 places Junius in Heidelberg.
Following a brief tenure as pastor of a Reformed Church at Schonau, and
an even briefer stint as a chaplain in a failed military campaign to the
Netherlands, Junius returned to his pastorate at Schonau until 1573.
The period from 1573 to 1578 was marked by an extraordinary
contribution to Reformed biblical studies in the period of Reformed
Protestant orthodoxy. In one edition or another, the Tremellius-Junius
translation of the Bible shaped Protestant--and especially
Reformed--theology and dogmatics well into the late eighteenth century.
During this period, Junius was partner to a distinctively Reformed
Protestant translation of the Scriptures from the original languages
into Latin. He embarked on this work with famed Hebraist, Giovanni
Emmanuele Tremellio (1510-1580), or Tremellius. Tremellius was an
Italian-Jewish scholar and graduate from the humanist bastion of the
University of Padua, a convert to Roman Catholicism (1540) and then to
Protestantism (1541). Tremellius was also imprisoned briefly for a
period in the 1550s as a Calvinist. As a Hebrew professor,
Tremellius' career took him to academies and universities at
Strasbourg (1541-1549), Cambridge (1549-1553), Heidelberg (1561-1577),
and then Sedan (1577-1580). Both of these scholars were skilled in
Hebrew, Aramaic, and its cognates of Syriac and Chaldee, as well as
Arabic, Greek, and Latin. (8) The first edition of the Tremellius-Junius
Bible appeared in 1579 and enjoyed three further recensions by Junius
(1581, 1593, 1602), with the most popular recensions being the second
(1581) and the fourth (1602). The Tremellius-Junius Bible was published
in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, Geneva, Hanover, and Zurich with over
thirty-three different printings between 1579 to 1764. The
Tremellius-Junius translation of the Old Testament was frequently paired
as well with Theodore Beza's Latin translation of the New
Testament.
In 1576 upon the death of Frederick III, Elector of the Palatinate
and staunch adherent of Reformed Protestantism, he was succeeded by his
Lutheran son, Louis VI. Under the tenet of cuius regio, eius religio
(whoever's region, that one's religion), Heidelberg became
Lutheran again. The Reformed faculty and students who refused to sign
the Formula of Concord (1577) were driven out of the University of
Heidelberg in 1577. Over the discord from the Formula of Concord, in
approximately 1578-1579 Johann Casimir von Pfalz-Simmern (1543-1592),
Frederick III's brother and also an ally of the Reformed, founded
the Casmirianum Collegium (1579-1583) at Neustadt. Junius was among the
faculty at the newly formed and short-lived college with one of the
primary authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, Zacharias Ursinus
(1534-1583), who had become a friend beginning in his days in
Heidelberg. Junius would later deliver the funeral oration upon
Ursinus' death in Neustadt.
It was very likely during this period at Neustadt in his lectures
on the Psalms that Junius would first articulate his hermeneutical
method for interpreting the psalms as well as his distinctive
understanding offoedus, pactum, and testamentum articulated in his
commentaries on Genesis as well as his theological theses. (9) In 1583
upon Louis VI's death, Casimir became regent for his young nephew
and future elector, Frederick IV, and thus Heidelberg crossed from
Lutheran hands into Reformed hands once again. At this time, after
Ursinus' death, Junius was invited back as professor of theology to
Heidelberg, a post he would hold until the late 1580s. While here,
Junius' engaged in the writing of biblical commentaries, political
tracts and letters, and theological theses for his students'
practice disputations. One of his most significant contributions from
this period is his work Sacrorum Parallelorum (3d ed., 1588), which was
a comparison, correlation, and commentary on all the Old Testament
passages in the New Testament. (10)
At some point in the late 1580s through early 1592, Junius was
involved in diplomatic conversations and missions for the duke of
Bouillon in France and Germany at the close of the Huguenot wars and in
personal conversation with Henry IV of Navarre, king of France. It was
during this time that the curators of the University of Leiden
persistently beseeched Junius to consider a professor ship in theology
at the University of Leiden. In early 1592, Junius accepted the position
of professor primarius.
While at Leiden, Junius authored the work before us now as well as
a significant work on theological prolegomena, De Vera Theologia. The
content of De Vera Theologia became a cornerstone of Reformed,
scholastic theology, surviving well into late nineteenth-century
Reformed theologians such as Herman Bavinck. Themes and hints of the De
Vera Theologia even found their way into such seventeenth-century
Lutheran scholastics as Andreas Quenstedt and Johannes Gerhard's
Loci Communes. In this work, Junius not only outlines the
archetypal/ectypal relationship as the basis for understanding the
Creator/creature distinction but also for understanding theology and the
necessity of Scripture for human beings fallen in sin, but striving as
pilgrims or wayfarers for the blessed visio Dei. This work first appears
in print in Leiden in 1594, two years after he employs the
archetypal/ectypal understanding of the Creator/creature distinction in
explaining natural law and its relationship to the Mosaic polity.
In 1602 upon his death, it was Junius' chair of theology (and
house on the Rapenburg in Leiden together with most of the furniture)
that Jacobus Arminius filled after Junius' death in the plague that
struck Leiden. No less than the world-renowned historian and humanist
Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) composed these words upon
Junius' death for the bereaved Leiden university community:
Scholarly Reminders on the Translation Proper
As to comments on the translation proper, a translator's
introduction frequently sounds, it seems, like a series of disclaimers
or apologetic warnings. In a sense, this is so; for if it were not, why
would one need a translator's introduction? Perhaps it is better to
speak of scholarly reminders then.
First and foremost, Junius is writing almost 175 years prior to the
publication of Jean-Jacque Rousseau's 1762 Du contrat social ou
Principes du droit politique. Rousseau's work is a significant
piece of Enlightenment legal theory and forever shaped the way the West
thought about laws and rights. On the other hand, Junius' project
stands squarely in the midst of terms and theories derived from the
classic jurists of Rome and Athens, Justinian's sixth-century
Corpus Iuris Civilis, and the classic natural-law tradition of much of
the Western Christian legal tradition. Junius is in many ways farther in
thought, rather than time, from the Enlightenment treatises and trends
that would sweep the currents of Western political and legal thought
away from its moorings in Greco-Roman as well as Christian natural-law
theories. For example, Rousseau frequently maintains that human beings
are good but corrupt through society. In theological terms, Rousseau
speaks with a Pelagian lisp. Junius, on the other hand, maintains that
human beings once were good but are now corrupt through sin. In
theological terms, Junius speaks with an Augustinian accent. Such
deep-rooted changes in thought inevitably mean changes in terms. Thus,
to contemporary ears more attuned to Rousseau, the older Christian legal
tradition that grew for approximately a millennium may sound foreign.
Second, there is a significant and somewhat ambiguous divide--not
quite a chasm--between modern usage of the terms law and right. Even
today, there is a great amount of disagreement as to whether we can or
even should speak about intrinsic rights or natural law. As such, the
modern English usage is notoriously vague as to what one means by the
phrase, for example, rule of law. Is it the rule of law as enacted by a
particular governing authority or administration? Otherwise, is it the
rule of law as laying claim to higher principles and issues of
intrinsic, universal merit? Is it law as power or law as reason? Is it
law as enacted or is it law as principle? In older terms, the former
typically means "law" or lex, and the latter "right"
or ius. For the purposes of this translation, I have endeavored to
maintain Junius' clear and rather distinct usage of Latin between a
lex and a ius by translating the former as law and the latter as right.
For example, Junius does not speak for the most part of a Mosaic ius,
but rather of the Mosaic lex as a system that reflects dependence upon
the archetypal character of God. Thus, in striving for clarity in this
modern translation to arrive at what Junius is doing in the text with
these terms, I beg your patience, dear reader. What sounds perhaps
artificial to a modern ear is actually a rather old, and as it were,
original distinction in the legal vocabulary of the late sixteenth
century. We may speak of the "law of the land" in colloquial
terms and, as Americans do, say that human beings "are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights," and in so doing, we
hearken back to a meaning much closer to the intent of Junius if we
attend closely to the distinction. Furthermore, for example, in this
translation I have carefully refrained from translating commune ius, as
a "common law," and instead employed a "common
right." It is true that one must take care when translating civilis
ius for it frequently means a civil right but also may mean a civil
code. One way, perhaps, to sort through this issue is to note that the
jurisdiction of a lex is generally tied to a regime, a territory, a time
period, and so forth, whereas a ius is universal. Perhaps one road
through the forest is to remember that we moderns are familiar with the
distinction that something may be legal (tied to the lex as it were) but
may not meet the standards of justice or what is just (appealing to the
ius that transcends a particular system). How often have we heard the
complaint, "It may be legal, but it isn't fair!"? That
one statement highlights the conceptual difference Junius generally
employs between lex as system and ius as right or principle of right.
Third, for the benefit of the scholar, the marginalia of Junius
have been included in the translation in several ways. First, all
Scripture citations in the original text occurred in the marginalia as
citations of chapters without verses. These citations appear in this
translation within the body of the text. Second, the marginalia of
specific citations of philosophers, theologians, and jurists are
included in the text as footnotes. Additionally, the Latin or Greek
texts of the citations appear in the footnotes if known and rare. If,
for example, the citation is from Augustine, it is assumed there is
broad enough access to find the work. On the other hand, other quotes of
harder-to-find authors are included in the footnotes. It is this
translator's opinion that Junius is frequently working from legal
florilegia and topical compendia for these quotes. For example, in
chapter 1 when Junius cites Chrysippus, more than likely Junius found
this in an edition of Marcianus, book 1 Institutes, in which the exact
quote of Chrysippus that Junius employs appears. When possible, I have
endeavored to include citations to critical editions of these texts. It
is also worth mentioning that besides reading this text with a copy of
the Christian Scriptures readily available, one should also have a copy
of the Corpus Iuris Civilis available as well. Several critical editions
and translations are available. As to the Latin text of Scripture to
which Junius refers, it may also serve as a helpful reminder that
Franciscus Junius and Immanuel Tremellius published perhaps the most
significant Protestant Latin translation of the Christian Bible in 1579,
which did not drop out of print until the mid-to-late eighteenth
century, running through over twenty-five editions in Geneva, London,
Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Zurich. Junius personally produced three
recensions after the first edition between 1579 and his death in 1602.
Given that this piece was penned in 1592, citations of Scripture that
may sound odd to readers of English translations of the Bible or even to
those familiar with the Latin Vulgate or the Glossa Ordinaria, should be
compared against the second and perhaps third edition of the
Tremellius-Junius Bible.
Finally, in seeking to produce a modern translation, I have sought
to distinguish between homines as human beings or persons and viri as
men, rather than the frequent issue of older translations in which man
stands in for both. That being said, in translating an early modern
theologian who did not think in gender neutral terms or hold to
egalitarian views regarding the sexes, this translator did not greatly
agonize over whether it is appropriate to force a
twentieth-century-stylistic question on a sixteenth-century
author's text. It is my sincerest hope that this will not hinder
the usefulness of this text or its readability but instead convey a
transparency or clarity of Junius' thought to the reader.
Learning from and improving upon Junius' Work
One point that is certainly striking in considering the relevance
of a premodern theological work of this nature is the depth of its
interdisciplinarity. Despite the fact that Junius insists in his letter
to the nobles of Holland that he will stay within the bounds of a
theologian who knows his place, one wonders if there was a judicial
complement who had studied theology, languages, and classics as closely
and with as much distinction as Junius had studied law. This work as
well as Junius' scholarly caliber forms also a counterpoint and
rebuke to overcome the frequent stereotype that humanism and
scholasticism are necessarily antithetical. In Junius, we have one
theologian who was trained as a humanist upon legal and classical
sources, formally cultivated the study of biblical languages and
hermeneutics, contributed to the development of theological systems,
thoroughly engaged in pastoral praxis and confessional development, and
managed to maintain a modest sobriety about his role as a theologian.
Yet, how many opportunities did Junius have to address matters of state
and civil polity whether as diplomat, pastor, or theologian?
Furthermore, Junius and his work stand as a beacon and call for the
interconnectivity, engagement, and distinctness of philosophy, culture,
society, civil polity, and theology.
(1) With respect to the biography of Junius, there is his
autobiographical Vita Francisci Ivnii available in volume 1 of his 1607
and 1613 Opera Theologica (Geneva) respectively, and Abraham
Kuyper's overview of his life and works lists the biographical
sources of Junius' life from the seventeenth century through the
nineteenth century, D. Francisci Junii Opuscula Theologica Selecta,
Bibliotheca Reformata, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: Muller and Kruyt, 1882), x.
One may also consult: Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, ed. P.
