THE
STATE
RELATIONS WITH THE CHURCH.
THE
STATE
IN ITS
RELATIONS WITH THE CHURCH.
BY
W. E. GLADSTONE, ESQ.,
LATE STUDENT OF CHHTSTCHURCH, AND M.P. FOR NEWARK
ev<ri fioi rat Tf' &* iv<f) w T<*{ criji T iv "A$av $M\*i
til* iiufi itoi u( Irtf^ir fif TO. rXr'l'n va^UtfayayuV roXu Si ^iXXo* / vi/v i*Ji
vr. Polyb. VI. 56.
FOURTH EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET;
AND HATCHARD AND SON, PICCADILLY.
MOCCCXU.
Complete set: S.B.N. - 0. 576. OZ192. X
This volume: S.B.N. - 0.576.02982. 3
Republished in 1969 by Gregg International Publishers Limited
Westmead, Farnborough, Hants., England
Printed in Germany
INSCRIBED TO
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD;
TRIED. AND NOT FOUND WANTING,
THROUGH THE VICISSITUDES OF A THOUSAND TEARS ;
IN THE BELIEF THAT SHE IS PROVIDENTIALLY DESIGNED TO BE
A FOUNTAIN OF BLESSINGS,
SPIRITUAL, SOCIAL, AND INTELLECTUAL,
TO THIS AND TO OTHER COUNTRIES,
TO THE PRESENT AND FUTURE TIMES;
AND IN THE HOPE THAT THE TEMPER OF THESE PAGES MAY BE FOUND
NOT ALIEN FROM HER OWN.
Jjmdfm, August, 1838.
PREFACE
THE FOURTH EDITION.
IN the years 1837 arid 1838 the general sentiment of
the English people in favour of the national Esta-
blishment of religion was very powerfully aroused.
When an access of strong public feeling has taken
place, upon a subject related to the permanent insti-
tutions of the country, it is pretty certain that the
emotion will clothe itself in some intellectual forms ;
but it is not similarly to be assumed that it will dis-
cover and appropriate to itself those which are most
conformable to truth.
It appeared to me a contingency greatly to be feared,
that the affections then called into such vivid action,
in a great degree through political circumstances,
might satisfy themselves with a theory which teaches,
indeed, that the State should support religion, but
Vlll PREFACE.
neither sufficiently explores the grounds of that pro-
position, nor intelligibly limits the religion so to be
supported ; and which also seems relatively to assign
too great a prominence to that kind of support which
taxation supplies. Such a theory would probably be
found to guarantee neither purity of faith, nor har-
mony nor permanence of operation.
In these circumstances is to be found my apology
for having presumed to tender to the public a volume
on the relations of the State to the Church, with a
free and deeply sincere confession of what must in-
deed have been obvious to every one else, even if on
my own part unavowed, namely, that it had no pre-
tensions to the character of an adequate* development
of the profound and comprehensive question to which
it relates.
Lamenting, as I then did, in part the insufficiencyf
for practical purposes, but much more the grave and
positive faults which had appeared to me to attach to
the theories of some earlier and much abler writers
upon the relations between the Church or religion on
the one hand, and the State on the other, I was per-
fectly aware that my own effort could not be other-
wise than obnoxious in many respects to merited
* Chap. viii. $ 53, of the first edition. t Ibid., chap i. $ 8.
PREFACE. ix
censure. In the tone with which such censure has
been pronounced I find nothing to complain of. In
some most important misapprehensions of my mean-
ing I see no cause for surprise, and I think it right
to set them down in far greater proportion to my
own account than to that of my readers.
It has been a prominent objection, that the doctrine
of a conscience in the nation or the State implies or
has a tendency towards exclusion, and even persecu-
tion. In this place I only answer by the following
general question. What political or relative doctrine
is there, which does not become an absurdity when
pushed to its extremes? The taxing power of the
State, the prerogatives of the Crown to dissolve Par-
liaments and to create peers, the right of the House
of Commons to withhold supplies, the right of the
subject, not to civil franchises only, but even to se-
curity of person and property, all these, the plain
uncontested rules of our constitution, become severally
monstrous and intolerable when they are regarded in
a partial and exclusive aspect. I do not wonder that
the same effect should follow, when the doctrine of
conscience in the State is viewed without regard to
its limiting conditions.
Attention should be directed to social principles in
PREFACE.
such modes and measures as may be most adapted to
neutralise the besetting dangers of each particular pe-
riod. In an age which leant towards a rigidly eccle-
siastical organisation of the State, it was wise and
laudable to plead warmly for the rights of the indivi-
dual conscience. In an age which inclines to secu-
larise the State, and ultimately to curtail or overthrow
civil liberty by the subtraction of its religious guaran-
tees, to declaim against intolerance becomes a se-
condary duty, and it is infinitely more important, and
as it seems to me more rational, to plead earnestly for
those great ethical laws under which we are socially
constituted, and which economical speculations and
material interests have threatened altogether to sub-
vert. I do not therefore repent my effort; but I
repent of its numberless imperfections, and deplore
the prejudicial results which they must have .had in
obstructing my general design.
The lapse of time and the opportunities it has given
for reflection, and the remarks both of those friendly
to my general view and of those opposed to it, have
brought out into much clearer consciousness the con-
fession I made two years and a half ago, with a strong
but less determinate conviction of its truth ; and have
rendered me fully aware of obscurities that required
PREFACE.
XI
to be cleared up, and of omissions that it was needful
to supply. My best care and labour have been be-
stowed upon this task, inadequate as they are to its
due fulfilment.
I am not ashamed to own, that the material changes
now effected in the form of this work are in the na-
ture of practical acknowledgments in detail of its
former faults as a book upon a portion of political
science. I am not ashamed, further, to repeat my
full belief that it is still most defective ; although I
trust that it is now brought somewhat nearer to the
form of such kind of demonstrative process as the
subject-matter will admit, and although I see no rea-
son to suppose that it will be hereafter my duty to
repeat anything like the operation which I have now
performed. If there be any, however, who think that
no man should write upon a subject of political science
until he is so completely master of it as to give it vice
simplici a perfect development, I would remind him
of the opinion of Lord Bacon, who says that politics
are, of all subjects, " most immersed in matter, and
hardliest reduced to axiom :"* and of that of Alger-
non Sidney, a masculine and powerful, though far less
profoundly philosophic mind, that " the political
* Advancement of Learning.
x " PREFACE.
science ... of all others is the most abstruse and vari-
able, according to accidents and circumstances." *
I have only to add, that while, warned by experi-
ence, I have been careful to guard against some mis-
apprehensions of my meaning, the spirit and intention
of the book, and the principles upon which its whole
argument was constructed, remain altogether un-
changed. Nor am I aware that a single sentence or
expression has been added, which at the time of its
first publication I should have been inclined to dis-
avow.
* Sidney on Government, ch. ii. sect. 8.
London, April 3, 1841.
CONTENTS OF VOLS. I. AND II.
N.B. The figure* of the left-hand column-indicate the Section* in the Third Edition ofthit work,
which corretpond with the Section! belonging to the parallel Jigure* of the right-hand column
in the Fourth Edition.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Third Edition.
Fourth Ed
I. 13
13
46
46
30
7
7
8
28
9, 10
8
11
9,10
12, 13
11, 12
14, 15
13, 14
16,17
1517
1820
18, 19
21,22
20
23
24
21,22
25,26
23
2729
24,25
30,31
26
32
27
33
34
VOL. I.
Special reasons for entertaining the subject at
the present time ..... 1
From what position approached ... 4
To whom addressed 6
How limited ...... 6
How far the basis is historical ... 7
Of prevalent theories 9
Theory of Hooker 11
Comment ....... 13
OfWarburton 16
Comment ....... IB
OfPaley 21
Comment ....*.. 23
OfBurke 23
Of Coleridge 24
Comment 26
Of Chalmers 28
Comment ....... 30
Of Hobbes, and of Bellarmine and others . 31
Of such writers as have touched the subject col-
laterally 31
b
XIV CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
TBS THEORY OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE STATE.
PART I.
THE DUTY OF THE STATE IN RESPECT TO RELIGION.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
II. 1 1 3 Notions and real import of the phrase " Church
and State" 34
4 6 Four principal methods of investigation :
(1) Scriptural 36
(2) Ethical 36
(3) Consequential .... 37
(4) Inductive 37
2 7 11 Why the second mode is chiefly followed in this
work 39
12 It is proposed to examine the nature and work of
association generally, and of the State in
particular ...... 45
13 Unity, of right, the law of the physical and moral
world 46
14, 15 Its derangement at the Fall .... 47
16 Actual and impending consequences . . 49
17 Provisional correctives supplied ... 50
18 Their generic character: a common life, or
association ...... 50
1 9 State of the relation between man and man as such
(1) In the cae of the Jews .... 51
20 (2) Generally 51
21 The law of association was recognised as natural,
and not conventional 53
22, 23 It corrected selfishness by throwing parts of our
individual existence into a common stock . 54
24 And mainly distinguished the nature of men
from that of devils ..... 5G
CONTENTS. XV
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Pig*
25 It had leading and subordinate forms . . 5G
26 Why we are backward to recognise the truth of
the idea ....... 57
27 Summary of its moral provisions ... 53
28 Why seek for the measure of its effects in the
heathen world ...... 58
29 33 Association also has its dangers and tendencies
to positive evil, which require a specific provi-
sion to balance them ..... 59
12 34 Therefore the common life, when incorporated,
demands a common or collective religion . 63
35 As a general principle, which must be diversified
in its application according to particulars . 64
36 Of the nature of personality in societies, and its
difference from individuality ... 65
37 Conditions under which a society may be a
capable subject of religious responsibility . 66
38 42 Conditions under which an individual is so
affected, viz., if active and moral as well as
living ....... 66
43, 44 They are found in the combination termed State G8
45 Objection that some kindred properties are found
in many subordinate combinations . . 70
46 Leading features of distinction among them . 71
47 Two forms only of combination are
(a) General 72
(6) Permanent ..... 72
(c) Natural 72
(rf) Of unlimited obligation ... 72
() Moral 73
48 One of these is, the family .... 73
49 To which, as such, common religion attaches . 73
" As acknowledged by heathens ... 74
51 Notwithstanding cases of exception . . 75
52 The other of these is, the State ... 76
53 The Nation defined 75
54 The State defined 77
55 Law of its composition .... 78
56 Its larger and more limited sense ... 79
57, 58 The office of the State has been exaggerated, yet
it aims very high * ... 79
b2
XVI
CONTENTS.
Tbiid Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
59 What it professes, negatively .... 80
60 Positively 81
61 What it effects, negatively .... 81
6264 Positively 82
65 What it symbolises 84
66 The foregoing applies to the historical State . 85
67 Which therefore fulfils the five conditions of (47) 86
68 70 The moral office of the State, and the conscience
implied thereby ..... 86
7 1 Analogy of the State and the family attested by
the adversary ...... 89
72 The idea of State duty, or conscience in the
State, sustained by language and the general
sentiment ....... 90
II. 21 73 State action transcends the individual action of
Governors . . . . . . 91
74 Summary of the argument up to this point . 93
75 Of the criteria to determine what combinations
require or admit of collective religion . . 93
76 78 Of minor combinations to which it seems less
akin, and their practice .... 95
79 The objection recurs ; if any one may on prin-
ciple be exempted, then why not any other ? . 98
80 83 A certain magnitude required in any function, to
render it ordinarily the specific subject of religion 99
84 86 This limitation is, however, our infirmity or
misfortune . . . . .102
19,20 87 Conclusion: that the nation is such a person as
should profess a religion . . . .105
88, 89 Reply to the objection' from the want of immor-
tality in corporations . . . . .105
90 Its personality and religious duty compared with
those of the family 107
9193 With those of the individual , . . 108
94 96 The specific resulting obligations compared,
with respect to worship, conduct, and the
propagation of truth . . . . .110
97 99 Enhancement of the whole argument, when the
State is assumed to be Christian . . . 113
54 100102 The mutual relations of the ends of the Church
and the State, and a community of duties
resulting therefrom 115
CONTENTS. XVU
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
II. 63, 64 1031 10 Whether the religious duties of the State should
on Christian principles be restricted to the
communion of the Church . . . .118
66 111, 112 Whether on ethical principles to unity of pro-
fession . . . . . . .125
6, 9 113,114 Argument from the obligations of governors as
individuals ...... 127
7,8 115 117 And from the need of sustaining the tone of their
nature 129
118 This reasoning of very various force, according
to the varieties of constitutions and of social
systems . 132
119 Inference to be drawn in favour of the general
argument . . . . . . .132
120 The argument from Scripture sets out with the
primitive union of governing and sacerdotal
functions . . . . . . .133
121 The twofold conception of government realised
in the connection of Church and State . . 134
1 22 The Hebrew State did not introduce, but merely
preserved the principle . . . 134
123 There was not merely a miraculous, but an
ordinary human agency of a religious kind,
which seems in point . . . . .135
124 We may also infer that national religion is a
sign and condition of political permanence . 136
125 The argument from induction or the general
testimony of mankind (1) heathen . . 136
126, 127 Question whether the promulgators of State
religions were in any sense believers . . 137
10 128,129 Force of the argument enhanced on the contrary
supposition . . . . . .139
11 130 (2) Christian 140
67 131 (3) Auti-Christian . . . . .141
132 At least the onus of showing a fundamental
change in principles lies with the adversary . 142
133 Anticipation teaches the same lesson as retrospect 143
134 Conclusion according to Mr. Burke . . 1-14
79 135 The practical moment of these principles . . 145
XV111 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
THE THEORY OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE STATE.
PART II.
THE INDUCEMENTS OF THE STATE IN RESPECT TO RELIGION.
SECTION I. TO RELIGION IN GENERAL.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
1 The method of investigation by consequences . 147
2 Its substantial differences from the ethical mode,
notwithstanding perfect coincidence of result . 1 47
3 5 The universal sense of mankind, as well as the
nature of a State, reclaims against its restric-
tion to external and material ends . . 149
68 So also the Divine Word, followed accordingly by
the law, which takes some account of motives
as well as acts . . . . .152
9 So also the opinion and practice of the day . 154
10,11 With respect to Art and Science . . . 155
12 With respect to Universities .... 156
13 In particular with respect to popular Educa-
tion 157
14 So also the grandeur and beauty of State pro-
ceedings ....... 158
1 5 The State, then, contemplates general well-being
and cultivation by all suitable instruments . 159
16, 17 Of this general cultivation religion is recognised
as the main instrument, in the philosophy,
art, and civil polities of heathens . . 160
18 According to the Christian Faith . . .164
CONTENTS.
XIX
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
II. 50 (Part) 1921 And to its historical development . . .165
22, 23 Montesquieu and Dr. Ramsden on the national
life 168
24 Under the lower theory of civil government, re-
ligion is still necessary to its ends . . 171
25 The secular means of government wholly defect-
ive 172
26 How religion reinforces them, in its negative
function ....... 173
27 In its positive function . . . . 1 74
5153 2830 In adjusting generally the relations of the State-
will with that of the individual . . .174
31 In particular uses ...... 176
50 (Part) 32 Its alliance with the State is also necessary from
the social mischiefs of its counterfeits . . 177
68 33 35 Or of its detached and separate action . . 178
SECTION II. TO THE CHURCH IN PARTICULAR.
36 The argument of inducements points preferably to
the Church 181
55 59 3743 On account of its superior presumptions of per-
manence ....... 181
60 44 And of truth ...... 186
61 45 And of its historical authority . . . 187
62 46 Which make good the assertion of (36) . . 188
65 47 And seem to favour the exclusive claim of the
Church 188
XX CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
THE THEORY OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE STATE.
PART III.
THE ABILITY OF THE STATE IN RESPECT TO RELIGION.
SECTION I. AS TO ITS EXTENSION.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
II. 4 1 Retrospect of the argument .... 190
2, 3 Paradox of the writers opposed to national reli-
gion ....... 191
4 Propositions to be maintained in answer . . 191
5 The charges respect (1) amount; (2) quality . 192
6 The comparative state of countries with and with-
out establishment, as to (1) amount of religious
provision ....... 193
7 The presumption, from history, that the aid of the
State is a positive, not a negative quantity . 193
8 That England follows the general rule . .194
9 Conclusion thereupon . . . . .194
30, 31 (Part) 10 As to (2) the objection from abuse, it aims at en-
dowment, not merely at State endowment . 1 95
31 (Part))
III 42rPrO\ ' '^ Endowments considered, as to independence, pu-
rity, and authority of doctrine . . .196
III. 35 18 20 State endowment considered, as to moderation
and sufficiency . . . . . 202
| 21 These principles attested by histor . . 205
| 22 And by the practice of their opponents . . 206
2426, 47 2326 Of the insufficiency of what is termed the volun-
tary principle ...... 207
III. 34 27 It should be combined with the State principle . 209
28 Those termed its supporters have no exclusive
right to the appellation . . . .210
CONTENTS.
XXI
Third Edition
II.
27
28
I. 3239
40,41
III. 45
Fourth Edition. Page
29, 30 Of some predisposing opinions . . 21 1
31 Of the argument from territorial distribution . 213
32 Of the indeterminate objection from abuse . 215
33 Objection, that the funds of the State belong to
tax -payers, and not to rulers . . .216
34 36 It is not so in the sense of the English law or
constitution . . . . . .216
37, 38 Nor according to the definition of property . 219
39, 40 State funds are the property of the nation, or
State-diffusive, disposable by its organ and for
its benefit 221
41, 42 Nor is there, morally, any injustice in such an
application of them ..... 223
43 46 And according to the spirit of free institutions
the State is entirely competent to direct it . 225
47, 48 The contrary opinion tends directly to the disor-
ganisation of society ..... 229
49 Conclusion 231
5057
58
59
60,61
62
63
64
65
The power of a State to add fixity to religious in-
stitutions ....... 232
Even by the principle of a double check . . 237
Not contradicted by the early history of the
Church 238
And eminently illustrated by the example of
Rome ....... 239
And by the avowals of Dissenters . . .241
General conclusion in favour of the capacity of
the State 242
In particular by an intermediate agency . . 243
Legitimate forms of State-assistance . . 244
1-33
SECTION II. AS TO ITS QUALITY.
66 Objection, that personal religion in deteriorated
by the connection ..... 2-J5
67 69 Favoured by present circumstances . . . 246
70 75 It would imply an actual incompatibility of two
duties 248
XX11
CONTENTS.
Third Edition.
Fourth Edition .
Page
7679
Argument upon the allegation of superior activity
in dissenting bodies .....
251
8086
Argument upon selection, the method of dissent ;
and upon universal solicitation, the method of
III. 133
establishments ......
253
8794
Argument upon the partial religion of large num-
bers in establishments ...
257
9598
Establishment tends, on the whole, to enlist se-
condary motives in favour of religion .
264
3641
99105
Certain beneficial effects of nationality on the
and 42 (Part)
tone of personal religion . .
265
4648
106108
General argument applied to England
270
49
109
272
CONTENTS.
xxm
CHAPTER V.
THK THEORY OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE STATE.
PART IV.
THK FUNCTION OF THE STATE IN THE CHOICE AND THE DEFENCE OF THE
NATIONAL RELIGION.
SECTION I. AS TO CHOICE.
Third Edition.
II. 4246
1317
72
5,71
Fourth Edition.
1
2,3
4
510
1116
17, 18
19
'20, 21
22
23
24
2529
30
3134
We have now to regard the State organic, intrin-
sically, and in its component parts . . 274
Subject of the Chapter proposed . . . 275
The sense of the terra " religious choice " cleared 276
The tendencies to assimilation between the reli-
gious choice of the State and of the people;
and their means of reciprocal influence respect-
ively 277
The presumable superiority in the intrinsic com-
petency of the State to choose . . . 283
j The efficient cause 288
1(1) As to the intellect of rulers . . . 289
(2) As to their morality .... 290
As to the elevation of the deliberative above the
personal standard .....
And of permanent above momentary conclusions
An abatement herefrom ......
Rationale of the principle of authority and trust .
Objection, that come States hold a false belief .
Choice of course limited by constitutional re-
straints 300
Cases where the national tie is imperfect . . 300
rxir CONTENTS.
SECTION II. AS TO DEFENCE J OR, ON PERSECUTION AND DISQUALIFICATION.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
35 (I.) The charge, that the union between the
Church and the State leads to persecution . 305
36 Laws against blasphemy need not be persecuting
laws ....... 305
37 Nor laws intended purely for social order : what
is included in the term "persecution" (1), (2) 306
38, 39 Consequences erroneously attributed to the theory
(1) That there need be persecution . . . 307
40 (2) That there ought to be persecution . . 309
41 (1) from the impracticability of adjusting a
scale 310
!42, 43 (2) from the free agency of man . . . 310
44 (3) from the nature of the faculties concerned . 312
45 Possible counter-argument .... 314
46, 47 (4) from the corrupting effects of persecution
upon its agents . . . . . .315
48 (5) from its undermining the proper subjective
foundations of the Church . . . .316
VI. 7, 8 49 52 (6) from the fact that it is either forbidden or at
least not commanded . . . . .317
53 (II.) The charge that the Union between the
Church and the State leads to disqualifica-
tion; and what it is ..... 321
54 It is within the scope of the five first arguments
against persecution ..... 322
55 It is, however, an inference from one part of the
theory of the connection .... 323
56, 57 Capable of being pushed to the most extrava-
gant lengths 324
58 To be met and limited by another principle of
political society ; namely, that being is the
condition of well-being .... 325
5962 Not grounded upon a notion that Divine truth
is secondary in value, but upon the order of
Nature 326
63 State may be progressive, retrogressive, or sta-
tionary 330
CONTENTS.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
64 Question whether the State shall maintain pub-
lic institutions of religion by force . . 331
65 The law of individual duty is usually clear . 333
66 The law of State duty : to seek for office those
best qualified to hold it .... 333
67 Criteria of fitness, chiefly four . . .334
68 How this law is necessarily subject to limita-
tion 335
69 The life of a people, and of its institutions, sym-
pathetic 335
70 Disqualification as it now exists in England war-
rantable 336
71 Recurrence to the question of (64), which seems
hardly to be solved by a formula . . 337
72 Grounds of a negative answer in certain cases . 338
73 Some maxims of practical policy resulting . 340
74, 75 Conclusion, on the polemical advantage of those
who recommend innovation .... 342
XXVI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SUBSISTING CONNECTION BETWEEN THE STATE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM AND
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND.
SECTION I. THE PLACE OF THE CLERGY AND OF THE CHURCH IN THE
CONSTITUTION.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
1 We now enter on the historical portion of the in-
quiry ....... 1
2 Proposed to examine the subsisting connection . 1
3, 4 Twofold conception of the Clergy ... 2
5 Exhibited in history ..... 4
6 8 Most vividly exemplified in the Coronation Ser-
vice ....... 5
9 Efficient cause of the nationality of the Church . 8
VII. 4 10 Constitutional notes of it .... 8
5 1 1 How far the nationality of the Church Establish-
ment of England is constitutionally distin-
guishable from that of Scotland . . . 12
II. 80 85 12 17 Remarkable development of the principle of the
connection in the case of Ireland . . . 12
86 18 Summary of chief reasons for its maintenance . 17
SECTION II. THE ECCLESIASTICAL SUPREMACY OF THE SOVEREIGN.
IV. 1,2 19 Current notions on the supremacy ... 19
20 Its establishment, and subsequent reduction to
the Elizabethan form 20
21 Its ground, in the high conception of nationality 21
22 Its aim, chiefly to repress RomanUm and Puri-
tanism ....... 22
CONTENTS.
XXV11
Thir.1 Edition.
IV.
3,4
9,7
5,68
1016
Fourth Edition. Page
23 It did not imply the absorption of Church power 23
24 It was claimed as the recognition of an ancient
right 24
25 How explained under James I. ... 25
26 How under Charles 1 26
27 Its relation to controversies of faith ... 27
28, 29 The Crown may be regarded as most nearly ap-
proaching to the nature of an intermediate
power 27
30 There must be a presumption of reciprocal confi-
dence as the general rule .... 30
31 33 In the contingency of collision, the State must
carry its point At facto .... 30
34, 35 We must not regard the claims of the State sim-
ply in the abstract, more than the rest of the
royal prerogative . .... 32
36, 37 The Church has still her resort, and therefore
retains always her potential, usually her ac-
tual independence . .... 33
38 40 In point of fact, the State has imposed limita-
tions on its claims, and the demand of a veto is
altogether reasonable ..... 35
4143 The power, the right, the law . . , . 38
44 The nomination of Bishops .... 40
45 The duty of the Crown to the Church threefold . 41
46 The charges against the Church on this point are
not sustained by analogy .... 41
47 There is, however, a want of precision in our
theories generally ..... 42
48 The Scottish Church- establishment . 43
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VII.
TBB REFORMATION, AS IT IS RELATED TO THE DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF
PRIVATE JUDGMENT.
SECTION I. OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT BEFORE THE REFORMATION.
Third Edition.
V. 1
Fourth Edition.
1 The connection of the question of private judg-
2,4
519
2
3,4
5
6
9,10
7,8
It
12, 13
1416
1720
2124
25,26
27
28
29,30
31
ment with the general subject of this work
The right of private judgment stated
Six questions inaccurately treated as questions
of private judgment .....
The legitimate test .....
Private judgment is logically inevitable in one,
but an insufficient sense ....
The limits of the controverted ground
Upon the whole, four senses of the phrase
(1) functional assent ....
(2) uucoerced assent ....
(3) deliberative assent ....
(4) self-based assent ....
Propositions respecting the connection of each
with the Reformation .....
Necessity of a retrospect to the previous period .
It was a specific aim uf Romish institutions to
reduce the action of private judgment .
By the rule of faith . . . .
By the rule of discipline ....
By the bearing of particular doctrines upon the
inward and practical government of the con-
science .......
For example, of the mediation of saints .
Of purgatory ......
Of relics, and of other usages ....
Of work* of supererogation and indulgences
Page
46
47
50
50
53
51
53
53
53
53
54
55
56
58
62
67
69
70
71
72
CONTENTS. XXIX
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
V. 20,24,21 32 34 Of confession, penance, and absolution . . 73
22 35 And others 76
23 36, 37 Different effects on different classes ... 76
SECTION II. THE LUTHERAN REFORMATION.
25 38 The Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Anglican Re-
formations 79
-6 29 39 13 First views and steps of Luther ... 80
44 The practical dilemma which arose with respect
to Church government .... 84
4547 Historical basis of the Lutheran polity, provi-
sional ....... 85
30 48 5 1 Calamities ultimately caused by the loss of the
Episcopate ...... 88
52 Recent reaction 92
31 53, 54 Summary 93
SECTION III. THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION ; ECCLESIASTICAL SKETCH.
38, 40 55, 56 General statement 95
57, 58 Charge may lie in two forms ; that the Anglican
Reformation countenanced the modern prin-
ciple of private judgment
(I.) by its teuets .... 98
(II.) by its acts .... 98
59 Negatkn of (I.) from the opinions of the Reform-
ers under Mary ...... 99
60 63 From the documents of the reign of EUiabeth . 100
58, 59 64, 65 Not contradicted by the free communication of
the Scriptures . . . . . .103
XXX- CONTENTS.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
66 With respect to (II .) we must distinguish
(1) the ecclesiastical,
(2) the civil
form of the English Reformation . . . 105
67 72 As to (1), that the abolition of the Papal juris-
diction under Henry VIII. was enacted by
the Church of England . . . .106
73 75 Of its competency thereto . . . .112
76 In conformity with the sense of a large portion
of Christendom . . . . . .115
77 And of the Council of Ephesus . . .115
7881 How the validity of the Elizabethan settlement
depends on the foregoing proposition . . 116
82 How regarded at the period .... 120
83 85 Which therefore rests upon authorised and
official, not upon private judgment . . 120
86 It is unnecessary to defend the terms of the
supremacy as they stood under Henry VIII. . 123
87 Or to condemn a Reformation otherwise grounded
88 Testimonies of posterior authors . . . 124
89 Opinions of that generation on the unbroken
continuity of the Church . . . .127
V. 29 90 Of the Scottish Reformers and Puritans . .128
91 94 The true parentage of private judgment in the
sense (4) 129
SECTION IV. PRIVATE JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO THE ANGLICAN
REFORMATION.
95 Combination of the rule of Catholic authority
with that of active and intelligent assent . 134
42 45 96 99 Does not deprive the former principle of its
substance . . - . . . .134
4649 100103 Nor the latter 137
32 36 104 108 Actual aberration and its moral causes . . 140
37 109 The present compared with the former abuse . 144
CONTENTS.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
50 54 1 10 115 The rule is not impeached from the hopelessness
of universal compliance with it ... 144
55 57 116 118 Nor by the divisions in the body of the Church . 149
SECTION V. THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION J CIVIL SKETCH.
60 119 Historical causes of the inroads of abusive private
judgment within the English Church . . 150
VI. 24 120122 Element of nationality in our Reformation, uud
its relation to that principle . . . 151
V. 63 123,124 Relation of the civil and ecclesiastical forms of
our Reformation . . . . .153
V. 61,62, 64")
... f 123 129 Argument for the national proceeding . . 155
V. 65 130132 Of the subserviency to the Crown . . .160
133 The supremacy progressively mitigated . . 164
VI. 28 134 Some of the minor acts of the Reformation en-
couraged the abusive principle . . . 165
135 But it was not recognised . . . .166
29 136 Nor at once developed by a schism . . . 167
V. 66 137 Nor did it lie within view here as abroad . . 168
138, 139 But it was also encouraged by the course of
events, which tended to merge the ecclesi-
astical form of the Reformation in the civil one 169
<140 Here then we euter on the history of toleration . 171
141 Which links the principle of private judgment
with the question of union between the Church
and the State 171
c 2
YKX11 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT AS IT IS RELATED TO
THE UNION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE STATE.
