A CHAPTER VII.

OF ETERNAL LAW
1. Of Eternal LAW

• A Law is defined to be: A precept just and abiding, given for promulgation to a perfect
community. A law is primarily a rule of action.

• The first attribute of a law is that it be just: just to the subject on whom it is imposed, as
being no harmful abridgment of his rights:

• An unjust law is no law at all, for it is not a rule of action. Still, we may sometimes be
bound, when only our own rights are infringed, to submit to such an imposition, not as a
law, for it is none, but on the score of prudence, to escape direr evils.

• A law in a community is like a habit in an individual, an accretion to nature, which abides

as part of the natural being, and guides henceforth the course of natural action.
2, Of Eternal LAW

 We have to learn to look upon the whole created universe, and the fulness thereof, angels,
men, earth, sun, planets, fixed stars, all things visible and invisible, as one great and
perfect community, whose king and lawgiver is God. He is king, because He is creator and
Lord.

 But lordship and kingship are different things even in God.

 The former is called power of dominion, or right of ownership, the latter is power of
jurisdiction. Power of dominion is for the good of him who wields it: but power of jurisdiction
is for the good of the governed.

 As God is Lord of the universe, He directs all its operations to His own glory. As He is King,
He governs as a king should govern, for the good of His subjects.
3. Of Eternal LAW

The law thus stated takes in manifestly a wider field than that of moral action. There is in
fact no action of created things that is not comprehended under this statement.

It comprises the laws of physical nature and the action of physical causes, no less than the
moral law and human acts.

It is the one primeval law of the universe, antecedent to all actual creation, and co- eternal
with God. And yet not necessary as God : for had God not decreed from all eternity to
create and He need not have decreed it neither would He have passed in His own Divine
Mind this second decree, necessarily consequent as it is upon the decree of creation,
namely, that every creature should act in the mode of action proper of its kind
4. Of Eternal LAW

 This law does not govern the acts of God Himself. God ever does what is wise and good,
not be cause He binds Himself by the decree of His own will so to act, but because of His
all-perfect nature.

 His own decrees have not for Him the force of a precept : that is impossible in any case :
yet He cannot act against them, as His nature allows not of irresolution, change of mind,
and inconsistency.
5. Of Eternal LAW

Emanating from the will of God, and resting upon the nature of the creature, it would seem
that the Eternal Law must be irresistible.

The one thing that breaks this law is sin. Sin alone is properly unnatural. The world is full of
physical evils, pain, famine, blindness, disease, decay and death. But herein is nothing
against nature:

Physical evil comes by the defect of nature, and by permission of the Eternal Law. But the
moral evil of sin is a breach of that law.
6. Of Eternal LAW

A great point with modern thinkers is the inviolability of the laws of physical nature, e.g., of
gravitation or of electrical induction.

The law of gravitation is equally fulfilled in a falling body, in a body suspended by a string,
and in a body borne up by the ministry of an angel. There is no law of nature to the effect
that a supernatural force shall never intervene.

The defeat of the law must be made good, the sin must be punished. Of the Eternal Law
working itself out in the form of punishment, we shall speak presently.
7. Of Eternal LAW

 It is important to hold this conception of the Eternal Law as embracing physical nature
along with rational agents. To confine the law, as modern writers do, to rational agents
alone, is sadly to abridge the view of its binding force.

 It is hard for us to conceive of laws being given to senseless things. We cannot ourselves
prescribe to iron or to sulphur the manner of its action.

 That is, man cannot make the laws of nature : he can only arrange collocations of
materials so as to avail himself of those laws. But God makes the law, issuing His
command, the warrant without which no creature could do anything, that every creature,
rational and irrational, shall act each according to its kind or nature. Such is the Eternal
Law.