C. Molhuysen and P. J. Blok (Leiden: Sijthoffs Uitgeversmaatschappij
1911-1935), Deel 9, coll. 481/483; and Eugene and Emil Haag, La France
Protestante (Paris: Librarie Fischbacher, 1896), vol. 5, coll. 711-26.
See entry "Junius, Franz (du Jon)" by Michael Plathow, in
Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexicon (1992), 3. coll. 885-86.
(2) Jochen Otto, "Duaren, Francois," in Juristen: ein
biographisches Lexikon; von der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed.
Michael Stolleis, 2d ed. (Munich: Beck, 2001), 186.
(3) Haag, La France Protestante, vol. 5, coll. 714-15.
(4) Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 6th ed. (Harper &
Brothers, 1919) 1:504-6, especially note 964.
(5) William E. Griffis, Belgium: The Land of Art: Its History,
Legends, Industry, and Modern Expansion (New York: Houghton Mifflin,
1919), 199.
(6) Brief discovrs envoye' av roy philippe nostre Sire &
souuerain Seigneur, pour le bien & profit de sa Maieste, &
singulierement de ses pais bas: auquel est monstre le moyen qu'il
faudroit tenir pour obuier aux troubles & emotions pour le fait de
la Religion, & extirper les sectes & heresies pululantes en ses
dits pais (1565); Ein kurz Christlichs Bedencken der Koniglichen Wurden
in hispania herrn Philippo &c zu geschicte Wie man aller hand
auffruren vnd enthdrungen so in deren Niderlanden von wegen der Religion
zu fesorgen moge begegnen vnd die Secten vnd Rekereien so des orts
teglichs erwachsen auszrotten (1566).
(7) La France Protestante, vol. 5, col. 716.
(8) It was also during this period in his spare time that Junius
published a translation of the Epistles of John in Latin from Arabic.
(9) Psalmvs Ci. Principis Christiani Institvtio. a Davide Rege et
Viro Dei Perscripta: et Aperta analysi commodaq; ad rationes temporum
nostrorum commentatione a Fr. Ivnio Biturige illustrata:... Ad
Illustrissimvm Principem Fridericvm Iiii. Electorem Palatinum, &c.
(Heidelberg : Hieronymus Commelinus, 1588); Protoktisia, Seu Creationis
A Deo Factae, Et In Ea Prioris Adami Ex Creatione Integri & ex lapsu
corrupti, Historia (Heidelberg, 1589).
(10) Sacrorum Parallelorum libri tres: id est, Comparatio locorum
Scripturae sacrae, qui ex Testamento vetere in Novo adducuntur, 3d ed.
(London: G. Bishop, 1588).
(11) Junius, Opuscula theologica, ix.
Selection from On the Observation of the Mosaic Polity
Franciscus Junius
What is necessary to be observed among the people of God and what
not, after grace and truth has been accomplished through Christ and the
Gospel has been promulgated.
Second Edition, Revised by the Author
Published in Leiden from the Press of Christopher Guyot at the
expense of Joannis Orlers, 1592
Preface
To the illustrious classes, most noble men, and most distinguished
Lords Franciscus Junius, many greetings from the Lord,
Of all the disciplines, O illustrious classes, which are commonly
called practical ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), that is active, the
nature of this sort is that indeed their knowledge and science should
always remain an act truly occupied on certain occasions and in a proper
time. The mind constantly retains their reasoning; the work is
accomplished by the body alternatively acting and resting. If moreover
there is such a practical ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) discipline
among human affairs, which should maintain a kingdom in all things by
its own certain right, surely this is what we call a political
[discipline]. "This is the teacher of the just and honorable; this
the guardian of order; this the judge of the public and private rights
of the common good; in this," Polyaenus says, "are all things;
in this all sound things are preserved; finally if this perishes, there
is nothing in public and private affairs that does not die and become
corrupted." (1)
Even if, by the noblest right, in one consensus of the common
testimony of nature itself and the certain judgment of our reason, we
all attribute the first rank among human affairs to this discipline that
they call either political ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) or legal
([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), yet here human reason is generally
accustomed not only to stagger but also to dash [itself upon the rocks],
partly by the deceptions of a darkened mind, partly from our fallen
infirmity, and partly by individual pursuits blowing each [one of us] in
different [directions]. For certainly nature teaches everyone that there
is an order in human affairs; moreover, [an order] that is especially
required in public ones: but in the determination of that order that is
required, we are all stuck fast in that debacle and depravity of our
nature. Here that adage truly applies, which is commonly and customarily
spoken of "as many opinions as there are heads." (2) So it is
not extraordinary that this evil befalls human beings, whose intellect
sees only a short distance and that dimly, whose reason is darkened,
whose wills vary, and whose judgment is corrupted: For which reason, in
our conclusions and determinations there exists among ourselves an
innumerable [amount] first of changes and then dissensions.
Wherefore if any legislator would be innocent from every vice, who
purely and simply, "as if in a spotless and unembroidered
mirror" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), expressed by his own
laws the method of their own purity, then his law must be considered the
queen of all others. Moreover because not even all, not even one, could
supply this accomplishment, or ever would supply it at this point,
whatever human laws have been supplied by humans, these in their own
kind simply cannot arrogate to themselves the first rank by any right,
because there is always some imperfection in it. Namely, any person in
this very human order, which is now treated, knows practically that no
one can ever track it down and obtain it, except through reason, and
that only by a few, over a long time, and contaminated with a great many
number of errors.
All histories once confessed that the wisdom of the Egyptians
(among whom Moses was instructed) was great, and all the philosophers
from Greece esteemed [Egyptian wisdom] as of the highest value;
generally all those with that name were celebrated by even profane
authors, because they had personally imbibed of the teachings of the
Egyptians. Their excellent principles are found not least among
Herodotus, Diodorus, Siculus, and others. Plutarch also mentions that
worthy commemoration that the rulers of the Egyptians, according to law
vowed that they had sworn to take the lead in speaking of a right: even
if the king himself should command them in judgment to pronounce
something unjustly, that they would not do it. Among the Romans, how
worthily imitated is Caesar Trajan, when, in the presence of his
vassals, handed his drawn sword to the prefect, and is reported to have
said, "Take this sword, and if I have been a good man, use it in my
favor, if an evil one, use it against me." (3) Indeed, however
outstanding those laws of the Egyptians are to others, yet there was an
imperfection in the corpus of them, so that it would be the easiest
thing to evince and demonstrate, I cannot rightly attribute to those the
first place in the political rank.
Additionally, whatever human laws there are whose corpus would have
[any] value, that right [of first place] would worthily go to that which
was compiled by [Emperor] Justinian 1,060 years ago from the records of
the wisest and most prudent of men. Yet even these laws as it were
declare their own imperfection with a clear voice if you should decide
to compare as the jurists do the old law with the new or the Justinian
one (as they say); as well as if you should compare them with, at
subsequent times, other laws, other customs, other modifications,
restrictions, enlargements, and in short the changes of every kind,
which the jurists desired to make in many places.
If, however, we should come to comparing the laws of Moses with all
those others, such would certainly be unjust to God, their author, and
to Moses, a faithful servant in the whole house of God [Heb. 3:5],
unless we would claim that there is a perfection that is divine and
greater in every way (4) in the aforementioned [human] laws. For even if
that touches upon political and legal forenses) matters, many things in
human laws and especially written in the civil code (iure ciuili), which
have the greatest [amount of] agreement with the laws of Moses (which we
predicate as divine), which in the matter to be proved several
outstanding jurists happily exercise our memory, yet these laws of Moses
rank higher than all the rest in their authority, ordination, and
application over a long time. In matters of sculpture, the canon of
Polyclitus ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) is superior, whereas in
political matters, it is the Mosaic one.
For if we would have regard for authority, it is not a human being
but the wisest, most just, and purest God of the very universe and of
everything dwelling in the universe who, as judge, produces these laws
for his house; that is, for the Church, which in all circumstances
obtains from God its perfection of beauty over all created things, so
that we may employ the words of the prophet: "Men endowed with the
slender shade of wisdom, led by the most obscure tracks, the most
depraved fall of wickedness, and the most infected by the danger of
corruption from every side," who, like causes that are imperfect
and insufficient, as they say, can least produce a complete and
sufficient effect of the laws.
If, on the contrary, you would redirect your line of sight to the
nature and application of laws, the latter [Mosaic] laws in their own
ordering and application are so perfect that they lack imperfection. The
former ones can never be that perfect; in fact a contamination
approaches from the imperfect cause, imperfect things, and in the
imperfect method of their processes (actiones). We call nature the
reason of the laws in themselves; indeed, its application, the reason
and accommodation of these very things for those from which the laws are
produced.
For instance, so that we may speak about their nature briefly, what
is better, more obvious, and briefer than the words of Moses? Regarding
which [words], deservedly I will recite that [passage in] Lucilius in a
more gentle way [than he did] because I respect the elegance and dignity
of your station:
What is truer for things in themselves? That is, so joined among
themselves, so agreeable, so united in every part than that is? There is
nothing in these out of place ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]),
nothing out of order ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), nothing
contradictory ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), nothing dissonant
([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) if you should so thoroughly examine
them with a cleansed eye of the mind, all things are proper and without
change ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), as Augustine writing in a
letter to Volusianus most carefully declared.
Concerning its application, indeed what should we say to that which
we daily turn our mind and thought[s] so many times that divine wisdom
excites one's own affections for incredible things? For he adapted
each and every one of these, his own laws, to the race of the Jews
gathered from the number of the rest of the most degenerate human
beings, as human beings were in the nature of things. Indeed he most
providentially accommodated all things in their own mode, to persons,
things, and circumstances, by which it was a body of the children of God
and His very own house of living stones united through grace, when by
innumerable signs and proofs--some transient, others permanent--a
confirmation given in every age [1] concerning the covenant, promises,
and the truth, trustworthiness, and constancy of that divine grace, what
would not wither away by any of the viciousness of human beings, and [2]
concerning the law. Thus, the moral precepts taught most absolutely the
most absolute truth of morals aiming at the proper duties toward God and
human beings. So also the ceremonial precepts [taught] the most absolute
[truth] for the faith of those striving for God through human beings
from this depraved world. So also the judicial precepts [taught] the
most absolute [truth] of order pertaining to cultivating morals and
faith in this republic, which God instituted.
So this is the reason (causa) why the Jews (just as we should
employ the words of Christ in John 5; Matt. 5; John 1) once preached
that they had eternal life in the Law of Moses. This same reason is why
Christ, who was made under the law, constantly taught that he did not
come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. This is the reason why the
apostles always confirmed grace and truth, which in the last times has
been accomplished through Christ, by the authority and presignifications
of the Law, because all should acknowledge that the Law of Moses in its
origin, matter, reason, modes, and finally in all things is divine.
Wherefore, however, pious persons in consciousness of those things
once were led to religious faith and obedience to the Law, so also
whoever was eager for piety and truth taught by God ([TEXT NOT
REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) sensed the authority of that Law and preached it
among all. Not all those studious of this salvific and heavenly teaching
learned to skillfully hold the rudder straight ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]) as if on that open sea. As to the former, because the whole
rationale of the Law is divine, each and every member of that law is
catholic ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), that is, they believe that
[every law] applies universally as well as commonly to all persons,
matters, times, places, and other circumstances as if there is nothing
of a general character (communis ratio) that does not come to light [but
it does]. The latter (because they were confident in the greatest degree
possible even in the authority of Christ and his apostles of its
particular and individual character) concluded that all things in that
legal system without exception and indiscriminately were particular and
now have entirely ceased, and so the authority of the whole Law has
ceased. Both miscalculate ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and
unwittingly conclude from a part of the Law regarding the whole. For
truly, you would conclude neither that the whole person is immortal
because the soul is immortal; nor on the contrary that the whole is
mortal because, with respect to the body, it is mortal. Thus, the
former, as if submerged in the depths, have lost the truth of the
Gospel; the latter, as if shipwrecked on the rocks, have destroyed the
authority of the divine law by the greatest imprudence.
Certainly concerning these commandments that are purely ethical
([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), and dwell in the rationale being
handed down for mores suitable to piety, courtesy (humanitas), and
integrity (honestas), no reasonable person ever seems to doubt very
much. Rather that would be [the conduct] of Ballion or of whatever other
of the most incapable of bipeds, of a person violently abjuring nature,
than of any good man. For when the most certain reason of the just and
unjust agreeable to nature and to the perfection of it has been set
forth in its moral commandments, which all wise men want a reason that
is a person's to [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], that is, their
leading principle of action (if indeed one is truly a human being), what
is that which could be desired in the law by anyone, which advances a
lost reason, restores what has been corrupted, and divinely perfects the
imperfect by saving proofs? Certainly whatever comprises a common law
and reason according to nature and according to grace, which God
introduced to nature from above, that whole is what has been exposited
in the Law of Moses so properly, or analogically, that whoever thinks of
adding something to it from a common right strives to assist the noon
day sun with torches!