SECTION I TOLERATION.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
VI. 1 3 1 3 The effectuation of the principle of national
religion before the Reformation . . .173
4 4 Dawn at that era of the conceptions of private
judgment and toleration or liberty of conscience 174
5, 6,9, 10 5 9 Each have legitimate and spurious senses ; and
toleration defined . . . . .175
1113 1012 Political and theological intolerance . . 178
14 13,14 Outline of the operation of private judgment
upon the connection between Church and
State 180
15 15 And upon civil government . . . 181
19 16 The influence of Protestantism upon the con-
nection not always unfavourable . . .182
17 We have here to do with private judgment only
in its senses (2) ai-.d (4) . . . .182
18 Its history in England is the history of tolera-
tion, and why . . . . .183
19 Before its rightful claims were fully acknow-
ledged, it had bejjun to make such us were
wrongful ....... 184
SECTION II. HISTORICAL SKETCH FROM HENRY VIII. TO 1688.
20, 21 First period, from Henry VIII. to the Revolution
of 1688 185
22, 23 22 24 On the use of the supremacy as a criterion . 186
26, 27 25 27 Good and evil of its substitution for the Papal
power ....... 189
28 Causes tending to debilitate the principle of
religious coercion . . . .193
CONTENTS.
XXXU1
Third Edition. Fourth Kdition. Page
(a) Change in the relation of the Crown and the
people 193
29 (b) Relation to the foreign Protestants . . 194
34 36 30 32 (c) Change in the ground of disciplinary regula-
tions 194
33 (<0 The civil form woru by ecclesiastical acts . 197
34 () The legitimate consequences of the free
circulation of Scripture . . . .198
30 33 3538 First and immediate mitigation of this principle ;
the restriction of capital punishment to funda-
mentals 199
39 Three allegations in answer, considered : . . 202
40, 41 (a) The alleged preparations under Edward VI. 203
42, 43 (b) The executions of Puritans under Elizabeth 205
37 39 4446 (c) The executions of Recusants under Elizabeth 207
47 Second mitigation : declarations against forcing
consciences generally in this reigu . . 210
48 50 Cause tending to encourage the principle of
religious coercion : the parallelism and close
association .of civil and ecclesiastical affairs . 211
51 Gradual decomposition of the Puritan body into
parts, each working out some of its first
principles . . . .215
52 It had more theological intolerance than the
Anglican prelates . . . . .217
40,41 53 56 But a part of it had less legal intolerance . 220
42 57 Decline and cessation of the capital punishment
of Recusants 224
43,44 58,59 Further signs of mitigation, to 1648 . . 224
45 60 Theory of toleration under the Independents . 225
46,47 6166 Ecclesiastical polky of 1 660 88 less tyrannical,
but more jealous, than before 1640 . . 227
-K 67 Allowances made by Charles II. to separatists . 232
SECTION III. FROM 1688 TO THE PRESENT DAY.
49
68 William III. Toleration Act . . . .233
69 72 Establishment of Pri'sbyterianum in Scotland . 234
73 Penal laws against Romanists . . . 238
XXXIV
CONTENTS.
Third Edition.
Fourth Edition.
Page
74
And against Socinians and others . . .
238
60
75
Further allowances to Irish Puritans
238
(Part) 51
76
Scottish Union ......
239
77
Further struggles and advances of toleration
239
78
Its analogy to the change in civil government
240
(Part) 51
79
Proscription of Episcopacy in Scotland
240
52
80
General policy of the eighteenth century .
241
8183
Its spirit at the close of that term ...
242
53,54
84,85
Sketch of the Roman Catholic question .
244
53
86
The repeal of the Test Act : and the single
remaining restriction .....
246
56
87
Latest dogmatic forms of the principle of coercion
246
58
88
Law of excommunication ....
248
57
89
Penalties for breach of the Act of Uniformity
248
16
9094
Synopsis of policy with respect to toleration,
from the Reformation to the present day
249
59
9597
The modern advantage is not unmixed . .
255
17
98
Our present position described . . .
257
SECTION IV. PROSPECTIVE INFERENCES.
6083
99 103 Form and grounds of the claim against the State
engendered by the abuse of private judgment . 259
104 106 Political impracticability of the distinction be-
tween opinions as fundamental or indifferent . 262
107 And defective operation of the test of belief in
Christianity 265
108 112 Step from the mixed religious composition of
the governing body to its mixed action . . 266
113 116 Step from indiscriminate action in the religious
function to its entire repudiation . . .270
117 Retrospect of the argument .... 274
118 124 The development of popular civil principles co-
operates with the exaggeration of Protestantism
in the destruction oi the connection between
the Church and the State .... 274
CONTENTS. XXXV
CHAPTER IX.
DETAILS OP THE PRESENT ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICE OF THE STATE OF THE
UNITED KINGDOM.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
VII. I' 1,2 The details of our practice are chequeied . . 279
2 3 The practical question is, whether the substance
of the connection at all remains . . .281
3 4 We have never had, and cannot look for, ideal
perfection 282
6 5 Apparent inferences regarding the Scottish
Church Establishment .... 284
7 13 6 13 Consideration of its case under the Act of Union
with Scotland 284
14, 15 14, 15 Illustrative details in Scotland . . .291
16 16 Details of practice in England : the Navy . 292
17 17 The Army 292
18 18 Prisons, workhouses . 294
19 19, 20 Schools 295
20 21 Vote for Protestant Dissenting ministers . . 298
21 22 The actual defect of spiritual provision . . 299
22 23 Details in Ireland 299
23 2429 Maynoth 300
24 30 Regium Douum 305
25 31 National system of Education . . . 306
2628 32 34 Chaplains in workhouses and in gaols . . 307
35 Chapels in foreign towns .... 309
29 36 The case of the colonies generally . . , 310
37,38 Their diocesan divisions .... 310
30,68 39 41 On the principles of ecclesiastical policy for the
Colonies . . . . . . .311
42 Tabular summary 315
XXXVI
CONTENTS.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition.
31,36
4354
3740
55, 56
4153
5759
5456
60,61
5764
6268
6567
6971
69,70
72,73
Case of Canada ....
Of the other North American Colonies
Of the West Indian Colonies .
Of the Mediterranean Colonies
Of the Australian Colonies
Of the East Indies
Concluding remarks
Page
317
324
326
328
329
338
340
CONTENTS.
XXXV11
CHAPTER X.
THE ULTERIOR TENDENCIES OF THE MOVEMENT TOWARDS THE DISSOLUTION
OF THE CONNECTION.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Page
VIII. 1 1, 2 General statement of the subject . . .343
3 Heads of consequences to be examined . . 3 15
4 (1) On the moral tendencies of civil union . 345
(Part) 4, 5 57 (2) On the nature and function of the State . 346
(Part) 4, 35 810 (3) On the character of governors . . 351
(Part) 35, 36 11, 12 (4) On the social and religious destinies of men 354
2, 3 13, 14 Particularly in connection with the course of the
remedial scheme of Christianity . . . 356
15, 16 The form of the development probably gradual
and subtle ...... 358
17. 18 Of the notion, that the separation will relieve and
purify religion ..... 360
1 9 21 Of the permanence of a generalised State religion
without distinction of forms or tenets . . 362
2225 Of the permanence of a State religion limited to
the acknowledgment of a single elementary
dogma ....... 364
26 29 Retrospect of the universality of primeval religion,
and its subsequent restriction . . . 368
30 32 Of the re-introduction of universality with
Christianity 372
33, 34 The abandonment of this universality appears to
follow upon the abandonment of nationality of
religion 374
35 Whatever the possibility of a subsequent reaction
of the Church 376
27 29, and 36 39 This abandonment seems also to prepare for the
II. 6, 70 consummation of the human apostacy, by the
introduction of Hocial Atheism . . . 377
626
XXXV111
CONTENTS.
Third Edition. Fourth Edition. Pe
40,41 And for the destruction of individual morality . 382
42 How public opinion runs parallel to the course of
VIII. 30 34 ^ events . . . . . . .385
43 Summary from this retrospect .... 386
44 Contrasted with the indications of the prophecies 387
37, 38 4548 The case of England relatively to that of other
countries ....... 3S8
49 52 Signs and features of this case . . .391
53 59 In particular of the tendency to substitute an
intellectual culture by the State for national
39 - 52 < religion . .... 393
60 The danger is not to the vitality of the Church . 399
61,62 But to the State 400
63 The mode of remedy 402
53, 54 6466 The apology of this work . . . .403
Chapters and Sections of the THIRD EDITION, with those generally
corresponding in the FOURTH EDITION.
Third Edition.
Fourth Edition.
Third Edition.
Fourth Edition.
I. 1-6
I. 1-6
II. 72
V. 30
7
8
73-77
42-45
8-27
11-33
78
II. 87
28
9, 10
79
135
29
80-86
VI. 11-18
Qf)
n
Ow
i
mi '-n
IV fifi-QS
II. 1
II. 1-3
l-OO
34
iv. uo yo
27
2
7-11
35
18-20
3
12
36-42
99-105,113
4
IV. 1
43,44
14-17
5
V. 31-34
45
60,61
6-9
I II. 113-117
1 X. 38
46-49
106-109
10, 11
II. 128-130
IV. 1,2
VI. 19
12
34
3,4
28,29
13-17
V. 25-29
5-9
36-40
18
II. 35
10-16
41-48
19,20
87
21
73
V. 1
VII. 1
22,23
2-4
9-13
24-26
IV. 23-26
5-24
14-37
27
31
25-29
38-43, 90
28
33-43
30
48-51
29
21,22
31
53,54
30, 31
10, 11
32-37
104-109
32-41
50-59
38
55
42-46
V. 11-16
39
57
47
IV. 23-26
40
56
48-53
III. 24-32
41
63
54
II. 100
42-49
96-103
55-62
III. 37-46
50-57
110-118
63,64
II. 104-106
58, 59
64,65
65
III. 47
60
119
66
II 111,112
61-64
123-129
67
130 131
65
132
68, 69
III. 33-35
66
137
70
X. 39 (part)
61
140
71 V. 31-34
Third Edition.
Fourth Edition.
Third Edition.
Fourth Edition.
VI. 1-4
VIII. 1-4
VII. 6-13
IX. 5-13
f 5-9
14-18
14-18
5-10
< and
19
19,20
{ V. 49-52
20-22
21-23
11-15
VIII. 10-15
23
24-29
16-18
90-94, 98
24-28
30-34
19
16
29
36
20
VII. 129
30
39-41
21
131
31-36
43-54
22,23
VIII. 22-24
37-40
55,56
24
VII. 120-122
41-53
57-59
25
125-127
54-56
60,61
26,27
VIII. 25-27
57-64
62-68
28,29
VII. 134-136
65-67
69-71
30-33
VIII. 35-38
68
40
34-36
30-32
69,70
72,73
59
97
VIII. 1
X. 1,2
60-83
99-124
2,3
13, 14
A ti
c in
VII. 1-3
IX. 1-4
6-34
t~L\J
15-44
4
VI. 10
35,36
10-12
5
11
37-54
45-66
THE STATE
m ITS
RELATIONS WITH THE CHURCH.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
1. PROBABLY there never was a time in the history of
this country, when the connection between the Church
and the State was threatened from quarters so manifold
and various as at present. The infidel, with sagacious
instinct, follows out all that tends to the general di-
minution of religious influences ; and, tolerant of the
union in those periods of ease and slumber when sepa-
ration might at least have had the effect of awakening
the Church to her duties, exclaims against it at a time
when its spiritual purposes and obligations begin to be
more truly appreciated. The Romanist (with some
exceptions), in order to erect his own structure of
faith and discipline, now seems to aim first at the
demolition of every other, and to deem us so involved
in fatal error, that we must pass through the zero of
national infidelity in order to arrive at truth. Some
of the professors of political economy, who assign to
the undigested materials of a future science preroga-
VOL. I. B
2 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
tives far more exalted and exclusive than it will be
entitled to claim in its maturity, regard this ancient
connection as a visionary theory, only and mischiev-
ously known by its tendency, when obtruded into
practice, to interfere with what they hold to be pre-
eminently the substantial interests of mankind ;* the
democrat, who, by the very law of his condition,
naturally desires to strip government of all its highest
duties, and leave to it the performance of no more
than mechanical functions : of all these it was per-
haps, on the whole, to be expected that they should
unite, upon any seemingly favourable occasion, to press
towards their common object ; and they have so united.
2. But some others of a different stamp f are begin-
ning to view the connection of Church and State with
an eye of indifference, or even of suspicion. These are
men dutiful to the State, but more affectionately and
intimately cleaving to the Church ; men who, though
unwilling to regard the two as in any sense having
opposite interests, are nevertheless wearied, perhaps
exasperated, at the injustice which has been done of
late years, or rather during recent generations, by the
temporal to the spiritual body. I do not mean that
there has been any absolute or conscious alienation of
sentiment ; but only (and it is enough) that, through
the secular or carnal principle working in every one
of us, the State has too generally perverted and abused
* See, for example, the preface to the ' Principles of Political Eco-
nomy,' by Mr. Poulett Scrope, M.P.
t British Magazine, April, 1836, p. 363.
CHAP. 1.] WITH THE CHURCH. 3
the institutions of the Church by unworthy patronage,
has crippled or suppressed even her lawful powers,
and, lastly, when those same misdeeds have raised an
energetic though partial sentiment of disfavour against
its ally, has evinced an inclination to make a separate
peace, and surrender her to the will of her adversaries.
Such being the case, we can hardly wonder, though
we may lament it, that a very few of the attached
members of the Church are growing cool in their ap-
probation of the connection, possibly not without the
influence of a nascent and unconscious resentment;
and, while they seem at least to waver upon the ques-
tion, there are others far more numerous who, although
they are themselves unshaken in their attachment to
the principle, yet defend it upon grounds untenable
for their purpose, and better fitted to be occupied as
positions against them.
3. Yet the mass of the people remains firm in its
adhesion to the ancient principles of the Constitution
and the Church. It appears still to be their belief
that the connection of Church and State, rescued on
the one hand from the Papal, and on the other from
the Erastian, exaggeration of the relation of either
power to the other, is conformable to the will of God,
essential to the permanent well-being of a community,
implied and necessitated by every right idea of civil
government, and calculated to extend and establish
the vital influences of Christianity, and therewith to
increase and purify the mass of individual happiness.
And as the circumstances of the day demand that the
B2
4 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
holders of that belief should now be busy and strenu-
ous in its defence, so also, if their agency is to be
effective, permanent, and conscientious, must they
be earnest and patient in its examination.
4. The point of view from which it is now proposed
to contemplate and discuss the question, is that which
men occupy as members of a State ; and the aim is to
show, that the highest duty and highest interest of a
body politic alike tend to place it in close relations of
co-operation with the Church of Christ. It is from
this position that I propose to regard it; first, because
the combatant in defensive warfare naturally resorts
ITT} TO xa/Avov, to the quarter which is threatened and
in danger ; because the Church is not likely to be the
moving party in measures for the dissolution of this
connection, while the State has, it is too certain, given
signs, though I believe unconsciously, of that inclina-
tion ; and therefore it is the mind of the State, not of
the Church, which requires to be more fully exercised
upon this subject, in order to the better knowledge
and fulfilment of its duty.
5. But besides the fact that we are more ignorant
of our duty as citizens than as churchmen, in respect
of the connection, we shall find another reason for in-
stituting the investigation in the former capacity
rather than the latter. The union is to the Church of
secondary though great importance. Her foundations
are on the holy hills. Her charter is legibly divine.
She, if she should be excluded from the precinct of
government, may still fulfil all her functions, and
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 5
carry them out to perfection. Her condition would be
anything rather than pitiable, should she once more
occupy the position which she held before the reign of
Constantine. But the State, in rejecting her, would
actively violate its most solemn duty, and would, if
the theory of the connection be sound, entail upon
itself a curse. We know of no effectual preservative
principle except religion ; nor of any permanent,
secure, and authenticated religion but in the Church.
The State, then, if she allows false opinions to over-
run and bewilder her, and, under their influence, sepa-
rates from the Church, will be guilty of an obstinate
refusal of truth and light, which is the heaviest sin of
man. It is, accordingly, of more importance to our
interests as a nation, that we should sift this matter to
the bottom, than to our interests as a Church. Be-
sides all which, it may be shown that the principles,
upon which alone the connection can be disavowed,
tend intrinsically and directly to disorganisation, in-
asmuch as they place government itself upon a false
foundation.
6. These are the main reasons for handling the
question in that sense which most applies to individual
Christians, anxious to be informed how they may best
discharge their duties in respect of this connection, as
members of the State : while, at the same time, we
shall find ourselves led by the proposed inquiry to ex-
actly the same conclusion, as if, setting out from an
opposite quarter, we were called upon to assist in
directing the operations of the Church, with reference
6 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
to the best means of extending its utility. There is
a substantial conformity between our several duties,
though not always an apparent one. The only ques-
tion is, respecting the order of the processes by which
they are demonstrated.
7. Further, the argument which follows is not spe-
cifically addressed to infidels ; hardly, indeed, to perr
sons in a state of systematic separation from our
national Church ; nor, on the other hand, to such as
have deliberately considered all its conditions, and
their own obligations as its members; but to those,
who form the mass of the educated community, and
whose minds have imbibed a general belief of the .law-
fulness and duty of the public support of religion, yet
without any clear and reasoned conclusions either
upon the grounds or the limits of that duty. I pre-
sume, therefore, on but a very small portion of favour-
able predispositions in the mind of the reader, while
I shall hope to show him, that a sincere believer in no
more than the general principle of Theism will, upon
looking attentively at the nature and necessities of the
State, and its capabilities in respect of religion, be led
on, by regular and progressive inferences, to the full
adoption of the principle which demands the con-
tinued union of the Church with the constitution of
the country.
8. Our principal inquiry, however, is into the
grounds and reasons of the alliance, not into its terms.
The precise arrangements, by which the respective
rights of the contracting parties are to be preserved,
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 7
are matter of very great importance, but they are en-
tirely distinct from the preliminary question, whether
they ought to be contracting parties at all ; and perhaps
we shall scarcely have reached the time for discussing
the first with advantage, until our policy and the tone
of public opinion shall have shown, beyond all doubt,
that the latter is set at rest. There are indeed, points
of contact between the two subjects, but they are inci-
dental ; and it is enough here to indicate that which
is the specific object of these pages, and which consti-
tutes an object of adequate magnitude when taken
alone : while the other, it is true, is not less important
than neglected. Milton* wrote to Sir Harry Vane
the younger,
besides, to know
Both spiritual power and civil, what each means,
What severs each, thou hast learnt, which few have done :
and the praise which was rarely due in his days
ought, I fear, to be still more rarely given in our own.
For then was the time of Selden and of FalklanH ; the
time when the polished society that met in the man-
sion of the latter, not far from Oxford, spent its hours
in the pursuit of truth, or, according to Lord Claren-
don, in a perpetual convivium philosophicum, or con-
vivium theologicum.^
9. But the phraseology which it has been usual to
employ may suggest another question how far are
we to consider the alliance of Church and State as an
historical compact? I cannot but think that the
* Sonnet xvii. t Clarendon, Life, i. 47.
8 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
representation of the relation between sovereign and
subject was unworthily and unfortunately, as well as
inaccurately, handled, when it was exhibited as de-
pendent upon the fiction of an original compact.
This is both a rude and a feeble manner of representing
duties to which no date can be assigned, and it much
more than loses in truth and in impressiveness what it
may gain in clearness and facility. It was doubtless
intended to strengthen the sense of personal obliga-
tion ; but it produced a very opposite result, because
it seemed to found on option, and on a computation of
results, what is indeed more deeply based in the ori-
ginal constitution of our nature. The same objections
will apply in a more limited degree to the application
of a similar phraseology to the connection between
the Church and the State. There is this difference
between the two. In the case of civil society, the re-
lation has in general been practically recognised and
its duties fulfilled long before any notion of a com-
pact in specific terms has been entertained ; and the
only pretext for such language as that of Locke is
found in the fact, that it may have been necessary in
the course of time to define and modify the general
relation by verbal conditions. In the case of State
religion, we should probably find it impossible, for the
most part, to define its historical commencement ; but
we can usually mark the period when the powers of
this world, in their respective spheres, began to own
submission to Christ, so that the contract or alliance
has here a substantial basis in history. But that basis
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 9
has not usually been one of deliberate forethought, of
prudential calculation, or of scientific accuracy.
10. In our own country, for example, we may say
with justice that the alliance of Church and State was
formed between Ethelbert and Augustine in the sixth
century. But what was done was probably little
more than a trustful obedience to the simple impres-
sions of conscience. The relation thus historically, but
indeterminately, established, was developed and embo-
died in forms of greater precision at different periods of
our history as, for example, in the reigns of Henry II.,
of Edward III., of Henry VIII. and his successors down
to Charles II. The peculiar arrangements, or a por-
tion of them, by which effect is given to the principle,
may, without violation of truth, be referred to positive
stipulation. But the principle itself is an obligation
antecedent to all verbal and determinate expression ;
and it is acknowledged by, not founded on, the assent
of the contracting parties. By the " compact " between
Church and State and its conditions, we may properly
express the particular forms and acts, in which the
objective truth of the relation has taken practical
effect ; only let not the superstructure be mistaken for
the foundation.
11. It does not appear that our literature is well
supplied with works which would meet the necessity
above described, and furnish men with sufficient prin-
ciples (axiomata summa) upon the fundamental condi-
tions of the union between the Church and the State.
Hooker looked at the question under influences de-
10 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
rived from the general controversy with the Puritans,
and he is much more ample and satisfactory on the
terms than on the grounds of the connection. Bishop
Warburton has written upon it with .much acuteness
and ability, but in the dry and technical manner of a
man who lived in times when there was no strong
pressure in one direction requiring to be warmly and
feelingly met from another. The splendid representa-
tion delineated by Burke can stand in need, I should
admit, of nothing but to be reduced to method and
expanded into detail. The extreme beauty of the
sketch in its present form may intercept the attention
of a reader, and prevent his being adequately impressed
with its philosophic soundness; but it seems to imply,
even where it does not express, the whole truth of the
subject. The work of Paley on Moral and Political
Philosophy is a storehouse of anything rather than
sound principles, although there are many parts of its
details whieh may be useful in affording direct instruc-
tion; as, for example, his account of the formation of
governments. Coleridge has dealt admirably with the
question in his ' Idea of Church and State ;' but his
conception demands from his readers a greater share
of the power and habits of abstraction than we can ex-
pect to find beyond the limits of a veiy small class ;
and it does not, I think, contain all the elements of
the subject, though it precludes none. Dr. Chalmers
has handled some points connected with this inquiry
in a manner the most felicitous; but, in other parts
of his recently published lectures, he has laid down
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 1 1
positions that are not less seriously detrimental to
our cause. None of these writers, who have handled
their subject in form, regarded it precisely in the as-
pect most requisite and available for present circum-
stances : namely, that which shows that governments
are, by "dutiful necessity," cognisant of religious
truth and falsehood, and bound to the maintenance
and propagation of the former. Some time, however,
will be well spent in succinctly regarding the respective
theories of the above-mentioned authors.
12. If the 6th, 7th, and 8th books of the 'Ecclesias-
tical Polity' are to be taken as representing the opi-
nions of Hooker, at least they cannot be said to do so
with the accuracy, nor consequently with the degree
of authority, which belongs to the earlier and larger
portion of the work. In the 8th book, however, he
teaches,* that the same persons compose the Church
and the commonwealth of England, universally ; that
the same subject f is therefore intended under the re-
spective names of Church and Commonwealth ; and it
is thus variously named only in respect of accidents,
or properties and actions,;); which are different. His
opponents contended for a personal separation, which
precluded the same man from bearing sway in both ;
he for a natural one, which did not forbid such a
union of authorities. " The Church and the Com-
monwealth are in this case, therefore, personally one
society, which society" is " termed a Commonwealth,
* Ecclesiastical Polity, book viii. c. i. 2. f Ib. c. i. 5.
J Ib. c. i. 2. $ Ib. c. i. 2.
12 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
as it liveth under whatsoever form of secular law and
regiment a Church, as it hath the spiritual law of
Jesus Christ."* Banishment, however, casts out of
the Church ; but excommunication does not cast out
of the Commonwealth.
13. In this society, considered as a church, the king
is "the highest uncommanded commander." f He
holds his entire office under the law, and by the will-
ing consent and subjection of the people, though still
by divine right, even while at man's discretion.^ His
chief ecclesiastical powers are, the title of headship ;
the right of calling and dissolving the greater assem-
blies ; that of assent to all church orders, which are
to have the force of law; the advancement of pre-
lates ; the highest judicial authority ; and in general
an exemption from the ordinary church censures to
which others are liable, at least from excommunica-
tion : but the question of this last he declines to de-
termine. The conveyance of power is not to each
sovereign in succession, but to one originally, from
whom the rest inherit; and the body cannot help
itself, but with consent of the head, while there is one.
The king's judicial power is subject to church law;
and it is the head of all, simply because not confined
to a district, but legally reaching to all. || Regal
power ^f is not naturally limited t9 the good of men's
* Compare the theory of Marheineke, stated and criticised in Stahl's
Kirchenverfassung der Protestanten, iii. 2, p. 125.
t Ecclesiastical Polity, book viii. c. ii. 1. J Ib. c. ii. 6. Ib. c. ix. 2.
|| Ib. c.viii. 1. f Ib. c. iii. 2.
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 13
bodies. Kings have " authority * over the church, if
not collectively, yet divisively understood; that is,
over each particular person in that church where they
are kings." He does not contend for the particular!
title of head to be applied to the sovereign, if that be
offensive. The subject in which this power is to re-
side J need not be one personally. The common-
wealth, when the people are Christians, being ipso
facto the church, the clergy alone ought not to have
the power of making laws " Quod omnes tangit,
ab omnibus tractari et approbari debet." And histo-
rically the fact is, || that canons of the clergy in their
synods have generally taken no effect as laws without
the approbation of governors ; not even those of the
council of Trent in Romish kingdoms. Until that
approbation, they are but the opinions of wise men on
the subject-matter. The parliament, by 1 and 2 Phil,
and Mar. c. 8, ratified by enactment the cardinal-
legate's dispensation, to give it the force of law. The
king's power of assent is a power derived to him from
the whole body of the realm.^f Secular courts here
regulate secular causes, spiritual courts spiritual causes.
The religious duty of kings was " the weightiest
part of their sovereignty,"** even while heathens. Do
they then lose it, he asks, by embracing Christianity ?
14. I have now extracted matter enough to show
the general doctrine of the Eighth Book of the Eccle-
* Ecclesiastical Polity, book viii. c. iv. 6. t Ib. c. iv. 8.
Jib. c. iv.7. $ Ib. c.vi. 7,8. || Ib. c. vi. 9.
H Ib. c.vi. 11. ** Ib. c. vi. 13.
14 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
siastical Polity on the relations between Church and
State. And thus much at least is clear : there can be
no doubt that it teaches, or rather involves, as a basis
and pre-condition of all its particular arguments, the
great doctrine that the state is a person, having a
conscience, cognisant of matter of religion, and bound
by all constitutional and natural means to advance it.
It is impossible not to recognise throughout the book
a texture of thought such as pre-eminently distin-
guished the great man whose name it bears. And
yet, on the other hand, it contains some statements
which lead us to rejoice that he is not responsible for
it as it stands in its particular details, and that it does
not carry with it the weight of his plenary authority ;
the authority of that noble and sanctified intellect, to
which Pope Clement VIII., according to Walton, paid
so just and eloquent, a tribute.* " There is no learn-
ing that this man hath not searched into, nothing too
hard for his understanding. This man indeed de-
serves the name of an author: his books will get
reverence by age, for there is in them such seeds of
eternity, that, if the rest be like this (the first), they
shall last till the last fire shall consume all learning."
The perfect copies of the three last books were un-
happily lost after his death : the rough draughts were
given to Dr. Spencer, his friend, and made up by him
according to the best of his ability ; and he writes of
them in very strong terms, that there were left " no-
* Walton's Lives, p. 228.
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 15
thing but the old, imperfect, mangled draughts, dis-
membered into pieces : no favour, no grace, not the
shadow of themselves remaining in them."* And
again, " the learned will find in them some shadows
and resemblances of their father's face."
15. Although the book speaks of the natural sepa-
ration of the two societies, and so lays a ground for
clear reasoning upon their mutual relations, yet in
other places it seems to lose sight of the distinction
between a society and the mere total of the individuals
who may belong to it ; and to assume that the people
of England composed one societyf which bore two
different names, rather than two societies accidentally
co-extensive as to the persons they comprised. And
even this we know was not in strictness true. There
were, even under Elizabeth, known members of the
state who were not members of the church. Some
confusion appears to arise from the want of a clearer
line. For example, it is said that canons, although of
ecumenical councils, are only the preliminary opinions
of wise men upon the subject-matter until they have
received the royal assent. Now we may grant that
they want the concurrence of the state in order to take
effect as a part of the law of the land ; but who will
doubt that they have some validity inforo conscientice,
affecting the members of the church, independently
* Walton's Lives. App. to Hooker, p. 25.
t " I must be bold enough to say, that I do not think that even
Hooker puts the idea of a Church on the true foundation." Coleridge.
