207 Law in Time: Legal Theory & Legal History good, that is, those with a public implication. All vices with private consequences only (or primarily) are to be left alone by positive law. These fall into the proper domain of divine law , the fourth kind of law in Aquinas’s jurisprudence. The central point about divine law is that it is divine will mediated by revelation as collated in sacred scripture. Divine law offers knowledge not achieved or even achievable by human reason. Revealed by God through prophets and enshrined in sacred scripture, divine law cannot possibly err. Therefore, divine law, which is universal in reach, can offer untainted insight into the nature of goodness and unimpeachable certainty about which practices and intentions have redeeming value. Under the weight of Aquinas’ authority and influence, The Great Manifold paradigm created the conditions for functional adaptation and axiological steering over centuries of great horizontal and vertical political power dispersion and then rapid consolidation – all in a culture profoundly religious and compounded by demographic, geographic, cultural and economic, etc. complexification. In doing so, it welded will, reason and history in a way that is compatible with the personal experience of faith, the cultural importance of religion, and the myriad ways that local and hemispheric, secular and religious orders are interfaced. The Great Manifold paradigm made it possible for legal actors to think and act in the practical tasks of daily life with a view to assist humanity – naturally committed to the common good and “ordained” to the end of eternal happiness – in God’s plan through the medium of law. The Great Manifold reigned sovereign for centuries, and remains in the marrow ofThe Great Alliance paradigm. It came under practical and intellectual attacks that proved ultimately successful only starting in the Renascence and throughout the Enlightenment, especially under the considerable strain of the Thirty Years War and its political aftermath. Early initiatives such as Henry VIII’s interdiction of the teaching of canon law and Thomist philosophy at Oxford and Cambridge in the sixteenth century did nothing to challenge the authority ofThe Great Manifold . All they did was contribute to the stunting – felt to this day – of the conceptual development of the common law. 12The Great 12 This is despite the efforts of English “civilians” then and after. See the account in Daniel Coquillette’s grand quadrilogy Legal Ideology and Incorporation (I-IV) published in the
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