Moreover because that common right is a common source of that other
right, which is appealed to in particular, by no means other than that
common sense is the universal source of individual senses, by which we
all customarily perceive sensible things ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
ASCII]). Surely inasmuch as it is unjust if you would search in a common
source of right and reason for a particular right, as if in a common
sense you desired the hearing of the ears, the sight of the eyes, and
the individual functions of the individual [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
ASCII], that is, the individual seat of the senses. It does not belong
to our office that we should seek those things in their source but that
we would derive them from the source, which source God deposited in the
Church.
In the streams leading from the Law, all by their own viciousness,
have all--not just a few--strayed from their office by an alien
authority. For of moral matters, concerning which it is agreed about
that common right, that God did not embed in the law first all the
particular conclusions, then the individual boundaries proceeding from
them, neither for all persons, nor for all things, nor entirely, nor in
every time, but rather from these showed the method by examples of that
law. Moreover, some of these concern human beings and human society,
others God and divine things. For which reason, God exhibited an example
of human affairs by the judicial and political laws, and an example of
divine things in the ceremonial ones. I call it an example and not the
distinctly defined form of all things, which can be required for
whatever matter in human society.
Certainly concerning the ceremonial laws, which had been commanded
for the divine worship, the most serious controversies among good men
arose. For, as I will say nothing about innumerable hypocrites, who for
this reason from the beginning placed the prow and stern (as they say)
of salvation in ceremonies, and in which protesting and prevailing the
prophets and certain pious men before the advent of Christ most
diligently put an end to work; I will say nothing about the Nazaraei or
those destroyers ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) (as Epiphanius calls
them) who wantonly rush into the contrary opinion, abolished all the
ceremonies of the divine law. Who is ignorant of how much has been
contentiously disputed from the advent of Christ concerning the use and
observance of ceremonies? The Jews argued for them, the Gentiles denied
them. Many who became Christians from among the Jews argued for them,
whom the orthodox Fathers called Nazaraei. The apostles as well as
anyone among the Christians who had been made more certain concerning
the truth of Christ and his fulfillment of the ceremonies denied them,
fought for Christian liberty, for edification, and not for destruction.
By these in-roads the Antiochene Church, those of Galatia, and others
were pretty well undermined if God would not have looked out for them by
the most vigilant care and ministry of the apostles. Sacred history
testifies of this (Acts 15), Paul does as well (Gal. 3), as well as
those who follow. "All the way up to today," says Jerome,
"throughout all the synagogues in the Orient among the Jews there
is the heresy which is called the heresy of the Minae and now is even
condemned by Pharisees, whom commonly are called Nazaraei; who believe
in Christ the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, and they say that he
is the one who suffered under Pontius Pilate and resurrected, in whom we
also believe. But they desire to be both Jews and Christians, and thus
they are neither Jews nor Christians." (6) Not from any other
source did so many individual controversies flow, which, by the
importunity of the latter, the ignorance of the former, and the
imprudence of all, exercised the ancient and orthodox Church, of which
sort was that observance of the fourteenth day for Passover, for which
reason they were called the [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or the
Quartadecimani, who by their own oversized commotions ravaged the church
for a very long time. (7) Moreover, these discussions concerning the
legal ceremonies, because the use of the ceremonies had already been
extinguished, were extinguished. God the Father did this, the Lord Jesus
Christ did this, the one who effected grace and truth, which the law
once foreshadowed in the publicly declared ceremonies so that that body
would be most holy, which in the last times he redeemed by his own
blood, so that he may cultivate the truth and grace of that [body] with
such great faith that, with regard to ceremonies, [the Church] may
abstain from fighting and would finally put an end to rending the
members of Christ, and that on account of their own human garments and
superstitious observances ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]).
Indeed, concerning the judicial and political laws, which concern
human beings and their common society, there is not a dispute to the
same degree in the ancient church. For in those first days of the Church
of Christ as in its earliest years, pagan emperors and kings held the
reins of government, as well as pagan rulers, prefects, and magistrates
were each put in charge of their own kind, either by their own merits,
by smoke and favoritism, or by a legitimate question held about those
(as Lampridius relates was done by Alexander Severus), through whom it
was not permitted at all to labor according to the method of exercising
judgment. Wherefore, those most holy ones, in that blooming time that
existed from the experience of the Church that was a result of the
condition of its anxious trial, did not raise this question concerning
the use and authority of the judicial laws of Moses. They were most
wisely busying themselves so that their own piety would be useful to the
Church in every circumstance; not by chance because it would lead the
minds of the pious to vacuous, curious questions, either those that
would oppose the common good or by imprudence would allow it to be
snatched to a foreign act. O what divine hearts! O what wisest souls! O
what admirable prudence! O what dignified sobriety which would bring
into view whatever has been called to the work of the Lord!
Afterward, indeed, the status of the state by the will of God was
altered and Christian emperors were given, at this point, the question
concerning the political law of Moses and its observation gradually
crept into the churches. At which time those wisest and orthodox fathers
seeing that it was necessary to turn this world around without rather
serious uproar (as they say), first carefully avoided secular matters
and the practical matters of life ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) (as
Paul calls it), then relinquished wholesale their own authority to
declare the right (ius) and produce laws (lex). However, if anyone
determined [a matter] contrary to right reason that had been instituted,
which God displayed in nature and Scripture, they either took care that
it was corrected with calm and modest warnings, or patiently (if
something were a lingering, malignant sore [[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
ASCII]] or poorly regulated [[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]]) enduring
it, so that perhaps they would not disturb the common good entirely by
the expectation of one good man. For the recklessness of men frequently
results in this, that while they try to cure the evil of one, they
undermine the good of the republic, and sometimes even of the whole
world. They stated it best that eternal reason is the moderator and
arbiter of human laws, which indeed nature and Scripture teach. Indeed
human laws are a certain emanation ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) of
this eternal reason, which may vary by a singular reason according to
the variety of things, with that eternal law remaining untouched and
thus teaching varieties. Moreover because neither the knowledge nor the
management of human affairs has been commanded, nor indeed do they pay
attention that it is useful for its own function, thus enclosed by the
bars of their own calling, with a calm mind they allowed their authority
and judgment concerning producing laws for these things which pertained
to a human knowledge and management of human society.
We will demonstrate this difference between the common reason and
the eternal law by a particular reason and by human laws, which are
temporary, with a quote of Augustine--albeit a rather lengthy one, but
one especially conducive to the comprehension of this matter.
"Tell me," says Augustine, "whether that law which
is promulgated in letters would relieve people living this life?"
For which reason Euodius says, "It is manifest: namely that
peoples and states certainly consist of these human beings."
Furthermore Augustine says, "What are human beings and people?
Are they of this kind of things, so that they could not perish or
change, and are entirely eternal, indeed are they mutable, and subject
to the times?"
Euodius says, "Does anyone doubt that this race is plainly
mutable and subject to time?"
Then Augustine says, "[I]f the people is quite self-controlled
and serious, and the most diligent guardians of the common utility, upon
which depend the private affairs (res privata), that are lesser than the
public ones (res publica), wouldn't a law be rightly produced, as
it is permitted for people to create their own magistrates, through whom
their own affairs, that is, public ones, may be administered?"
To which Euodius responds, "Right again."
Here Augustine says, "Furthermore, if the same people who had
been gradually deformed, should prefer their own private affairs (res
privata) to public ones (res publica), and would have their votes for
sale, and having been corrupted by those who love honors should commit
control over themselves to shameful and wicked persons, then likewise
rightly if some good man should arise who could accomplish the greatest
amount of things, would he not take away from this people the authority
to give honors and reduce the choice to a few honors or even one?"
"And rightly so," says Euodius.
"Therefore," says Augustine, "there seem to be two
laws contrary to each other, so that one attributes to the people the
authority of giving these honors, the other takes it away; and since
that second one has been carried out in such a way that in no way could
both [laws] simultaneously exist in one state, will we say that either
of these laws is unjust and must not be endured at all?'
To which Euodius responds, "I agree."
"Therefore," says Augustine, "let us name that
temporal law (if you please) which although it is just yet can be justly
commuted for a time."
Euodius nodding agrees, "Yes indeed."
Augustine takes up the subject, "What kind is that law which
is called the highest reason, which must always be obeyed, and through
which evil people merit misery and the good, a blessed life, through
which finally the former which we said are being called temporal, is
rightly produced and rightly changed, can it not seem to some
intelligent person that it is commutable and not eternal? Can it not
sometimes seem to be unjust in order that the evil are miserable? And,
on the contrary, the good are blessed, or that a modest and serious
people would personally create for themselves a magistrate, indeed a
dissolute and depraved man who lacked that license?"
Euodius says, "I see that this is the eternal and
non-commutable law."
Then Augustine says, "Then likewise do you also endeavor to
see that in that temporal law there is nothing just and legitimate that
human beings did not derive it for themselves from this eternal one. For
if that people at a certain time justly gave honors, and again at a
certain time justly did not give them, this temporal vicissitude, so
that it might be just, has been drawn from that eternity, by which it is
always just that a serious people give honors, and the trivial one does
not, does it seem otherwise to you?"
"I agree," says Euodius.
"So that therefore," says Augustine, "I may explain
in words, as much as I am able, the notion of the eternal law which has
been impressed upon us, it is this, by which it is just that all things
may be best ordered. Speak up if you think otherwise."
To which Euodius responds, "I do not have anything which would
contradict the truth of what you are saying."
Thus Augustine concludes saying, "Therefore because this is
the one law from which all those temporal ones ruling human beings vary,
can that one vary in any way?"
Euodius says, "I understand that it entirely cannot, for any
strength, any circumstance, any defect of things would not ever occur
such that it would be unjust that all things are the best ordered."
To this extent the words of Augustine, which we inserted at that
point for a certain discussion because it most evidently contains the
opinion of the orthodox fathers and rightly as well as by a certain
rationale of judging shows to all the correct canons ([TEXT NOT
REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) concerning this whole case. They perceived (so
that I may use the words of [Nicholas of] Lyra) that moral things
remain, because they are from the law of nature, which is immutable. (8)
Judicial things indeed have been excluded, inasmuch as they had the
force of obligating someone in law, even if they can be established de
novo into an innumerable amount, with respect to those things that seem
to have been accommodated to the control of Christians. Therefore,
content in present things, they are not threatened by ancient customs of
law, and, content in their own location, they do not in the least charge
into a foreign one so then they might not think either to Judaize or
like a cobbler beyond his shoe (as they say) (9) to rashly extend their
own judgments.
Moreover even if those most holy fathers, the most wise men, had
publicly demonstrated by their sermons, writings, and example that those
judicial commandments are neither absolutely necessary for the public
nor pertain to themselves and their own function, yet in these last days
people have emerged with a zeal for piety, truth, and doing
righteousness who contend that it is necessary that their use is
integrated into the Christian state and that by divine authority [we]
are obligated to their observance. On the contrary, others who strive
against these people think that generally their very use and observation
must be destroyed with the same obligation by which it was necessary to
abolish the ceremonies prefiguring Christ and to keep them abolished.
Both have zeal, which I praise, but I at least desire that both would
have knowledge and that many good men so inflamed by zeal would desire
with me truth, charity, and public peace.
Thus, we certainly would have gladly laid this labor aside if
either the reason of the public would have allowed us to rest or the
demand of good men who, several times, demanded this duty from us both
for their own sake--that is, of those governing--and of all. It was
their obligation to recuse us from the work. For we have been called to
assist the public in the argumentation of things and in the manner of
writers, which matter--even to have desired though not achieved--is an
abundantly beautiful and magnificent thing. As I will say with Pliny,
"since I especially feel that, with respect to studies, the cause
of those is outstanding, who, although they overcame difficulties,
preferred the usefulness of assisting, to pleasing for the sake of
popularity," and so that they might speak about useful things
usefully, they have spent their own work. (10)
"What now?" someone might say, "Would it not be
proper that you, by the examples of both the holiest fathers whom you
spoke of previously and by the authority of jurists and pious
magistrates be more deterred from this [work] by the argument already
established than at this point being induced by the annoying demands of
others, and perhaps even of the foolish?"