Table Talk, i. 241.
16 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
of any civil approbation whatever? Another most
important question is raised respecting the derivation
of power from the body at large. This maxim fell in
with Hooker's purpose, because he was thus enabled
to limit the ecclesiastical headship, and show it to be
secondary to the body, though superior to individuals.
It was quite worth his while to yield something of the
general prerogatives of the crown in civil matters,
especially at a period when they were so much over-
strained, in order at the same time to reduce within
moderate limits its ecclesiastical pretensions. Indeed,
but for this doctrine, the theory in general would have
been as hazardous to the constitution and existence of
the church, as it certainly was to the civil liberties of
the subject. We need not here examine into the
accuracy of the position, as it is not within our
scope. It is enough to say, that it fully sustains the
principle of union between Church and State, so long
as the body which he contemplates is composed mainly
of members of the Church, and its conscience, repre-
senting the result of the general belief of the people,
yields homage to her doctrines.
16. Bishop Warburton, in the 'Alliance of Church
and State,'* taught that civil society, being defective
in the controul of motives and in the sanction of re-
ward,f had in all ages called in the aid of religion to
* See Postscript to the fourth edition (Works, vol. vii. p. 320), where
a partial summary is given.
t There is a much nobler and purer statement of the inadequacy of
the State, taken alone, to fulfil its purposes, in No. IX. of Letters to a
Member of the Society of Friends, pp. 50-52, by the Rev. F. Maurice,
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 17
supply the want. The State contemplates for its end
the body and its interests ; has for its means, coercion ;
for its general subject-matter, utility. The Church is
a religious society, of distinct origin ; having for its
end the salvation of souls; for its subject-matter,
truth ; for its instrument, persuasion ; regulating mo-
tives as well as acts ; and promising .eternal reward.
Though separate, these societies would not interfere,
because they have different provinces ; but, the State
having needs as above stated, and the Church requir-
ing protection against violence, they had each reasons
sufficient to induce a voluntary and free convention.
17. Accordingly, the societies united ; not indeed
under any formal engagement with all the stipulated
conditions, but like sovereign and people in the ori-
ginal contract. That is, the theory of the alliance
accurately represents the true idea according to which
they ought to unite. And this idea was actually
realised by the then existing state of things in
England ; where an established church and a free
toleration were made perfectly to agree by the me-
dium of a test-law, without which, either dissenters
will obtain political power and destroy the church;
or, in the other extreme, the church will persecute
dissenters. And the conditions of the union are, that
the church receives a free maintenance for the clergy ;
a share, for her security, in the legislative body ; and
chaplain of Guy's Hospital, and professor of English literature and
history in King's College, London. See also the same author's Lectures
on National Education.
VOL. I. C
18 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
a co-active power to be used in her spiritual courts for
a purpose which is also a state purpose, namely, the
correction of certain forms of vice. In return for
which, she surrenders to the state her original inde-
pendence,* and subjects all her laws and movements
to the necessity of the state's previous approval. If
there be more than one such religious society or
church, the state is to contract with the largest ; to
which will naturally belong the greatest share of po-
litical influence.
18. Of the great moral defects of this theory, one
is that indicated by the concluding sentence. The
state is to contract with the largest religious society.
The adoption of a national church is then with it
matter of calculation, and not of conscience. The
state in this view has no conscience. It is not con-
templated in the bishop's work as a moral person,
having responsibility before God, nor as an aggrega-
tion of individuals, each having personal responsibili-
ties, and baund in all things according to their capa-
bility to serve God, His church, His truth : therefore
under obligation to regard that service as in itself an
end of positive value, independently of the resulting
* Unfortunately our language does not supply a term by which to
distinguish an important secondary signification of the word independ-
ence (selbstandigkeit) from its etymological sense (unablmngigkeit).
In the first of these it means independent being, self-sustained and un-
derived existence ; in the second, independent or uncontrolled opera-
tion. It is evidently in the latter sense that Bishop Warburton uses
the term. I cannot but think that this indistinctness has had an un-
fortunate effect in clouding the popular notions and in exasperating
controversy.
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 19
benefits to society. In addition to this fatal deficiency,
the view of the state, as to its aims, is wholly unsa-
tisfactory. It is represented as restricted absolutely
to temporal, nay to material, ends ; and is consequently
stripped of all its nobler attributes. It is probable,
indeed, that the writer, agreeably to the tone of his
mind, thus curtailed its functions, rather in order to
give clearness to his demarcating line between the
church and the state, and precision to the conception
of the alliance, than with the view of advancing a
proposition philosophically true. But it is a very low
theory of government which teaches, that it has only
the care of the body and bodily goods ; and might
almost seem to imply, that all physicians are more
peculiarly statesmen. There was far more truth in
the go f)v* of Aristotle ; under which we may con-
sider that the state, bound to promote more generally
the good of man, finds the church ready made to its
hand, as the appointed instrument for advancing that
department of human well-being which is spiritual,
and contracts with it accordingly.
19. The greatest intellectual defect appears to be
(besides its inadequate measure of the comparative
social power of religious communities) the absolute
and rigid form of its propositions in indeterminate
subject-matter. The writer argues for his scheme of
the support of an establishment, with full toleration of
dissent and the maintenance of an exclusive test, as
though it were the single and mathematically neces-
* Arist. Pol. iii. 5.
c 2
20 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
sary result of all general arguments from the nature of
the state and of the church ; whereas his is, in fact,
only one particular mode of constructing the social
equation, adapted perhaps to one particular stage of
the progression of religious freedom, but not distin-
guished by any inherent properties of truth from other
modes which may be equally suitable to the preceding
or the following stages. The basis therefore of the
work is narrow, and its applicability and use propor-
tionably restricted.
20. And there does appear to be something reason-
able in the objection which was urged by Paley*
against the representation of the alliance in the light
of a fact, on the ground that it is a fiction. But, says
Warburton, it is no more a fiction than the celebrated
original compact. Nor is it : but both are fictitious :
and Bolingbroke also censures the teachers of the
original compact for having represented men as if
they had at some time anterior to civil society been
independent, when it is notoriously untrue ; and this
untruth is made the basis of other and greater un-
truths concerning the derivation of power from the
people, and the consequent denial of a divine autho-
rity in government. In fact, Warburton appears to
have adopted the views of Locke, and to have copied
his representation of the alliance from the original
compact, not himself objecting to the use that has
been madef of that arbitrary mode of stating the
* Mor. Phil., book vi. ch. iii.
t Postscript to the Fourth Edition.
CHAP. I.J WITH THE CHURCH. 21
case, but, on the contrary, considering any derivation
of political from patriarchal rule as an absurdity.
21. Dr. Paley* has supplied us with a view of re-
ligious establishments, distinguished by his own great
and highly characteristic merits, but likewise impaired
by the original vice of his false ethical principles, and
by the total absence of any substantive conception of
the visible church. According to this author, the
rights, offices, order, family, and succession of the
priesthood, were parts of the Jewish religion, as well
as the means of transmitting it. But no form of
outward institution enters into the composition of
Christianity. " The authority, therefore, of a church
establishment is founded upon its utility:" and the
end is " the preservation and communication of reli-
gious knowledge." Regard to political ends has only
served to deteriorate the church wherever it has been
allowed. Three things, accordingly, are requisite :
1 . A clergy, or order of men set apart for religion.
2. A legal provision for their maintenance.
3. The restriction of that provision to the ministers
of a particular sect.
22. He contends for the necessity of a clergy " to
perpetuate the evidences of Revelation, and to inter-
pret the obscurity of those ancient writings in which
the religion is contained ;" and to conduct public
worship with decency. From these peculiar occupa-
tions he deduces the necessity of a separate mainte-
nance. Voluntary contribution would yield but an
* Moral and Political Philosophy, book \ i. ch. x.
22 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
insufficient supply, and would lower the tone of in-
struction. As to the third condition, the form of
religion ought to be such as to comprehend all exist-
ing differences of opinion ; but if the prevailing
opinions be "not only so various, but so contra-
dictory," as to render their junction impossible ; then,
where patronage is allowed, and one set of people
appoint the teachers whom another set are to hear,
there must be a test the simplest possible to secure
some unity of proceeding. Such test, therefore, " may
be considered merely as a restriction upon the exercise
of private patronage." Again, if the parishioners
chose their ministers without a test, intolerable dis-
cords would arise. The recognition of all sects
appears scarcely compatible with that which is the
" first requisite in a national establishment the divi-
sion of the country into parishes of a commodious
extent." One sect, therefore, should be preferred.
But tests ensnare consciences, often come to " contra-
dict the actual opinions of the church, whose doctrines
they profess to contain," and proscribe tenets long
after they have ceased to be dangerous. Any form of
Christianity is better than none, as all tend to good.
This justifies the magistrate's interference; which
therefore carries no violation of religious liberty while
he is only " providing means of public instruction."
But where his faith differs from that of the majority,
he should establish the latter, as the chances of truth
are equal. Toleration promotes truth ; but exclusion
may perhaps be defended where disaffection happens
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 23
to be connected with certain religious distinctions.
Generally there is no reason why these should pre-
vent men from discharging civil functions together,
more than differences of opinion on questions of " na-
tural philosophy, history, or ethics."
23. The views here given of the office of the clergy,
of the visible church, of creeds, of the method of
weighing different forms of Christianity, and of the
irrelevancy of religious distinctions to the discharge
of civil duties, are full of the seeds of evil. The truths
which the author seems to have perceived with clear-
ness were, the national benefits of a recognition of
religion ; the futility of the allegation that the civil
magistrate is not competent to its advancement, or
not justified in " providing means" for that end ; the
compatibility of an establishment for religion with
religious liberty ; the need of a provision for preserv-
ing as well as diffusing the truth ; and the tendency
of the voluntary method of support to deteriorate the
quality of pastoral instruction.
24. Mr. Burke, among the varied treasures of his
Thoughts on the French Revolution, has given us,
not indeed a theory, but much more, such a living
picture as might rival the fabled works of Daedalus,
of the principle of national religion. According to
him, the state is " a partnership* in all science, a part-
nership in all art, a partnership in every virtue, and
in all perfection." The bond of each particular state
is but one link in the great primeval chain which
* p. 183.
24 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
holds all physical and all moral natures each in its
appointed place. All things, says he, should be done
in their proper relations, and the acts of the state
must fulfil the duties of that relation which, from the
scope and nature of its organisation, it bears to God.
Hence the English nation " think themselves bound,*
not only as individuals in the sanctuary of the heart,
or as congregated in that personal capacity, to renew
the memory of their high origin and cast; but also
in their corporate character to perform their national
homage to the institutor, and author, and protector of
civil society." He that willed our nature to be per-
fected by virtue, willed the state as a condition of that
perfection, and connected it with the source and
archetype of all perfection. To impress governors
with a strong and awful idea that they act in trust ;f
to strengthen and complete the insufficient control of
shame ;^ to give fixity to the national institutions by
environing them with the associations of reverence ; to
provide for the preaching of the gospel to the poor;
and to counterbalance the temptations as well as to
minister to the human misfortunes of the rich, the
people of England will have their church "mixed
throughout the whole mass of life :" they do not regard
it as a thing heterogeneous, accidental, or added for
accommodation. " Church and state are ideas in-
separable in their minds, and scarcely is the one ever
mentioned without mentioning the other." ||
25. The argument of Mr. Coleridge " on the Con-
* p. 185. t p. 175. | p. 177. $ pp. 191, 192. II p. 187.
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 25
stitution of the Church and State according to the
Idea of each" is alike beautiful and profound. He
shows, from an analysis of the parts of the body politic,
that, in order to its well-being, there must necessarily
enter into its composition an estate, whose office it
shall be to supply those governing and harmonising
qualities of character,* without which the remaining
elements cannot advantageously cohere.f His first
estate is that of the landowners, or possessors of fixed
property, barons and franklins providing for the per-
manency of the nation. His second, that of the
merchants, manufacturers, artisans, "the distributive
class," whose especial office it is to secure the pro-
gressiveness of the nation, and personal freedom, its
condition. In the king, again, " the cohesion by in-
terdependence and the unity of the country were
established." But these, viewed alone, are as it were
but the material means for attaining their several ends.
26. There must be a soul, underlying and animating
them all, a cultivation of the inward man, which is the
root, the corrective, and the safeguard of civilisation.
The nourishment of this paramount ingredient of na-
tional life constitutes the function of a third great
estate : living on reserved property for more free devo-
tion to its duties, and divided into two classes; a smaller
number dwelling at the fountain-heads of knowledge,
* Compare Mr. Emerson's Dartmouth College Oration, p. 26. Boston,
U. S., 1838.
( Church and State, p. 42. A masterly analysis of this work will be
found prefixed to the small volume in which it has recently been re-
published, together wiili the Lay Sermons, by Mr. H. N. Coleridgr
26 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
guarding the treasures already acquired, opening new
shafts and mines, and dispensing* their acquisitions to
their brethren; the second division of this estate, a
far larger number distributed throughout the country,
supplying for every spot a resident guide and teacher;
and thus connecting each part of time and each part of
the nation with the rest respectively. Such is the na-
tural " clerisy" of a State. Upon such a theory, drawn
according to human principles, supervenes what Mr.
Coleridge has felicitously termed the (in reference to
this theory) "happy accident" of the Christian Church,f
" the sustaining, correcting, befriending opposite of the
world, the compensating counterforce to the inherent
and inevitable defects of the State as a State ;" not
primarily to any particular State, inasmuch as the
whole world is her inheritance, but yet with applica-
bility, by subdivision into branches, to each particular
State.
27. The ministers of a national Church are, accord-
ing to Mr. Coleridge, created by the nation " trustees
of a reserved national fund." We should, however,
notice that, whatever may be the case in Scotland, in
England that which the Church enjoys was not set
apart by national appropriation as a provision for im-
provement, or for an establishment indefinitely ; but
was conferred upon herself as an actual institution,
given to the object indeed of national cultivation, yet
exclusively in that its highest form, in whichit depends
"Che di BU prendono, e di sotto fanno." Dante, Paradiso, ii. 123.
t Church and State, p. 133.
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 27
upon her. A recent writer avails himself of Coleridge's
phrase, and says his theory involves " the appropriation
of a part of the national property for the support and
propagation" of a system " from which large masses of
the community by which that property is furnished
conscientiously dissent."* What the nation, however,
has given to the Church, is no longer national property
in an ordinary sense; much less then is what individuals
gave.
28. The first remark I would make on this theory
is, that, in its view of the State, it does not specifically
include the element of its living personality and con-
sciousness ; it regards the State as a thing composed
and guided, rather than as self-composing and self-
guiding, and deliberatively free in the exercise of its
functions. I do not notice this as a fault, but merely
as a characteristic. The work does not profess to aim
at scientific entireness. As its gifted author states,
" the scheme or diagram best suited to make the idea
clearly understood, may be very different from the
form in which it is or may be most adequately real-
ised."f But it is far from forbidding the addition of
the idea of moral freedom and conscience in the State;
on the contrary, it prepares for, and I would indeed
say requires, this idea. More we need not ask or have.
29. It may be well further to observe, with refer-
ence to the analysis of the two first estates, that its
classification is true on a large scale, not in minute de-
* Wardlaw's Lectures on National Establishments, lecture i. p. 28.
t Church and State, Advertisement.
28 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
tail : it is the delineation of a painter, not of an anato-
mist ; and yet the painter has regard to anatomy, but
he generalises its results. The landed estate is not en-
tirely permanent; it is also productive and progressive;
but, on the whole, the habits of mind and action which
belong to it are indisposed to change. It more evi-
dently depends on super-human power, and generates
less of self-reliance, with greater stability. The trading
class has a facility of motion and of transition, a power
of rapid creation, a fertility of resource, an acuteness
produced by constant friction and rivalry of interests,
a tendency to reduce all social relations to the form of
money as the most convenient and determinate medium
of exchange ; with more of the spirit of self-reliance, it
is therefore more inclined to form judgments, and to
review and reverse what has been judged already, and
it is also much more ready and apt in giving effect ot
its desires. Thus it is better able to sway, but less
suited to sustain, the State. There are, however, some
important counteracting influences, such as the neces-
sity of order and tranquillity to the prosperity of trade,
and to the regular action of the labour-market ; and
the disposition of those who have acquired property to
pass into the class of landholders, and thus to refresh
and invigorate the more permanent and stable interest.
But these explanations in no way detract from the
substantial truth of Mr. Coleridge's definition ; and I
do not venture any further to incumber the masterly
sketch which he has drawn.
30. The profuse and brilliant eloquence of Dr. Chal-
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 29
mers, and the warm heart from which its colouring
is principally derived, have necessarily contributed to
render the scientific form of his conclusions less ac-
curately discernible than it would have been had he
written more apathetically. His lectures on Church
establishments teach that Christianity is the sure found-
ation of order and prosperity ; that the efforts of indi-
viduals, without aid from government, are insufficient
to bring it within reach of the whole population ; that
the territorial division of the land into manageable
districts, with a general cure of souls over all persons
within each, is the most efficient method of giving to
Christianity an universal influence : that such division
cannot well be carried into effect but by a Church of
one given denomination. Again, with respect to the
religious tenets within which a government may
choose its national establishment, he contends that the
Church should be wholly independent in respect of its
theology* that there should be "maintenance from
the one quarter, and an unfettered theology from the
other :" but he subsequently, in effect, qualifies this
doctrine.
31. He teaches that the government should deter-
mine what shall be its establishment, if possible, simply
by the answer to the question, " What is truth ?" but
if not, then with a modified view to the benefit of the
population at large.f He considers a state incompetent
to enter upon the details of theological discussion, but
abundantly qualified to decide upon certain broad and
* Lecture ii. p. 37. t Lecture iv. p. 115.
30 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. I.
leading principles. Upon the former consideration he
holds them justified in selecting, or in adhering to the
selection of, any one of the Christian denominations,
which, being Protestant, are also evangelical ; as, for
example, Methodist, Independent, Baptist : he does
not, however, supply any precise test for determining
to what extent the epithet " evangelical" may be ap-
plicable. But, upon the latter consideration, he teaches
that the State is competent, nay, that any man,*
" with the ordinary schooling of a gentleman," and
" by the reading of a few weeks," may qualify himself
to decide upon the broad question which separates
Protestantism from Popery, namely, whether the
Scriptures be or be not the only rule of faith and
practice in religion.
32. It did not enter into the purpose of Dr. Chalmers
to exhibit the whole subject ; but even in these propo-
sitions he has, it may be apprehended, put forward
much questionable matter. He appears by no means
to succeed in showing, upon his own principles, that
his territorial establishment must be of one denomi-
nation : he would probably find it impossible, upon
stricter investigation, so to define Evangelical Protest-
antism as to make it a universal criterion for the
guidance of governments : it might further be argued,
that he has surrendered the condition without which
all others fail, in omitting from his calculation the
divine constitution of the visible Church ; and that,
while he does not so much as inquire whether on the
* Lecture iv. p. 119.
CHAP. I.] WITH THE CHURCH. 31
one side it would be easy or the reverse to reject the
unevangelical Protestants, he has on the other very
greatly underrated the difficulty of the questions at
issue between the Church of Rome and her opponents.
But no more : it is painful even to indicate points of
difference from a most distinguished and excellent
man, who has done his subject and his country per-
manent service by his lucid and powerful explanations
of the machinery of a religious establishment.
33. The reader will probably agree that it is unne-
cessary, with a view to the practical purposes before
us, to enter upon any detailed investigation of two
other theories of the connection between Church and
State, which embody the respective- extremes of opi-
nion adopted on the one hand by Hobbes, and on
the other by Bellarmine and ultramontane Romanists.
They are theories of derivation rather than of con-
nection, properly so called. According to the first, the
Church and her religion are mere creatures of the
State. According to the second, the temporal power
is wholly dependent and subordinate. These views
are not avowed amongst ourselves. A third extreme
opinion of a different kind, namely, that the magistrate
has no concern with religion, is that against which
the general argument of the succeeding chapters is
directed. It is observed by a German author that the
first of these schemes has been the peculiar danger of
Lutheranism, the second of Romanism, and the third
of Calvinism.*
34. Several other writers have touched collaterally
* Stahl's Kirchenverfassung, Anhang i.
32 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [dlAP.-I.
on the subject, of whom the following are most fami-
liar. Machiavelli treats of religion as an instrument
of government, and holds it needful beyond every-
thing else to be in the care of states.* Lord Claren-
don's treatise, entitled ' Religion and Policy,' is histo-
rical. He considers that the verse of Isaiah (xlix. 23)
sufficiently proves the " sovereign care, protection, and
propagation of religion to be committed to Christian
princes ;" and proceeds to investigate the origin and
progress of the papal supremacy, which, as he argues,
had been the great obstacle to the full discharge of
this obligation. Justice Blackstone writes briefly but
rationally upon this topic as on others. His proposi-
tions are 1. That the State ought not to punish the
sin of schism as such ; 2. That it should protect the
Church ; 3. That if this can be better effected by the
imposition of tests, it is not precluded from using them,
since the disposal of offices is matter of favour and
discretion."]" The object of Montesquieu, in his work
on the ge.nius of laws, is much more to exhibit the
actual than to embody the ideal : De presenter ce qui
est, ce qui fiit, et non ce qui aurait du etre,^ according
to his Parisian editors of 1796. He seems, however,
to assume as axiomatic the doctrine of a national reli-
gion, and treats of its relations to many of the forms
of life. He belonged to a school not in harmony
with the spirit of the Church of Rome, but he enunci-
ates his general opinion in these terms : Ce ne fut ni
Discorsi, i. 11, 12. t Commentaries, iv. 52.
J CEuvres, Paris, 179G, Avertissement.
$ Esprit des Loix, lib. xxiv xxvi.
CHAP. 1.] WITH THE CHURCH. 33
la crainte, ni la piete, qui ctablit la religion chez les
Remains; mais la necessitc oil sont toutes les societes
(Ten avoir une* Neal,f the historian of the Puritans,
bears witness that a state may give sufficient encou-'
ragement to a national religion, without invading the
liberties of dissidents. J
* Sur la Politique des Remains dans la Religion.
t Vol. iv. Preface.
J The following are among the recent productions which touch upon
the relations of the Church and the State:
Vinet's Memoire en faveur de la Liberte des Cultes. Paris, 1826.
Armstrong's Civil Establishment of the Church Indefensible. Lon-
don, 1831. And Abuse of Power in the State. 1838.
Smith's Letters on National Religion. London, 1833.
Inglis's Vindication of Church Establishments. Edinburgh, 1833.
Brown on Church Establishments. Glasgow, 1833.
Lorimer's Condition of Religion in the United States. Glasgow
1833.
Esdaile's Connection of Civil and Religious Institutions. Penh,
1833.
Sewell's Letters to a Dissenter. Oxford, 1834.
Essays on the Church, by a Layman. London, 1834.
De Tocqueville's Democratic en Amerique, Vol. II. ch. ix. Paris,
1835.
Visit to the American Churches. London, 1836.
Rothe's Anfange der Christichen Kirche, B. I. Wittemberg, 1837.
La Mennais, Les Affaires de Rome, in the Chapters on ' Les Maux
de I'Eglise et de la Societe. Paris, 1838.
Maurice, on the Kingdom of Christ, Vol. III. London, 1838.
Wardlaw's Lectures. London, 1839.
Angus's Voluntary System. London, 1839.
Swaine's Shield of Dissent. London, 1839.
Macneile's Lectures. London, 1840.
Stahl's Kirchenverfassung, Anhang II. Erlangen, 1840.
Hutchinson's Reasons for Conservatism. London, 1840.
VOL. I.
34 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
CHAPTER II.
THE THEORY OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND
THE STATE.
PART I.
THE DUTY OF THE STATE IN RESPECT TO RELIGION.
1. THE maxim, phrase, or cry of " Church and State,"
so familiar to our ears and mouths, has been adopted
in the present day, as one of its leading symbols, by a
great political combination, which is unjustly treated
when it is denominated a party, because it is en-
trenched in a broader and more comprehensive posi-
tion than any party, properly so called, can occupy ;
because it is composed of men belonging to many
once separate parties, who have now come into cordial
union, not (of necessity) through any change in their
original and peculiar opinions, but in consequence of
having fallen back with the movement of events upon
those larger and deeper principles which formerly, as
now, they held in common.
2. The notions, however, which are attached by
each man, or class of men, to this celebrated and
effective watchword, are various and fluctuating. In
the minds of some it may represent what is no better
than one among the thousand forms of egoism and
CHAP. II.] WITH THI CHURCH. 35
intolerance an impression that some opinion must,
according to the law of this world's course, preponde-
rate over all others in influence and distinction, and a
eelfish eagerness that, among competing claims essen-
tially equal in authority, our neighbour's rather than
our own should be in relative depression. Others
again will befriend the connection of Church and
State for the same reason which would, in different
circumstances, have induced them to discourage it;
simply, that is to say, as an existing connection, the
sheer acquiescence in which, for no other reason than
that it does exist, flatters and indulges the indolence
of our nature. With a larger and a higher class than
either of those which have been named, the phrase is
the index of some hereditary or personal attachment,
laudable in itself, valuable in its results, yet falling
very far short of its real signification.
3. But underneath and beside all these faulty, or at
best deficient conceptions, there is much of that in-
stinctive attraction towards truth which has often saved
men from themselves: an unconscious bias, the merciful
though unappreciated gift of God, not to be despised
nor lightly esteemed by any one who studies in prac-
tical philosophy, inasmuch as every such person must
be well aware that it is futile, that it is insane, to re-
fuse the aid of right conclusions merely because they
have not been formed on right premises, or because
they have been reached and entertained without any
distinct intellectual analysis of their grounds. Thank-
fully, however, accepting all assent, and employing all
36 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
concurrence, the man who is in earnest will desire on
this as on all subjects to aim at bringing the under-
standings of his fellow -men into harmonious co-
operation with their instincts and affections ; and now,
with an earnestness proportioned to the stress of the
period, to the intricacy of the subject, and to the mag-
nitude of the interests involved in it, should we endea-
vour to apprehend the great idea of fixed and active
relation between the Church and the State of asso-
ciation between the supreme organisation of earthly
power, and the supreme organisation of spiritual au-
thority. It is not a matter of narrow compass, obvious
to the eye upon a superficial view, but a deep funda-
mental truth of human society, and therefore of the
nature in whose capacities and necessities that society
is grounded ; prolific of results, alike affecting public
institutions and individual character, together with
the destinies that are ordained to depend upon them.
4. Let us proceed to consider of the various modes,
in which this extended and difficult question may be
treated.
It appears, then, to me, that there are four principal
modes in which our subject may be investigated to
omit in this place any notice of minor and incidental
arguments.
The first, directly ; by inquiring for positive pre-
cept, or direct example equivalent to precept, from
Scripture.
The second, ethically ; by the analytical examina-
tion of the nature of a state, and the deduction there-
CHAP. If.] WITH THE CHURCH. 37
from of its purposes and conditions of action so far as
they respect religion.
The third, consequentially ; by showing the neces-
sity of religion for the fulfilment both of the higher
and of the lower, which last are also the primary and
universally acknowledged ends of a state.
The fourth, inductively ; by tracing through his-
tory the actual forms or images of civil and of spiritual
power, and thus indicating both a primeval authority,
and the universal consent of mankind in favour of
their combination together for the fulfilment of their
joint and several designs.
5. The first of these represents specifically the voice
of immediate command, represented by the symbol
shall.
The second the voice of design, or of God speaking
through h is works : even as by the sun and the rain,
and " by the things that are made,"* He is pleased to
teach us His " invisible things ;" " His eternal power
and Godhead," and the duties that flow from them ;
so by the very nature of a man, or of a society of men,
which is likewise His creature, does He instruct us to
discover their several laws of being, assigned to them
by the creative Mind. By this kind of investigation
are we shown what ought to be that is to say, duty is
laid before us, not as simple will or command, but with
some insight into its orderly growth out of the nature
of things.
The third mode of inquiry represents the voice of
* Rom. i. 20.
38 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
penal admonition, whereby when our higher sensi-
bilities are blunted, the seat of feeling is reached
through the medium of the lower ; and from conse-
quences, palpable to the grossest discernment at least
when they have arisen, men learn that that which
ought to be, likewise must be, or torment is the result ;
that the command will take effect, that the right will
sooner or later clothe itself with power.
Vuolsi cosi coli, dove si puote
Ci6 che si vuole.*
The fourth, or experimental mode, apprises us of
what has been ; and in proportion as historical evi-
dence enables us either to trace up the substance of any
institution to a strictly primeval ordinance, or to show
universality of prevalence, or to prove that the amount
of its reception has varied in different times and coun-
tries, directly as the nobler influences of human nature ;
in such proportion does it approximate to the establish-
ment of a general law obligatory upon us all. This is
the kind of induction proper to moral sciences.
6. Upon the whole these methods very much cor-
respond with the main directors of moral action,
whose titles respectively are-^-it is* written ; it is na-
tural ; it is expedient ; it is customary. All may aid
together in leading us up to the fountain of all duty,
the will of God. The first, as giving us His own utter-
ance. The second, as reading in actual nature the
will of its Author. The third, as a formula verifying
these ; since all things which are obligatory are also
* Dante, Inferno, canto iii. 95.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 39
conducive to well-being. The fourth, as indicating to
us in Nature active (so to speak) that which the second
elicited from Nature at rest.
