it would be still imperatively necessary, as we have seen, for mankind
to erect political institutions, and to abide by the laws and
ordinances of constitutional power. But there would be no _formal
obligation_ of submission to these laws and ordinances; and resistance
to this power would be no more than _philosophic sin_. (_Ethics_, c.
vi., s. ii., n. 6, p. 119.) What makes anarchy truly sinful and wrong
is the prohibition of it contained in the Eternal Law, that law
whereby God commands every creature, and particularly every man, to
act in accordance with his own proper being and nature taken as a
whole, and to avoid what is repugnant to the same. (_Ethics_, c. vi.,
s. ii., n. 9, p. 120.)

Therefore, as man is naturally social, and anarchy is the dissolution
of society, God forbids anarchy, and enjoins obedience to the civil
power, under pain of sin and damnation. "They that resist, purchase to
themselves damnation" (Rom. xiii. 2): where the theological student,
having the Greek text before him, will observe that the same phrase is
used as in 1 Cor. xi. 29 of the unworthy communicant, as though it
were the like sin to rend our Lord's mystical Body by civil discord as
to profane His natural Body by sacrilege. But to enjoin obedience and
to bestow authority are the obverse and reverse of one and the same
act. God therefore gives the civil ruler power and authority to
command. This is the meaning of St. Paul's teaching that there is no
power but from God, and that the powers that be are ordained of God.
(Rom. xiii. 1.)

14. The argument is summed up in these seven consequent propositions:

(a) Civil society is necessary to human nature.
(b) Civil power is necessary to civil society.