For my part, I am not ignorant of those boundaries which God has
placed around my function, neither of the examples that the orthodox
fathers offered in the Church of God, nor the authority that God has
attributed in this matter to prudent jurists and just magistrates and
would thus be vindicated from audacious and gladiatorial feelings. Yet,
on this question, in my opinion, anyone who would judge by a just
balance its nature and mode as well as its end that even some parts of
this should be judged as our [task]. As a matter of fact, it is the
nature of this question that one should hold part of it as common and
another part of it as singular. The method of it holds itself in such a
way that a theologian describes part of its rules [whereas] the
magistrate applies his authority and coaction to its parts. Finally, the
theologian sets forth the communion of the saints and conscience of
whoever is in this communion. The magistrate sets forth this very
necessary human society and order in that society. Concerning the
former, whoever orders the theologian to be silent, rejects theology. If
any theologian labors concerning the latter, he wastes himself and does
the most serious injury to the God who calls him, who has been called
for the sake of the church, and with respect to this sort of
person's calling: "through being a busy body and meddling in
other's business, it is insatiable presumption" ([TEXT NOT
REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). They are the sorts whom an impudent bribe
([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) would help, the sort that never cease
from [doing these things], unless (as Cicero says) their legs are
broken, which persons, so that the punishment should be equal to the
crime (which once was stipulated by the Twelve [Tables]) I wish that
they were condemned to an uninterrupted vacation! For this reason would
it be just for good men, instructed in a vocation and religiously
constraining themselves in those things by their own office [to do
likewise]? [Would it be just for them] to disguise those things that God
commanded to be set forth in the communion of the saints by his
servants? Are nature, its method, and goal to be neglected because they
are most conjoined with a holy calling? Should the tranquility of weak
consciences (as they are commonly called) be neglected?
Indeed, we have said of this question that there is partly a common
nature and partly a particular one, because first it pertains commonly
to all human beings as human beings, and it pertains to all those who
are in charge, as they have been called to a public office. Next, it
certainly has a certain singular reason because the latter specifically
pertains to a politician and the former to a theologian. As a matter of
fact, according to the principles and reason common to all, whether
formed naturally in anyone or formed graciously in the saints and the
pious, this question and its investigation pertain to all somehow: There
is no human being in common, in the church, and still less among those
who are in charge, whether jurists or theologians, [for] whom it is not
necessary to be imbued with these principles and with this rationale.
For each of us, the heart of a human being is proper, not the hide of an
elephant, (11) so that they may realize those common notions and may not
be stupefied as senseless persons ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). If
a theologian is ignorant of these principles, how would he teach the
conclusions drawn from them? These [principles], by the communion of
nature, are for all human beings, being common among them.
Indeed, among those who are in charge, to some degree it is common
in a more ample way. For from those principles and common notions of all
by certain knowledge, it is necessary that general and specific
conclusions be constructed more than by the common people according to
their own authority for the common good of human society. Thus, it is
fitting to distinguish the magistrates and the jurisprudent more in
these matters than the common people, according to the custom of the
political order, as well as the servant of God according to the use of
the sacred order and the instruction of conscience.
Even so, these very things, in whatever way these may be common to
protectors ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), by their own bolts have
been most providentially shut by God and set apart by boundaries.
Whoever rashly moves them deserves the worst thing possible from the
republic. Why? The Lord would strike with a curse whoever would move the
boundaries of a private field. Is there any Enceladus that can flee the
Aetnean fires of that curse if one should provoke the state? Let them
pay close attention, I pray, whichever of either page in the rationale
of human society they handle according to these bars of their own
vocation. For there are those for their own society of persons that
magistrates rule; there are also their own communion of the saints that
the servants of God at the fore shepherd and who are established by the
best God.
The magistrates construct from the natural principles in the
political science general and specific conclusions and appoint
individual determinations adapted to human society and order, according
to the reason of the eternal law that has been sketched in the nature of
a human being. However many theologians and servants of God there are
who build upon general and specific conclusions by the natural
principles in the divinely inspired science, and, abstaining from
individual determinations accommodated to human society and order (which
are another kind of approach and investigation), they cultivate the
society of the saints and the conscience of whoever is in this communion
by spiritual determinations, according to the rationale of the eternal
law in the word of God and informed by Holy Scripture. By these
boundaries, in my opinion, the whole nature of the latter
administrations is so separated and distant from the former that I could
not be more bewildered at the people who arise within the span of our
memory who are not ashamed to run from the latter administration into
the former and from the former discipline into the latter.
We have spoken about the nature of their functions; let us consider
their method. Therefore, there is a twofold method that is present in
these functions: a common one and a specific one. Even if the rule of
nature has been introduced into all human beings, the rule of grace for
all the pious has been introduced into them for the purpose of their
formation (informatio). Yet it is befitting that those who attend to
public functions surpass the private ones. First, because they are
guardians and administrators of all the laws, as it were of public rules
and not only private ones. Next, because it agrees with their own
authority as protectors ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) of all for a
commendation of the rule, which they determine for others. Certainly
these things are common according to the nature of their function to
both kinds of human beings, those who are in charge of the community
(politia) and of the Church (Ecclesia), for they also publicly display
the rule and have an adjunct authority. Their own authority is just
authority of a magistrate by their own ministry in these things that we
have previously circumscribed.
Yet, the rationale is specific to both orders, as well as the
method also of imposing a rule and of exercising authority. For the
magistrate places his own rule in human affairs concerning his own
[sphere] and by his own authority. A theologian certainly is one also as
well as whoever is a minister of the Word who neither brings his own
law, nor from his own, nor by his own authority but rather brings a
divine law from the word of God himself and by the authority of God of
whom he alone is called an interpreter and messenger. The magistrate
confirms this by gathering the force of the rule and of his own
authority. The latter affirms his own [authority] by teaching and
vindicates gathering force in sacred and divine things by God alone.
These being separate in their rules and authority are plainly unique. If
the magistrate neglects his, he sinks the society of human beings, but
if the theologian or minister of Christ arrogates them, he is either a
wicked servant or a thief in the flock of the Lord and a tyrant!
However, whatever we have said regarding the nature of the
administration of both, and concerning the method, by that degree they
are especially proved because they [each] have an end that is as diverse
as possible. The end that has been set forth for the Magistrate is so
that he may look after human society and the common good according to a
person in earthly and temporal affairs. However, the end set forth for a
theologian is so that he may care for the society of the pious, which we
have spoken of as the communion of saints, and for their salvation in
heavenly and eternal things according to God. According to both of these
ends, for that reason from the beginning there was in these
administrations a nature and a reason most wisely established by God
separately.
Even if in these very boundaries of administrations there is
something common to both, it must be diligently observed by all. For
both the magistrate in his own political order assists his own society
[in] aspiring to the gate of eternal salvation, and so does the
ecclesiastical minister, through the support of human society, and the
influence of a good magistrate. The magistrate rules in this life, the
minister directs through this one to the next. (12) So then it happens
that also of many of their actions there is some communication among
their orders; there is not however any confusion (as the stupid [[TEXT
NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]] and ambitious think). What does confusion
have to do with order? What does light have to do with darkness? I want
one order to be assisted by the other, not killed! Both to be preserved,
not ruined! I desire that each would agree on their own nature, method,
and ends against the foolishness and wickedness of men rashly in the
height of playing and behaving as if they were [sailors] in port.
Moreover, this need is common to jurists and our own: Of the
former, so that they may care for the public order; ours, so that we may
care for the conscience; of which both are treated in this argument. Let
us undertake an equal part for both in common. What is expedient for the
common, let us report of it. I have decided to write upon the prior, not
by chance, because I was asked about it first, but yet having been asked
also by good men who pay attention to the law, secondly those will
supply the things needful (I hope), and what I have spoken of more
deliberately, yet perhaps less popularly, those adduced by my example
will declare it more fully and conveniently. I declare in advance that I
sincerely favor and will favor those who have amply and happily provided
for the public advantage in this cause if perhaps led and assisted by
the example of my trifling efforts. I do not intend to prescribe to the
jurist and magistrate but to report my opinion in this common cause to
those demanding their own political conclusions and determinations,
which are legally human, by relinquishing wholesale, and the divine
conclusions, which are of divine right from the Holy Scripture, by
explaining to struggling consciences or to the less certain.
The argument is serious, difficult, dangerous, and undecided, but
necessary, by which also the consciences of private persons may be put
to rest, and those who are in public authority may more certainly carry
out the duties of their calling in good faith. Wherefore surely I am
confident about all those things that must be done, which useful and
necessary conclusions according to right reason in their own kind and
determinations from conclusions according to their method and
constitution of things will seem to require to be accomplished from true
principles.
This argument indeed, O illustrious orders, because it also touches
upon political matters of which in these parts you most happily put up
with the responsibility and entirely pertain to supporting the
consciences of the pious (as those who are in charge are in charge with
a good conscience and because they yield to the same conscience), they
could obey and beget a good conscience; V A. appears to address ([TEXT
NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and entrust the whole [state] to your wisest
judgment. If (as I hope) you will approve of this writing not so much as
it is my work but as I desire to be on record for your office by which
also your faith in the care of this republic as long as it can be done
may give light, and my obligation toward whatever pious magistrate, and
especially towards V. A., may be made as observable as possible for all
posterity. O illustrious orders, I beseech God the best and greatest
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that He may preserve you safe in his
heavenly grace, be present in your counsels, bless your actions, and may
He grant each city of this region truth with justice and holiness and
felicity for this entire Republic under your protection for as long as
possible.
Leiden, October 11, 1593
(1) Polyaenus ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), there are at
least four different noted persons by this name in the classical and
early Christian period. More than likely this is a citation of Polyaenus
the Macedonian (2d century a.d.), many of whose works have been lost,
the primary one of note being Strategems ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
ASCII]) consisting of eight books. There were at least two noted
editions of the works in the sixteenth century: the 1549 Latin Vulteius
edition, and the 1589 Greek Casaubon edition. Cf. A Dictionary of Greek
and Roman Biography and Mythology, ed. William Smith (Boston: Little
Brown and Co., 1867), 3:442.
(2) quot capita, tot sententiae.
(3) Junius' citation: "Carpe hunc ensem: ac, si bonus
fuero, pro me; sin malus, eo contra me vtitor."
(4) & omni exceptione maiorem.
(5) Gaius Lucilius, (c. 160s-103/102 B.C.), Roman satirist, see C.
Lucilii Saturarum, ed. Charles Lachmann (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1876), 1-25,
30, lines 993-94, p. 108.
Junius paraphrases the text as:
The word lexeis or lexes is of Greek lineage winding its way into
old Latin as lex, lexeos/lexis, and is commonly translated as
"word" or "law."
(6) Marginalia: Epist ad August. Cuius principium, Tres simul ep.
(7) Note the Latin pun here on the name of group and their
oversized commotions: ... ex qua [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] siue
Quartadecimani dicti, qui suis decumanis fluctibus perdiu Ecclesiam
diuexarunt.
(8) Marginalia: In cap. 3 epist. Ad Rom.
(9) Sutor, ne ultra crepidam: The Greek artist Apelles supposedly
asked the advice of a cobbler on the appearance of a sandal in one of
his paintings. When the cobbler extended his critique from the sandal to
other aspects of the painting, Apelles is said to have replied:
"Cobbler, not beyond the sandal!" It was a popular quip for
someone who spoke beyond their competence.
(10) Marginalia: praef. Naturalis Historiae.
(11) This is a Latin pun: Singulos nostrum decet cor hominis, non
elephanti corium....
(12) Magistratus in hac vita regit, Minister per hanc ad illam
dirigit.
Theological Theses
Concerning the Judicial Laws of Moses and Their Observance
Thesis 1: The Law is the ordering of reason to the common good,
established by the one who has care of the community.
Thesis 2: This Law is either eternal--think of the immutable
concept and form
of reason existing before all time in God the leader (princeps) of
the universe--or informed and handed down in time.
Thesis 3: That [Law] which in time is either the natural law or
that which advenes to nature. (1)
Thesis 4: The natural Law is that [which], innate to creatures
endowed with reason, informs them with common notions of nature, that
is, with principles and conclusions adumbrating in a certain
participation of the eternal law.
Thesis 5: That which advenes to nature arises to it spontaneously
or is infused; we call the latter a divine law and the former a human
one.
Thesis 6: The divine Law, which has been inspired by God and
infused in rational creatures informs them with common and individual
notions above nature, for the purpose of transmitting a supernatural end
by a supernatural leading.
Thesis 7: The human law, which humans proceeding by reason from
those laws, accommodated first to common just, honest, useful, and
necessary conclusions, then to particular determinations for the
condition of persons for whose good it is born, or of the business of
things concerning which it is born, and of circumstances which occur to
them.
