Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/162



156 HUMAN LIBERTY.

is true liberty, a liberty worthy of the sons of God, which nobly maintains the dignity of man, and is stronger than all violence or wrong â€” a liberty which the Church has always desired and held most dear. This is the kind of liberty the apostles claimed for themselves with intrepid constancy, which the apologists of Christianity con- firmed by their writings, and which the martyrs in vast numbers consecrated by their blood. And deservedly so; for this Christian hberty bears witness to the absolute and most just dominion of God over man, and to the chief and supreme duty of man towards God. It has nothing in common with a seditious and rebellious mind; and in no tittle derogates from obedience to public author- ity; for the right to command and to require obedience exists only so far as it is in accordance with the authority of God, and is within the measure that He has laid down. But when anything is commanded which is plainly at variance with the will of God, there is a wide departure from this divinely constituted order, and at the same time a direct conflict with divine authority ; therefore it is right not to obey.

By the patrons of Liberalism, however, who make the State absolute and omnipotent, and proclaim that man should live alt ogether independent l y of God, the liberty^ of which We speak, which goes hand in hand with virtue' and religion, is not admitted; and whatever is done for its preservation is accounted an injury and an offence against the State. Indeed, if what they say were really true, there would be no tyranny, no matter how mon- strous, which we should not be bound to endure and submit to.

The Church most earnestly desires that the Cliristian teaching, of which We have given an outline, should penetrate every rank of society in reality and in practice; for it would be of the greatest efficacy in healing the evils of our day, which are neither few nor slight, and are the offspring in great part of the false liberty which is so much