7. It is not a repetition of the arguments of Bishop
Warburton, and others akin to them, that is here in-
tended, or a mere exhibition, in any form, of the uses
of this connection. These topics have been more con-
formable to the modes of thought prevalent in some
former generations, and less palpably inadequate to
their need. Protection received on the one hand,
and obedience inculcated on the other, are facts in
themselves which I certainly am not about to deny,
and they undoubtedly manifest an interchange of be-
nefits, such as should tend to support the credit of the
alliance itself. But in our period its uses are ques-
tioned and denied, and it is necessary that we fall back
upon the examination of its rights. No theory upon
a subject essentially ethical, which has reference to
results alone, will be found sufficient in the day of
trouble. Such a mode of reasoning is made for sea-
sons of calm weather, and will not abide those tempests
of our social existence in which men are driven, as by
an instinct anticipating necessity, to anchor themselves
upon principles of breadth and of solidity, and can
find no adequate support in the pithless argumentation
which we too often allow to monopolise the character
of what is prudent and practical.* It may be that the
same proposition is applicable to theories founded
* Coleridge, Statesman's Manual : " It seems a paradox only to the
unthinking," &c. Note to Lay Sermon on Ps. Ixxviii. 5 7.
40 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [cHAf. II.
upon causes alone. It seems, then, that the all-wise
God has given us evidence enough to support our con-
victions, but not too much ; a strength according to
our need, but not beyond it. Had questions of the
deepest interest been so palpably and undeniably plain
as to need no 'extrinsic support, faith could not have
been tried ; while, had those extrinsic props been want-
ing, it could not have survived the trial. We cannot
then afford to dispense with any class of confirmatory
arguments and evidence tending to uphold our prac-
tical principles ; but we must travel both backwards
into the region of causes, and forwards into the region
of results, in order to do them and our own consciences
full justice in the time of need.
8. I will however state more distinctly the reasons
which have induced me principally to follow the se-
cond of the modes of investigation which have been
indicated above, or, the ethical argument.
And first, as comparing it with the argument from
Scripture. The exposition of the latter belongs most
properly to the profession of theology. Further, as the
form of Scripture was adapted all along to the circum-
stances of its delivery, and as the Scriptures of the New
Testament were written at a time when there was no
case of a nation of persons professedly Christian, such
as is essentially required by the present argument, it
follows, that we are thrown back on the indirect
modes of scriptural teaching ; on inferences from the
history of the Hebrew commonwealth, confessedly dis-
tinguished as it is in many points of importance from
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 41
any in modern times ; and on the interpretation of
type and prophecy. The latter seem to require a light
for acces"s to them, before we can display in the face
of men that which they themselves emit.* And as
* I cite the following development of the practical bearing of cer-
tain texts in the prophecies of the Old Testament on the modern
question of connection between the Church and the State, from an
article in the ' British Critic and Quarterly Theological Review,' for
the month of September, 1839, pp. 373-375: -" Some perhaps will
think it strange to be referred thus to the Old Testament, and to a
single text there, for an evangelical law of such great practical im-
port. But they may consider that, since it was not intended that the
Church should, at her first beginning, enter into relations with any
State since that whole order of things was to be but a later develop-
iqent of something in her original constitution any rules expressly
concerning it could only be prophetic, and the natural place to look
for them would be in those portions of the prophetic Scriptures which
the Church, from the beginning, knew to have reference to her own
later times. Nor would it be hard to find other usages and rules on
which the same remark might be made, viz., that they are develop-
ments of something in the original system, for which at first there was
no occasion, and accordingly that for the scriptural sanctions of them
we have to look in the prophetical and typical Scriptures rather than
in the New Testament itself. Such, for example, is the penitential
discipline of the Church : her earlier and purer times had compara-
tively little occasion for it ; and when it became settled, it was in great
measure the development of precedents and hints from the Jewish
history, and the lessons of mortification and penitence in the Psalms
and Prophets. Such again is the splendour of churches and church
ornaments : the days of our first poverty of course knew it not, but
when it came it found its warrant in the records of Moses, David, and
Solomon. No prejudice, therefore, need he against a similar mode of
deducing the obligation of the State to establish the Church.
" If any one ask, of what particular article or fundamental rule of
God's kingdom this theory of Church and State is a development, we
should answer, of the Holy Catholic Church : i. e., of the continued
presence and manifestation of Jesus Christ in the world, through the
medium of that society which is called His mystical body. The Church
is the spouse of Christ, and the mother of His family; and these pas-
sages of Isaiah declare what is the especial office of kings and queens
in that family; how they in particular stand related to the Church.
They are to be her nursing fathers and mothers : i. e., as Leslie has
42 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
respects the former, namely, the Jewish precedent, it
is only by considering what nationality is and imports,
that we can be in a position to judge accurately how
far that case is peculiar ; or how far a real analogy
explained at large (and to him we must refer for a thorough and
most satisfactory elucidation of the passages), they are among her
servants and attendants, trusted by Almighty God with the nourish-
ment of her children, with the training of them, and bearing them
safe in their arms. The phrase has acquired a trite and almost a pro-
verbial use, in a very different sense, as though the Church were a
helpless infant in the arms of some Defender of the Faith ; but the
context puts the true force of the image out of question. ' Thus saith
the Lord GOD, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and
set up my/ standard to the people ; and they shall bring thy sons in
their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.
And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing
mothers ; they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the
earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet ; and thou shalt know that I am
the Lord, for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.' Isaiah,
xlix. 22, 23. Again, in ch. Ix. 4, ' Thy sons shall come from far, and
thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.' If in another verse we
find, ' Thou shalt suck the milk of the Gentiles, and thou shalt suck
the breast of kings ;' this cannot be so pressed as to denote childish
dependence and obedience, since in the very same prophecy, as well
as in the former one, apparently parallel to it, the expressions of humi-
liation, nay subjection to the Church, on the part of the potentates of
the earth, are so very full and unequivocal. ' The sons of strangers
shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee.'
' Thy gates shall be open continually, they shall not be shut day nor
night, that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and
that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that
will not serve thee shall perish : yea those nations shall be utterly
wasted.' These words throw light on one of the distinctive titles given
to Jesus Christ in the Apocalypse : ' Prince of the Kings of the Earth.'
They point out in what sense the kingdoms of this world were to be-
come the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ ; and how ' the kings
of this world ' were to ' bring their honour and glory into the Holy
Jerusalem.' And that all this was not so much a prediction as a pro-
mulgation of God's will on the subject, is proved unquestionably by
the fearful sanction annexed: perishing and utter wasting to the
nation and kingdom that will not serve Zion.
" Thus are kings and governors representatives of Jesus Christ, in
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 43
prevails, and, consequently, to what extent the autho-
rity of Scripture will apply. But after such consider-
ation, we may find ourselves the more able both to set
aside what was temporary and specific in the theocra-
tic dispensation, and to retain and press the claim from
the Israelitish history for the principle of national
religion ; as well as to establish that sense of the pro-
phecies which it is so easy for an opponent, as long as
no literal precept can be cited, nor any collateral light
introduced, to dispute.
And that argument which I have termed ethical
must of course, to be valid, be itself agreeable to the
principles of Scripture, though it includes their appli-
cation to a distinct subject-matter. There is however
a further object in resorting, firstly, to an argument
distinct from that of Divine Revelation : it is to show
that by the light of nature God had already, when
His protecting particular Providence, whereby He educates those who
shall be heirs of salvation : that Providence of which Moses, who ' was
king in Jeshurun,' was a type, when he had to bear God's people ' as a
nursing father beareth a sucking child,' which he describes in its appli-
cation to the whole people, where he says, ' The Eternal God is thy
refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arras.' And in its appli-
cation to Benjamin individually (i. e., to the energetic self-renouncing
champions of the Church, such as St. Paul, of whom Benjamin was
the appointed image), in the last clause of that highly descriptive verse,
' The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by (literally, upon) Him,
and the Lord shall cover, wrap him up in His garment, and he shall
dwell between His shoulders.' There cannot be an exacter if it were
uninspired we should add a sweeter and more engaging description
of a foster-father bearing a young child ; and this, we have reason to
believe, is the appropriate scriptural image the sacramental sign, as
antiquity would have esteemed it of the care due from kings and
governors to the children of the Church. (Deut. xxxiii. 5 ; Num. xi. 12;
Deut. xxxiii. 27, 12.)"
44 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
revelation was unknown, imparted sufficiently the
grounds and proofs of the principle of public religion,
together with those of other elementary truths and
duties ; which if we reject under this double confirma-
tion, we do it with enhanced guilt.
9. Secondly. As respects the argument from con-
sequences, it has received I think its full proportion
of attention : it is no less liable to indefinite prolonga-
tions through the spirit of controversy than any other
course of reasoning; and the discussion upon it, if
exclusively pursued, has a tendency to lower that
moral tone with which the mind should engage itself
in the pursuit of truth.
10. On the other hand, the conclusion from history
is allowed to be in our favour; but an appeal is entered
to a different tribunal. It is imagined that for the pre-
sent age has been reserved the discovery of a grand
and determining moral principle, the duty of sepa-
rating the Church from the State ; and that, having
exploded the axioms of former times, we must no
longer argue from their practice. I desire then to test
this great discovery, and to afford some aid towards
conjecturing its final results, by looking for those ma-
nifestations of the will of God, which are afforded
by the structure of His creatures ; and by showing
that, until we can radically change and invert the
very nature of political society, we cannot, except with
fearful guilt and hazard, consent to its divorce from
the consecrating principle of national religion.
1 1. If government be in its substance a divine ordi-
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 45
nance ; if the testimony of primeval records, repeated
in the individual history of every one among us, bear
witness to the fact that our social relations do not de-
rive their origin from the private, or even from the
general will ; then I submit that the most authentic,
the most conclusive, the most philosophical, and, in
the absence of literal and undisputed precept from
Scripture, also the most direct method of handling
this important investigation, is that which examines
the moral character and capacities of nations and of
rulers, and thus founds the whole idea of their duty
upon that will which gave them their existence.
And indeed this province is one almost untrodden.
We have not given free scope to the resources of the
ethical argument. Undoubtedly it lies in a region of
abstraction to which the temper of the age, and the
prevailing pursuits of this country, are averse. Yet,
though the sphere be narrow, contemplative investiga-
tions are not wholly disused among us, nor are they
likely so far to fail as that there shall not be left
space and ample reward for every man that brings
his gift, though mean, to the altar of truth ; the seed
he sows in weakness may find entrance into minds
whence it may again and again become prolific.
12. In attempting then to investigate, by such a
course of argument, the truths indicated by the popu-
lar symbol already cited, I shall commence by consi-
dering what place association in general occupies with
reference to our moral being, what is its proper work
in the Divine organisation of the universe, what addi-
46 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
tional necessities it superinduces, and what moral
guarantees it requires : in what degrees these securi-
ties are demanded by, and applicable to, the several
descriptions of human combination : whether, among
these, what we term the nation, and what we term the
State, eminently demand the guarantee of religion, in
respect both of capacity and of necessity : by what law
or criterion the nation or State must supply itself with
this requisite to its well-being : by what form of reli-
gion this guarantee is most legitimately and most
effectually provided. By these steps we shall find
ourselves led up to the conclusion, never more suc-
cinctly, popularly, or forcibly embodied, than in the
peculiarly English watchword " Church and State ; "
the union of a Christian government with the Catho-
lic organ of Christianity.
13. The universe everywhere bears testimony to
oneness of life and action, to absolute and invariable
dependence on a centre, as the characteristic and the
law of its nature, and therefore also the condition of
its well-being. The Grecian tongue spoke with an
unbiassed simplicity in giving it the name of xoVftoj,
or essential order : arrangement everywhere referred
to a single and pervading law. Plato has delivered,
in the noblest manner, the conception of that fellow-
ship which sustains the universe and controls the
tendencies to disorder. <Paa-} ' of <ro<po*, J KaXXixXsTj,
KOU oupavw, xctl fT}V, xai 0sou, xa) avQpurrroos, TT)V
xoivaw'av j~vve%etv, xa) <p<X/av, xa) xoo-jaorrjra, xai
, xai SMeaiorijTa* xai r)> oXov TOUTO 8<a raura
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 47
xoVjttov xaXoD<nv.* The Latins retained in their lan-
guage, and have conveyed into ows, the fundamental
notion of TO irav, of a fixed point and a revolving
system, the universum.^ The idea is that expressed in
the fine lines of Virgil :
Coelum ac terras, camposque liquentes
Lucentemque globum Luna?, Titaniaque astra,
Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.J
The physical confirmation of our solar system attests
the veracity of this designation. And the moral struc-
ture, as dimly traced in tradition, or conjectured by
philosophy, or as fully revealed by the Holy Scriptures,
agrees with these independent witnesses. It was be-
cause this idea of oneness of life and of a paramount
sovereignty in the world had a ground in our human
consciousness, that some have evaded the truth by that
perversion, which absorbs the whole system into the
centre, and deifies every particle of matter. It was,
perhaps, on the same account, that the schemes of
polytheism, however inconsistent and defaced, have ever
retained the notion of some kind of supremacy or
superiority in some one of their idols. From this car-
dinal idea of unity, as the fundamental law of beauty
and of well-being to creation, let us commence.
14. It needs not to travel back into the region of
deeper mystery ; the history of our own race affords
matter sufficient for our instruction. The origin of
* Plat. Gorg. i. 137 (p. 507, Steph.).
t Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 43. He usually employs the term universitas.
I JEn. vi. 724.
48 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
evil in this world of ours was the infraction of the
established rule of reference to a supreme and single
will. Our first parents were not content to derive
from a source that lay out of themselves the ultimate
ground and reason, and the definitive criterion of their
acts : they would seek for themselves another image of
good : they would entertain it in the mind under a
different conception : they would be the j,udges of its
nature, and would not have God to be the judge for
them. One act disorganised the earth and all its
moral destinies. It constituted as many new centres,
as many rebellious and divided systems of action, as
there should be human beings ; atomic centres of
limited and petty influence, but without subordination
to Him from whom they had derived even the power
to rise in revolt against Him. Nay, even more. So
long as man was obedient to God, the whole being of
man was obedient to his controlling faculties ; but
when he ceased to be the servant of his Lord, he ceased
also to be the master of himself.* Nor has he ever
regained* nor can he recover, that self-mastery, that
inward consent and harmony of all his faculties in
purpose and in action, which is essential to his peace,
until he has once again received and enthroned over his
whole heart, to reign there without reserve, the Divine
will so madly repudiated.
15. The actual law of human conduct, then, before
the fall, was out of man himself, and was in God.
The actual law of human conduct after the fall was in
* S. Aug. de Civ. Dei, xiii. 13.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 49
man himself, and was out of God. He had a sense of
right and wrong ; but he did not ground it on the
Divine command. He had a faculty of love ; but he
would not take account of the continual beneficence of
the Almighty, and he spent that faculty upon such
inferior objects as he chose. He was susceptible of the
sentiments of gratitude and admiration ; but he would
neither admire the most worthy, nor return thanks to
the most bountiful. And all this because he regulated
these principles by a reference to himself as supreme
arbiter, instead of a reference to a rule out of himself.
He had been ordained to walk as an infant by the
hand of a nurse ; and refusing that aid he could only
fall. That which we are specially to observe is, it was
not that he thought " I will repudiate the good and
worship the evil ;" it was not even that he thought,
" I will abandon the good to follow the pleasurable ;"
it was the form and criterion, not the matter of con-
duct, that he appeared to himself to change; the lan-
guage of his action was, " I will do that which seemeth
good to myself, instead of that which seemeth good to
God ;" or, " I will require of God that that which He
enjoins upon my practice should submit and approve
itself to my understanding."
16. Thus, therefore, in the midst of God's fair crea-
tion, was there planted, wherever there stood a man, a
perpetually prolific principle of derangement; of sepa-
rate, self-centred action, spent ineffectually upon ob-
jects that did not enter into the design of the universe,
nor contribute, unless by opposition and revulsion, to
VOL. i. E
50 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
the fulfilment of its appointed work. The conse-
quences of this rebellion, had they been uncontrouled,
must have been, as it would seem, the continual
growth of that self-worship which was established at
the fall, until at length every vestige of truth and love
had been destroyed, and earth had fully reached to
the riper wickedness of hell.
17. While, however, it pleased the mercy of God to
design a provision for the redemption of mankind by
His Son, to be accomplished when the fulness of time
should have come; so He likewise ordained certain
conditions of the human existence, which, as inter-
mediate expedients, and instruments of a secondary
discipline, should both check the progress of selfish-
ness, so far, at least, as to prevent the disease from ar-
riving at its crisis, by establishing a counteracting
principle, and should likewise prepare men to recog-
nise the higher truths taught in Divine revelation, and
supply them with real though partial approximations
to the true law of their being.
18. These were various in shape, but their pervading
character was the same ; it was that of a xuvcovia, a
common life : a common life in .the family, in the
tribe, in the nation, and in each of the relations which
each of these contain, was, apart from direct manifesta-
tions of the Divine will, the grand counteractor of
the disorganising agency of the law of self-worship,
and prevented it (as it seems) from realising all those
extremes to which it naturally tended. Even to the
brute creation was extended a softening influence by
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 51
means of this principle of intercommunity. But to
mankind it was invaluable. The records of ancient his-
tory too plainly testify, that the ordinary and habitual
relation of man to man, when independent of any form
of positive affinity or fellowship, was one of hostility.
The charities of life ranged within the limits which
were thus described ; the rights of hospitality might,
indeed, create reciprocal obligations between indi-
viduals who were personally strange to one another ;
but they always had reference to community of race
or of nation, or to some specific acts, as their basis ; to
one or other of those forms of common life, which I
have designated.
19. What can be more instructive to this effect
than the sense of neighbourship as it was understood
by the Jews? Within a territorial and hereditary
limit the law of brotherhood had been determinately
prescribed ; but beyond those confines by which the
letter of the command was bounded, the principle of
human fraternity seems to have met with no recogni-
tion, unless indeed at the periods when the Hebrews
imitated the nations upon their borders in the gratifi-
cation of a common lust for idolatry. When this
vicious disposition had been effectually repressed by
the terrible chastisement of the Captivity, there re-
mained, as Scripture shows us, a proud and deep mis-
anthropy, which too clearly proves that, in this region
of the earth, at least, man, as such, knew nothing of
duty or of love to man.
20. Again : among the most civilised of ancient
52 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
nations, the Greeks, it was shameful indeed to break
treaties, but wherever there was peace between neigh-
bouring states, it was founded on treaty, or rather
truce, upon specific and voluntary compact, unless
with partial and qualified exceptions in cases of colo-
nial derivation or of a known common origin. When
the specified term of friendship or of suspended enmity
had expired, the parties resumed at once their natural
attitude of belligerents. * And not the mere habit of war
and of marauding prove the extinction of the general
law of love; not the mere existence of piracy, but
much more the fact, that it does not seem to have been
deemed infamous ; the uniform recognition of slavery
* Thucydides, in his history, supplies us with many examples of
truces and of alliances among the various belligerents both before and
during the Peloponnesian war. In these it is very remarkable that
abstinence from hostilities during the whole term, and not merely a ces-
sation, is usually specified. It is still more so, that there is no example
among them of what we now term a peace : they are all either sus-
pensions of hostilities for a definite period, or else offensive alliances
for the purpose of carrying on a common war. The first vary from
ten days (between the Athenians and Breotians, v. 26) to an hundred
years (between the Acarnanians and Amphilochians, iii. 114). The
latter are in the eighth book (c. 18, 37, 58), between the Lacedaemonians
and the Persians, with respect to the Athenian war. Athens too was
a formidable neighbour to Persia, while Sparta had no habitual rela-
tions with it. Although, however, the attitude of war was thus re-
garded as being natural to states, there were certain ties of race still
recognised, to which we have allusions on different occasions, both as
among the Greeks at large, and as among the leading families of which
the nation was composed. A part of the Amphictyonic oath ran thus :
" I swear that I will never subvert any Amphictyonic city ; I will
never stop the courses of their water either in war or peace." Mitford,
vol. i. ch. iii. 5, 3. In proof of what I have said of war as the habitual
and ordinary state of the reciprocal relations of the Greeks, 1 would
quote the following words of Thucydides : iJiT T TOUT* ei 'Afyi7ai
* fffiffi oroAi^ov \a'o^,iioi (lit t|a3ai yaf W{f
)iri( r>jf lltktirntfoov riyr,etirta,i V. 28.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 53
as a permanent institution not less legitimate than any
other, and the formal view of the slave as an animate
machine, opyavov g/*\|/y^ov ;* the prevalence of the law
of force, indicated, among other signs, by the relative
depression of the female sex; human sacrifices, the
devouring of human flesh, the indifference of public
law to all private misery and misfortune : these and
the like features of ancient society supply us too
abundantly with the materials of proof that the sense
of a general brotherhood was at an end for all prac-
tical purposes, even though it might charm (and
there how rarely) the sensibilities of the theatre ; that
the bond of amity between man and man, as such
simply, as creatures having common faculties and a
common form, was absolutely broken. If, as com-
pared with the inferior animals, he had more power
of discerning the rights of his brother, so also he was
better able to perceive or imagine rivalry of interest,
to sustain more longsighted and deliberate enmity, to
add fuel to the flames of his anger or desire. There
was indeed a law that in various degrees bound father
to son, Spartan to Spartan, Dorian to Dorian, even
Greek to Greek ; but there was no law that bound
man to man, or nation to nation. And we find only
the partial reconstructions of primitive obligation, in
the several divinely ordained forms of a common life,
constituted by the union of men into bodies. Such then
was the general law and office of human association.
21. And this law of mutual association was itself
* Arist. I'ol.
54 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
so deeply impressed upon the human heart, that,
though too weak for practice, yet, as respected at least
its domestic form, none doubted that it was to be re-
ferred to our nature, and not to any device of the
conscious understanding ; while, even as regarded the
larger form of political society, the noblest of the
heathen minds perceived that it was either referable
to the same source, as Juvenal ;
Mundi
Principio inchilsit communis conditor illis
Tan turn ananas ; nobis animum quoque ; mutuus ut nos
Affectus petere auxilium et praestare juberet ;
Disperses trahere in populum, migrare vetusto
De nemore, et proavis habitatas linquere sylvas ; *
or at least essential to the general well-being, as Aris-
totle.f
22. I say, then, that the action of the usurping
principle of self-direction was repressed and restrained
in mankind chiefly by the knitting and blending to-
gether the lives of men in domestic and social organ-
isations. It is no figure but a reality which is indi-
cated by the phrase, a common life. It truly means
no less than this, that a portion of our individual life
becomes subjected to the laws and conditions of a
more general life, and therefore in so far ceases to
minister to the selfish appetite, and is redeemed from
the dominion of the usurping principle. It is placed
under a law whose seat is external to the mind and
will of the individual, and which is not referred
mainly or singly to his independent pleasure or advan-
* Juv. Sat. xv. 148. t Arist. Pol. iii. v.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 55
tage. Indeed, wherever common life, in any form, is
established, then, in the same proportion as it prevails,
there must be an actual surrender of the individual
will. That which is thus sacrificed is thrown into a
common fund, and unity of being, instead of diver-
sity, is to the same extent established, as to everything
that gives to being its interest, dignity, or value. And
thus natural association in its several forms does in
some small measure redress the original evil, and pre-
pares for its fundamental and complete redress; by
taking something away from self, it prepares for re-
storing it to God.
23. Nor does the establishment of this common life
attain the negative good alone of abstracting some of
the food of the rebellious and self-regarding appetite.
It does not throw these energies and sympathies, of
which it prohibits a particular exercise, to waste, but,
as will presently be stated more at large, augments
their power. He who has to care for his family or
his country, and who has learned to identify himself
with their interests in thought and in deed, feels that
the weight upon him is greater than that of any
merely individual concern, and exerts himself with
more of general vigour, than if he stood an isolated
savage in the forest. Self does not now supply either
the exclusive subject-matter of his action, or its uni-
versal end. By means of association, the relations of
kindness and of justice, and the ideas of right and
reciprocal duty, take definite form in his mind. He
is still individual, but he is not isolated ; the lives of
56 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
his fellow-creatures have become by fellowship por-
tions of his own ; he lives, he hopes and fears, he
suffers and rejoices, he loves and hates, in them and
through them, as well as in his single capacity. The
poet does but clothe in bolder language those truths
of which all have a partial consciousness when he
declares his friend animce dimidium mece.* The sym-
pathy with such an one is as true as that of the body
with its members ; and the loss of such an one as real
a withdrawal of something belonging to the proper
and plenary measure of its existence.
24. It is this corrective to the spirit of self-regard
which mainly separates between the human race, as
it exists apart from revealed religion, and devils. We
have no reason to suppose that the fallen spirits differ
from the self- worshipping man in respect of his
adopting as his law of action that which is inwardly
attractive to himself, for the reason that it is thus
attractive. But he who has truly learned to love, in
so far differs from the lost angels, that he has found a
ground and a motive of conduct extrinsic to himself.
25. Nor is it only in the relations of the family, the
race, or the nation, that a common life is established
among men. There are many narrower and specific
forms in which it exists, as those of the client with his
Roman patron, the burgher to his borough, the artisan
to his guild, the landlord with his tenant, the em-
ployer with the employed. Wherever the principle
has been vigorous, man has run a glorious career;
* Hor. Od. i. 3. 8.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 57
wherever it has been torpid, he has left nothing to
imitate, nothing to lament. It was the real and en-
during praise of feudalism* that it marked, though
unequally, all the gradations of society by corre-
spondent classes of reciprocating duties, definite
enough to be undeniable, and yet not so precise as to
be capable of a mechanical and prefunctory discharge.
Not only between the private person and the nation,
but between each man and those immediately above
and next beneath, a subaltern law of association was
in force. Protection on the one hand, and obedience
on the other, each to be rendered at all hazards and
to all extremities, formed the noble, though imper-
fectly realised, idea of medieval society, and exhibited
in the liveliest manner the theory and practice of a
common life. And while this conception is travelling,
through many stages of progressive deterioration, to
the state in which its elements are to be material pro-
duction on the one hand and consumption on the
other, those lineaments indeed become more and more
faint, but yet not indiscernible.
26. If there lurk in our minds the suspicion that
this is after all a vain attempt to embody the mere
phantasms of the mind, that a joint or common life
is either a form of language to which no reality of
nature corresponds, or at best an arbitrary and con-
ventional device, in such a suspicion I read partly
indeed the result of national habits and pursuits un-
friendly to speculation, whether sound or fanciful, but
* Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. pp. 321, 322.
58 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
in great part also the confirmation of one of the most
sinister symptoms of our own time, namely, its tend-
ency to detach social relations from the control of
the affections, and to trust for their regulation to law
or to economical influences alone ; to the former, in-
deed, mainly for redressing the more glaring abuses
that result from the uncontrouled dominion of the
latter. If we had more fully realised our human
brotherhood in practice, if we had more faithfully
acted upon the sacredness of these our secondary rela-
tions of duty, it would be a simpler lesson to learn
the great truth, that all those considerations which
separate our individual life from the dullest forms of
vegetative existence, and render it a matter of serious
and rational concern, do also as strictly attach to those
modes of common life of which we are partakers by
virtue of our social constitution in its various aspects.
27. Association, then, by setting before us duties to
be done to others, enlarges the province of our ordi-
nary practice : by establishing within certain bounds
one law for all, it provides that such law shall be in-
dependent of, or exterior to, each ; and by intertwining
our affections one with another, as well as by attach-
ing them to the forms themselves of our fellowship, it
gives us the conditions of disinterestedness, and sup-
plies us with extrinsic ends upon which action may
terminate, instead of reverting within the isolated
sphere of the single being of the agent.
28. It is by looking to the state of the world before
the Advent, and beyond the circle of the earlier reve-
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 59
lation from God, that we may best estimate the func-
tion and the moral power of that fundamental law
under which God willed us to be socially constituted ;
because we may then arrive at it by measuring the
actual state of the world with what it must have been
had no bond of family, of race, of patriotism, existed
among men, and had the selfish appetites in conse-
quence been left to grow by indulgence from day to
day into impenetrable obduracy and unmitigated ra-
pacity. Yet, even under the benignant influences of
the kingdom of the Redeemer, these secondary in-
fluences have been of no less, nay of greater, value,
only their beneficial effects have been less conspicuous,
because generally blended with those higher results,
which the principle of a spiritual life has produced.
Yet even this principle, adapting itself to the frame of
our nature, is tabernacled in the fellowship of the
Catholic Church, the communion of saints.
29. I have endeavoured to show the great moral
designs of the fundamental forms of social organisation,
which are certainly in the nature of reasons for at-
taching to them Divine sanctions. I shall now further
attempt to prove that the general doctrine of collective
forms of religion, apart from purely individual devo-
tions, has a ground not less in the actual and peculiar
wants, than in the capacities and purposes, of human
association.
30. Let us then consider whether it be not true that,
together with those beneficial effects of association
which have been specified, there are not others of an
60 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
opposite character, which require that it should pos-
sess additional guarantees against abuse ; and whether,
as this participation in the several forms of joint life is
a fundamental law of our condition, we be not morally
obliged to make the requisite provision against the
dangers which it involves.