Thesis 8: There is a perfect example of these in the law of Moses.
For it declared the natural law in moral commandments, the divine law in
ceremonies adjoined to the instructions of grace, the human law by
political and judicial precepts.
Thesis 9: Concerning the natural and divine law suitable among good
and pious people, neither of which can oppose any [of these] without the
most shameful injury against God, nature, all, and thus oneself.
Thesis 10: The opinions concerning the human law and the judicial
precepts of Moses vary, because they have been tempered with human
judgments; moreover, human judgments cannot compose either conclusions
from common principles or individual determinations from particular
conditions that are entirely just for all people at all times for all
things, or evaluate others composing them.
Thesis 11: And certainly the judicial precepts of Moses are divine
in their origin or author, but those things which are spoken about human
laws, the majority pertaining to the judicial precepts of Moses, because
God indeed personally brought these things [to him] but in such a way
that they are still in a human manner.
Thesis 12: As a matter of fact all these laws partly obtain their
own immutability and mutability; the former always obligate, whereas the
latter obligate those under them according to the persons, matters, and
circumstances.
(1) Naturae adveniens: lit. "That which advenes to
nature." The distinction is between a temporal law that is either
internal (lex naturalis) or external to a nature. The sense of advene or
adventitious in this translation should not be understood as implying
something that occurs fortuitously or randomly (one meaning of
adventitious), but rather as something originating external to the
nature.
Concerning the Just Definition and Division of Law
Chrysippus, who once spoke about the law, is said to have described
its highest dignity, utility, and necessity by these words: "The
law is the queen of all of divine and human affairs, which is necessary
to be a guardian for both the good and the wicked, the prince and leader
as well, and accordingly is the rule of the just and unjust, given for
the sake of living beings which are by nature political and inhabit
society with reason, instructing those things which are necessary to be
done, and in truly prohibiting those things which must not be
done." (1) This is the description of the Law given according to
its nature by Chrysippus and others similar to him, or in the same
opinion with him. It is by this law that all mortals--with nature as a
guide and experience as a witness--have been led from the beginning for
the purpose of preserving a certain order in human society, just as they
acknowledged its dignity, utility, and necessity. Moreover when the
saving grace of God dawned on human beings, from which we are called and
are Christians, for which reason Jesus Christ our savior brought more
truth and perfection to the law of that grace, it is necessary for us to
pay attention to him with more dignity, usefulness, and necessity in his
Church, so that we may be preserved by certain laws in our office, not
only as we are human beings, participants in social life and
communication according to nature, but indeed, this is also the case
especially inasmuch we are Christians, admitted to the communion and
possession of heavenly life according to grace, worshipping and obeying
here on earth. For to the extent that we may be Christians, we do not
cease being humans, but we are Christian human beings; so also we must
state that therefore we are bound by Christian laws, not consequently
that we are released from human ones. For grace perfects nature, grace
does not however abolish it, and therefore the laws by which nature
itself is preserved and renewed, restored what has been lost, renewed
what has been corrupted, and hands it over unknown. And so concerning
this holiest and most useful argument of what is about to be said,
however much of the theological rationale is seen to be necessary for
calming human consciences, so that it may be understood what it is that
is treated, first we will establish our speech from the definition of
the law; next certainly by distinct genera of what could be done as
briefly as possible, and we will come to declaring and determining that
specific genus, for the sake of which this labor has been undertaken.
Therefore, we will define the law in this method according to a
certain common and analogical rationale.
Thesis 1: "The Law is the ordering of reason to the common
good, established by the one who has care of the community."
There are certainly other definitions already given by most learned
men: of which sort the Stoics' definition is [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII] that is, "right reason which commands those things which
must be done and prohibits the contrary." And Cicero, who followed
in their footsteps, says that "it is the highest reason, innate in
nature, which commands those things that must be done, and prohibits the
contrary," in this manner making the definition more narrow than
that which the Stoics once taught. (2) But, because things are most
evidently defined by their causes, we preferred that definition to
others, especially when other definitions convey other things, there are
hardly ever more narrow things (which is vicious) because we must define
what is undertaken in this place.
Therefore in this definition instead of that which others name Law
as right reason, which specification is spoken of figuratively, we
prefer to express the genus and difference of law more distinctly,
saying that it is the ordering of reason. For the genus is the ordering
which is an act [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], that is, showing the
perpetual and necessary relation between the one ordering and those who
are under the ordering. Indeed the difference pertaining to determining
the nature and species of law is expressed by the term of reason. For
certainly there are other orderings imported first by nature, then by
the will and appetite of created things; but whatever ordering of reason
there is, it is so tempered that the reason of the one ordering
influences the reason of those who are under [the ordering], and in turn
the reason of these would depend upon the reason of the one ordering, at
last that truly must be called a law. Whatever things are done in any
other way, these are not laws, but must be called customs (instituta),
unless perhaps someone would want to speak [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
ASCII] or equivocally. Accordingly, for the just formation of law, the
ordering certainly establishes the genus, the triple mode entirely
pertaining to the difference of the law truly constitutes a proper and
necessary species of it: of course, the reason of the one ordering, the
reason of those who are governed by the ordering, and that very reason
of ordering intervening between both. If one of these is lacking, it is
improperly called a law. Now truly because a thing itself (res ipsa)
employed in the enumeration of causes is more easily understood, and the
recounting of causes is what will entirely remove all causes of doubt,
let us consider in a few words those things that exist in our definition
of law. Therefore let us call the matter (materia) of law reason, as the
subject and whole work of reason placed in the distinction of the just
and unjust, which work intercedes between superiors which are in charge
and inferiors who are underneath [them]. For even if the law, as it is
an act, is properly attributed to the will, because acts are from the
will, yet because an act here is ruled by reason which prevails over the
will, it is entirely more appropriate that this act is attributed to
reason as the master than to the will as its assistant. In fact, the
form of that act is called an ordering, because it is the nature of all
related things that the very relation intervening between two related
terms should properly constitute the form of the thing that is enacted.
We have expressed the efficient cause in these words:
"established by him who here has care of the community." For,
if someone to whom the care of the community does not pertain should
desire to set these things in order, while shadowboxing ([TEXT NOT
REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), he would foolishly squander his effort in vain.
It is necessary for him to have care of the community, not only by a
just zeal, but also by a just calling into the authority, who has been
established to order concerning the community, whether it is in fact the
whole multitude comprehended in the community or a public person having
care of the whole community by a legitimate calling.
The end is the common good. For even if the law also orders
concerning individual matters, yet the very individual formations of the
law pertain to the common good. First, it is necessary to strive for a
particular common good according to its own proper end. Then, in fact,
because nature itself constantly teaches that all parts of one body are
ordered to the whole; and the reason of one part separately constituted
by the thing itself is imperfect, until it is called back to the
rationale of the whole of which it is a part.
Certainly, this definition of the law properly and simply is
declared concerning every law, which has ever been established among
created things, or furthermore can be established. But yet because this
very name of law is customarily predicated of that highest reason of
divine wisdom which moves and directs all things to a just end, in the
same way also this definition of law must be commonly understood
concerning that highest reason or ordering. Moreover, that law spoken
about analogically and yet not homogeneously ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
ASCII]), that is, of one kind with our laws. Therefore, it is necessary
also that this definition of the law, which we have asserted in this
way, be received in such an analogical way that as these things are said
about God they are understood divinely ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
ASCII]) and as they can be taken by us about God, moreover as they have
been enunciated about created things, properly understood.
Just as the definition of law has been received in this way so also
must that first division be received in that use about which we are
speaking.
Thesis 2: "This law is either eternal or informed and handed
down in time."
For even these two species are not properly speaking of the same
genus; but only referred analogically to the one common head as it were,
although differing in the entire genus. Wherefore also in this division
(which genus the logicians call from one to one [[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]]) one observes first more and less, the prior and posterior to
the nature ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and then also more and
less ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). For the eternal law and its own
nature is prior and by its own infinite virtue entirely surpasses every
mode of natural and human law.
We define the eternal law of God in this way: It is the immutable
concept and form of reason in God, the master of the universe, existing
before all time, without a doubt for the common good (just as it was
previously proposed in the common definition) as its conjoined and
proximate end. For the highest or ultimate and universal [end] is the
glory of God, which surpasses this very universe. In which words, we
have asserted that eternal law is above the nature of all other laws (as
we just now said). For when we call "the immutable concept and form
of reason" the eternal law, we demonstrate that it is pure,
unadulterated act, to which extent God is a single energy ([TEXT NOT
REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), upon which as the universal principle entirely
all things (res omnes vniuersae) depend. Moreover, when we say that form
of reason has been conceived by God and in God for the common good, we
manifestly distinguish the eternal law of God from the rest of the
reason of the divine wisdom acting and occupying itself towards created
things. For the reason of that divine wisdom, which stands forth in
acting, moving, and sustaining created things, is occupied for all time
in all things, but only concerning that reason of the divine wisdom
treated in this place, which he established human beings endowed with
reason in the perception of it; so that those things perceived are
adduced for just obedience in doing just things and fleeing their
contraries in the contemplation of the common good, and which also a
private (as we have previously touched upon) and particular situation.
For which reason by the noblest right that phrase must be asserted for
this law which Chrysippus reasonably predicated concerning the law,
"this is the Queen, Guardian, and prince, as well as the rule of
just and unjust things, to which is necessary that all political and
social living things must be conformed." For this by itself is the
rule; however, I do not present it by an alien communication or
participation. This [law] is eternal and divine, and therefore the
universal principle and exemplar of all other rules. This [law] is
immutable, and accordingly (as we should say with the scholastics) never
ruled by any other law. For the rule applies most constantly to all
others, this one in the same ceaselessly remains, not through some
things here and other things there, and not to other things elsewhere
(as Augustine says) but asserts its own eternity and immutable truth in
God above all things and rules from every mutation and dissolution. To
be sure, why would a rule of all rules not be considered eternal and
immutable, when that law is nothing other than the very wisdom of God
(ipssissima Dei sapientia), determining the reason of the just and the
unjust in all things created according to his own image?
Therefore from this unmoved and constant rule, which is of that
essential, divine majesty, all other rules exist regulated (in such a
way that we say) with regard to created things from this one through a
certain communication and participation, some informed by a certain
tacit way and instinct, others handed down in fact in a certain, open
way, either by the testimony of God or those in whose hands the
authority was [placed]. Thus, for this reason the former one is called
eternal, the latter existed in time, concerning which we should now
speak.
Thesis 3: Of these laws which existed "in time," the
first division according to the principles from which it has been made
is: "some law is natural and others advene to nature," because
whatever there is in created things entirely either has an internal
principle from nature in themselves, or advenes to them outwardly from
some acting, external principle and operating upon them. Whatever it is
whether innate or agnate and adventitious, it is necessary; there is
nothing in human affairs beyond these two seats of principles that can
be thought of by anyone. And for this reason because the law is entirely
present in created things according to the image of God, it is necessary
that it is either innate or it supervenes to this nature. In fact beyond
this distinction nothing can be devised or fashioned.
We define the natural or inborn law in such a way that it is proper
that the common as well as analogical definition of law posited in
principle are necessarily conjoined, because that definition is general
and common to each species of laws to which they can be applied,
pertaining equally. In fact whatever individual [characteristics] are
necessary for definition of natural law as it is natural, we have
expressed in this way.
Thesis 4: "Natural law is that which is innate to creatures
endowed with reason and informs them with common notions of nature, that
is, with principles and conclusions adumbrating the eternal law by some
sort of participation." [Those principles and conclusions]
certainly remain constantly, just as those things also pertain, which we
have placed in that highest definition, to this natural law. For the
material justly and unjustly pertains to reason: the form consists in
the ordination, the efficient cause is God the author of nature, to whom
pertains the care of this universe, but especially the care of human
beings. Finally, the end is the common good. But in this specific
outline there are three individual things that we most diligently desire
to be observed in the natural law. These things are: the principle,
which is spoken of as innate to creatures endowed with reason; the
action, which informs these creatures with common notions of nature; and
the mode of that law and of actions (think of this because by a certain
participation they adumbrate the eternal law).
And in fact concerning the singular and proximate principle,
because it is agreed upon among all, we ought not to speak about several
[principles], provided that they would observe individually, one is it
is treated concerning the common principle absolutely or universally,
concerning which we spoke about in the common definition (moreover that
is God), the other is if it is treated concerning the common or
individual and internal principle, which we call nature, or rather
actually ours.
