human rights and duties. In the course of cul tural change, as the mediteval range of ideas and of circumstances begins to take on a more modern complexion, God's creative relation to mundane affairs is referred to with growing frequency and insistence in discussions of all questions of tliis class ; but for the purpose in hand His creative relation to human rights does not supersede His relation of sovereignty until the modern era is well begun. It may be aaid that God's tenure of office in the raedisEval conception of things was a tenure by prowess, and men, of high and low degree, held their rights and powers of Him by a servile tenure. Ownership in this scheme was a stewardship. It was a stewardship proximately under the discretion of a secular lord, more remotely under the discretion of the divine Overlord. And the question then pressing for an answer when a point of competency or legitimacy was raised in respect of any given human arrangement or institution was not, What hath God wrought? but, What hath God ordained ?
This medieval range of conceptions first began to break down and give place to modem notions in Italy, in the Renaissance. But it was in the English-speaking communities that the range of ideas upon which rests the modern concept of natural rights first gathered form and reached a competent expression. This holds true with
H respect to the modem doctrines of natural rights
^L aa contrasted with the corresponding ancient doo-