Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/227

Rh which is not justified by example and is abhorrent from English customs. With this single exception any act overt or covert is allowable against the tyrant. He is an enemy of the state and therefore those moral restrictions which bind society have no force in our dealings with him. We may flatter him, or employ any art, in order to lure him on to his destruction.

It need not be pointed out how accurately John had learned the historical lessons of the Old Testament. All through the controversial literature relating to church and state, the hierarchical party, as we have said, like the English puritans of a later age, rely on the precedents furnished by Hebrew history, and pass by, or explain spiritually, those passages of the Christian Scriptures which insist with such emphasis on the universal duty of obedience to the temporal ruler. The doctrine that the powers that be are ordained of God was held only with the reservation that God acted through the instrumentality of the church. Christianity in fact hardly influenced their political doctrine, except in so far as it considered life on earth as merely the preparation for another life hereafter, the 'road,' via, according to the expressive and constantly recurring phrase, that leads to the eternal 'home,' patria. Hence a new goal was set to human aspirations, and the nature of the civil state lost in worth by comparison of the supreme interests which lay beyond its cognisance. Nor did John of Salisbury at all reädjust or discriminate the various factors in this