Indeed the work in action of the natural law even if it is
enunciated by all indiscriminately, yet it has not been equally
perceived by all in every age. In fact because nature's twofold
rationale is revealed in the Scriptures, one of integrity in which our
first parents were created, the other depraved, into which we have
fallen by the same, and we have followed. There is no doubt that in
integral nature the natural information and their common notions
occurred in some other way, and now in this one it has been corrupted.
Indeed because nothing now attains to the present business to discover
the law of that primitive and uncorrupt nature and that information,
when that distinction has been omitted, well then, let us consider in a
general way that work of nature.
Therefore, there are two kinds of common notions (which the ancient
philosophers used to call [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [i.e., common
notions] or [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [i.e., preconceptions]):
one, regarding the end to which we act by the natural law; the other,
regarding those things that pertain to the same end. Moreover, the end
of that practical reason, posited in the just and the unjust, is their
own good and for this reason it is the first and highest precept of the
natural law; the good, as the end of nature, must be pursued and done;
evil must be avoided. In fact, notions pertaining to that are of three
kinds, just as there is a triple order of inclinations distributed in us
by nature. Of these, for instance, some are universal, by which whatever
substance is brought to the good according to its nature, applying those
things that are suitable for its own conservation, and repelling those
things contrary to the conservation of the same. Others, common to
ensouled beings, which nature has taught all living things so that
individuals serve the interests of the propagation and conservation of
their own species, of which sort are the conjunction of a husband and
wife, the education of children, and similar offices. Finally, others
are particular to a human being, according to the nature of [their]
reason, by which they surpass other ensouled beings, by which a human
being inclines first to the knowledge or cognition of God and of all
things, then for establishing life with nature as their leader, so that
one may achieve the good. Therefore to these inclinations God added also
the common notions of nature so that a blind man as to a certain extent
is a human being is not plundered [of these], and God has impressed
[these] in each human being, which would be the law for naturally
inclining a human being to those things, so that a human being, as one
individual substance, would discover their own being (so that we are
speaking in this way), just as an animal is informed concerning their
own species so also a human being truly is informed with reason
concerning their own cognition and life.
Indeed of these notions, which we affirm are commonly endowed to
human nature, we have entirely stated as two parts, of which we
designate one by the name of common principles and the other of common
conclusions. We call these principles, which are known through
themselves, are immovable, and (as the scholastics call them) are
indemonstrable, that is, (as the Greeks have said it better) are [TEXT
NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [that is, are not reached by demonstration
themselves], just as, for example, the principle of knowledge that is
innate to the mind is God, in life it is conserving our being ([TEXT NOT
REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), our species, and justice. We call those common
conclusions, however, those things which natural reason proceeding by
the light of nature constructs from principles: that God must be
worshiped, that our life, our species, and the supports of justice must
be procured. Thus for the very work of nature, whether integral, which
we were speaking about previously, or depraved, with which we are now
concerned, that holy eye of the world most suitably provided for a human
being in the natural law, whereas he has written the principles, means,
and end of nature with such great suitability in the minds of each
person, and the one leading from the principles (which generate those
natural inclinations) to the conclusions most suitably proposed a just
end, to which we all have been most equally brought by nature as the
leader.
However, the mode of those notions and actions of the natural law
changed to our greatest evil. For that first mode in integral nature
holy and perfectly conformed to the eternal law according to the mode of
nature, and it adumbrated that [eternal law] by a certain, perfect
participation. Moreover I call it perfect, not according to the mode of
that perfection which has been perfected in the eternal law by divine
perfection and is immutable, but according to the mode of human nature,
in which just as the image of God was perfect according to the
perfection of the human condition as the image of God, not however as
God, so the natural law was a shadow that eternal law according to the
perfection of our nature, as a shadow, not as the body and substance of
it. Where however the particular natural law in a human being was absent
from participation and conformity to the eternal law, that more perfect
law was the natural one, just as now on the contrary, by which it is
absent from that eternal law by far, that natural law present in us must
be called such imperfectly. And so this is the reason why in defining
the natural law we prefer to say that it adumbrated the eternal law by
some sort of participation, because it did nothing for what has been
established, if in this passage we would treat a perfect or imperfect
natural participation according to the mode of our nature, seeing that
neither the imperfect nor perfect nature of a human being perfectly
secured or participated in the eternal law according to the mode of the
[eternal] law itself, but only to the extent that it had adumbrated [the
eternal law] in itself according to the mode of our nature. Thus far
concerning the natural law; now let us pass to that which supervenes
upon the natural [law].
It was necessary to develop two approaches to the natural law, so
that it refers to the human race first according to this our present
life, then to that future one. For because the natural law is of common
things, however, let us each occupy ourselves with those common things
in particular and individual things; it was necessary that the other
adjunct of natural law be applied, according to which particulars and
individual things are directed to the common law. Truly no human being
living--even according to integral nature--would have become cognizant
of supernatural life and grace (which leads to life) by natural law or
even would gain [supernatural life] naturally. It was necessary that the
grace of God produce a law superior to nature. In both cases there is
our imperfection. In fact, because the natural law is imperfect in us
and we also struggle from such great imperfection and infirmity that to
which we arrive to a greater extent at individual things, consequently
more fully we descended into base and unworthy failures from that
natural law. It must be seen of necessity so that certain things just as
fences and barriers were placed around us as a human help so that we
would not rashly wander from the natural law. Moreover because God
graciously decided to exalt us above nature, so that we might be given a
supernatural and eternal perfection in Christ Jesus, also it must be
seen that in God the author and leader, who is the way, the truth, and
the life, we would have that law of the way, the truth, and the life.
Thesis 5: We have expressed this distinction in evident words in
the fifth thesis saying, "That Law which advenes to nature" or
to the natural law, "either originates it or is infused."
Moreover, originating is nothing other than nature, protruding as it
were, approaching to that natural law which we mentioned a little while
previously; infusing is nothing other than the heavenly principle over
us all and derives our nature in us. From this, moreover, it entirely
follows that, just as the thing itself is an off-shoot ([TEXT NOT
REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) or a budding sprout that is inferior to the
trunk from which it sprang and upon which it depends. So, also, that law
of nature that arises is inferior to that natural law, and is ancillary
to the same. However, on the opposite side, that higher one which
advenes in a heavenly way is the arbiter of the natural law wherefore we
call the latter the divine one, as it is from the one God; the former we
call human law, as it is from human beings, a public order from the code
of that natural law and the common necessity for restraining them.
We define the divine law in this way:
Thesis 6: "The divine law is that which, because it was
inspired by God and infused in rational creatures, informs them with
common and individual notions on top of nature for the purpose of
transmitting a supernatural end by a supernatural leading." In fact
we previously spoke about this definition, pious readers must be
reminded that we are treating the divine law according to its substance
and genus, not however according to any of its external forms as it has
either been enunciated in the spoken word or expressed in legible
writing. For whatever has been enunciated or written by the authority of
God, then that indeed is of the divine law, but it must not be
necessarily asserted for the whole substance of the law or the divine
law in general and universally embraced. Therefore on that account we
have distinguished the latter divine law from the former eternal law,
whose nature we have described above, because it is not the same as the
eternal law, but is proximate and most closely associated with it.
Indeed the eternal law is divine law; more correctly (if anyone would
attend properly to the thing) it is more divine than this very one which
in this place we call divine. For the former one is divine in all modes,
the latter is divine in principle and according to a certain mode only;
the former is essential to the divine majesty and is therefore
incommunicable (for what essential of deity could be communicated to
created things?), we participate in the latter by a gracious
communication. But we call this the divine law in this instance with
qualification [in a certain respect] (as they commonly call it), (3) not
however simply, as in a simple mode that eternal law is divine. For here
we do not treat the divine law simply, but with a circumscription or
certain proximately preceding determination, since we have spoken about
the law that advenes to nature producing it spontaneously or infusing
it. From which words we have plucked that out not only that the eternal
law as essentially divine, incommunicable, foremost, the rule of rules,
and never ruled by another rule (as we have previously said) is treated
of here, but that speech about the properly divine law is accepted; [a
divine law] that advenes to nature and time, is not essential but
adventitious; is not incommunicable, but communicated; is not the
foremost rule of all rules, but nevertheless proximately pertains to
that foremost rule, inasmuch as with respect to its image it has most
certainly been given by God, so that by it we may be drawn to the
contemplation, cognition, and admiration of that eternal law. For that
[eternal law] is the rule of all [rules] according to the measure
(modus) of divine majesty, which is infinite. The latter rule is [a
rule] of humans according to our little measure (noster modulus) by a
certain measure, to whom God accommodated his own revelations and
communications by a little measure.
Therefore, this divine law ought to be defined in a certain way, as
we have done in circumscribing the natural law. We have posed three
things which pertain to determining this law properly and specifically:
its principle, action, and mode.
We expressed its principle in these words: "what has been
inspired by God and infused in rational creatures," also the
actions for those, "it informs those [actions] by common and
individual notions above nature," and finally the mode for those,
"for the purpose of transmitting a supernatural end by a
supernatural leading." And certainly in the first place regarding
the principle is agreed among all, to which even nature witnesses. For
just as the principle that God exists is natural in us, so also from
this principle there is a natural and most certain conclusion that God
acts according to that which he is; God speaks and communicates his
speech according to his mode with his own creatures. Since these things
are so, necessarily it is proper that we circumscribed the mode of that
communication or the mode of the acting principle by the words of
"inspiring" and "infusing" so that at least in some
way we would understand the principle of divine communication with human
beings. Moreover, in every communication a twofold mode is observed: (1)
how the communication proceeds from an agent, and (2) how it comes to
others and is perceived by them. The mode of procession, or how the
divine law proceeded from God, is demonstrated when we say that it has
been inspired. For thus we teach, with Scripture as our witness, that as
God is spirit, so he also acts and speaks in the spirit; it is required
to seek nothing according to the flesh, or the corporeal mode simply
speaking in this whole action of God. Moreover as it proceeds from the
divine law, so also it proceeds to us, who, because we are constricted
vessels, inept to perceive the plenitude of his revelation, consequently
we gain a fuller kindness from God, because he infuses his own law by
the same spirit, and gradually and instilled it in our spirits by his
own power (virtus). For the natural law ingenerates its own precepts
(praeceptiones), and human law commands in a corporeal way, but the
former one is inspired and infused by the spiritual mode of divine
grace.
Moreover, it is necessary for this divine law to be present in us
in some way, because "it informs us with common and individual
notions above nature." We have previously explained the two genera
of notions and defining natural law, namely as (1) the principles and
(2) the conclusions arising from the principles by ratiocination. Also,
no good man would deny that the same rationale is observed by the grace
of God which communicates his law. For there are the supernatural
principles that have been inspired and infused by a supernatural virtue
from the Lord, the conclusions shown to us from the same principles, and
we who believe in a supernatural way. For even if by natural law the
principles and conclusions that are natural according to human reason
are present in human beings, never the less it is necessary that other
principles above nature be inspired and infused by God, so that we may
know that end to which we have been ordered above nature, and the truth
which certainly would lead to that end. The end is God, the end is [TEXT
NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or incomprehensible, unless he personally
would show it as it must be comprehended by us. The truth which would
lead us to that end could not be known by anyone through nature or by
the strength of nature, indeed particularly with respect to the darkness
of ignorance and the abyss of sin in which our nature has been immersed.
For if our intellect (as even the most outstanding philosophers once
acknowledged) holds itself in such a way according to the most manifest
things of nature as the eye of a little owl does to the light of the
sun, and accordingly the truth of these things investigated by reason,
we do not perceive unless by a few people and that after a long time,
and thoroughly mixed with the most number of errors possible. What, I
ask, would we say about the attainment of that supernatural end and the
knowledge of that truth? This indeed is not the light of the natural
knowledge but the light of the superior knowledge, by which light it is
necessary that each of us in this infirm nature be illuminated by that
divine inspiration and infusion, which is done so that we may grasp the
principles of that superior light and knowledge.
Moreover of these principles and conclusions beyond nature, which
God drives and excites in us, the mode has been established by the
twofold grace of God. For it both commonly exhibits the proofs of
heavenly grace and individually by his spirit informs his own in a true
consciousness of the divine law. And for this reason just as by their
very nature a human being is endowed with a double sense, commonly by
the natural law, as (for example) "you shall not murder," and
individually by the testimony of conscience "but you have
murdered" (for of this witness, as Paul says, individually it
accuses or excuses someone) so also was it necessary for God to employ a
twofold testimony, by which he might inform us. The first, by common
notions of the mind, the other, by individual notions in the conscience,
so that the use of the divine law would accomplish in us by that most
common salvation, sometimes even by an individual witness and revelation
of that, applied ordinarily or extraordinarily. And so we have
established the mode of these actions as best and suitably to the truth
as possible, since we might say that by these actions creatures
"must be transmitted to a supernatural end by a supernatural
leading." For just as the acting principle in us for the
information and cognition of divine things is natural, so also it is
necessary that the supernatural principle by which we are led into
obedience of those preceptions and notions act in us, whose acting
principle in us and supernatural leading which moves us is its efficacy,
so that by its strength alone--not by any faculty of our nature--we may
be transmitted to that supernatural end, no differently than a javelin
is moved and transmitted to its proposed target by a javelin thrower.
