Roman Catholics and Protestants alike have forgotten that Protestants had a natural law theory, says E. J. Hutchinson in this week’s Acton Commentary.

To be sure, the work is of historical interest, as a testimony to Melanchthonian and, more broadly, Protestant thinking on natural law in the 16th and 17th centuries. That fact alone is not without significance, given that many people — Roman Catholics and Protestants alike – have forgotten that Protestants had a natural law theory (or, rather theories), and indeed that natural law in its more or less traditional form was basic to all magisterial Protestant theologians and philosophers from the very inception of the Reformation. Clearing the ground has its uses.

The full text of the essay can be found here.