31. I have said that incorporation establishes rela-
tions of justice, and even of mutual kindness, between
the body and its members generally ; and also between
one member and another. But it does not provide
for the recognition of such relations between one who
is within its precinct and others who are not; nor be-
tween the society itself and persons out of the society;
nor between the society and other societies ; nor even
effectually between the society and particular members
of itself. Incorporation establishes an a$>o), a sense
of honour and shame, a responsibility, one to another,
among the partners in that common life which it has
created. But the whole of their extrinsic action still
remains unregulated, and the whole, also, of that of the
society itself. Nor is there any tendency whatever,
inherent in the nature of incorporation, to quicken the
perceptions of moral obligation in the members or in
the body, with reference to those who are beyond its
pale. Thus, then, while it begins well, and, in order to
its own organic completion, lays a powerful repressing
hand on the action of selfish appetite, and provides for
the continuance of that pressure within itself, yet, as
extrinsically regarded, it will have brought into exist-
ence a new power which may itself be greedy, unjust,
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 61
and aggressive, and may perpetrate for the community
more and grosser evils than would have been com-
mitted by the feebler means of its members as indi-
viduals.
32. Reverting to another aspect of the general
nature of combination among men, let us observe that
it is calculated to produce the following results : a
maximum of effect from given means ; a great compli-
cation of interests ; an endless diversity of reciprocal
influences ; a subdivision, and with the subdivision a
great waste and diminution, of that sense of individual
responsibility which is felt by private persons in their
capacity as such. The first, by economising the appli-
cation of resources, by setting each man to do that for
which he is fittest, and by enabling one man to do the
same thing for many. The second, by taking out of
each man's immediate province the execution of a
large part of that which belongs to his own wants, and
making him a co-operator in joint labours and a sharer
in joint proceeds. The third, by providing for the in-
termixture a"nd contact of man with man, in every mode
of sympathy, interest, and obligation, to the greatest
possible degree. The encroachment of society, by its
circuitous influences or by its positive acts, on the in-
dividual, varies under different forms of civil polity.
Under despotism, a particular person ; under demo-
cracy, the mass, override and subjugate his will. But,
besides these cases of vicious excess, in every form,
from the very nature of society, he must have many
extrinsic forces mingling with and modifying his own
62 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
agency, and thus greatly complicating the rules of his
moral life. Their shades, numerous enough and al-
most indiscernible when our action is wholly in the
individual sphere, and when all our motives are self-
derived, are multiplied as by a new set of factors
when we come to act in societies. The fourth, because,
whenever blame is shared by a plurality of persons,
each becomes conscious, as it falls upon himself, that it
affects his neighbour also ; and that principle of self-
love which with most persons is paramount, is forth-
with tempted in every one to shift the burden, and to
ascribe more to those around him, and less to himself,
than the equal share. And as this is done by all,
much of the blame due to acts confessedly evil is, as it
were, unappropriated, and falls short of its mark.
And where many unite to do wrong, the conscience is
staggered as by an appearance of authority, and we are
tempted to believe it right, or to insist less upon its
wrongfulness. In these methods does combination,
firstly, enlarge the power of the creature man; se-
condly, increase his liability to be affected by conduct
which he cannot control ; thirdly, impair and obstruct
his sense of moral responsibility.
33. What has been said may, I trust, suffice to
bring into clear, if not full view, the urgent necessity
which exists for some provision to meet the increased
demands of the collective life in general; to guarantee
us, as far as may be, against the increased abuses
which will attend the increase of the moving power of
human life, by combining therewith an enhanced
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 63
moral sense, deriving new strength from new and suit-
able principles, against the idola fori * which society
engenders, and the delusions which they weave around
us ; against the heavy visitations to which, in commu-
nities, we become liable through conduct of others
over whom we have no control, and to secure to us
the realisation of the beneficial effects of civil union ;
lastly, to preclude the fatal operation of that tendency
to diminish responsibility and to impair the strength
(so feeble at the best) of the principle of individual mo-
rality, which we have seen to belong to combination
as such, and which, if it be not counteracted by the
application of some auxiliary principle over and above
the principle of individual morality, may, of itself, or
rather must, as it seems, poison the very sources of
action and of life.
This remedy has been recognised by the common,
the almost universal sense of mankind, as being found
in collective religion.
34. This joint, or common life, is what is ordinarily
intimated by the phrase, the personality of societies;
by which it is represented and carried into action.
That phrase becomes applicable, when the community
of law, sentiment, and interest, belonging to the com-
mon life, assumes the determinate form of incorpora-
tion, and becomes subject internally to a deliberative
regulating principle. It is not any mere metaphysical
or theological abstraction, nor a phrase invented for
the purpose of discussion, but a reality, having its own
* Novum Organon, aph. xxxix.
64 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
palpable exponents in the persons of those who are in
their several departments the organs of the societies,
and in every member of them according to the sphere
of action which each may fill in virtue of his member-
ship. Now I am to argue, that the powerful and
separate moral agency which is thus established, re-
quires the application to it of a consecrating principle
of religion, as the moral agency of the individual re-
quires to be consecrated by his individual worship.
Wherever in the universe there is power, connected
with that moral and reflective consciousness which is
the condition of agency, it both is the property of
God, the King of that universe, His rightful property,
however for a time withholden or abused ; and it can
only be as it were realised, it can only fulfil the laws
under which He gave it, when it is used for the pur-
poses He has ordained, and in the temper of mercy,
justice, truth, and faith, which He has inculcated.
But these principles never can be truly, never can be
permanently, entertained in the human breast, except
by a continual resort to their fountain above, and the
supply of the Divine grace, sought and obtained
through a solemn worship. And this reasoning ap-
plies to moral agency as such, whether it be public or
individual.
35. These general positions are alike tenable, as I
apprehend, whatever theory we may adopt as to the
origin of political power. If it be founded on the
consent and will of the majority, that consent and will
must themselves act subject to the obligation to sane-
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 65
tify its exercise. The function of choice in the legis-
lature is yet more clear, where government is founded
on paternal principles, and the fiction of popular sove-
reignty is discountenanced.
So, also, is it to be observed, that the conclusion
we have reached seems properly to belong to pure
Theism, and capable of being supported in argument
even without reference to the more peculiar doctrines
of Christianity ; although it be undeniable that but for
the revelation of the Gospel it never could have been
clearly contemplated by the human understanding.
But before it can reach to its minuter forms among
the details of our conduct, it must be compared with
many considerations. We are met at once by the
fact, that while our duty as creatures to the Creator
requires that all our acts should be done with regard
to Him as their centre and to His law as their rule,
the structure of our mind seems physically to preclude
the possibility of maintaining without interruption a
conscious reference to Him even while, nay, it may be
even because, we are earnestly seeking to obey His
will. Ought, then, all the combinations of men, by
which new personalities are created, and a common
life composed ; ought all these, or, if not all, ought any
of them, to be specifically consecrated by solemnity of
religion appropriated distinctly to themselves ?
36. In order to the successful pursuit of this inquiry,
let us endeavour to examine strictly into the nature
and degrees of personality in societies. Now, although
it be true that there is generally in societies a real and
VOL. i. F
66 THF STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
substantial personality, care must be taken to keep the
idea which the term conveys distinct from that of in-
dividuality. The latter signifies not only actual unity
of life, but that unity attended with universal indivisi-
bility ; whereas, moral personality, while it implies
unity for certain purposes, is compatible with divisi-
bility in the subjects whose composition goes to form
that unity. This personality is recognised by the laws
of every civilised nation, and by the law of nations,
under which bodies of men associated for the purposes
of religion, of learning, of government general or mu-
nicipal, of science, of art, even of economical and
material improvement, are regarded as persons, are
dealt with, that is to say, as being in every practical
sense agents, with the liabilities of agents ; as dis-
charging the functions, and as bearing the character,
of individuals quoad certain purposes.
37. But, it will be asked, how do we see that to
this limited and qualified individuality, religious re-
sponsibilities can in any case belong ? I answer, be-
cause it may fulfil these three conditions : the first, to
be living ; the second, to be active ; the third, to be
moral ; therefore it is capable of, and subject to, reli-
gious responsibility.
38. Let us then inquire narrowly what it is that
renders the individual, properly so called, a capable
subject of religious responsibility. It is plain that it is
not merely his individuality ; for a man is not more nor
more truly an individual than a brute, and yet a brute
is not bound by a religious responsibility. May it not
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 67
be something which he has in common with the great
moral person of a society of men ? And if it be some-
thing which characterises him in common with such a
complex person, then it follows that the complex person
is as capable of the religious relation as the simple one.
39. Imagine the spark of life, under any form in
which it merely exists, and discharges no function be-
yond that (if it be one) of self-maintenance. By the
very terms of the hypothesis, there is nothing here
but the bare stationary unit, incapable of movement
either forward or retrograde, of growth or of decay, of
reflection or of habit. Here there is individuality, but
no capability of religion.
40. Now, again, imagine that spark of life endowed
with power, enabled not merely to be, but to act, to
move, to grow, to advance, to decay, to recede ; pos-
sessing that which we term a vegetative life ; indi-
viduality remains, and something is added, but we
have not yet filled up the conditions of moral respon-
sibility.
4 1 . Once more, add something further to the last
predicament, and suppose a power not only of expan-
sion and contraction in the life itself, but also of ex-
trinsic action, of affecting for detriment or for advantage
other lives elsewhere situated ; and suppose that the
being whose action was now endowed with this fertility,
this capacity of production, should not only exercise the
capacity upon other objects but upon himself, should
mould and modify his own being, not by mere growth,
but through the medium of action, by the formation of
F 2
68 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
habits, that is to say, of modified states of his own
nature, arising out of his acts ; we have now an active,
as well as a merely vegetative individuality, but we are
as clearly as ever wanting in the elements of the cha-
racter of moral agency.
42. One stage in addition, and we have done.
Superadd to the foregoing conditions a capacity of re-
flection, that is to say, of intelligence and consciousness,
whose reach shall embrace the whole sphere of action
to which the given powers are applicable ; a faculty of
perceiving the law by which means are adjusted to
ends, and the higher law by which ends are chosen
and rejected ; and a free function of choice, of adop-
tion or refusal, upon the view either of ends or means;
and we have now all the conditions which are requisite
to fill up the conception of a moral person, a being
morally responsible, the subject upon whom, if there
be truth in our fundamental conceptions of right and
wrong, may be justly administered a system of reward
and punishment, of praise and blame.
43. Now there is no one of these conditions which is
wanting, I do not here say whether or not in all
combinations of men, but in that peculiar combination
which we term State. No one doubts that a State
lives in the first and lowest form which I have de-
scribed : no one doubts that it is capable of progression
and retrogression in physical or in intelligent power : no
one doubts that it is capable of producing great results,
great moral as well as great material results, great
results of positive good and evil, whether upon itself
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 69
at large, or upon its individual members or subordi-
nate combinations, in its dealings with them as ex-
trinsic persons, or upon other combinations of the
national and independent form ; that not its reputation
alone, but its actual health and its future conduct, are
affected by its past conduct. And clear as it is that
the sphere of action of the State is one full of the most
essentially moral matter, it is perhaps of the whole ca-
talogue of conditions the one less than the rest sus-
ceptible of doubt, that a State as such is at least as
deliberative as an individual : at least as capable, by
its nature, of discerning right and wrong, since it may
and by its nature ought to command the very best
perceptions of right and wrong, which are found
among men, to be enlisted in its service ; at least as
free in the use of its organs to do or not to do, since it
owns no human superior.
44. Therefore I say that the necessary conditions of
moral action attach to personality with the qualified
or rather limited unity which it implies, and not to
individuality as such, which, though it has absolute
unity, need not include moral elements ; and that all
these conditions are fulfilled in the idea, in the reason-
able theory, of the nature of a State.
Thus much respecting the need of religion in com-
binations of men, and the capacity of it in States, by
way of establishing affirmatively the principle, that a
national religion ought to exist, provided the subse-
quent considerations regarding the proper organ for
choosing and defining it, and the right instrumentality
70 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
for its profession and propagation, can be practically
adjusted. I have endeavoured, in short, to show, that
it belongs properly to a nation as such.
45. But does it belong to all combinations of men ?
Those characteristics of combination, which have been
specified above, are general, and not limited to the po-
litical form. There are many other kinds of combina-
tion among men, from the nation and the family
downwards, in a descending scale of dignity and im-
portance. And it may be truly alleged that in these
subordinate combinations there is collective power
wielded by individual agency, which is one of the
foregoing arguments : and that there is in them, or in
many of them, common advantage and loss, common
acting and suffering, as well as in that great combina-
tion under which organised aggregations of men are
usually called nations : and hence it is inferred, that if
it be right to argue, from these characteristics of col-
lective power and common acting and suffering in po-
litical societies, for a national profession of religion, it
is equally right to argue, from similar characteristics,
that such inferior combinations cannot be legitimately
constituted without an analogous profession : and the
popular reasoning of the day proceeds in this form,
that, as it is manifestly true that a common profession
of religion is not required in these combinations, despite
of the existence of those characteristics, so neither need
it be required as a condition of the right constitution
of a State, which, as is taught in some systems of opi-
nion, existing only for external and material ends,
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 71
ought not to embarrass itself with a matter which has
come to be of the utmost intricacy from the subsisting
divisions of opinion, and which lies entirely beyond its
natural province. Is then religion beyond or is it
within the natural province of all combinations alike ?
or of some more and some less ? and why of this more
than of any others?
46. Of course it is readily to be conceded, that all
combinations ought not to contemplate all purposes :
that the intrinsic superiority of one end to another is
no reason for employing means adapted only to the
inferior end in the pursuit of the higher: that all
combinations of men have in their degree the attri-
butes of personality and power, common acting and
common suffering : and yet that not all are alike
bound as combinations to profess a specific religion.
Which among them are so bound, and which are not,
is the ulterior question, requiring to be determined by
an examination of the nature and of the degree of that
personality, that power, that common acting and com-
mon suffering. For instance, the personality may be
(a) constant and sustained, or it may be intermittent ; it
may resume activity only at long intervals, and during
the intermediate spaces may have no more than a poten-
tial existence : (>) it may be temporary and occasional,
or it may be permanent. The power may be (c) indefi-
nitely great or indefinitely small. The functions, about
which the community of acting and of suffering sub-
sists, may be (d) applicable to few, or many, or mosc, or
all: may be (e) grounded in natural ordinance, or in hu-
72 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
man convention and allowance : may be (f} narrow,
determinate and calculable in amount; or may be
overreaching, comprehensive, unlimited, and entirely
transcending the range of all foresight and distinct
reasoning: may be (</) conversant with matters of
mere computation, of material interests, of physical
result, such as the understanding can with facility an-
ticipate, and such as involve no agency of the kind
properly termed moral : or may on the other hand be
largely and pervasively connected with the moral fa-
culties and habits of the mind, with the passions and
the affections ; with the deep foundations, and with
the entire superstructure of human character.
47. Now there are two forms of human association,
and two only, which answer to the whole of the fol-
lowing description, (a) They are general; so that
every man not comprehended under them is consi-
dered as the exception to the rule. (6) They are
permanent, either in one single form, or in an homo-
geneous succession, so that on leaving one we pass
ordinarily to another, or, the obligations of the second
gather around us before those of the first are fully dis-
charged, (c) They are natural, because they do not
imply, and never have implied, the antecedent consent
of the individual, nor do they even arise out of any pe-
culiar dispensation of God, but they accrue to him as
man, in order to his fulfilling the elementary conditions
of his well-being, (rf) They are of unlimited purposes
and liabilities, so that no one can be the judge of his
own duties in them, or can obtain beforehand any
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 73
schedule or formula of those duties, (e) They are
moral, because they are essentially, and proximately,
and generally connected with the state of the moral
habits and affections, with the growth and formation
of character.
48. One of these is, the family. It is (a) general, be-
cause all men, unless under circumstances contrary to
the usual order of Providence, are born into it. It
is (6) permanent, because, unless in cases similarly
exceptional, our original obligations to it are only
dissolved by death ; and from the family of one gene-
ration as it disappears we create or enter one of the
new formations by which the old are continually re-
placed. It is (c) natural, because domestic obligations
accrue to men in general independently of their own
consent, from a higher law, the will of the Author of
nature, expressed not in any restricted or partial
scheme, but in its fixed constitution. It is (d) uncon-
fined in its right of demand upon us, as it rests upon
the broad and comprehensive law of love, not cur-
tailed, but enhanced, by having a specific and primary
application to some particular persons : and as there
is no limit (in quantity) to our duty of self-culture and
self-amelioration, so neither is there any limit (in
quantity) to the obligation which binds us to promote
at large the welfare of the family around us. Lastly,
(e) it is moral, because in its offices, and through its
influences, a very large portion of our actual character
receives its impress and its development.
49. Now it will hardly be denied, that religion ought
74 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
to attach to families as such, and that unity of religion
is the first condition of their well-being. The want of it
does not indeed annul existing domestic obligations, as
we know from the highest authority :* and those who
reproach the advocates of State-religion with holding
a doctrine that leads to persecution, might at least as
consistently have inferred, from the general directions
to married persons with which the Epistles abound, that
the Christian wife and husband would have been com-
manded to abandon their unbelieving partners re-
spectively; whereas the very contrary is enjoined.
Yet these domestic obligations entail religious duties :
of instruction in Divine truth from the parents to the
children, of common worship in a common faith. Nor
do the reasons of these duties cease to be applicable,
until by local dissolution the existing single family
parts into the seeds of many.
50. The practice even of the heathen world supports
the principle of family religion : sustains it, that is to
say, in the same manner as it sustains the principle of
personal religion, by supplying us with indications,
however rude and perverted, of its acknowledgment.
The household had its deities, as well as the temple ;
and JEneas, a type be it remembered of the Roman
character and manners as they were estimated by
Virgil, bore his aged father from Troy with his house-
hold, and with the emblems of his household worship :
Cum famulis natoque, penatibus ct magnis Dis.f
* 1 Cor. vi. 1216. t JEn. iii. 12.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 75
51. Notwithstanding all this, however, a man may
be, and frequently is, a very kind father without reli-
gion. He may educate his children with care, treat
them with unvarying kindness, and provide with the
utmost sedulity and effect for their temporal welfare,
without any regard to God, and merely under the in-
fluence of the unacknowledged benefit of those pa-
rental instincts which God has given him. Further,
it will sometimes happen that a family is orderly and
peaceful, without any common religion, where each
walks in his own way, and there is either no joint
belief and action, or, if any, yet such as is of the most
vague and shadowy description. On the other hand,
it may happen that a parent, who is in the main con-
scientious towards God, may nevertheless exhibit some
harshness of temper, something of the spirit of wrath
yet unsubdued, in the conduct of his parental relations ;
or may fail in the judicious culture of the understand-
ings of his children, or in the regulation of their ordi-
nary occupations, or in his plans for their temporal
welfare. Or again, great pain and disunion may fol-
low from his attempts to instruct his children in the
faith which he has received, and which it is his duty
to deliver to them. Yet all these causes, whatever
might be their right explanation or their proper
remedy, or even if they had none, would in no way
destroy the general principle, that religion belongs to
families in their collective capacity, and not merely to
their members as individuals, that family relations
entail religious duties, and that unity of religion is,
76 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
when we speak of things in their ordinary courses, the
first condition of their well-being. So much then for
religion in the family, and the reasons of it.
52. The other form of universal association, which I
would couple with the family in respect of its exten-
sive range of influences upon the characters and des-
tinies of men, and of its high moral characteristics, is
that of the nation or the state.
53. The nation, in its fullest sense, is an aggrega-
tion of men having substantial unity in physical
origin, in language, in character and customs, in local
habitation, and in political life. This unity admits of
degree. Of origin and language there may be much
diversity, as in the United Kingdom. The conformity
of customs and character may be indefinitely various
in amount. Even local juxtaposition is not essential
to nationality, as we see in the case of the Jews,
though it is nearly so. Unity of political or public
life to some extent is absolutely essential. We per-
ceive it in that singular people, under its own pecu-
liar forai) partly as blended with the theocratic
element, and partly as compounded of retrospect and
anticipation. Even this, however, is susceptible of
gradations, as we may see its slighter forms in the
Grecian, the Argive, the Ionic and the other confede-
rations of Asia Minor, among the ancients ; * and in
the Germanic empire, the Swiss confederation, the
* Mitford on the Council of Amphictyons, i. iii. 3 ; and on the Argive
or Calaurean Confederation, i. iv. 2. Herodotus on the Ionic Con-
federacy, i. 143, 147, 148 ; the Doric, 144 ; the JEolic, 149, 150.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 77
provinces of the Low Countries, the United States of
America, and the union of several European countries
with their colonial dependencies, in modern times.
54. If we take in succession the terms a multitude,
a people, a nation, a state, we rise by progression from
a mere juxtaposition of units to a complete moral
organisation. When we speak of a multitude, we
indicate mere number ; when we speak of a people,
we separate the governed from the governors ; when
we speak of a nation, we contemplate them together,
but we merge the governors in the governed; when we
speak of the state, we contemplate the same personal
subjects, but wholly and singly in respect of their part-
nership in the national life and order, not as individuals,
but only as constituents of the active power of that
life. We contemplate those who administer affairs,
those who compose the legislative body, those who
bear office, those who possess franchises, those who pay
tax ; in short, all who in any way contribute to make
up the organic body ; that is to say, all absolutely, but
each simply in respect of his entering, according to
his measure, into its mechanism; and the term re-
gards them with degrees of more or less, according
as their capacity therein is more or less comprehen-
sive and efficient. And together with that fluent body
of individuals, which is permanent only by succession,
the term state includes those fixed laws and tradi-
tionary institutions to which they give effect, through
which the national character is sustained and propa-
gated, and which, comparatively secure from the
78 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
storms of passion and the devouring rust and moth of
selfishness, become for the most part the depository
and the safeguard of the best, purest, and truest por-
tions of the common life. As, then, the nation is the
realised " unity of the people," * so in the state is that
unity made vital and active. The state is the self-
governing energy of the nation made objective.
Where monarchy prevails it is centralised and repre-
sented in the person of the sovereign, himself an in-
tegral portion of this realised unity. Through his
will the mind of the state is made effective, and be-
comes action; and the executive power which he
impels throughout is the functional life, or organ, of
the state, as the state is of the nation. Even thus, in
its correlative the church, is understood, along with
an organised body of individuals, the laws and forms
of institution according to which they are organised.
55. Into the composition of this organ there should
enter different elements in different proportions, ac-
cording to their intrinsic fitness either positively to
determine its actions for good, or reciprocally to cor-
rect the faults of each other, the interests or forces
(in the German phrase momente) of nobility, of talent,
of property, of numbers ; all these, on account of their
presumption of merit, or at least of a negative compe-
tency, as weights balancing one another; and with
and beyond all these, the virtue which is from
above, whose title to govern is alone indefeasible, but
which on earth, from the imperfection of the forms of
* Coleridge, Table Talk, vol. i. p. 226.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 79
its development, and yet more from the difficulty of
applying a test to distinguish the genuine from the
counterfeit, requires to be sought chiefly through the
circuitous medium of other and secondary qualifica-
tions.
56. These powers are continually passing into the
composition of the governing body, in which we find
them no longer in the gross but more or less refined,
the weaker elements eliminated or suppressed, and the
residue prepared for action. While the term state, in
its larger sense, signifies the whole emanation and
procession of these powers from their sources towards
their concentration and their work, in a narrower
sense it considers them apart from their primary
springs, and in the determinate forms of the actual
public authorities. For the present we have to do
with the former.
57. In order to arrive at a comprehension of the
general attributes of the state thus defined, let us
consider separately what it professes, what It effects,
and what it signifies.
Some writers have indeed mischievously exagge-
rated the office of the state, and even under the
Christian revelation have represented it either as the
fountain of morality, or at least as supremely charged
with the regulation of the large province of relative
duty ; that province so comprehensive and important
that the Redeemer has honoured it more than once
with a distinct enunciation* of the law of moral obli-
* Matt. xix. 17 ; Luke x. 27.
80 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
gation, although of course in the highest and ultimate
sense it is comprehended within the yet larger com-
mandment that enjoins upon us love to God as the
universal principle of action.* Thus they have super-
seded the paramount principle of our private respon-
sibility. Even these exaggerations, however, may
serve for a sign of that real grandeur and comprehen-
siveness in the functions of the state, upon which they
have been built.
58. The state, indeed, does not possess that range
of qualifications which caused it to be said of the an-
cient Egyptians, that they wrought upon the scale of
a giant but with the nicety of a jeweller, and which
in matters of moral government are the attributes of
almightiness alone. The state cannot provide for the
discharge even of determinate, or as it has been de-
fectively termed, perfect, duty in all its branches ; far
less can it insure the fulfilment of our indeterminate
yet not less real obligations the maintenance of
Christian charity in its higher forms. But though it
most imperfectly realises the idea of moral govern-
ment, yet by its nature it tends and strives towards
that consummation, and in its course or nisus thither-
ward, it exhibits signs and embodies portions of moral
government in a pre-eminent and peculiar manner.
59. It declares itself against all injuries, whether of
word or deed, between man and man, provided only
that they be represented in such a form as its cognis-
ance can reach, and as is also exemplary and intelli-
* Deut. vi. 4, 5; xxx. 6.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 81
gible to the generality of mankind. It also professes
to establish the same principle of universal justice
between itself and its members, to exist impartially
for the being and the well-being of all, and to act
without respect of persons, though not without respect
of characters. And if it do not always fulfil the con-
ception of a just indifferency, the very cases, where it
deviates from the rule, demonstrate its validity ; they
testify to the original truth that the state is just, by
the strong indignant sense which they arouse in the
mass of men, not only of impolicy, but of actual wrong
sustained, and of resentment thereupon. So that the
state, as such, is indeed invested with the attribute of
a limited, but yet, as compared with individuals gene-
rally, a less imperfect, justice.
60. While it has so high a standard for even its
negative and preventive functions, upon the positive
side it pretends to a prerogative of applying to its
members, in a manner determinable by its own dis-
cretion, the processes of cultivation and improvement.
In conformity with which lofty aims, it asserts the
most absolute, though still impartial, claims upon all
within its pale ; the right to dispose, upon its own re-
sponsibility and without appeal, of their time, their
liberty, their property, and their life.
61. As to what the State effects, we are to remember,
that all which it prohibits, it prevents, or punishes;
its laws, in every tolerably ordered polity, are put
into actual and strict execution; there is no discretion
to relax them, except such as they themselves contem-
VOL. i. G
82 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
plate, and, by allowing, create. Thus, though from
afar, it imitates Omnipotence in the penal and coercive
aspect of its government. And how much is involved
in this, even though it is far from the highest charac-
teristic of the State, that while it contains all other
forms of our earthly life, so likewise it is that upon
which the continuance of their peaceful and effectual
existence depends. If we break up the State, even the
family must probably be wrecked in the convulsion.
62. But here, again, the State is most worthy of re-
gard in its positive offices. By that principle of
degree, which it distributes and confirms throughout
the whole community, it establishes the discipline of
command and obedience, qualified, intermingled, and
alternated, in a thousand forms; the discipline most
effectual for a progressive nature, in a probationary
state. It opens a field for charity, by the reciprocal
dependence of men one upon another; for who is there
in a State that is not dependent on his fellows ? It
teaches humility and rebukes the private spirit, by the
subordination of the individual to the mass. It forges
the chain of order as a sacred thing, by attaching its
extremity to the eternal throne ; for this is its progres-
sion: as the single person is subordinate to the public
authority, so the public authority is not a mere will,
experimenting at haphazard upon human character
and destiny, but in proportion as the State is excellent
in its kind, that public authority is itself, notwith-
standing its supremacy of will, practically subordinate
to fixed and stable law, perhaps the least inadequate
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 83
of all earthly representatives of that Divine power
which is the true foundation of all legitimate govern-
ment. And a people is permanently great or the
reverse, in proportion as it realises to itself a treasure
of this description :
uv t/oftti f^oxiitra.1
L^/lirabif, tuftttia* 3/ aitigtt
rtnvtiflnrtf, <J "OXvftras
#*TJi pints, fuSi tiv 6ia.<ra.
lOUt ITIKTII,
-rori Xa# x.xra
63. Further, the voice of public laws is commonly
clearer and nearer to truth, upon the subjects to which
they relate, than the average sentiment (I mean not the
abstract but the active sentiment, the sentiment which
passes into action) of the community. As for example
among ourselves : hardly any man dares upon right
principles to refuse a duel, and to -avow and abide by
his refusal ; whereas the law utterly prohibits the
practice, and there is a latent sense, it may be pre-
sumed, of the righteousness of the law, which prevents
every one from so much as proposing its alteration
and reduction to the standard of the common beha-
viour. And this superiority of law to opinion is not a
mere and barren notion ; for so long as the law re-
mains above the ordinary practice it has a perpetual
tendency to attract it upwards, or to prevent or retard
its further depression.
64. Lastly, under this head, let us consider what
the State elicits from individuals. Not only is it
* Soph. CEd. Tyr. 853.