Therefore it follows most certainly, which we said in defining the
divine law, both that its principle is supernatural and also a
supernatural substance, work, and action, and likewise its mode and end
transcend nature, which matters not even the former integral nature in
which the first human being was created would have secured it by its own
strength, but only by a divine communication and operation of grace. How
much less in our misery, by which disaster of ignorance and sin it would
have been lain prostrate?
Thesis 7: It remains that we should consider human law that we
define in this way: "Human law is what human beings produce
proceeding by reason from those laws, accommodated first to common
conclusions as just, upright, useful, and necessary, then to particular
determinations to the condition of the persons to whose good it is
brought, or whose matters or business concerning which it is brought,
and of the circumstances which occur." Moreover, in this
definition, just as we likewise have shown in superior [laws], those
things are not repeated which have been posed in the common law in that
first definition, but those things are almost only applied, which make
for constituting the distinction and species of this law. Wherefore
indeed first it must be remembered about this law, as concerning
superior ones, that there is also the ordination of reason to the common
good, established by the one who has care of the community. But in this
human ordination a special circumscription from three places must be
especially sought, of course from the principle, action, and mode of it,
as we have demonstrated was done in the nearest preceding definition.
The principle of the human law is distinguished in two modes from
those about which we have previously spoken. For neither is essential to
God as that eternal one, nor is simply by nature, as that one which we
call natural, nor is by God, as that divine one which we described in
the last place, but it is from human beings, from which it is called the
human law, and human beings bear it proceeding from the common principle
of the laws, what we call reason. But yet human beings bear this in such
a way by which it is an authority, that human law as if it has been born
of anteceding laws, not however comparing with those the principle as if
[it were] immediate, the authority, and its dignity, which distinction
we were proposing with evident words, saying, that human law is born by
humans, when they proceed by reason from those other preceding laws. For
the proximate rule of human law is twofold: one innate, which we call
natural law, the other inspired, which we call divine. Moreover, these
two laws proceeded from the eternal law, as from its own immutable
archetype. Therefore from these sources, human law proceeds. The latter
is the birthplace of the former, from which if a law wanders, it is
degenerate, unworthy of the name of law, and if by the same name ([TEXT
NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), or in general, it is called (as they say)
equivocally.
Moreover of the actions or works of that law, there are two genera,
which we have expressed in our definition by these words:
"accommodated first to common, just, honest, useful, and necessary
conclusions; then to particular determinations." For either from
innate principles, which are taught by natural law, or from inspired
[principles] which are taught by the divine law, streams ought to be
led; from those two sources, entirely these two kinds of actions proceed
and flow, think conclusions and determinations agreeing with those
conclusions. As a matter of fact, from both of those laws, these two
streams are led in two ways: first, when from common principles certain
laws are derived by the ratiocination of our mind through the mode of
conclusions, just as from a common principle, no one strives to be
afflicted by evil; the conclusion follows therefore one must not murder,
commit adultery, steal, and so forth. The other, through the mode of
determination, as when from that common conclusion that whoever would
murder, commit adultery, and so forth must be punished, the
determination of this or that punishment exists by the force and
authority of human law, for example, of a more atrocious or trivial one
as by noose, sword, fire, stoning, fines, and similar things. Moreover
by these conclusions which human law defines, because they have some
force from the natural law from which they are derived, we have added
two attributes in the definition: The prior is what are called common
conclusions, of course so that they may be discerned from particular
conclusions and an individual right, which pertains least to the nature
of human law, but rather to private law (priuilegium), as it is properly
called by the Latins. By us, however, it was not our intention to speak
about private law because it is attached to the specific, for it does
not seem to properly pertain to the rationale of the science. Later, the
attribute is set aside from abundance (as they commonly say), when we
have said that the just, upright, useful, and necessary conclusions are
produced from human law. For otherwise, this very attribute must be
entirely understood from this, which we have said that human law is born
from human beings proceeding by reason. Reason, however, does not
produce any conclusions in itself, or for anyone it commands, unless
what ought to be most closely connected with right, honesty, usefulness,
and necessity.
The other work of human laws we have expressed in the term of
determinations. Moreover, we call determinations that part of human law,
which circumscribes whatever of those natural conclusions by specific
(as we call such) boundaries, not by the authority of nature, but by the
judgment rather of the most wise persons, the common right of nature
specifically in the mode of accommodating individual things, just as we
were saying previously in the example of punishments. From which it
happens that those particular determinations would not obtain from any
natural law, but from its own human force alone.
Indeed, of these actions and operations of the human law, a mode is
posited in those things that we call a just proportion (commoditas): the
object of which just proportion are in three genera (unless my mind
deceives me) for the sake of specific determinations [of] difference.
For either they are primary objects whose good is seen by natural,
divine, and human law, or as secondary objects which are ordered to the
former ones as to their own end, or finally they are accidents, by which
both of those generally are customarily clothed and change in a certain
way. The first of this kind are persons, whose laws are born to the
good. The second of this kind are things, matters, and deeds, from which
laws are born. In the third are counted circumstances, first which
necessarily accompany persons and things ceaselessly, as are time and
place, next those which vary through vices and by a perpetual
succession, such as mode, causes, instruments, and similar things. For
when the condition of persons, things, and circumstances of all would
vary first in themselves, then also among themselves, equity demanded
that by human law concerning those individual things, one might take
head suitably to nature and the public order, just as in the following
examples produced from the law of God will be manifestly demonstrated.
(1) Chrysippus ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 279-206 B.C.) was
a Greek Stoic philosopher. For his work on ethics, see Stoicorum Veterum
Fragmenta, ed. Ioannes ab Arnum (Leipzig: B. G. Teubneri, 1903) vol. 3,
77. The quote cited by Junius in Greek reads:
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]
(2) Marginalia: De legibus, 1.
(3) Sed legem divinam hoc loco secundum quid (vt loquuntur vulgo)
appellamus, non autem simpliciter. The Secundum quid is a logical
specification literally meaning "according to something." As
Junius points out by his further explanation, this must be understood as
a qualified example not summative of the class. In modern logic, it is
common to refer to the fallacy of hasty generalization as a secundum
quid or properly a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, although
formally they are distinct. A hasty generalization in modern logic is
moving from a small statistical sample to a broad generalization and
represents an error of scale, whereas classically the secundum quid is a
neglect of proper qualifications in definition. Junius is carefully
specifying and nuancing his definitions in order that the reader may
avoid the pitfall of the latter fallacy, which if perpetrated here would
collapse what he is calling divine law in a particular manifestation or
circumstance into the eternal law that is referring to one of or a
cluster of God's incommunicable attributes. In fine, such a fallacy
would neglect the relationship between the incommunicable archetype and
the communicable ectype as respects the eternal law and the divine law.
Concerning the Law of Moses and the Substance of It in General
After we briefly explained about the laws that are common, it seems
to demand of us a right rationale, in order that we may consider the law
of Moses, on account of which this writing has especially been
established. We commonly call the law of Moses those five books written
down by Moses at the command of God and deposited in the sanctuary by
those who serve the church and most religiously maintain it. In these
books are contained some descriptive things ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
ASCII]), things placed in the narration of human deeds and of divine
promises, other conventional things ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]),
or things pertaining to the substance and mode of the law. We especially
desire these things to be understood by the appellation of the Mosaic
law in this our case, which pertain to that moral ordering of reason,
which we have previously circumscribed, not to the narration
comprehended in those books of matters previously done or of promises.
Thesis 8: "Therefore, in this law of Moses," that is, in
that legitimate part that is diffused through those five books as blood
through the whole body, we have established, supported by the truth and
authority of God, that it is "a perfect example of" all
"those laws" about which we have been speaking. An example is
demonstrated in this way: These things have been done according to the
form and mode of one or several examples. These examples are said to be
the law of Moses that has been made according to the example of the
eternal, natural, divine, and human law; therefore, it is an example of
these.
It will plainly establish that this is an example of the eternal
law if we should show that it is an example of natural, divine, and
human law, because the eternal law is an immutable example of all of
these, and these in turn are an example of the eternal law.
Moreover, the law of Moses is an example of the natural law, most
suitably expressing the common notions of nature endowed by the natural
law. The principles and conclusions of the natural law, that is, those
common notions of nature perfectly expressed in the law of Moses that in
the nature of man have not only been corrupted but also have existed in
the integral and original (primigenia) [nature]. In our corrupted nature
there are the same common notions, which were previously in the integral
one, but, just as that very nature has been corrupted by the deed of our
first parents, in whom was the principle of our nature, in the same way
the notions and principles of this nature as well as its conclusions
received the defect of corruption and depravity. Moreover, all these
principles that now in us have the highest degree possible of depravity,
those things were once integral in our first parents according to the
perfection of our nature by the faculty of that law that we call natural
(as the apostle teaches in Romans 2). I asserted these things are
vindicated from corruption by the highest perfection in the law of
Moses, and, according to the integral [nature], they are restored
against every impiety and injustice of human beings suppressing the
truth and righteousness. Finally, they have obtained their own perfect
life and dignity in themselves by a perfect declaration of the law. We
can confirm this moral perfection by most evident examples, and Christ
in Matthew 5 is an interpreter and witness greater than every exception,
asserting that the perfection of the natural law has been declared in
the law of Moses. One example at present would suffice concerning that
vengeance that they call particular. This corrupted nature of ours
approves so much of vengeance that even certain ones of the greatest
philosophers (I except Plato and other minor ones) believed that the
right [of vengeance] proceeded from the natural law, and Aristotle
enumerates it among the works of magnanimity. This is a work of the
corrupted nature, whose law of nature is so corrupted that now that most
pernicious evil seems to be present from the natural law. Indeed,
awakened from the torpor of our nature, and called back to the pure
sources of that nature, one perceives that such vengeance is adverse to
the law of nature because the principle of the natural law is common so
that we would not curse anyone. From this principle exists the
conclusion that not even the one who has undertaken the offense must be
cursed, neither the person wrongfully charging against us, nor the one
fallen through our own particular vengeance and being driven further
into evil. Moreover, this law of Moses so perfectly asserted this (Lev.
19) that nothing could be stipulated more clearly or evidently. It is
also generally said in the law, "you shall not avenge," and
especially that private and diabolical vengeance is continuously
prohibited in such a way that not even to one's own donkey or beast
of burden by which we are offended is one allowed to damage by
one's desire for vengeance. Thus, God preferred to call back our
corrupted nature from that miserable and ruined corruption to its
integrity by the law of Moses (Ex. 23; Deut. 22) and revive the
preestablished example of natural law.
Moreover, as there is a perfect example of the natural law in the
law of Moses, so also let us confirm that there is [a perfect example]
of that divine law by more evident arguments. Because the divine law is
supernatural proceeding from God, the law of Moses is that very law that
God allotted to his own church for those times so that he might set
forth supernatural proofs of grace, first by clear commands then also by
types and ceremonies, nor was there formerly any other law given by God
or afterward confirmed by the testimonies of Christ himself and of the
apostles. From this [point], we have entirely established that [to be] a
perfect example of that divine law, which from the beginning God
graciously communicated to his church for this reason, just as by the
most certain symbol of that divine and supernatural law, on which God
most frequently and in many ways bestowed a supernatural testimony.
Moreover, concerning the example of human law, what is there
necessary to say now? All human institutions seem to exist as much as
possible in the law of Moses, which flow forth not from the source and
principles of nature simply, nor from the divine law, but are
accommodated to human and political conditions. Therefore, it must also
be noted that the entire political and forensic temperament of the genus
was established in the law of Moses by God. Moses with such great
reverence always abstained from his own judgments and authority so that
even in minor matters he consulted God and depended upon his authority.
Finally, these very laws were never recorded in the authentic book of
the church except by the singular command of God. Therefore, who would
not see that a human law and political and judicial examples has been
declared in the law of Moses, and the latter is an example of the
former?
