Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/120



114 CHRISTIAN CONSTITUTION OF STATES.

Nay more, princes and all invested with power to rule have themselves approved it, in theory alike and in prac- tice. It cannot be called in question that in the making of treaties, in the transaction of business matters, in the sending and receiving ambassadors, and in the inter- change of other kinds of official dealings, they have been wont to treat with the Church as with a supreme and legitimate power. And assuredly all ought to hold that it was not without a singular disposition of God's provi- dence that this power of the Church was provided with a civil sovereignty as the surest safeguard of her inde- pendence.

The Almighty, therefore, has appointed the charge of the human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over himian, things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the prov- ince of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within which the action of each is brought into play by its own native right. But inasmuch as each of these two powers has authority over the same subjects, and as it might come to pass that one and the same thing â€” related differently, but stiil remaining one and the same thing â€” might belong to the jurisdiction and determina- tion of both, therefore God, who foresees all things, and who is the author of these two powers, has marked out the course of each in right correlation to the other. For the powers that are, are ordained of God} Were this not so, deplorable contentions and conflicts would often arise, and not infrequently men, like travellers at the meeting of two roads, would hesitate in anxiety and doubt, not knowing what course to follow. Two powers would be commanding contrary things, and it would be a derelic- tion of duty to disobey either of the two.

' Rom. xiii. 1 . '