G 2
84 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
hither that sovereign intellect naturally betakes, and
here that it unfolds itself; not only does it give scope
and space to the highest energies of the human under-
standing : it is also directly the parent, and the object,
of some of the noblest feelings which belong to our
nature, and these too such as operate on the most
comprehensive scale. It lifts us by our affections out
of the narrow sphere of individuality, yet without re-
solving them, through unlimited and objectless diffu-
sion, into vague and unreal transports. It probably
does far more to stimulate generous action, and to
cherish that spirit of self-sacrifice which is so urgently
required as a counteraction to our prevailing bias, than
any other earthly cause, except the yet more sacred
and more directly ordained influence of the domestic
affections. It is still, I grant, subservient and instru-
mental only to the higher work of perfecting individual
man, and is in the nature of means ordained to this
end ; yet it is a main instrument and an absolute con-
dition of his culture, as it is also that comprehensive
and overreaching form of the natural human life which
includes and harmonises all its other forms, under
which they must fall, and to which they must adjust
themselves.
65. Still more remarkable is the State in that which
it symbolises. Independent of the will of man alike
in the origin and in the exercise of its power, it both
precedes and survives the individual; and it perpetually
presents to him the images and associations of duty, of
permanency, of power, of something greater and better
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 85
than himself. It claims to represent to us, in that re-
lative sense which alone the conditions of our earthly
sojourning will admit, the principles of the Divine
nature, inclusively of the power to assert them ; to set
before us, hand in hand with resistless power, unlimited
duration, uniform right, unrespect of persons, the har-
mony of degree, the law of discipline and retribution.
So far as respects the rewards and penalties of this
world, it is the only general minister of Divine govern-
ment, treading unequally in its steps, no more than a
shadow of its glory, yet a shadow truly projected from
the substance.
66. I have here, it is true, spoken of the State in its
idea, rather than of a particular country or constitu-
tion. Yet these considerations have practical applica-
tion to the historical forms of the State, which, in
falling below its own standard, has merely resembled
the individual ; both are still bound to the pattern
which they have never exemplified. However much
particular actual States may fall short of the absolutely
true, all that has ever been recorded of human society
testifies to this at the least, that in the State, considered
both as an active and as a permissive power, we find
the index both of the characters and of the conditions
of the men within its pale; in its peculiar modifications
we discover an effect, which is also the most fruitful
of social causes, as estimated by its results upon indi-
vidual being and well-being. Therefore it is that the
civil history of man has ever been, under the sanction
of that example which is afforded by the inspired
86 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
writings of the Old Testament, the history of States,
from the time when first the family had expanded into
this its larger development.
67. It is very easily seen, upon a review of what has
now been propounded respecting the abstract idea of
the State, that it fulfils the same grand conditions
which have been enumerated as descriptive of the
family. Like the family, it is of universal, or, at the
least, of general application. Its agency is permanent
and annexed to the whole of our life. It is natural, as
opposed to what is spontaneous and conventional.
There is no limit of quantity to the obligations of the
individual towards it. It is moral, and not merely eco-
nomical, inasmuch as its laws and institutions, and the
acts done under them, are intimately connected with
the formation of our moral habits, our modes of
thought, and the state of the affections, and inasmuch
as its influences pervade the whole scheme and system
of our being, mingling with the first instincts of boy-
hood; it may be, even attracting the last lingering look
of age on the threshold of its departure ; inasmuch as
that which we are individually, we have come to be, in
a very considerable degree, through and by means of
that which we are nationally.
68. Of all the qualities that have here been predi-
cated of the State, there is but one on which I propose
to dwell a little in detail ; it is this, that the State is
properly and according to its nature, moral. In a
lower sense this is likely to be admitted on all hands.
Every man will perceive that there must be such
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 87
things as public faith and justice, or that political so-
ciety would become an universal and intolerable curse.
But the morality of the State means much more than
this. It means that the general action of the State
is under a moral law, is conversant with moral subject-
matter, is fruitful of moral influences. Now, as re-
gards the second of these in particular, the lawgiver,
proposing to himself as his idea the establishment
of peace and order and the security of property, im-
mediately finds that he impinges upon the subject-
matter of moral science ; that the same acts which are
favourable to politic designs are the acts that general
morality approves; that the same acts which are
hostile to these designs are the acts that general
morality condemns, and that upon a scale which,
though there are partial exceptions, ordinarily very
much conforms to his. Thus his law and his subject-
matter are in relations of the closest proximity, al-
though not identical, with those of moral science. He
is to consider how far it may be in his power to encou-
rage, and, on the other hand, by what means most
effectually to repress, through prevention or punish-
ment, classes of acts which he must estimate mainly
by the standard of that science ; although he may be
compelled in certain particulars to qualify that cri-
terion by regard to those lower purposes, without the
regular attainment of which he cannot proceed to such
as are higher. So that law travels over much of the
same ground as ethics, and guides its course nearly
according to their dictates.
69. If this be the case, then it is clear that (while we
88 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIOftS [CHAP II.
may reserve for another place the consideration of the
preventive function of civil rule) the lawgiver has the
same need to be ethically instructed as the individual
man. The philosophy which holds that the latter will
do best to choose his actions by a consideration of their
general consequences, and which maintains that pre-
sumed advantage is to the human mind the best and
most available criterion of right, may propound the same
doctrine for the lawgiver. But most men revolt from
this position, and maintain that the intrinsic nature of
acts is in itself generally accessible to the understand-
ing, as well as the calculation of their results ; that it is
usually the easier and safer rule; above all, that, accord-
ing to the Divinely ordained canon, right is intended to
be employed as the criterion of advantage, much more
than advantage as the test of right. They, therefore,
will also hold that the deviser of public law, because
it deals (in great part) with subject-matter of right
and wrong, and deals with it for the public well-being,
must, like the private person, read the guarantees of
that well-being in the nature of the acts, and take this
nature as a guide to their results, as well as measure
his enactments by the results which he is thus enabled
to estimate. The lawgiver then, that is, the legislative
mind of the nation, must be ethically instructed ; which
implies that it must be enlightened by religion, upon
the basis of which alone it is, that moral science can
be effectually reared.
70. And, indeed, the circumstance that the State
has primary regard to certain external conditions of
well-being, peace and order, so far from overthrowing,
CHAP. II. J WITH THE CHURCH. 89
corroborates the necessity for guarding its acts by the
forms of religion. Nothing could be more dangerous
to moral health than the habits which would be en-
gendered by continually estimating action, of which the
subject-matter is admitted to be moral, with exclusive
reference to these external results, and with no regard
whatever therefore to their intrinsic nature. The
practice proceeds upon a false opinion, that we are at
liberty to deal with truth upon considerations of simple
convenience, and its sure effect would be the general
induration of the human heart. But it is a practice
to which the State is continually tempted, for the very
reason that the law of its being compels it to have
some, and that no inconsiderable, regard to these ex-
terior results ; and thus it lies under a peculiar need
of the influences of religion, in order that a healthy
tone of disinterestedness and of public virtue may per-
vade its action, and hold up an example for private
imitation rather than avoidance.
A reflective agency, then, conversant with moral
subject-matter, involves of necessity a conscience,
which is, ex vi termini, the regulator of moral offices.
71. In an earlier part of this chapter* the case of
the family has been alleged to be in the main analo-
gous to that of the State. The application of the
principle of collective religion is, in the smaller sphere,
it has been admitted, more palpable and less disputed. f
But of the reality of the analogy between the two we
may be persuaded, among other means, by this re-
* Sup. $ 48-51. t Ed. Rev., April, 1839, p. 249.
90 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
mark able circumstance : that the school of reasoners,
which alone in this country has employed the methods
of logic in its attacks upon the principle of national
religion, and which, therefore, holds out to us the best
promise of a certain self-consistency, has likewise pro-
ceeded to assail the principle of family religion, and to
contend that it is a capital offence against the laws of
truth to communicate any bias to the minds of the
young, or to inculcate belief antecedently to compre-
hension. In this very sense, Mr. James Mill has
written his essay on ' The Principles of Toleration.' *
72. This idea of conscience in the State is supported,
as I contend, by the impartial and weighty testimony
of human language, which continually applies the
phraseology of duty to its acts, and predicates of them
all the moral qualities and their opposites. And I
think every man must feel that injustice embodied in
law, that bad faith in the inobservance of national en-
gagements, imply something quite beyond the guilt of
the individuals who may have been the instruments of
the offence, although undoubtedly including it. Fur-
ther, is it not true that the inward experience of con-
scientious men, who have been engaged in the discharge
of public functions, would yield us a similar witness ?
Such a man will surely feel, in entering even on the
routine of his duties, that he has come under a new set
of conditions of action, involving elements quite distinct
from those merely personal ; that he is impelled to
* Westminster Review, July, 1826. Reprinted in a separate form,
London, 1837.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 91
do one act and to avoid another, upon reasons, justified
indeed by reference to his own moral obligations as a
private man, but felt to have infinitely greater force,
and to assume a far higher form, than any such refer-
ence singly can supply. He will be sensible, that in
yielding to any suggested temptation, in doing or pro-
curing to be done any unjust action (as, for example,
in using means to carry a partial and oppressive bill),
he is dragging along with himself, not merely into
dishonour but into guilt, not merely the reputation,
but the positive, subjective, character of the State.
He will feel that this great idea of State duty is as
true and stringent as the kindred idea of individual
duty, and is only capable of being explained away by
sophistry of the same kind as that which, from the
days of the Cyrenaics and Epicureans, with intervals,
until now, has laboured to destroy the principle on
which private rectitude depends, and to resolve it into
a pure calculation of consequences : thus, as Coleridge*
remarks, making that which is the absolute, the one
thing needful in every man alike, to depend upon the
faculty which of all others is most unequally distri-
buted among the human race.
73. I will propose another reason, which seems to
me to prove with clearness that the responsibilities of
the nation are not satisfied by the individual piety of
its members. The national conscience, or, if this
phrase be too alarming, that sense of duty which
ought to regulate public acts, should be as far as pos-
* In the Friend.
9*2 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
sible formed upon a pure and comprehensive idea of
right and wrong, and as little as possible coloured with
idiosyncracy, or individual peculiarity. The statesman
should feel that his office demands this larger rule of
action, while his conscience must remind him of the
difficulty of separating his own opinions, and even
caprices, from those conditions of truth and justice
which he is to apply to the national service. Even
those who hold the loftiest doctrine of the rights of
government will admit that it must commonly har-
monise in its proceedings with the national character
and will. The statesman, then, must resolve to lay
aside in his public function a part of his individuality,
and very commonly, in all matters that are not of con-
science, must act more as impelled than as impelling,
more upon the convictions of others than his own.
Still the acts so done are acts which may be fraught
with most serious, even with highly moral results.
At least, they are acts which ought to be, like all
others, commended to God. Yet these are acts done,
so to speak, without an agent, unless the nation, the
moral person of the State, be that agent. They are
not the acts of the statesman in any sense, except that
he is their instrument ; he is, with respect to these, as
the soldier in the ranks. He will shift the responsi-
bility for them from himself in proportion as they are
less the genuine offspring of his individual judgment;
he will feel, and with a degree of justice, that morally,
though not constitutionally, it rather lies elsewhere.
But what is its true and proper seat ? The persons,
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 93
whose will he is anticipating, are busy each with his
farm and his merchandise, with personal interests or
duties. This responsibility, however, which has an
aspect so indefinite while we look only at individual
men, has, in fact, a legitimate subject, which can con-
sistently and adequately refer all these acts to the
Almighty Ruler. There are qualities in a combination
which aise out of the union of its parts, and are not
to be found in those parts when they have been sepa-
rated and are singly examined. In the government
and laws of a country we find not a mere aggregation
of individual acts but a composite agency, the general
result yielded by a multitude of efforts, each of which in
part modifies, in part is absorbed amid the rest. This
composite agency represents the personality of the
nation ; and, as a great distinct moral reality, demands
a worship of its own, namely, the worship of the State,
represented in its living and governing members, and
therefore a public and joint worship.
74. To sum up then in few words the result of
these considerations, religion is applicable to the State,
because it is the office of the State in its personality to
evolve the social life of man, which social life is essen-
tially moral in the ends it contemplates, in the sub-
ject-matter on which it feeds, and in the restraints and
motives it requires ; and which can only be effectually
moral when it is religious. Or, religion is directly ne-
cessary to the right employment of the energies of the
State as a State.
75. It is however, I admit, an entirely equitable
94 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
demand that the criterion should be stated as speci-
fically as possible, by which the question is to be de-
cided, what forms of combination admit and require
collective religion, and what on the other hand may
dispense with or even practically preclude it. And I
would hope that the ground has been effectually laid
for the performance of this operation. Those combi-
nations admit of collective religion, which are general,
and belong to man as such ; which are natural, and so
come upon him as parts of the dispensation into which
he is providentially born ; which are permanent, and
so run parallel to his entire existence ; which are ma-
nifold in their functions and unlimited in their claims
upon him ; above all, those which, in concurrence with
all the foregoing conditions, are moral in such respects
as these : that they require in a high degree moral
motives and restraints for the right discharge of the
obligations subsisting under them; that they distinctly
contemplate moral ends ; that they exercise manifold,
pervasive, subtle, potent, moral influences. Wherever
these characteristics can with truth be jointly predi-
cated of any human association, its idea demands, in
order to its possessing a right constitution, the ingre-
dient of a collective religion. In proportion as they,
and more especially as the last of them, can be truly
or probably predicated of any such association, there
is an approximation to the necessity for such religion,
and at least a capacity, with favourable circumstances,
to receive it. In proportion as they are only in a slight
degree discernible in any such association, the idea of
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 95
collective religion becomes unnecessary, and at last
even inapplicable.
76. Now, to quote a list which a mind of redundant
opulence has furnished, all have heard of these among
the minor forms of human combination :* ' banks, in-
surance-offices, dock-companies, canal-companies, gas-
companies, hospitals, dispensaries, associations for the
relief of the poor, associations for apprehending male-
factors, associations of medical pupils for procuring
subjects, associations of country gentlemen for keep-
ing fox-hounds ; book-societies, benefit-societies, clubs
of all ranks.' There are also stage-coach-companies,'!"
railway-corn panics, J armies. And it is properly
said that there can be no efficient co-operation for any
one object, if agreement with respect to every other
object is required from those who are to unite for it.
The question, however, with which we have seriously to
do, is, whether agreement in the truths of religion is to
be, not indeed exacted, but by certain means promoted,
in any earthly associations, and, if in any, then in what.
77. I am not aware that there is any one of those
just enumerated, of which it can be asserted that they
fulfil the conditions, which are fulfilled, as has been
shown, by the family and by the State. With respect
to the State, I contend that it requires in a pre-eminent
degree moral restraints and motives in its subjects
and its agents in order to the attainment of its ends ;
in a degree, that is, proportioned to the immense
* Edinb. Rev., April, 1839, p. 241.
f P. 242. I P. 240. $ P. 243.
96 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
amount of human well or ill being that depends upon
its right or wrong organisation. With respect to these
inferior combinations I observe, that either they do
not require them, or they presuppose them. In either
case alike they can at less obvious peril dispense with
the machinery of a specific religion for producing
them. Thus associations for the relief of the poor, for
the support of hospitals and of dispensaries, for cha-
ritable objects in general, being in their nature wholly
spontaneous, presuppose the existence of moral mo-
tives and restraints, antecedently to their formation,
in those who voluntarily join them. Companies
formed for mercantile profit contemplate pecuniary
and not moral ends : they require in general no moral
motives or restraints in their mere members ; while
from their managers they sometimes take pecuniary
security ; sometimes they proceed upon known cha-
racter as a condition of office, that is to say again,
upon pre-existing and ascertained moral restraints. A
State can do neither : it cannot select its members from
the mass, nor can it make character a condition of
power, nor impose checks fit to ensure the conscientious
exercise of civil privilege by pecuniary penalties. And
therefore it is not secured in the same manner as some
of the inferior societies for the fulfilment of its functions,
and requires, consequently, additional guarantees.
Associations for specific objects of pleasure, or of pro-
fessional use, or of social defence and these include
the residue of the entire catalogue fall within the
same observations. In so far as they require moral
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 97
motives and restraints, they can either secure them by
lower sanctions, or make them a pre-condition of ad-
mission to their functions. Their functions are limited :
their personality is little more than mechanical : and
we should particularly note, that they are capable of
being formed on a principle of selection, by virtue of
their conventional character, while the State must
deal with masses as it finds them, and bear in its bo-
som a load of alien and discordant elements, by the
very law of its existence comprehending all the hu-
man beings, good and bad, who may be congregated
within certain local limits. Further, these associations
do not in any case distinctly contemplate moral re-
sults. And, above all, they do not in general fill any
large space in the eye of the individual man as such,
they do not exercise a ruling and comprehensive influ-
ence upon his character.
78. And yet it is well worthy of remark, that even
from amofng these instances, which have suggested an
inference hostile to my argument, the truth of its ge-
neral principle may draw abundant confirmation. For
example, what are termed " Benefit Societies," though
purporting to be framed for economical purposes, yet, I
believe, usually solemnise all their meetings with public
and common worship. Our hospitals are, if I mistake not,
always provided with chaplains. Workhouses, the prin-
cipal provision made for the destitute poor by the State,
have their chaplains and their schools, where religious
as well as secular instruction is provided. And I quote
this, although it is a system of public law, because in-
VOL. i. H
98 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
dividual sentiment, it is clear, in this nation entirely
concurs with it. But the army in particular, whose
ends might so easily have led some to a contrary sup-
position, is of all the others the most strict, in this
and in all European countries, in the establishment of
a collective religion. It is quite true that armies of
different creeds may have combined for a common
object, known in its nature and limited to a particular
time ; or that different portions of the same army may
profess different religions, and still may co-operate
upon distinct and definite grounds : but wherever there
is close contact and habitual permanent association,
the discipline of the army regards as essential the
maintenance of a common religion. Nay, in general,
the example of the place assigned to divine worship in
military discipline goes beyond the scope of my argu-
ment, for it has ordinarily been the practice to enforce
the observances of religion in a form of considerable ex-
clusiveness. Generally then we may venture to affirm,
that collective religion is applicable to combinations of
men, in a descending scale of more and less, accord-
ing as they are jointly comprehensive and moral in
their nature and in their results.
79. But the objection which I have been consider-
ing may recur in an altered form. If the rule be
morally binding for one kind of combination, is it not
good for all ? If it be treated as a moral rule, and
drawn from the nature of human combination as such,
must it not be required by every combination of moral
beings, inasmuch as there can hardly be any which
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 99
shall be entirely void of moral elements and results ;
and as man is bound to be governed by religion in
every act of his life ? On principle, it may be urged,
the smallest deviation is as fatal to the argument from
duty as the greatest, and either all combinations as
such, or none as such, must involve the condition of a
collective religion.
80. This difficulty will most easily be solved by a
reference to the acts of the individual life. It is quite
true that as Christians we are enjoined " to do all to
the glory of God :" nor can we take any such account
of greater and smaller in the particulars of our conduct
as to say, actions of such a magnitude are to be truly
done to the glory of God, and actions beneath that
standard are not. But although it be true that the
rule is universal, the infirmity of our nature does not
permit its distinct, palpable, deliberate application to
each of that infinite series of actions, whereof our life
in its common texture is woven. Each separate act,
therefore, is hardly capable of receiving its own speci-
fic consecration, by being separately offered up to
God. And as each act, so it may be that each agency,
does not require its distinct system of devotion Shall
then we say that one general form will cover all ?
The practical effect of such a doctrine would be to
place us within one step of atheism. If we separate
homage to God from the details of life, and content
ourselves with a verbal submission to Him in the
gross, our words will become a barren and worthless
formula, which will speedily itself be cast away. The
ii 2
100 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
sound maxim will be, to carry the habit of conscious
reference to God to the utmost bounds of practicabi-
lity : to compare the particulars of our life with the
Divine law, up to that point at which the comparison
would threaten to absorb the energies that ought to
be applied to their performance ; and when we move
in important capacities, distinctly to seek the blessing
of God upon them all. In short, that the dedication
of the whole life may be real and cordial, it is re-
quired that it be as specific as possible ; and therefore
that at least all the leading and more arduous func-
tions of our condition be hallowed by religious worship.
81. If we consider some evidently great and car-
dinal act of life, which comprehensively affects and
modifies its tone, surely all will admit, that such an
act ought not to be performed without the special in-
vocation of Divine aid. If on the other hand we look
to some extremely trifling act, as rising up or sitting
down, some act done, perhaps, without any conscious
design, it is manifest, that the nature of our faculties,
which requires for the most part a singleness of thread
in our thoughts, and the limitation of all that we do
to definite time, precludes the possibility of our conse-
crating all such acts with a positive and active desire
for the assisting power of God, which nevertheless is
not less truly requisite for the smallest than for the
greatest of our movements.
82. Further, it would not be possible to define be-
forehand what acts ought to suggest to our minds the
duty of special prayer concerning them, and what acts
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 101
need not be so marked, but might pass and be accept-
able to God under a generally pious intention. But
although, in any attempt at such definition, we should
be bewildered with hopeless difficulties, yet in the
daily tenor of life it is not found very difficult to discern
and apply a practical rule, according to which it is
probable that most persons of just and faithful con-
science accompany every act and undertaking which
appears to them on reflection of any considerable mo-
ment, with a positive reference to God ; while for the
rest they will seek that their sense of His presence, and
of their duty and dependence, may be progressively
quickened and enhanced, so that the lively regard to
His will may become more and more extensively ap-
plicable to their thoughts, words, and deeds, indivi-
dually as well as generally, and with explicit as well
as with implicit intention.
83. Now I submit that the case is very similar
with respect to combinations of men. Many of them
are, with respect to the whole sum of our life, trifling
and infinitesimal. In many of them, whatever in
their personality is moral is so merged in other, by
supposition inferior, and yet predominant, elements,
that it would not admit of receiving a specifically reli-
gious form any more than the religious element in the
smaller acts of the individual life. Yet even of this
class I am inclined to think the number, though
great, is yet not so large as has often been supposed.
The impressive admonition of our social circumstances
begins to warn us that we are less secure in dealing
with men as animals and machines, and abandoning
102 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
the cultivation of their higher nature, than we had
assumed.* In many more the case is doubtful, and
must be governed by a considerate reference to cir-
cumstances. In some, as the family and the State,
the character of the combination so essentially requires
the predominance of the moral element, that its co-
pious interfusion needs to be secured by that specific-
ally suitable provision which has been here discussed
under the name of collective or joint religion. It is,
of course, impossible to lay down any antecedent
rule in such subject-matter, which shall govern cases
as they arise with the precision of a mathematical
formula.
84. I do not, however, hesitate to go one step fur-
ther, and to say that it is the infirmity and not the
strength of our nature which prevents our applying
to minor acts of the individual life a distinct religious
consciousness, which should exist anew for each, and
should modify each throughout, just as our physical
infirmity causes our need not less of the microscope
than of the telescope. Indefinite magnitude and in-
definite minuteness alike elude the scope of our per-
ceptions, and alike evince our littleness. If we make
this a matter of mutual congratulation, we are self-
condemned, we are glorying in our shame ; and even
* The Rhymney Mining Company resolved, on the 21st November,
1838, to build a church for the use of their labourers, and to endow it
with the sum of 4000/. (Bishop of LlandafTs Address at Abergavenny,
October 10, 1839, to the local Society for the Promotion of Christian
Knowledge, arid the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts.) It appears also, that the Birmingham Railway Com-
pany have voted 1000/. towards the erection of a church at Wolverton,
with leave to dissentient proprietors to withhold their quota.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 103
so in the case of corporations of men, having in their
immediate view temporal objects, it is a matter to be
viewed with some mixture of regret that they can so
rarely be formed with direct reference to the principles
of religion, under the present circumstances of society,
or owing, in part, to the permanent constitution of
our nature. Even the production of physical and
scientific results is not a matter which ought ab-
stractedly to be apart from religion ; and everything
which tends, by the law of association, to separate any
portion of our life from the supervision of divine faith,
is in itself so far unfortunate, and likewise tends in the
same degree to weaken the hold of religion as a master
principle on the residue.
85. It certainly ennobles the tenure of landed pro-
perty, that the realisation of its profits is so intimately
blended with a thousand opportunities of moral duty
and of religious influence. It is, on the contrary, an
unhappy condition of some descriptions of pecuniary
speculation, that, while they are made effective through
the labour of human agents, they usually form with
those agents no reciprocal relations, except those which
are pecuniary, and yet put them to employments ex-
ercising a ruling influence upon their moral condition.
I will take, for example, the class of mining companies.
They probably have many servants whose lives they
expose to constant risk ; many whom the discharge of
their tasks may detach from domestic associations and
from regularity of habits. The nature of these under-
takings tends again to create a shifting population,
104 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [cHAP. II.
and to destroy that local fixity which, with the lower
class in particular, is one of the main guarantees of
respectability. Perhaps the necessary course of the
business may require that a portion of those employed
should be denied their Sabbath rest. The workmen
are remunerated for these moral sacrifices in gold,
upon a scale which, as compared with the actual
wants of persons similarly educated, supplies a rapid
and disproportionate increase to their means, and
thereby greatly increases their temptations, while there
is no counteractive provision usually made to neu-
tralise these undoubtedly noxious influences.
86. Such things are but too true, real, and prac-
tical. The evidence of facts may, and that soon,
supersede the necessity of arguments to prove that such
a disposal of human labour, however apparently pro-
ductive, secretly undermines the foundations of society.
It is enough for my purpose to have shown, that if the
mind and conscience of our own time were sufficiently
harmonised and enlightened to admit of adequate se-
curities for uniformly annexing a provision for religi-
ous ordinances to the schemes of temporal enterprise
and pecuniary aggrandisement, we should probably
avoid many kinds of evil which are now engendered
among us, on a fearful scale, by the separation of the
two, as respects a large portion of our population ;
and therefore, in assenting to the proposition that
there are some combinations of men to which, at the
present time in particular, it is impossible to apply
the principle of collective religion, it seems to me most
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 105
becoming and rational to do so, not with any self-
gratulatory admiration of this feature in our character
or condition, but rather with shame and deprecation
of the Divine displeasure.
87. I return then to the position, that, as the nation
fulfils the great conditions of a person, a real unity of
being, of deliberating, of acting^ of suffering ; and
these in a definite manner, and upon an extended
scale, and with immense moral functions to discharge,
and influences to exercise, both upon its members and
extrinsically : therefore it has that kind of clear, large,
and conscious responsibility which can alone be met
by its specifically professing a religion, and offering,
through its organ the State, that worship which shall
publicly sanctify its acts. That which, by its govern-
ing organ, it professes specially, it must encourage and
maintain throughout its inferior members as a part of
such profession itself.
88. But some minds are staggered by the objection,
that a nation, like other forms of human incorporation,
is not immortal ; that no retribution and no reward
await it in a future state ; or, as it is sometimes said,
that corporations have no souls. But corporations
have souls quite as much as they have bodies, and it
will hardly be held that they have neither. They
have souls ; they have deliberative minds ; they have
personality, and with it responsibility. Grant that
public personalities are limited to the sphere of this
world : this does not destroy their moral obligations.
Suppose the doctrine of a future state, as it respects
106 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
individuals, were disproved, the foundations of morality
would remain ; because they in no way depend upon
the hypothesis of an unlimited continuance, but are
laid in the actual relations between the Creator and the
creature, and as long as those relations endure they
subsist. It is true indeed that their subjective appre-
ciation in our minds, defective as it now is, would
be, if we may imagine such a case, still further and
miserably enfeebled ; but objectively they would only
be affected in so far as anticipation is one of their con-
stituent parts. Surely it is impossible to maintain a
doctrine so extravagant as that no obligation can be
real which is not eternal. Indeed, if it were held at
all, it might as well be applied to things or beings
which have had a beginning as to those which have
an end. Of course the responsibility of a moral or
public person terminates upon the individuals who
enter into its composition, as the health or disease of a
body takes effect upon the members.
89. But inasmuch as consequences may afford a
powerful stimulus to the performance of duty, it has
been observed, that prosperity more commonly crowns
virtue, and adversity more closely dogs the course of
sin, in the case of states, than in that of individuals.
In particular instances the results of virtue, under the
conditions of this world, are uncertain ; but as a gene-
ral rule they tend decisively to prosperity. Now,
individuals are subject to the contingency because the
whole tenor of their life may be determined by one or
more particular acts; but in communities it is the
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 107
effect of average practice which is most surely and
permanently felt, and they therefore reap the advan-
tage of the rule in favour of good deeds upon a large
scale. So that in some points of view the doctrine of
retribution has perhaps a more stringent application
to states than to private persons, and thereby makes
up for its limitation to the bounds of the present
world.*
90. I offer further some incidental remarks, which
arise upon a comparison of the several personalities
of the individual, the family, and the state. The per-
sonality of the family differs from the last in this
respect, that it is less permanently sustained by a
collective action, as from its sphere it is capable of
management without formality of proceedings and
written codes. Its relations are more securely founded
on an immediate reciprocity of affections. The appli-
cation to it of the principle of collective religion is
far easier than in the case of the state, and for a rea-
son quite irreconcilable with the utilitarian theories;
that the maintenance of its specific compact much
less requires it, and that that warm confiding attach-
ment of its members to one another and to its heads,
which can better dispense with the use of its sanctions,
do also prepare the way for their ready acknowledg-
ment and acceptance. In the State neither the prin-
ciple of affection is so strong, nor that of dependence
so determinate, as to obviate obstructions to the ac-
knowledgment of the national religion ; but the need
* More's Hints, i. ch. 18.
108 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
of the blending and consolidating power of a spiritual
principle is thereby increased, and the general obliga-
tion is therefore enhanced in proportion to this ne-
cessity.