Thus, in fact, we believe that the examples set forth in the law of
Moses were in the mode of perfection, which could be comprehended by
people at that time, and for this reason the law of Moses is not only an
example of those laws, but we most piously affirm [that they are] a
perfect example [of law]. When we say that it is perfect, however, we do
not understand by that perfection that the law of Moses is perfect as we
call God perfect, to whom nothing could be added and whose perfection is
infinite in all ways, but we understand this perfection [in the sense]
in which there is nothing imperfect that could be taken away, in which
whatever there is, is perfect being free from imperfection, or (so that
we may speak more plainly) we understand it as a limited perfection (as
they say) according to a moderated mode of the thing that is delivered
and of those things by which it is handed down. Whatever is in the law
is perfect ..., yet that very thing that is perfect in the law is more
perfect in the gospel because the gospel pertains to the fullness of
times. The mode of created or communicated perfection is twofold in all
matters that are liable to mutations: one is of a perfection absolutely
speaking and the other comparatively speaking. We call that an absolute
perfection in which nothing [more] may be desired that pertains to
constituting the nature of a thing as just and full. Indeed, we call
this perfection comparatively in this place that according to the order
of nature tends by certain degrees to that absolute perfection. For
example, a man in an upright age has a perfection of his own nature
according to its mode; indeed a boy has a perfection of his own nature
according to his rank, which perfection if compared with the state of
manhood is an imperfection; if it is considered in itself, it must be
called perfection, but nevertheless it is born by nature to a greater
perfection, just as it is customary that every imperfect thing with
respect to time is prior to the perfect and always strives to perfection
by the law of its own nature. For which reason moreover perfection of
mutable things is successive (as they say), so also is the [perfection]
of the proofs pertaining to those things. A boy is taught principles in
one way, men are taught the perfection of the science in another, even
if both modes of teaching have one perfection according to their
principles and seeds. For this reason the law of Moses according to its
principles contains the same perfection that we believe is contained in
the gospel, yet in a posterior mode of perfection because it is of
minors as if a tutor has been given so that they might rise to a more
perfect teaching. Here there is that mode of perfection according to
which we call the law of Moses a perfect example of the natural, divine,
and human law so that it hands down whatever principles of that law
perfectly by the thing itself or by his own example and lacks every
imperfection, seeing that the perfect wisdom of God ordained it so that
it would convey God's adolescent church to the perfection of the
gospel.
Moreover, because we say that a perfect example is handed down by
that law whether in the thing itself or in the example, we affirm that
by certain counsel, because the ectype ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN
ASCII]) is in fact an example of the natural and divine law (that is, an
example from the type of those things and an immutable rule by the
goodness and thoroughly unsearchable wisdom of God) indeed an example of
human laws is not the ectype ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) but the
antitype ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), not fashioned by Moses from
the rule of human laws but consequently communicating with them because
all human laws are examples of those [ectypal laws], patterns, or types
of other laws not necessary. Therefore, even if this example must be
placed before other examples of human laws, because it is perfect it
corresponds with all good things in every genus, which praise no one can
attribute so certainly to other human laws because this one has been set
forth, confirmed, and sanctioned by God with a solemn witness; however,
those others have not.
Thesis 9: Moreover, of these laws, I assert that the authority of
the natural, divine, and human [ones] are observed to vary. Of the
former, I say that the authority of the natural and divine law is
posited among good and pious people without any controversy, seeing that
their authors entirely vindicate both from all controversy, doubt, and
suspicion. Nature proves the natural one; God proves the divine one from
which authors their names have been assigned. Moreover, all human beings
sense and acknowledge that nature testifies of its own law, evil persons
oppose them (snatched away in their own individual pursuits), and the
good cherish them. In fact, most generally sense God's testifying,
and only the pious perceive this most effectively through the
communication of the Spirit. Since these things are so, we have most
truly established that "neither can it be opposed by anyone without
the most shameful injury against God, nature, everyone, and thus against
oneself." How does one who opposes his law not cause injury to God
when God is the one universal principle of nature and of all things that
are in nature and of the common and individual principle of grace in his
own Church? In fact, would not a person be injurious to his own nature
who attempts to uproot the law given by nature and impressed in the
minds of all? Could one be pronounced just among any human beings who
afflicted God and nature itself with the most atrocious affront by
violating those sacred and inviolable laws? Finally, could it be
supposed that a person would always be just toward oneself, who also
deprived himself of his own principle, in whom he lives, moves, and also
exists and would forget all things as if its outlines most evidently led
and exposited in the natural and divine law? If of these laws there is
such great authority, it cannot be doubted by anyone that the law of
Moses is by the same authority as it hands down the natural and divine
law, renewing the antiquated principles, restoring what has been lost,
communicating the unknown, and revealing the divine in a human way.
Thesis 10: "However, of the human law and the judicial
precepts" that are in Moses, it is not marvelous if "opinions
vary" or that concerning its authority it is insufficient among us.
For when the condition of human beings will vary as much as possible as
if it were floating indefinitely, then the judgments about their
conditions will vary and then human laws will vary according to the
condition and judgments of human beings. In all these very things not
only does this one disagree with that one but one and the same majority
differ with themselves. Finally, by themselves in all things a
weak-minded person ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), which is
customarily spoken of as common, that on the contrary would be with the
greatest admiration the worthiest if in the judgment concerning the
authority of the judicial laws of Moses, and, concerning human laws, all
human beings would agree among themselves. The greatest weaknesses of
judges is their variety and their incredible diversity, even in more
trivial matters. In so great a matter which of the judges believes that
certainty, stability, and consensus is obtained? Indeed, nevertheless we
must strive as long as something can be done for it. The judgments of
human beings may be united because the greatest amount can be
accomplished for this matter if we would uncover the causes of those
evils that twist human judgments. We intend to say a few things now
about this argument.
This order of human judgments has been established by God and by
nature so that reason would draw out the principles from the intellect.
From the principles, it would connect conclusions, and, from the
particular conditions, it would cause just determinations, individual
ones, all, entirely, in every time, for all things. It would observe
other things caused by just reason. Moreover, in all these for
individual matters our judgment falls apart. First, the intellect does
not have those common principles made clear and disentangled as would be
necessary for rightly making a judgment about such great things; nor is
the will serviceable for exciting and cultivating the intellect, as it
is proportionate, from which it happens that obscure, muddy, imperfect,
impure, and vicious judgments are drawn from a muddy fount. Next, indeed
it is a weak, imperfect, disturbed, and depraved reason, which is held
to make conclusions from whatever sort of principles derived from our
intellect, whether it is impeded by one's own darkness or it would
be obscured and transferred to individual pursuits, to which the will is
carried away by all moments, innumerable modes, objects, and occasions.
Next, so that it may build on just conclusions in a certain way from
indubitable principles, the particular things themselves, concerning
which it is necessary to establish our judgment through our own
conclusions from principles, are so obscure to us in view of our
infirmity in the nature of those things and in their innumerable number
(so that we may speak in such a way) that water always clings to us, as
those who grasp about say when in a gloomy mist--especially if we pay
attention to particular conditions of these things concerning which it
is necessary to be judged. Not only do the things themselves vary by
nature, but also some conditions in themselves pass through individual
moments to others that no creature, though the most sharp-sighted and
plainly lynx-like, (1) not even by heavenly ones could perfectly
recognize unless instructed by the gracious strength of God over their
nature. Yet, without this knowledge of things in particular conditions,
what judgment can be made that is clear and tested? How can just
determinations be applied to a certain judgment? Accordingly, that
perversity of judges, accordingly the difference according to which we
neither make individual just determinations with reason, much less for
all things, nor entirely, nor for all time, nor for all things, nor do
we properly turn our attention to doing other things if or when we make
just determinations. From so many and so serious impediments, it follows
that human laws have been handed down variously, and various things have
been judged concerning them.
Thesis 11: Moreover, because the law of Moses is one, we cannot ask
about its variety (for it is one, certain, and definite), but concerning
its judicial commands that certainly pertain to the genus of human laws
we recall that opinions of human beings vary according to some certain
mode, so that to its judgments given by God, our judgments rashly and
sinfully cause injury. Therefore, we certainly distinguish the law of
Moses generally from other laws because the whole is by God its author
and embraces the whole instrument and perfect example of all anteceding
laws, which two things most powerfully lead us to confirming and
guarding its authority and extolling it above all others. From these two
is certain that the law of Moses with its own origin in principle and in
its substance is divine. Now, however, because we did not decide to
speak about the whole law but only concerning that part of it that has
been placed in human judgments and courts, at least by that argument
judicial laws and courts of Moses witness to others because God their
author is most certain; neither in principles nor in any conclusions,
nor in the knowledge of individual things and conditions, nor in the
case of determinations, nor in any other thing can err or be led astray.
Indeed, this must befall all other legislators because they are human
beings, to whom nothing human is foreign; however, God personally is the
very eternal law and universal principle of all sacred laws that either
are from nature or grace or are sanctioned by human beings according to
the order of nature and of grace itself.
Although in fact with respect to its principle and origin this part
of the Mosaic law is plainly divine, and for this reason it simply
obtained its divine authority among the Jews, yet, because God conformed
part of the law to human laws and in a human way, they have acted
unjustly who have contended that this judicial law of Moses is divine in
all respects because it is divine in its origin. (2) From one
perspective it is ignorant that conclusions about the whole are
constructed in this way: the judicial laws of Moses are divine in
origin, therefore, they are divine in all ways, especially when the
origin of the thing advenes publicly; however, the mode of the thing
from whose matter and internal form of it is especially acknowledged.
Moreover, the matter of those things is mutable in itself; the form
indeed of the law of the courts was established by God according to the
mode of those things at the time, not forever, (3) if you would have
considered [them] according to human laws in themselves and the courts
of Moses.
Thesis 12: Therefore, we have stated that even if these laws that
we call judicial are divine in origin, yet, in themselves, they are
according to the nature of other human laws that human beings produce
and that have been modified by God so that with respect to their
principle and end, they are in all respects divine and immutable.
Indeed, with respect to their matter and form, certain distinctions that
must be observed come forth so that human infirmity is not attributed to
divine things or that divine authority and perfection is attributed
against human things. "In fact all these laws" not only other
human ones and certainly even the judicial laws of Moses, "obtain
their own immutable part and mutable part." Moreover, because the
force of the laws exists so that by their own authority they oblige
those to whom the laws are brought, it entirely follows from this: There
is something in human laws or even in the Mosaic ones that is immutable;
therefore, it always and immutably obligates human beings as if it were
an inflexible bond. Indeed, whatever is present in these laws that have
a condition involved in mutation do not always bind and obligate those
subordinate to it according to the will of the one who produced the law
and the mode of the persons, matters, and circumstances that are
present. For God, even in the judicial laws of Moses, sanctioned the
things instituted of this sort, which also had a condition of mutability
and of mutation by his will, whether expressed or tacit and that were
conformed to those persons, matters, and circumstances, the whole reason
of which is different from the present reason of persons, matters,
things, and circumstances of ourselves or of others. It remains, because
there is an immutable part of these judicial laws in a divine way and a
mutable part in a human way, so that thereafter concerning what is
immutable and what is mutable in the judicial laws of Moses equally as
well as of other human beings, let us consider [this] separately.
(1) In ancient Greek mythology, the Lynx was said to be a ghostlike
creature that could see everything in the forest without being seen.
(2) Inique fecerint qui Legem hanc iudicialem Mosis per omnia
diuinam esse contenderint, eo quod ortu diuina est.
(3) In aeternitatem: lit. "unto eternity."
Scholia ([dagger])
([dagger]) The scholia offers never-before-translated documents of
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Catholic and Protestant moral
theologians. Our objective is to put important historical texts back
into circulation and, by so doing, to assist scholars in Christian
social ethics, economics, and moral philosophy to reclaim the once
vibrant natural-law foundation of these disciplines.
Franciscus Junius
Translated by Todd M. Rester
Introduction by Todd M. Rester
Contents *
Introduction by Todd Rester
Title Page
Author's Preface
Theological Theses: Concerning the Judicial Laws of Moses
and Their Observance
1. On the Just Definition and Division of the Law
2. On the Law of Moses and the Substance of It in General
* Ed. note: This selection includes the full text of two of
the eight chapters in the treatise.
You, O mourning school, weep for your teacher!
You, O bereft Church, your parent!
Your doctor, O whole wide world, lament! (11)
Te moerens scola flet suum magistrum
Orba ecclesia, te suum parentum
Doctorem gemit orbis universus.
How charmingly arranged, all laws, like tiles
all, in pavement, and inlaid in vermiculated manner! (5)
quam lepide lexeis compostae ut tesserulae omnes
arte pavimenti atque emblemate vermiculato
Quam lepide lexes compostae! Vt tesserulae, omnes
Endo pavime[n]to, atq[ue] emblemate vermiculato