Catholicism itself, oddly enough, we found revolutionary-individualistic views on the foundations of state power and on the question of the origin of the state. This, of course, defeated the Ukrainian population of radical individualistic principles, although it was far from being consistent with the liberation movement. Among the tyranomachus, we also celebrated the Catholic Jesuits Maranna, Bellarmpna, who taught that, by divine right, power belongs to the people, free to delegate it to anyone. Absolute power, be it ecclesiastical or political, does not tolerate the division of power over an individual subject.
This is quite understandable. Every politician (secular or spiritual), understanding human nature, strives to gather in his own hands power over all categories of social imperatives that dominate it. The most consistent in this regard is Eastern despotism. There is no light in it for the freedom of the individual. Despot—absolutely fierce spiritual and holy ruler. The norms of religion, morality and law depend on his wishes. For the same reasons, the Roman pope raised his spiritual sword over the rights of secular sovereigns and their subjects. But | For the founders and secular autocrats, the autocratic monarchs presented literary defenders who proved that they, | then, sir, rule by greater mercy, what will happen in the future called "ridiculous tales" by the doctrinaire predecessors of the French revolution, and Locke scientifically disputed against Filmer. By this they tried to achieve obedience not only for fear, but also for conscience. Enough
VEIN
Point to one of these defenders, mentioned by us, Bossuet '), a complete exponent of this type, or to Thomas Hobbes, who argued - (about which
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below), complete, slavish obedience to the church state, to the secular Levaean '), or to Salmasius °).
If absolute power, in order to secure its dominion over the individual, strived for a unified authoritarianism over all categories of norms governing the behavior of the individual, uniting them in its power, then the writers of individualistic rule achieved precisely the opposite. They were looking for a principle with the help of which it would be possible to delimit the area of action of each category of social imperatives, making it more or less independent. Therefore, the struggle between representatives of various authorities, indicating that not everything was going well in the desired unification and subordination of the world to absolutism, was to their advantage.
After the literary feud of the two swords began to subside in the era of the late Renaissance and the secular power turned out to be victorious in Protestant lands, the same phenomenon was revealed in England. Namely, here one notices the emergence of a kind of religious scientist on the soil of Christianity liberated from Catholicism. This made it possible not only to free the individual from subordination to traditional church absolutism, but with the same principles derived from the same religion, made an attempt to substantiate the entire inconsistency of secular absolutism. It also took advantage of the results of previous opposition doctrines, namely: the idea of the independence of the believing individual from the arbitrariness of power 3), the general idea that God needs
1) Geuablalt.
2) Repzo gesta rgo Sago1o Rgito, where Salmazy reads the sovereign as a father, with his parental rights.
3) Richard Greene, in his history of the English people (vol. III, chapter 1), cites the words of this Puritan about her husband: “In all his life, his mind always obeyed the word of God, but in everything else, the greatest authorities in the world could not guide his actions contrary to reason.” The Puritan, the historian notes, was obliged by virtue of his religious beliefs! to examine any claims of the Jewish authorities on him obey more than people (at which the divine truths were interpreted by them individually) ") and, finally, the political thought that the sovereign exists for the people, and not the people for the sovereign, that the sovereign is an authorized ruler. This last thought of delegating power to the ruler about resisting the oppressed, could not contribute to the strengthening of legitimism and dynastic interests. From it there was only one step to republican theory, i.e., the theory of pure political individualism, to which John Lalborne, Overton, Walwyn and other Levellers leaned (It is remarkable that the sectarians were the most passionate theoretical defenders of political individualism: the Huguenot Lange, the Presbyteran Buchanan and, finally, the English Dissenters).