91. But if, on the other hand, we compare the per-
sonality of states with that of individuals, we perceive
that it differs in point of the tendency to entail moral
obligations chiefly in this particular, that, while every
individual of adult years has a full free agency and
responsibility, the composition of states and their share
of moral personality are susceptible of infinite degree.
The personality of all states is imperfect in detail,
though in essential conditions entire, and cumbrous
and circuitous in operation, as well as difficult to be
realised in the discursive understanding, when com-
pared with that of the individual. Even when they
are ordered in the manner most according to nature,
there is much in the community that the governing
energy cannot control ; it is, as it were, imperfectly
projected ; there arey many practices of its own mem-
bers which from impotence it is constrained to tolerate,
though injurious alike to itself and to morality ; but
there is nothing in the individual for which he is not
at all times fully responsible, and no moral practice
alien to duty which he is permitted to tolerate.
92. And if the principle of state personality and
conscience be liable to modifications even in cases
where the form of political association is single and
integral, it follows as a matter of course that it is yet
further restricted in various degrees in those instances
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 109
where a part only of the properties of such association
are found, and where the appertaining duties are con-
sequently curtailed. To this class will belong federa-
tions of nations or tribes, partly independent and
partly incorporated, as in Germany, Switzerland, and
the American Union, where the duties of the state are
variously divided between the general and the parti-
cular governments. To this class will also belong
in part empires like that of Great Britain, to which
are attached many colonies and dependencies, either
held under treaty or originally constituted of social
elements essentially distinct, and perhaps even dis-
cordant. But however difficult it be to frame any
formula such as shall meet the infinite varieties which
the past, the present, or the future may supply, I
would adjoin these two observations first, that the
principle of national religion is rather subjected to
limitation in its scope and sphere of action by these
diversities of circumstance than to any essential
change, that quantity rather than quality is affected ;
secondly, that, while the stringency of its obligations
may vary according to the closeness of the political
and economical relations in each case, it is desirable
to avoid attempting to tighten the bonds of a merely
secular connection wherever it has been found imprac-
ticable to cement and dignify the union by a true
brotherhood in the Christian faith.
93. Although, however, the qualified personality of
the state may give ground for the inference that its
conscience may lie under conditions of responsibility
110 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
different from those which affect the conscience of an
individual man, yet there are considerations, not to be
wholly disregarded, which tend in an opposite direction.
In certain stages of society and tempers of the pub-
lic mind, the individual is more independent than the
State. The individual can draw lines, which the State
cannot ; the individual, after he has given countenance
to some forms of separation, can still withhold it from
others ; he can say, for instance, among ourselves, " I
have aided the Wesleyans, but my conscience will not
allow me to aid the Socinians ;" and thus a part of
the mischiefs of having no regard to the discriminating
characters of truth and error may be restrained. But
the State cannot be a discerner and a balancer of par-
ticular points in theology; it cannot exercise that
continuous function ; experience proves that it is im-
practicable for public law to stand upon distinctions
of pure doctrine or opinion ; and when it has once
recognised communities other than the Church, it
seems quite unable, at least in our day, to stop short
of any that bear the Christian name : even this bar-
rier it has in some cases overpassed, and, after a pause,
may in others do the same.
94. Now, if the argument here offered, from the
nature of political or national association, be sound,
and if religion, therefore, belong to the right constitu-
tion of a State, what are the specific obligations in-
volved in such a proposition ? They are generally the
same as would attach to an individual conscience
owning the law of Divine obedience. First, by prayer
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. Ill
and the other ordinances of religion, to seek for
guidance by the grace of God in all his acts ; se-
condly, in the deliberative regulation of conduct to be
careful that throughout all its particulars it follows
the line of the commandments of God ; and thirdly,
as a part of this general law, to be forward to com-
municate by all due means to others the benefit which
he has received.
95. In conformity herewith, the legislature will
hallow its proceedings by prayer, and will frame its
laws and employ its legitimate influence for the ad-
vancement of religious truth. With the extrinsic
propagation of that truth beyond the nation it has
comparatively little concern, because all its functions
outwards are little more than negative. States are
not ordinarily invested with definite responsibilities
for other states, although it be nevertheless true that
they may sometimes arise. But with respect to the
diffusion of religion throughout the body of the na-
tion which it impersonates, this is, in the view of
reason, a part of the primary law of its self-preserva-
tion and self-improvement. A state recognising the
principle of national religion will naturally endeavour
to consecrate the people by the extension of personal
religion, in order to the maintenance of its own reli-
gious life. For they all contribute something, each
in his own degree and by methods direct or indirect,
to make up that moral person which we term the
State. Impersonating and representing them, it re-
ceives much of its colour from them, and reciprocally
112 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
imparts it. The State cannot be permanently reli-
gious if the body of the people be irreligious ; and
the governing body, in providing for the population
the means and even the solicitations of religious wor-
ship, acts upon the same principle as the athlete when
he anoints his own limbs for the contest. Obedience
to the laws will depend partly upon each person and
partly upon the tone of public opinion. The propa-
gation of religion throughout classes and families, so
as to bring it home to the heart of each man, is alike
necessary in the second view and in the first ; in the
first directly, in the second, because that public opi-
nion is itself formed, and modified from time to time,
by what the mind of each individual contributes to-
wards it : it represents the sum, or the balance, of the
abstract moral principles of the persons forming the
community.
96. This, then, is not a missionary work, but one
reflected upon itself. It does not imply that the pro-
pagation of religious truth is specifically the end of
governments more than of individuals ; but that go-
vernments, like individuals, in order to render their
lives pleasing to God, to fulfil their end which is in
both alike His glory, to discharge the obligations under
which they lie, must consecrate their actions by reli-
gion, and must take the best securities for that conse-
cration. And it is not enough that the members of this
combination should offer worship in their separate capa-
cities, more than it would be enough in a family, or
would rightly fulfil its idea, that the father, and the
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 1 13
mother, and their children, should each seek, hold,
and exercise a religion for themselves. Their acts in
each case are essentially joint and co-operative, and,
in order to their right discharge, they demand the
kindred sanctions of a common worship.
97. The foregoing argument generally applies to
the State independently of revelation. When we
come to contemplate it as specifically Christian, and
to apply to it the rules of that religion, we find that,
together with the family, it is distinguished from all
other human combinations as being more specifically
a Divine ordinance ; and therefore in the same pro-
portion these more specifically require to be dedicated
to God, their Author, by the consecrating power of
worship. Without social organisation man cannot
fulfil those relative functions, which are an essential
portion of his duty. Without government he cannot
have social organisation. Thus government stands,
by necessary implication, in the determinate form of
a Divine ordinance charged with sovereign authority
over a sphere of our relative duties, always saving the
co-ordinate rights of family and blood. On both
sides of the controversy which so much agitated our
own country during the seventeenth century, respect-
ing the claims of government, it was contested whether
they were restrained to a particular line of succession,
or whether it was essential to sovereignty that it
should be clothed in a, particular form ; but Sidney*
admitted, no less than Filmer or than Heylin, that it
* Sidney on Government, ch. iii. 12.
VOL. I. 1
114 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
was a Divine ordinance, to which it was not optional
but obligatory to submit.
98. I grant that all instruments of good, whether
great or small, may be called Divine ordinances, as
they certainly are gifts of God, but it is in a sense less
definite a sense not fixed on them severally by the
authority of revelation. And the sequence of the fore-
going argument is as follows. Inasmuch as we must
consecrate all good things to the honour of God ; and
inasmuch as by the composition of our nature we
cannot consecrate each ; it results that the specific con-
secration must be annexed to those which are more
specifically His ; and that the general consecration of
implicit intention must suffice for those which are less
specifically His. As being, then, according to revela-
tion, a specifically Divine ordinance, the State, like
the family, is a moral, and should also be a religious,
being.
99. It is of course the parallel effect of revelation, to
embody the obligations of religion, as well as those of
civil order and union ; and to direct the conscience of
men to determinate objects in respect to faith and
worship. To heathens religion was only obligatory
under those general forms which constitute the law
of nature, perceptible by the unaided light of con-
science. To Christians it has been given in the shape
of a definite and historical institution, charged with
the custody and promulgation of its divine code the
Sacred Scriptures.
Indeed it would be allowable to institute the argu-
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 115
ment from this quarter. Christianity is a principle
of life intended to govern and pervade the whole
human life. Further, it is a principle of common
life ; must it not therefore govern and pervade our
human common life, our association in the family,
and in the State ? *
100. In short, the Church and the State have ends
reciprocally inclusive, though with a difference of de-
gree. Thus writes Coleridge : " Whatever is bene-
ficent and humanising in the aims, tendencies, and
proper objects of the State, it " (the Church) " collects
in itself as in a focus to radiate them back in a higher
quality ; or, to change the metaphor, it completes and
strengthens the edifice of the State, without interference
or commixture, in the mere act of laying and securing
its own foundations."! The State and the Church have
both of them moral agencies. But the State aims at cha-
racter through conduct: the Church at conduct through
character ; in harmony with which, the State forbids
more than enjoins, the Church enjoins more than for-
bids. The Church brings down from heaven a divine
principle of life, and plants it in the centre of the hu-
man heart to work outwards and to leaven the whole
mass : the State out of the fragments of primeval vir-
tue, and the powers of the external world, constructs a
partial and elementary system, corrective from with-
out, and subsidiary to the great process of redemption
Rothe, Anfange der Christlichen Kirche, b. i.
f Church and State, p. 134.
I 2
116 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
and spiritual recovery which advances towards it from
within.
101. For the proposition that the nature of the
State adapts and therefore binds it to pursue the ends
of the Church, I have already argued. That the
Christian religion contemplates peace and order, and
the temporal well-being of man, in the natural course
of its operation, will hardly be denied. But the State
has for primary ends, to be sought at once by direct
means, those conditions of external order and security,
which the Church is rather ordained to reach indirectly
by a spiritual process mainly contemplating higher
matters. These lower ends of the State are first in
time and in necessity ; and without their attainment
in some tolerable measure, it cannot so much as itself
exist to contemplate the higher, because civil society
is virtually dissolved. On the other hand, if not amidst
" the wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds," yet
in whatever agony of external and social convulsion,
the Church, by the law of her nature,
-" from city and wilderness,
In vesper low, or joyous orison.
Lifts still her solemn voice/'*
Yet it is hardly more than a possibility that, in any
given place, the Church could long survive social
order ; it would be her positive duty to use her best
efforts for its re-establishment, and she must probably
either succeed in the effort, or perish in her failure.
* Alastor.
CHAP. II. J WITH THE CHURCH. 117
In like manner it may be possible that States may
subsist without religion; but it is a law of their nature,
they are morally bound to its observance ; if they do
not do so, they may anticipate the sure though perhaps
tardy penalties of violated or unfulfilled obligation.
102. Thus, then, these powers are co-ordinate ; and
each is ordained to ends included within the purview
of the other ; but the specific function of the one is the
less proximate though still morally essential func-
tion of the other. Thus a father and a mother are
jointly ordained for the same end, as to the nurture of
children : thus parent and tutor are jointly, and with
distinction of rank, charged with their education. The
State is a moral being, and must worship God accord-
ing to its nature : it is thus intrinsically competent to
promote the designs of religion, and extrinsically (as I
shall hereafter endeavour to show) it has effective
means of aiding them ; in both respects it is morally
bound to render that assistance. As on the other
hand, the ministry of religion, whether under its ge-
neral or its Christian idea, is able in many ways to
promote the purposes of the State; whether those
purposes be restricted to a negative and material cha-
racter, or whether they also include general develop-
ment : and it is bound to render that service in the
course of simply accomplishing its own specific work.
On either side, therefore, the principle of connecting
religion with the State is grounded in the constitu-
tions of nature. We are elsewhere to inquire, whether
it be not also attested by the criterion of advantage.
118 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
103. The question seems next to arise, whether, in
the case that has now been introduced, of a Christian
State, the religious duty which attaches to it is pro-
perly limited to the form of the Church ; or whether,
according to an opinion which has some adherents in
this country and has received much practical counte-
nance in others, the civil power may profess and up-
hold a variety of creeds and communions, limited
either by the Christian name, or by an adhesion to
doctrines assumed as fundamental? There are two
modes in which we may examine this question : the
more conclusive, by regarding those direct principles
and precepts of revelation which apply to us as mem-
bers of the Church ; the other, by deducing inferences
from the more general ethical argument respecting
the personality of the State. Let us take these in the
order in which they have been stated.
104. Let us now suppose, with Hooker, that the per-
sons composing the nation are all or generally mem-
bers of the Church, that the decided preponderance of
social forces is with the Church, that the governors are
accordingly members of the Church : in such case, if
they be thoroughly instructed in her apostolic rights
and in the nature of her functions, they will not be
perplexed by being left to determine this great question
upon calculations of expediency, or by the results of an
analytical inquiry into the composition of different reli-
gions, claimants for state patronage, in order to decide
the impossible questions whether there be in them
upon the whole more of truth than of untruth, more of
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 119
virtuous thau of vicious tendency ; and whether they
themselves are justified in becoming parties to the
inculcation of an hundred falsehoods, for the sake of
an hundred-and-one truths with which they may be
associated. They are called to no surrender of right,
to no bewildering of the conscience. God has given
them a vineyard wherein to labour ; and they need
not go beyond its bounds, for it will afford employ-
ment more than enough to all the energies they can set
in array.
105. And again, insuperable difficulties of con-
science appear still to arise, when we have agreed to
substituted for Catholic principles the test of some
more vague agreement upon undefined fundamentals,
in the practical adjustment of the questions which the
present divided state of Christendom could not fail to
raise. Suppose we adopt this for our rule ; that the
State may unite with itself any religious body profess-
ing the essential doctrines of Christianity. The fatal
objection arises, that there is, manifestly and beyond
dispute, no criterion of essential doctrines, apart from
the body of the Church, upon which a State could
practically act. The same temper which excites a
jealousy even of the exclusive recognition of the
Church, would create an infinitely stronger and more
reasonable dissatisfaction if the State were absolutely
to refuse countenance and aid to a body of religionists
on the naked ground of some one doctrine or opinion
in theology ; and at some one it is, whichever that may
be, that the dividing line must be drawn. Hardly
120 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
any man is hardy, I should almost say presumptuous,
enough to frame a scheme of fundamentals for him-
self, or to place any other restraint, than the want of
evidence to establish the fact of God's revelation of the
particular tenet, upon his own obligation to believe.
But no private or partial opinion, however confident,
would supply a locus standi for a government, upon
which to found a principle of its policy at once so vital
and so critical. Because then, by the supposition,
deviations from the rule of adhesion to the Church
must be limited : and because it is impossible to as-
certain any intelligible and practicable method of limi-
tation, we are driven back to the position, that the
rule capable of the best prospective determination, and
most truly satisfying the obligations of duty, is that of
alliance with the Church alone.
106. The Church, therefore, is the society with
which, and with which alone, they can consistently
form such an alliance as has been here described.
And as they know that she will best support the State,
so their affectionate regard to her as having the stew-
ardship of grace,* and to Him who is her Head and
their Redeemer, will supply them with an accumulated
strength of persuasion and of motive to be diligent in
promoting a co-operation so natural, so needful, and
so valuable. If, in short, we take up the subject as
members of the Church, we find her not merely a
form, a vessel, an appendage, but a part of Christianity,
revealed as one ; the doctrine of unity in one society
* 1 Cor. iv. 1 ; 1 Pet. iv. 10.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 121
delivered to us as a portion of the living covenant ;
and this of course precludes us, not indeed from dis-
charging obligations incumbent on us as of good faith
under any existing laws, but from entering into
schemes even for the promotion of God's word in any
manner contravening that which He has sanctioned
and ordained ; and from dropping any portion of His
command while the means of fulfilling the whole are
graciously vouchsafed to us. While the doctrine of
" one body " is authoritatively declared by Scripture,
to recognise the Christian religion in separate bodies
might be to countenance the sin, which lies some-
where, though it may be hidden, or may be divided
among many offending parties, in every such putting
asunder of what God has united.
107. But there is also an injurious mental habit,
and a hazard of ulterior evils, connected with that sort
of eclecticism, which a system of indiscriminate aid to
different religious communions presupposes. It seems
to imply, and at least it prepares us to believe, that
the power of revealed Truth is in the abstract forms of
its propositions, just as, when we have accurately stated
a formula of mathematics, we know that we virtually
possess all its results; and as, when we reduce it
to a narrower expression, we are still aware what
classes of results we exclude, and how much we retain.
It is most perilous to handle Christianity upon such a
principle, most presumptuous thus to dispense with a
part of God's benefaction to mankind. The Church,
indeed, commissioned of Him for the function of teach-
122 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
ing, has embodied in her earliest creeds, probably from
the authority of inspiration itself, conveyed by the
mouths of the Apostles of Christ, the great elementary
truths of the faith : not as presuming to discard any
portion of what is revealed, but to put more promi-
nently forward in the series of progressive instruction
those truths upon which the residue of Christian
knowledge is built. But this summary, which she has
so received, is meant to introduce and not to confine
her teaching. Of this she is, with respect to order, and
method, the judge: it is hers to endure or to condemn
any of the forms of private opinion, limited by the
maxim of adhesion to the Scriptures which she holds,
and to their Catholic interpretation. But she has
never said, and cannot say, With the written Creed, I
will be satisfied and ask no more. Much less then
can any authority other than hers thus shut up the
way of instruction which the Creed lays open ; and
less still can any such power be entitled to define a new
c, lass or form of tenets as fundamental, to supplant the
basis of eighteen hundred years.
108. Suppose therefore that a State composed of
Christians and Catholics should say, " We will aid all
communities in which the doctrine of the Atonement
is taught, and no others." First, it would undertake
a function not given to it, and would frame a standard
of things essential, for which office it was not appointed.
Secondly, the standard so framed would be a new one,
and would place in the category of non-essentials all
other matters ; for instance, the Deity of Christ, and the
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 123
Sacraments. Thirdly, it would thus classify doctrines
simply according to our human apprehension of their
consequences, and thereby adopt a criterion which in
all moral subject-matter tends to lower and debilitate
the tone of those who employ it. Fourthly, it would
overlook the fact that all Christian teaching is wholly
dependent on the inward energies of the Holy Ghost,
the promise of which is given to the revelation as a
whole, and not to any particular parts of it. Partial
teaching in religion can only be justified as prepara-
tory teaching, or because our physical and social
necessities prevent men from realising at once the
treasure of the Christian Revelation. But if we coun-
tenance a sectarian -creed, which is absolutely founded,
which builds its distinctive existence and vindicates its
separation, upon the negation of what such a State
would hold to be a part of the revealed Truth of God,
the teaching which it administers is not elementary but
mutilated : it is not a part of the body, but severed
from it.
109. I am free to admit that, on any other than spe-
cifically Christian principles, the human understand-
ing would probably incline to the theory of a plurality
of establishments: not as abstractedly preferable to
unity, but so also neither as being essentially objection-
able. There might be many reasons inclining a State
to grant a demand of the kind if it were made ; and
accordingly we find, that among the cultivated nations
of antiquity, where public religion was observed chiefly
with a view to its political effects, and the grand re-
124 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
quisite was to flatter and soothe and at the same time
subjugate the popular mind, the ordinary practice was
to enlarge with great facility the catalogue of national
deities, subject to the sole reservation, that they should
be such as should not tend to displace the old ones.
Socrates, indeed, was arraigned for introducing new
divinities ; but it was because the actual tone of his
philosophy tended to discredit the national forms of
worship. Rome, the mistress of state-craft, and be-
yond all other nations in the politic employment of
religion, added without stint or scruple to her list of
gods and goddesses, and consolidated her military
empire by a skilful medley of all the religions of the
world.
110. Thus it continued while the worship of the
Deity was but a conjecture or a contrivance; but
when the rising of the Sun of Righteousness had given
reality to the subjective forms of faith, had made
actual and solid truth the common inheritance of all
men, then the religion of Christ became, unlike other
new creeds*, an object of jealousy and of cruel perse-
cution, because it would not consent to become a
partner in this heterogeneous device, and planted itself
upon truth, and not in the quicksand of opinion ; and
in the same natural order, when Christianity became
the religion of the State, it excluded every other
system from public patronage. Even so the Maho-
metan creed is distinguished among the religions of
the East for its hostility to indifferentism,* because it
* Esprit des Loix, xxv. 15.
CHAP. II. J WITH THE CHURCH. 125
is a definite though false belief in revelation ; and
should the Christian faith ever become but one among
many co-equal pensioners of a government, it will be
a proof that subjective religion has again lost its God-
given hold upon objective reality ; or when, under
the thin shelter of its name, a multitude of discordant
schemes shall have been placed upon a footing of
essential parity, and shall together receive the bounty
of the legislature, this will prove that we are once
more in a transition-state that we are travelling back
again from the region to which the Gospel brought
us, towards that in which it found us.
111. We have to consider, secondly, the argument
from the personality of the State, which, implying
cognisance of truth, seems to show that a unity in
its profession and its maintenance is, if not necessary
in the strictest sense, yet both to be desired, and cer-
tainly requisite to the ideal perfection of a State. If
there be between any set of distinct religious com-
munions not merely a nominal but a substantial dif-
ference of doctrine, then, independently of specifically
Catholic obligations, the idea of union with more than
one is fatally at variance with the idea of personality
and responsibility in the government as the organ of
the national life. It is sad when two persons take
discordant views of religious truth; but it is still more
sad when one person contentedly acquiesces in each of
these discordant views, because, though he might not
know which is truth, he must know that truth is one.
But the State is as a single human being in the view
126 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
of the present discussion ; for if it have moral action,
it must be capable of moral choice ; and if it be capa-
ble of moral choice, that choice must rest upon truth
as one must rest, at least, upon the nearest approxi-
mation to it, and cannot at all consist with jointly
embracing systems that are fundamentally or substan-
tially at variance. Whenever, therefore, the State is
not in a condition to give itself to the clear intelligible
profession of unity in faith and in communion, we
may predicate that the national life must, in the same
proportion, be curtailed of its moral fulness ; for a dis-
cordant action is established in the leading faculty of
its being.
112. It is moreover clear, that when a State deviates
from its actual constitution to commence the practice
of indiscriminate support to competing forms of reli-
gion, it raises for the consideration of its deliberative
ministers and agents a difficult and delicate question.
That question is, " How shall I lend my personal
agency to carry into effect a principle of which it
must thus be said that it both springs from and tends
to evil ? Can I, in such a matter, go beyond the com-
mand of the law, which as such discharges my responsi-
bility ? In serving the State, I ought to be engaged
with my freest energies to give the utmost possible
effects to its acts : can I contribute their use to facili-
tate a scheme which is faulty, and faulty too in moral
subject-matter ? Or again, how far may I exercise
voluntary functions in a State, a part of whose action
is thus disfigured ? " These are issues for the court of
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 127
conscience, which I am unable to answer by any
general terms having the rigour of a formula, that
would not rather cause confusion than convey know-
ledge. There are many similar problems in private
life ; and our ambition must not be dissatisfied with
the want of an absolute and universal solution, far less
must a man be forward to condemn his brother where
he can hardly feel his own way. But thus much I
will say : happy is that man who gives, in his own
heart, free but not exclusive scope to the fear of sin ;
who holds that, for a public man, the first condi-
tion of capacity to serve his country is an unsullied
conscience ; and who, when he sees national advantage
seemingly contingent upon his own moral contamina-
tion, trusts that God will raise up instruments to se-
cure for his country all necessary goods of earth, and
refuses to sell wisdom though it be for rubies.
If it be so, then the practice of manifold or indis-
criminate establishment tends to throw public office
more and more into the hands of the unscrupulous,
and thus aggravates the disorder from which it took
its rise.
For the sake of the continuity of the argument re-
specting exclusive duty to the Church, I have here
entered by anticipation on a part of the general in-
quiry, to which we may now regularly proceed.
113. There is another aspect of the argument for na-
tional religion, secondary when compared with the more
abstract consideration of the nature of a State, yet not
in itself unimportant. The governing body is com-
128 THE STATE IN ITS DELATIONS [CHAP. II.
posed of individuals, each of whom are morally bound
to refer all their acts to God, to select, and with all
their strength to perform, such acts as most tend to
His glory, and to employ whatever influence accrues to
them with the same view. The man who is aware of
his duty in these respects cannot, with safe conscience,
bind himself to forego such reference; to omit acts
which are for the glory of God, and are within his
power; and to forbear applying, in aid of religion,
influences which government possesses and confers,
and which are naturally conducive to its advance-
ment. Such a man will further feel, that when he
becomes a member of the governing body, a portion
of the national energies are impersonated in him, and
take effect in his decisions. The responsibility be-
longing to them is not satisfied by his private acknow-
ledgment of God, and it wholly transcends his private
capacity. His acts become arduous and difficult in
the extreme, and pregnant with the most remote and
most extensive consequences ; and even in this view
he feels the need of new religious associations to sus-
tain him in his function, and to teach him how to
appreciate it. But further : his acts too are public ;
the powers and instruments with which he works are
public ; operating by and under the authority of the
law, he sets in motion at his word ten thousand sub-
ject arms ; and because there is here an agency quite
beyond the range of his mere individual function, it
must be sanctified not only by the private personal
prayers and piety of the men filling public situations,
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 129
but also by their public observances as composing a
public body, and actuating and impelling the sovereign
power. In the collective character,* in which they
constitute the organ of the nation and wield its force,
they are bound to offer collective prayer and praise.
114. Or in another view. Can a man who under-
takes to frame laws on moral subject-matter, venture
to approach his task without a distinct appeal by sup-
plication to God for His guidance in the task ? If
then he makes himself, as respects this purpose, a
part and parcel of a common deliberative mind, ought
not that mind, into which thus entering he resigns, as
it were, quoad hoc, his individuality, to seek similarly
for the same necessary endowments ? And, unless it
recognise such a duty, are not the consciences of
the persons composing it placed in an inextricable
dilemma ? If they are so, then, as the ordinance of
government is divine, we may be certain that, when
its arrangements are not conformable to those requi-
sitions of individual duty, which emanate from the
same source, its spirit has been misunderstood and
its design perverted.
115. I apprehend further, that a pure theism en-
tirely sustains that precept of revelation, which instructs
us, that we are to discharge all our relative or social
duties, "as to the Lord and not to men;"f that from
the midst of their daily crowd we are to look con-
tinually upwards, and to consider evermore the ulterior
bearing of our acts upon our higher relation to God.
Burke, Thoughts, p. 185. f Eph. vi. 7-
VOL. I. K
130 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
And even a philosophy regardless of revelation should
methinks instruct us at least in this, that they are
made for us rather than we for them ; that the results
of moral action on the agent are, perhaps, on the
whole, more important than its more directly contem-
plated consequences ; that this world is a gymnasium
supplied with a complex apparatus, which, when it has
fulfilled its purposes upon us, is to be laid aside ; in
short, that, whatever be the outward circumstances or
ordinary tasks of each particular person, he has a high
immaterial nature within him, appointed to live under
a law extrinsic and superior to these ; a nature that
emerges from among them, struggles to rise above
their level, reserves its inner precinct from their intru-
sion, protests against being absorbed and lost in the
external energies that those circumstances and tasks
require, claims to rule over him, and to determine
with preferable right the main conditions of his life.
By the supersession of this inner nature he surrenders
his human birthright and patrimony, the central, the
otherwise unconquerable freedom of his being, and he
becomes a captive, though chained it may be to a gor-
geous and triumphal car.
1 16. A voice from republican America reminds us
in indignant tones of this oftentimes forgotten truth.*
" There is one man," says Mr. Emerson, " present to
all particular men, only partially or through one
faculty." " The individual, to possess himself, must
sometimes return from his own labour to embrace all
* Oration delivered before the p/3* Society. Boston, 1838.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 131
the other labourers." " The planter, who is man sent
out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by
any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees
his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks
into the farmer, instead of man on the farm." And so
it is especially true that he who holds offices of public
trust runs a thousand hazards of sinking into a party-
man, instead of man employing party instrumentally
for its ulterior purposes ; into a politician, instead of
man in politics ; into an administrator, instead of man
in administration.
117. This, I say, is especially true of a period and a
country, when the progressive advance and continual
pressure of popular principles breaks down the energies
and contracts the growth of statesmen, by multiplying
the details of their function, and by restricting the
spaces of their discretionary action in higher subject-
matter. By the element, however, of religion, entering
into the work of government, the inversion, as it were,
of its figure is prevented, its connection is maintained
with its origin from above, and public men may see
that the orb is still at the foot of the cross;* and their
own superior life should hereby still keep its position
above that which is inferior, their judicial and reflective
powers over those which of right are subject to them.
Upon such a redemption from the slavery of ambition
or of business, depends alike the freedom and dignity
of their being, and that highest result of its highest
dignity and freedom, its implicit submission to God.
* Order of her Majesty's Coronation, p. 36.
K 2
132 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
118. The argument derivable from the personal
obligation of governors for national religion varies in
its force, according to the diversities in the relations
between ruler and subject. Where the former only
exercises power as it were by delegation from the
latter, it is impossible to regard his intellect as in any
sense the origin of public measures. Yet even in such
case, from the violence done to the true principles of
personal duty in the holder of office, where no religion
is professed by the State, the argument may be legiti-
mately raised. There still are, however, many cases,
and there have been more, in which the personal con-
science of the ruler or rulers is a more palpable object
of appeal than the conscience of the nation. At least,
there are those, in which the interval which separates
the sovereign from his subjects, as measured by effective
power or wisdom, or both, is still very great; and
where they are accustomed to receive from him, as from
a parent, what he deems conducive to their welfare.
