In opposition to Rousseau's doctrine De Maistre maintains that man is by nature a slave, but that Christianity has, in a supernatural manner, emancipated him. For this reason he calls the Christian woman a truly supernatural being. Voltaire he without more ado calls the man "into whose hands hell has given all its power." And he puts the crowning touch to his work by propounding the following theory: "Monarchy is a _miracle_, and instead of reverencing it as such, we rail against it as tyranny. The soldier who does not kill a man when commanded to do so by his lawful sovereign is not less guilty than he who kills without having received orders to do so." Those states which have introduced Protestantism have been punished by the loss of their monarchs. De Maistre has discovered that the average length of reigns is shorter in Protestant than in Catholic countries. The one inexplicable exception to this rule is provided by Denmark, which is the only Protestant country whose sovereigns live as long after the Reformation as before it. "Denmark appears, from some unknown reason, but doubtless one honourable to the nation, to have been exempted from this law of the shortening of reigns."[1]
The fifth book of the earliest edition of _Du Pape_ was afterwards published as a separate work. It is the well-known _De l'Église Gallicane_, a treatise in which De Maistre draws from the doctrine of papal authority conclusions utterly subversive of the claim of the French church to relative independence. On this occasion he assumes an antagonistic and supercilious attitude towards Bossuet, a man for whom he generally has nothing but praise. The special object of his attack and invective is the Church Council held in France in 1682 for the purpose of strictly defining the limits of the Pope's power. He is almost as much incensed against that of 1700, which pronounced Jesuits and Jansenists to be equally blameworthy. It is to a life-long enthusiasm that De Maistre here gives expression. From his youth he had been the devoted friend, admirer, and supporter of the Jesuits. His diplomatic letters from Russia tell of his constant endeavours to be of assistance to them in their difficult position as Roman Catholics in a Greek Catholic country, of his anxiety to shield them when the court is exasperated by their efforts to convert members of the aristocracy, &c, &c. He now, as their champion, attacks Pascal. His attack is not made from the standpoint of philosophy, as it easily might have been, in so far as their sensible apprehension of the fact that there can be no other morality except morality of intention gives the Jesuits in certain ways the advantage over the man of genius who impeached them. Nor is his defence of the Jesuits conducted altogether from the standpoint of the man of the world, as it might well have been, in so far as the Jesuits, with their modification of principles and their practical indulgence, have followed the prudent rule that it is unwise to alarm and better to have some of the moral law fulfilled by demanding little than none by demanding all. He contents himself with maintaining that the Jesuit treatises on morality attacked by Pascal are obsolete, unread books, which Pascal dragged from their mouldy obscurity with the sole aim of insulting and injuring an order, the strict morality and stern self-discipline of which even its enemies had been forced to admit. Then, by way of variety taking up for a moment the standpoint of the worldling, he remarks humorously: "It is, when we come to think of it, very comical that we worldlings should take upon us to inveigh against the _lax morality_ of the Jesuits. This much is certain, that the whole aspect of society would be changed if every member of it acted up even to Escobar's moral standard, and were guilty of no shortcomings other than those excused by him."