Bernard Groethuysen Quote

The worldly-minded... were unable to see why God should not give men their due if men, on their part, fulfilled their obligations.... A new man had emerged. He was demanding his rights; he was conscious of his importance. As he was before men, so would he be before God. What he had acquired materially or morally was his own, his very own, and neither king nor God might dispute his possession with him. He loved his God as he loved his king, but on condition that both respected his rights.

p. 89 - The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927)