From Lectures on Calvinism (1898):
But Calvinism has done more. In Politics it also taught us that the human element – here the people – may not be considered as the principal thing, so that God is only dragged in to help this people in the hour of its need; but on the contrary that God, in His Majesty, must flame before the every nation, and that all nations together are to be reckoned before Him as a drop in a bucket and as the small dust of the balances. From the ends of the earth God cites all nations and peoples before His high judgment seat. For God created the nations. They exist for Him. They are His own. And therefore all these nations, and in them humanity, must exist for His glory and consequently after his ordinances, in order that in their well-being, when they walk after His ordinances, His divine wisdom may shine forth.
When therefore humanity falls apart through sin, in a multiplicity of separate peoples; when sin, in the bosom of these nations, separates men and tears them apart, and when sin reveals itself in all manner of shame and unrighteousness – the glory of God demands that these horrors be bridled, that order return to this chaos, and that a compulsory force, from without, assert itself to make human society a possibility.
This right is possessed by God, and by Him alone.
No man has the right to rule over another man, otherwise such a right necessarily, and immediately becomes the right of the strongest. As the tiger in the jungle rules over the defenseless antelope, so on the banks of the Nile a Pharaoh ruled over the progenitors of the fellaheen of Egypt.
Nor can group of men, but contrast, from their own right, compel you to obey a fellow-man. What binding force is there for me in the allegation that ages ago one of my progenitors made “Contra Social,” with other men of that time? As man I and bold, over against the most powerful of my fellow-men.
I do not speak of the family, for here organic, natural ties rule’ but in the sphere of the State I do not yield or bow down to anyone, who is man, as I am.
Authority over men cannot arise from men. Just as little from a majority over against a minority, for history shows, almost on every page, that very often the minority was right. And thus to the first Calvinistic thesis that sin alone has necessitated the institution of governments, this second and no less momentous thesis is added that: all authority of governments on earth originates from the Sovereignty of God alone. When God says to me, “obey,” then I humbly bow my head, without compromising in the least my personal dignity, as a man. For, in like proportion as you degrade yourself, by bowing low to a child of man whose breath is in his nostrils; so, on the other hand do you raise yourself, if you submit to the authority of the Lord of heaven and earth.
Thus the word of Scripture stands; “By Me kings reign,” or as the apostle has elsewhere declared: “The powers, that be, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstand the ordinance of God.” The magistrate is an instrument of “common grace,” to thwart all license and outrage and to shield the good against the evil. But he is more.
Besides all this he is instituted by God as His Servant, in order that he may preserve the glorious work of God, in the creation of humanity, from total destruction. Sin attacks God’s handiwork, God’s plan, God’s justice, God’s honor, as the supreme Artificer and Builder. Thus God, ordaining the powers that be, in order that, through their instrumentality, He might maintain His justice against he striving of sin, has given to the magistrate the terrible right of life and death.
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