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Natural Law in the Thought of Luther
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
Henry Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883) opens with the sentence: “Natural law is a new word.” But the term may claim a respectable antiquity: it goes back to the pre-Socratic philosophers. In Drummond's time it was merely being put to a new use. To him it meant the body of principles learned in the laboratories of physical science. In the long tradition of ethical, legal, and political thought from Hippias to Kant it implied a body of principles which, resting upon a divinely implanted endowment of human nature, underlie all acceptable ethical precepts, just laws, and sound political institutions.
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References
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42 Tametsi enim omnes homines notitiam quandam naturalem habeant, animis ipsorum insitam, qua naturaliter sentiunt alteri faciendum esse, quod quis velit sibi fieri (quae sententia et similes, quas legem naturae voeamus, sunt fundamentan humani juris et omnium bonorum operum), tarnen adeo corrupta et caeca est vitio diaboli humana ratio, ut illam cognitionem secum natam non intelligat, aut si etiam admonita verbo Dei intelligat, tamen scienter (tanta est potentia Satanae) earn negligat et eontemnat. , E. A. (Lat.) XXX, 357Google Scholar; , W. A., XL, ii, 66f.Google Scholar
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