Re: St. Robert Bellarmine: " Jefferson had Filmer in his library (Patriarcha 1680). It was his custom to score the passages in books which he liked. It is interesting that the only passage marked in Filmer was the above quotation from Cardinal Bellarmine." Dr. James Brown Scott of the Carnegie Foundation gives this interesting bit of history concerning the proximate and probable origin of Thomas Jefferson’s statement of sovereignty: “If we of the United States were to have a patron — and in our case a political saint — (Protestant though we be) we might indeed do well to choose the Cardinal and sainted Bellarmine, who, strange as it may seem, has perhaps the greatest claim to the gratitude of the people of the United States, because he stated and defended in advance those principles of government which the United States have made their own and upon which their government firmly rests.” -- Fulton J. Sheen, Freedom Under God, Liberty and the Republic, (1940/2013), page 149 & 151-2
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 23:13:59 +0000
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