Page "Divine right of kings" Paragraph 20

On the other hand, Aquinas forbade the overthrow of any morally, Christianly and spiritually legitimate king by his subjects.

The only human power capable of deposing the king was the pope.

The reasoning was that if a subject may overthrow his superior for some bad law, who was to be the judge of whether the law was bad?

If the subject could so judge his own superior, then all lawful superior authority could lawfully be overthrown by the arbitrary judgement of an inferior, and thus all law was under constant threat.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages, many philosophers, such as Nicholas of Cusa and Francisco Suarez, propounded similar theories.

The church was the final guarantor that Christian kings would follow the laws and constitutional traditions of their ancestors and the laws of the presumptive god and of justice.

Similarly, the Chinese concept of Mandate of Heaven required that the emperor properly carry out the proper rituals, consult his ministers, and made it extremely difficult to undo any acts carried out by an ancestor.