abuses it.





CHAPTER VI.

ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT--CONCLUDED.


VI. The theory which derives the right of government from the
direct and express appointment of God is sometimes modified so as
to mean that civil authority is derived from God through the
spiritual authority. The patriarch combined in his person both
authorities, and was in his own household both priest and king,
and so originally was in his own tribe the chief, and in his
kingdom the king. When the two offices became separated is not
known. In the time of Abraham they were still united.
Melchisedech, king of Salem, was both priest and king, and the
earliest historical records of kings present them as offering
sacrifices. Even the Roman emperor was Pontifex Maximus as well
as Imperator, but that was so not because the two offices were
held to be inseparable, but because they were both conferred on
the same person by the republic. In Egypt, in the time of Moses,
the royal authority and the priestly were separated and held by
different persons. Moses, in his legislation for his nation,
separated them, and instituted a sacerdotal order or caste. The
heads of tribes and the heads of families are, under his law,
princes, but not priests, and the priesthood is conferred on and