The old Germanic state was a conglomerate of positive law and specific custom, having no existence beyond the laws, which were its formative constituents. Such a conception did not satisfy mediaeval publicists, imbued with antique views of the State’s further aims and potency. Nor were all men satisfied with the State’s divinely ordered origin in human sinfulness. An ultimate ground for its existence was sought, commensurate with its broadest aims. Such was found, not in positive, but in natural law--again an antique conception. That a veritable natural law existed, all men agreed; also that its source lay back of human conventions, somehow in the nature of God. All admitted its absolute supremacy, binding alike upon popes and secular monarchs, and rendering void all acts and positive laws contravening it. It must be the State’s ultimate constituent ground. God was the source of natural law. Some argued that it proceeded from His will, as a command, others that its source was eternal Reason announcing her necessary and unalterable dictates; again its source was held to lie more definitely in the Reason that was identical with God the _summa ratio in Deo existens_, as Aquinas puts it. From that springs the _Lex naturalis_, ordained to rest on the participation of man, as a rational creature, in the moral order which he perceives by the light of natural reason. This _lex naturalis_ (or _jus naturale_) is a true promulgated law, since God implants it for recognition in the minds of men.[417] Absolute unconditional supremacy was ascribed to it, and also to the _jus divinum_, which God revealed supernaturally for a supramundane end. A cognate supremacy was ascribed to the _jus commune gentium_, which was composed of rules of the _jus naturale_ adapted to the conditions of fallen human nature. Such law was above the State, to which, on the other hand, positive law was subject. Whenever the ruler was conceived as sovereign or absolute, he likewise was deemed above positive law, but bound by these higher laws. They were the source and sanction of the innate and indestructible rights of the individual, to property and liberty and life as they were formulated at a later period. It is evident how the recognition of such rights fell in with the Christian revelation of the absolute value of every individual in and for himself and his immortal life. On the other hand, certain rights of the State, or the community, were also indestructible and inalienable by virtue of the nature of their source in natural law.[418]