We are familiar with the conception of the divine nature of political authority, the normal and fundamental mediaeval view of the State. If we translate this into more general terms we shall find that its meaning is that the State has an ethical or moral purpose or function; the State exists to secure and to maintain justice. You must not, indeed, confuse this great conception with that foolish perversion of it which was suggested, I think, by some characteristically reckless phrases of St. Augustine, stated in set terms by St. Gregory the Great, almost forgotten in the Middle Ages, and unhappily revived by the perversity of some Anglicans and Gallicans in the seventeenth century. This foolish perversion, which we know as the theory of the 'Divine Right of Kings', is indeed the opposite of the great Pauline and mediaeval conception of the divine nature of political authority, for to St. Paul, to the more normal Fathers like St. Ambrose, and to the political theory of the Middle Ages authority is divine just because, and only in so far as, its aim and purpose is the attainment and maintenance of justice. Indeed, it is not only the notion of the 'Divine Right' which was inconsistent with the mediaeval conception of the State, but the notion of an absolute sovereignty inherent in the State, that notion with which some eccentric or ignorant modern political theorists, ignorant of Rousseau as well as of Aristotle, have played, to the great danger of society; we have, indeed, got beyond the theory of the sovereignty of the king, but we are in some danger of being hag-ridden by the imposture of the sovereignty of the majority. Whatever mistakes the people of the Middle Ages may have made, they were, with rare exceptions, clear that there was no legitimate authority which was not just, and which did not make for justice.