No doubt, as the authority of the church is derived immediately
from God in a supernatural manner, and as she holds that the
state derives its authority only mediately from him, in a natural
mode, she asserts the superiority of her authority, and that, in
case of conflict between the two powers, the civil must yield.
But this is only saying that supernatural is above natural.
But--and this is the important point--she does not teach, nor
permit the faithful to hold, that the supernatural abrogates the
natural, or in any way supersedes it. Grace, say the
theologians, supposes nature, gratia supponit naturam. The
church in the matter of government accepts the natural, aids it,
elevates it, and is its firmest support.

VII. St. Augustine, St. Gregory Magnus, St. Thomas, Bellarmin,
Suarez, and the theologians generally, hold that princes derive
their power from God through the people, or that the people,
though not the source, are the medium of all political authority,
and therefore rulers are accountable for the use they make of
their power to both God and the people.

This doctrine agrees with the democratic theory in vesting
sovereignty in the people, instead of the king or the nobility, a
particular individual, family, class, or caste; and differs from
it, as democracy is commonly explained, in understanding by the
people, the people collectively, not individually--the organic
people, or people fixed to a given territory, not the people as a
mere population--the people in the republican sense of the word
nation, not in the barbaric or despotic sense; and in deriving
the sovereignty from God, from whom is all power, and except from
whom there is and can be no power, instead of asserting it as the