Last night, I was part of a discussion about the merits of the pre-Renaissance mindset, and how recovering the Christ-centerdness of that mindset would be useful to us as Christians.  Whatever you may think about that age, the fact is that the worship of God and the cultivation of His earth were the motivating factors behind everything the pre-moderns did: art, music, architecture, agriculture, education, family rearing, even politics and international law.  One of last night’s participants pointed to The Declaration of Arbroath as a great example of the mindset in question.  Notice the appeal, not to human reason and common understanding of natural law as the basis for the appeal against the provocations of Edward, but to the Scots place, as they saw it, in the Kingdom of God:

The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not otherwise manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called them, even though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the first to His most holy faith. Nor would He have them confirmed in that faith by merely anyone but by the first of His Apostles — by calling, though second or third in rank — the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter’s brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron forever.

The Most Holy Fathers your predecessors gave careful heed to these things and bestowed many favours and numerous privileges on this same kingdom and people, as being the special charge of the Blessed Peter’s brother…

But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help of Him Who though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most tireless Prince, King and Lord, the Lord Robert. He, that his people and his heritage might be delivered out of the hands of our enemies, met toil and fatigue, hunger and peril, like another Macabaeus or Joshua and bore them cheerfully. Him, too, divine providence, his right of succession according to or laws and customs which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent and assent of us all have made our Prince and King. To him, as to the man by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we are bound both by law and by his merits that our freedom may be still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean to stand.