Among all ancient nations the law had been subject to, and had received all its rules from, religion. Among the Persians, the Hindus, the Jews, the Greeks, the Italians, and the Gauls, the law had been contained in the sacred books or in religious traditions…. Christianity is the first religion that did not claim to be the source of law…. Men saw it regulate neither the laws of property, nor the orders of succession, nor legal proceedings. It placed itself outside the law, and outside all things purely terrestrial. Law was independent; it could draw its rules from nature, from the human conscience, from the powerful idea of the just that is in men’s minds. It could develop in complete liberty.#Quoted in Arthur Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines (2014)