119. If we try the controversy of national religion
by such a case as this, the mind revolts at once from
the palpable and gross delinquency of a ruler, who,
under these circumstances, should decline to use the
means with which his station endowed him, for the
advancement of religion among his people. It may
with truth be said that he would be a monster, con-
demned not more by Constantine than by Julian, and
not more by the sentence of philosophical or religious
inquiry than by the universal sense of mankind. And
if the function of rulers, in a given set of circum-
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 133
stances which are quite conformable to natural order,
thus essentially embraces religious duties, it will be
difficult to show that at any given point it can be
wholly divorced from them, until, indeed, we arrive at
the state of things in which government shall have
been wholly divested of its deliberative and moral dis-
cretion, and, indicating little more than the setting of
popular currents this way or that, and the determina-
tions of numerical preponderance, shall be a name
serving only to record and to bely its original and
true conception.
120. Upon the argument from Scripture for the
religious duties of the State, I shall not venture to offer
more than a few general remarks. First, before we
arrive at the case of the Jewish commonwealth, we
find * that in primitive times, the paternal, the regal,
and the sacerdotal functions were united in the same
person. Corroborative evidence of this truth appears
both in the systems of Egyptian and Oriental religion;
and in the records of Greece and Rome. We find its
traces in Virgil-
Rex Anius, rex idem hominum, Phoebique sacerdos.t
In the a%x<ov fiaa-faev$ of Athens; in the rex sacrificulus
of Rome. I refer to these, as probable witnesses that
this constitution belonged to the period when the in-
tercourse of men with God was free and familiar; and
* Dr. Inglis, in his work on National Church Establishments, di
cusses the argument from the examples of the Old Testament.
JEn. iii. 80.
134 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
that it had its ground, like the ordinance of sacrifice, to
say the very least, either in our primitive social consti-
tution, or in an express Divine command.
121. The idea of government, as it is exhibited to us
in the earliest records of Scripture, includes two great
instruments, that of persuasion, and that of control or
coercion. As an animal and a rebellious being, man
requires the last; as a being of free will, intellect, and
affections, he demands the first, as an element of his
discipline. The former is represented in religious
teaching and ordinance, which work through the will,
which lead but do not compel ; the latter in civil law,
which works without the will, and chiefly leads by
compelling. In the Patriarchs these were joined per-
sonally. In the Hebrew commonwealth they were
separated personally, having divaricated in Moses and
Aaron ; but they were united nationally, and derived
through the lines of kings and priests respectively.
" From this it follows, that the union of the Church
with the State is not an alliance of two several things,
each perfect without the other, but the coalescing of two
functions inherent in the first idea of sovereignty. So
that both were imperfect until Constantine." * They
represent the two leading processes of Divine govern-
ment, the one of which works upon what is inward by
means of what is outward, the other upon what is out-
ward by means of what is inward ; and they integrate
one another.t
122 V The argument of the opponents of national es-
* MS. by the Yen. H. E. M. t Stahl, Kirchenverfassung, 282.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 135
tablishments respecting the case of the Jews is, that the
theocratic form of their institutions renders their case
so wholly exceptional, that its precedents can afford us
no analogy. Yet the theocracy was, after all, but a
narrow and specific form of the general truth of Divine
government. It reduced the patriarchal relation of men
to the Most High into a shape more palpable to sense,
and whose perception was therefore less dependent
upon the principle of faith ; but the annexation of
sacred functions to public institutions was not a novelty
then introduced; it was merely a provision for the
continuance of an association already familiar.
123. Besides which, we have no warrant for assert-
ing, that the usual administration of the national con-
cerns was conducted by Divine interposition. The
sanctions of the moral law were brought nearer to the
eyes of men by national triumphs and reverses ; the
command of God was from time to time announced
upon special cases as they arose; but the daily conduct
of affairs appears to have been left in the hands of un-
inspired human agents, who were to judge by the in-
strumentality of their natural faculties, and to act under
the dictates of their consciences, much in the same man-
ner as governors must proceed at this day. Now the
Jewish kings appear to have done acts of a character
quite as directly religious as at this time we require of
Christian States, without any express or special com-
mand, and to have been blessed in doing them. Thus
Jehoshaphat* sent persons throughout Judah for the
* 2 Chron. xvii. 79.
136 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
purpose of inculcating the truths of religion. I will
not cite the cases of destroying the symbols or the
high places of idolatrous use, because there was a
definiteness, both in the duty and the crime, which may
impair the analogy. But the act of Jehoshaphat ap-
pears to me conclusively in point ; and I do not know
how his competency or his title to perform it can be
shown, without showing by implication that the same
duty attaches to the nature of modern and Christian
sovereignty. It follows that, inasmuch as the will of
God approved his measure, the obligation still subsists.
124. The entire Jewish history exhibits in the liveliest
form the ideas of national responsibility, national cha-
racter, national life, and national personality; and I
should venture to make a conjecture, though I dare
not call it more, that it was the thorough and peculiar
impregnation of the whole civil scheme with the func-
tions of religion, which gave to its organisation the
tenacity and permanence, that as secondary causes
have enabled it to survive such overthrow and dis-
cerption as would in any other case have destroyed a
hundred times over both the substance and the name
of nationality. If such be the case, it follows that we
are supported in the general proposition, that the ac-
knowledgment of national religion is a sign and con-
dition of permanence in a political system, and that the
period when it shall have been repudiated is one when
the social energies are enfeebled and relaxed, and tend
towards their dissolution.
125. The inductive argument has already been
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 137
touched, so far as it signifies or involves the historical
affiliation of the principle to a period, when human
institutions were modelled upon expressly Divine com-
mand. And, so far as it respects the practice of hea-
then antiquity, I would refer to the second and third
books of Bishop Warburton's * Divine Legation of
Moses,'* and to the sixth book of Saint Augustine's
'City of God,'f not with any view to the peculiar
purposes of either of those great works, but only as
exhibiting a body of facts, which carry the argument
afforded by the general practice of mankind, apart from
revelation, to as high a degree of authority as in its
nature it can reach.
126. The scornful infidelity of Gibbon has indeed
alleged, that the politicians of antiquity embodied reli-
gion in civil forms, only on account of its convenience
for the purposes of government; and his assertion de-
rives a countenance more entitled to respect, from the
paradoxical breadth which Warburton, in the volume
already cited, has given to his hypothesis respecting
the insincerity with which the State religions of old
were propagated and maintained. We may, however,
freely allow that which St. Augustine has said, that
the popular mythologies were disbelieved by the edu-
cated minds of antiquity. It does not follow that
they disbelieved the general truth of theism, of which
Cicero says, ipsisque in hominibus nulla gens est, neque
* Works, vol. i. iii.
t S. Aug. De Civitate Dei, b. vi. ; also b. iv. c. 31, 32. See also
Bacon, De Sapientid Veterum, Works, x. 163.
J De Civ. Dei, b. iv.
138 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
tarn mansueta, negue tarn fora, quce non, etiamsi ignoret
qualem habere Deum deceat, tamen habendum sciat.*
It may be vain to look for reality of individual senti-
ment in the speculative writings of this author; but his
extensive knowledge and experience combine with the
philosophical timidity of his character to make him an
excellent witness to the maxims current among the
more enlightened portion of mankind.
127. Is it notmore probable, that in many cases states-
men may have used the popular mythologies as the
only means of conveying theistical ideas to the vulgar
mind, on the principle of Plato, that it was impossible
to make the nature of the Deity generally understood ?f
and according to the practice of Socrates, when, at the
point of death, he vowed a cock to ^sculapius,^ or in
conformity with the views of Plato, who may have
adopted this means of showing his approval of such an
action ? Upon this supposition, which however I ad-
vance as representing rather the exception than the rule,
more instructed persons may have regarded the pre-
vailing creeds as symbolical exhibitions, yet as the real
though imperfect vehicles of a truth which they had
no better means of developing, and may have employed
them allegorically, as Menenius Agrippa is related to
have told the fable of the Belly and the Members ; they
may have deemed it immaterial, if truth in the spirit
were ever so imperfectly conveyed, that untruth in the
letter, and even much moral impurity, in condescen-
sion to human passions, should be attached to it.
* DC Legg. i. 8. f Plat. Tim. $ 9. J Plat. Phaedo, 66.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 139
128. The force however of the inductive argument
in no degree depends upon the question, whether the
statesmen and speculatists of old time credited or
rejected those popular mythologies which formed the
public religions. Perhaps it might be argued, that
the more entire and contemptuous their own unbelief,
the more cogent the testimony of their judgment be-
comes in support of the principle of a national worship,
as grounded alike in the necessities of civil order, and
in all those higher purposes of human association, by
which it so powerfully conduces to the discipline and
development of character. In this case, they stand as
unwilling and reluctant witnesses to an uniform con-
viction, that a civil religion is essential to the perma-
nency and well-being of States, and their evidence is
weighty in proportion to that unwillingness.
129. It may be less remarkable to find those whose
individual temperament might have so disposed them,
lamenting the prevalence of unbelief, as in the indig-
nant measures of Juvenal
Esse aliquid manes et subterranea regna,
Et contum, et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras,
Atque una transire vadum tot millia cymbS,
Nee pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aere lavantur.*
Or to see Plato building his ideal republic upon the basis
of religion, Qebv 8e Tr%b$ ryv T% 7roAeo> xarao-xsu^j/
7nxaXa>ju,e0a.t Or Cicero in his " Laws," Nunc
ibidem ab eodem (sc. Jove) et a caterisDis immortalibus
sunt nobis agendi capienda primordia.^ These were
men of theistical schools. But who can avoid being
* Sat. ii. 149. t Rep. iv. J De Legg. ii. 4.
140 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
struck by^the circumstance, that others of a more hard
and dry, of a sceptical, or a rationalising or utilitarian
temperament, are found in the same category. Thus
Polybius finds the distinctive character of the Roman
polity and the cause of the greatness of the city in the
peculiar prominence and power of its religious institu-
tions.* Thus Sallust connects the ancient purity and
freedom with the solemn worship and strict regard to
the gods, the recent corruption with its decay through
the ingress of luxury, f Thus, even Horace, contrast-
ing the excess of selfish expenditure in his own time
with the noble character of ancient Rome, sets down
among the features of the latter a care for the worship
of the national deities strangely opposed to the existing
neglect.J Thus Aristotle places religious institutions
among the first essentials of a State ; cov oivev
av
130. With respect to the practice of Christendom,
it has been notorious and all but universal. Dante
indeed wrote
Ahi Costantin ! di quanta mal fu matre
Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
Che da te prese il primo ricco patre ! ||
But it was with respect to the fabulous donation of that
emperor to Pope Sylvester, not to his actual support of
religion. The authority of practice, from that period
to this, is altogether in favour of the general principle
that religion should be professed and supported by the
* Polyb. vi. 56. t Bell. Cat Praef.
J Compare Od. ii. 15, with iii. 6. $ Pol. vii. 7.
|| Inferno, xix. 115
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 141
State. Even in the United States of America, the
only country whose constitution repudiates the prac-
tice of lending direct aid, we find an attestation of the
position, that the acts of government require to be
sanctified and offered up to God by a collective wor-
ship. The meetings of her federal legislative body are
opened with prayer. It is, I believe, true, that such
prayer is offered in rotation by ministers of all persua-
sions indiscriminately, entered upon a roll or list;
Roman, Anglican, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Baptist,
Unitarian ; I know not how much wider may be the
range ; I do not ask how far this heterogeneous wor-
ship satisfies the commands of that word which pro-
claims the doctrine of " one body, and one spirit,
even as ye are called in one hope of your calling ;"*
but I highly value the acknowledgment, rendered but
the more conspicuous in the midst of such anomalies,
that, where civil society and government exist, there
should be attached to them a religion.
131. And this authority we draw from the conduct,
not only of those who have known and loved Christi-
anity, but of those who knew it not, or who knew and
hated it. The Church, by the mouths of all her doc-
tors, has taught the religious duties of the State, and
the advantages resulting from the connection. It
is difficult for those who walk with her not to feel, in
a case of such magnitude and vital import to the pur-
poses of her mission, the weight of her sanction. But
it receives corroboration from an opposite quarter.
The vigorous common sense of Napoleon perceived the
* Eph. iv. 4.
142 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
necessity of public religion in France, in order, not to
the maintenance of the physical life of the nation, but
to its elevation towards a moral tone. And Julian the
Apostate was sufficiently informed by the experience
even of a single generation, to outdo Constantine in
the opposite direction. History informs us* that he
adopted the systematic organisation which the Church
was then acquiring, and brought the powers of the
State to bear, by a religious establishment, upon the
restoration of Paganism. But all men, it seems,
at all places, and in all times, of all characters and
creeds, have been mistaken in that in which almost
alone they have agreed ; and the State ought not to be,
and cannot be, religious. Never, surely, was there so
old an error exploded by so new a truth.
I would seriously urge that the historical evidence
upon the present subject approaches nearly to that
universal testimony, of which Aristotle,f a mind that
flinched from no investigation through servility, has
so wisely said o yaq TTCMT* SoxsT, TOUTO stvai
o vaipwv Tatj-njv ryv 7ri<rrtv, oy Travu irurTOTepa. spsf.
132. One more illustration. As it is admitted that
the support of religion by the secular power was uni-
versal in the early stages of society, and as it is hardly
questioned that such support was then conformable to
nature, I think we have a right to demand of the oppo-
nent, that he should point out to us at what point in the
progress of society that has become wrong in governors,
which had formerly been so sacred and essential a
* Milman's Hist, of Christianity, vol. iii. p. 70, et seq.
t Ar. Eth. x. ii. 4.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 143
duty. In one point of view I allow, that the weight
of that charge is diminished. The mind of the subject
is now more enlightened, relatively to that of the
governing body, than it was many ages back. He is
more competent to act on his own judgment, and is
less to be bound or led by that of the State. But in
another view, the progress of modern civilisation tends,
as it seems (at least among ourselves), to press down
and to keep down the most numerous class to so low a
level in respect of pecuniary means, that a religious
provision from the State becomes additionally neces-
sary as society advances, and as the amount of
population presses on the means of subsistence, some-
what in the same manner as it has become neces-
sary to make a legal provision for the temporal wants
of the poor. It would seem, for example, not unrea-
sonable to argue thus : that if national religion did
really befit governments in their commencement, then
they cannot be justified in abjuring it, until at the least
all the private members of the State are extrinsically
supplied with it, that is, are supplied with the means
of access to it. For nothing can justify the withhold-
ing that supply, in those who have the power to give
it, except some inherent incompetency ; and that there
is no such inherent incompetency in the essential cha-
racter of governors, their early practice bears sufficient
witness.
133. If, on the other hand, we look forward to the
idea of a State perfectly organised, and assume its
realisation, certainly we cannot but attach to it the
144 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
idea of a distinct profession of religion, of the acts of
religion attending and consecrating all its proceedings
and purifying the motives of its instruments, of unity
in belief, of consistency in practice, of the ordinances of
Christianity brought home to the door, and thus placed
within the easy reach of every man. Even should we
frame our conception of government upon the lowest
negative theory; should we imagine its perfection with
reference only to that theory, namely, the defence of
life, property, and freedom ; yet, if it be perfect, even
in this lowest sense, the supposition surely involves, as
one of its conditions, a universal access for the people
to religion, and the public, national performance of its
solemn acts. If we imagine it free from vice and sin
in all its members, still more must we include in its
conception a devout and systematic worship. It is,
therefore, an obvious argument, that if State religion
be implied in the idea of the perfect State, then all true
approximation to that idea involves the retention and
progressive realisation of the principle of State religion;
and if, on the contrary, we are, in point of fact, relax-
ing our hold upon it, and receding from its practice,
then we have no right to delude ourselves with the
belief that we are upon the whole drawing nearer to a
genuine political well-being.
134. Mr. Burke, "one of the greatest teachers of
civil prudence," as he has been denominated by the
sagacious and candid avowal of his former opponent,
Sir James Mackintosh,* has taught us, in his 'Thoughts
* Life of Mackintosh, i. 75.
CHAP. II.] WITH THE CHURCH. 145
on the French Revolution,* that in upholding the
principle of a national religion, " we continue to act
on the early received and uniformly continued sense of
mankind. That sense, not only like a wise architect,
hath built up the august fabric of States, but like a
provident proprietor, to preserve the structure from
profanation and ruin, as a sacred temple, purged from
all the impurities of fraud, and violence, and injustice,
and tyranny, hath solemnly and for ever consecrated
the commonwealth and all that officiate in it."
Upon the hypothesis of the opponents of national
establishments, nothing can be more unpractical, no-
thing more visionary ; but I trust that a more substan-
tial and sober consideration of the needs of human
nature and of the legitimate conditions of human asso-
ciation, has now brought us to the conclusion that
truth, and therefore that permanent utility, are at the
heart of this glowing diction ; just as the accurate
drawing of the human form is everywhere preserved
beneath the unconfined and majestic draperies of
Raphael.
135. Now these views require to be strictly sifted.
They cannot rest in mere speculation, but if affirmed as
true, will be found full of points of contact with daily
life, so far at least as regards that large and increasing
portion of the community, who are called under the
British constitution to exercise some degree of direct
influence upon public affairs. Therefore, before finally
resting in the principle, let us ask ourselves whether
* Thoughts on the French Revolution, p. 175.
VOL. I. L
146 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. II.
we have counted the cost ? It is very clear that these"
later times have been parents to an opinion, that
government ought to exercise no choice in matters of
faith, but leave every man without advice, or aid, or
influence, from that source, to choose for himself.
And many hold this opinion under an idea that the
overthrow of national establishments, as such, will be
beneficial to pure and undefiled religion. They hold
and contend thus, quite undisturbed in their convic-
tions by the ominous and yet undeniable fact, that
they share them with all the enemies of law both
human and divine. They know not the acuteness of
Satanic instinct. May they become alive to it while
there is yet time ! But we have to calculate, as will
presently be seen, upon encountering not merely the
political difficulties which these strangely mingling
classes of men will create, but likewise the more bitter
and more painful reproach that we are injuring the
cause of Him, whom, in maintaining the union between
Church and State, we profess to serve.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 147
CHAPTER III.
THEORY OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE STATE.
PART II.
THE INDUCEMENTS OF THE STATE IN RESPECT TO RELIGION.
SECTION I. TO RELIGION IN GENERAL.
1. THUS far upon those reasons for national religion,
which, according mainly to the principles of theism,
are derivable from a view of the intrinsic nature of
political association, as it is impersonated in the State.
I now proceed to touch separately upon the argument
from consequences, which is the basis of the treatises
of Bishop Warburton and Dr. Chalmers, and is also
the ground that has been selected for the most part
by the opponents of religious establishments.
2. It is one thing, to say that the inherence of any
given quality is necessary to any given creature in
order to the accomplishment of its purposes whether
higher or lower, and another, to say that such a quality
attaches to it as one of the proper conditions of its
being. It is true that the results of these two forms
of argument are precisely coincident one with the
other. That which is a condition of the due being of
a thing is essential to the attainment of its ends ; and
that which is necessary to the attainment of its ends
is likewise a condition of its legitimate constitution.
L2
148 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
But there are practical differences of great weight
between these several modes of conducting our inves-
tigations. When we treat of such and such a quality,
for example, of religion in a State, as advantageous
or even essential for the accomplishment of its pur-
poses, we at once depress it into the character of an
instrument, and exhibit it as subordinate to the end
contemplated; we treat of a duty as though it de-
rived its binding power (under the Divine law) from
something posterior to its performance and extrinsic
to itself; we separate it, as it were, mentally, from the
constitution of the subject ; and we introduce more or
less the element of contingency, and a dependence on
calculations which are in their nature very far removed
from certainty, into the question of its adoption. And
that adoption stands in the mind as at most the issue
of a probable judgment upon difficult subject-matter,
instead of ranking among those cardinal principles
which the sense and practice of mankind have usually
recognised as certainly discernible by the eye of a
purer reason, the faculty of intuition, and as alone
properly entitled to the name of science. What in
the one theory we discover to be fundamental and
anterior to human sanctions, in the other we hold as
an opinion revocable by the authority that gave it, as
in its nature indifferent, and as shining at best by a
reflected light.
In this branch of the inquiry, therefore, the State
is assumed as calculating and deliberative, but not as
properly moral.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 149
3. Having thus expressed a preliminary caution, I
now contend, that religion is necessary to the attain-
ment whether of the higher or the lower ends of
government. But, first, it may be questioned if this
distinction of ends be legitimate. There is, indeed, a
doctrine that political society exists only for " material,
outward, and mere earthly objects ;" that it is a con-
trivance prompted by necessity for the defence of life
and property through the establishment of peace and
order ; that it is a formula for producing a maximum
of individual freedom by an apparent sacrifice, a small
payment beforehand, of the same commodity, from
each member of the community to the State. Here
is the fulfilment of the declaration of Burke, that the
age of economists, sophisters, and calculators has
arrived.* Here is the twin sister of that degraded
system of ethics or individual morality, the injurious
legacy of Locke, f which received its full popular de-
velopment from Paley, and was reduced to forms of
greater accuracy by Bentham ; which in logical self-
consistency sought to extirpate the very notion of duty
from the human heart and even to erase its name
from language, and which made pleasure and pain
the moral poles of the universe. So long as this
theory of moral obligation continues to receive among
us any portion of that sanction which was once un-
happily bestowed on it in places of authority, it must
(as the ultimate standard of all our philosophy is to be
* Thoughts on the French Revolution, p. 148.
i Essay on the Human Understanding, b. ii. ch. xxi., on Power.
150 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
found in the state of the individual conscience,) de-
press to its own level every other branch of moral
science. But now, when the utilitarian morals have
been attacked in the very places of their strength,*
we may hope that the days of their reign are num-
bered, and upon the basis of a right conception of
man single, we shall naturally found a right concep-
tion of man combined and organised.
4. To ascertain the ends of government we must
not resort to this or that notion, prevalent in a parti-
cular country or generation. It is, indeed, not less
sad than instructive, when we extend our view to a
larger range of time and of space, to behold the va-
garies of human opinion, each revelling within its
own domain, be it a little narrower or be it a little
wider; each entertained with the most undoubting
confidence by partisans, each destined to speedy super-
session by the favourites of the coming hour, and
either to undergo a final extinction, or to be fixed
upon the wheel of some metempsychosis, to appear
and reappear, and to merge and merge again. All
these in the mean time are condemned out of the
mouths of one another by their own irreconcileable
contradictions ; among which are, notwithstanding,
thinly scattered the fragments of true knowledge,
slighted, perhaps, yet enduring, bound by their con-
sistency to one another, and by their common hold
upon God, the rock of their foundation. These are
* See Professor Whewell's Four Sermons upon the Principles of
Ethics, preached before the University of Cambridge.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 151
they which find occasional manifestation in what is
tejrmed the universal sense of mankind, approved by
the general conscience, and corroborated even by ap-
parent exceptions. So that there is at all times an
inner region where Truth,
Weak Truth, aleaning on her crutch,*
exerts nevertheless her centripetal attraction, and re-
wards them that seek her, and retains in often uncon-
scious connection with her those whom their indivi-
dual or partial impulses are drawing off in this
direction or in that, far from her, perhaps farther still
from one another.
5. Now this universal sense of mankind exclaims
against the crude and novel dogma, that the State is
appointed to be conversant with material ends alone.
It speaks to us in the voice of the best philosophies,
and in the common rule of governments, amply re-
cognised, though, like all other moral rules, always
unfulfilled. It speaks to us in the praise of those
monarchs who have fostered the inward and spiritual
life of man ; of Constantine, of Theodosius, of Char-
lemagne, of St. Louis, of our own Alfred and Eliza-
beth, and in the unwept departure of those who have
had no care either for civilising arts or for the propa-
gation of the Divine life ; not least of all in the fact,
that care for the material advantage of the subject has
been generally commensurate on the part of rulers
with their wise and effective concern for his higher
welfare as an immaterial and an immortal being. I
* Tennyson's Poems, vol. i.
152 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
do not say that the most pious have uniformly been
the most successful princes, more than that the best
private persons have uniformly prospered; but that
wise or devout sovereigns have been remarkable also
for regarding the temporal, and able and sagacious
princes for regarding the spiritual and intellectual
welfare of the people. And the nature of a State
itself reclaims, as we have seen, against the limitation
of its functions to the negative ends of securing per-
son and property ; by its hold upon the heart and
affections of man, by its innumerable and powerful
influences upon his character and his destiny, by its
dealing with moral subject-matter ; attributes, all far
too large to be included within such a definition.
6. Finally, to determine how this question is re-
solved for us as Christians, what says the Divine
word ? That the ruler " beareth the sword for the
punishment of evil doers and for the praise of them
that do well."* I do not cite this passage, as in for-
mer times it has been employed, in order to demon-
strate that rulers have duties directly religious ; but I
contend that it describes them as appointed to main-
tain a moral law according to all their means and
opportunities ; and therefore, by the very force of the
terms, a law not having exclusive reference to results
which are not moral at all, but merely negative.
"The punishment of evil doers" is a principle mean-
ing something more than that the ruler must intercept
those descriptions of evil deeds which are capable of
being classified (for this is the point really at issue)
* Romans xiii. 4; and 1 Pet. iii. 14.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 153
according to their directly injurious effects upon social
order ; although it of course does not imply his un-
dertaking correction of all kinds independently of the
degree of his competency to administer it, yet it
surely must imply, that he is to look at the moral
element in acts, and to use it as a criterion of their
social consequences.
7. And so it has been interpreted : otherwise, why
does law attach the very same penalty (for example)
to the murder of a widowed pauper, a burden to the
State, and having no friends or relations who might
be excited to violate public order by avenging her
death, and to the murder of the wealthiest and most
beloved nobleman of the land ? Or why is the pro-
vocation received allowed to be an element in the case
of a person arraigned for taking away life, but be-
cause motives (when proved or fairly presumable) as
well as acts are legitimately regarded by public law ?
If I am asked, on the other hand, why the life of a
sovereign should be protected by severer penalties
than that of a subject, I reply, not only because that
life is more valuable and its violent extinction more
injurious to society, but likewise because the sacred -
ness of the person and the function of majesty positively
enhance the guilt of the murderer inforo conscientice.
So much for penal administration.
8. If we look to the other branch of the Scriptural
definition, we shall find that the materialised theory
of government leaves scarcely any space for the
ruler's contemplating " the praise of them that do
well." And practically it has been found, that in
154 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
proportion to its prevalence has grown up an extreme
popular jealousy on the subject of pecuniary rewards,
and a tendency to narrow in the same degree the dis-
cretion of the governing body ; except, indeed, as to
honorary distinctions, of which, as being upon the
same hypothesis mere shadows void of all reality, it
exacts little or no account.
9. After all that has been said, I propose that my
last witness in favour of the comprehensive theory of
the functions of government shall be the popular
opinion of the day itself, by which that theory has
been commonly resisted. Nay, there are dogmas even
peculiarly inculcated by those who resist the principle
of State religion, that can only be supported upon
this theory. They who say that the State has only to
do with the security of person and property and the
like, must also, in consistency with the conclusions
which they draw against the doctrine of religious
establishments, be understood to mean that in the
employment of means for that end, it is restricted to
such as have a direct and palpable bearing upon it,
and are in kindred subject-matter; otherwise they
are not at liberty to urge their theory against na-
tional religion, inasmuch as its friends are ever ready
to argue that nothing can more effectually, nay,
that nothing can so effectively, give security to per-
sons and property and stability to public order. But
of the instances I am about to cite some have cer-
tainly no other than a very remote connection with
external and material ends : inasmuch indeed as,
in a comprehensive view, the higher instruments of
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 155
human cultivation are also ultimate guarantees of
public order, it may be difficult to demonstrate in the
negative, that they are not used simply in the view of
their conduciveness to material ends ; yet all reason-
able presumptions are with us, as nothing can be more
contrary to analogy than the supposition of a great
mental and moral machinery provided exclusively to
subserve purposes of a temporal, external, and mate-
rial nature.
10. I allude, then, first, to the practice so familiar
to the governments of civilised countries, and so com-
monly that we may well term it universally approved,
by which the State lends its aid to the cultivation of
the principles of art among the people, and to the
diffusion and encouragement of learning. Among
ourselves, for example, such institutions as great libra-
ries have long been aided by the public funds, or con-
tributions of the copies of all literary works, exacted
by public authority. One of these, as well as a great
museum of natural science, and galleries of statuary
and pictures, dignifies the British metropolis. And all
of these are, I apprehend, supported without exciting
any discontent in any portion of the community.
Take, for instance, the English National Gallery, an
institution decidedly popular, yet one in which the
State provides the building and the pictures, at the
general cost, at the cost equally of those who enter
the doors and of those who pass them by.
11. Although some of us may be of the belief,
that Art was intended to cherish some of the faculties
156 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [cHAP. III.
of the human mind highly conducive to its perfec-
tion, and to subserve the yet loftier purposes of re-
ligion ; yet others may and do hold the opinion, that
Art in its refined sense, is essentially trifling, or even
if not so, yet has been so mischievous in its effects on
religion, that it ought no longer to be encouraged.
Still the State offers to its individual member those
humanising influences which are derived from the
contemplation of Beauty embodied in the works of the
great masters of painting, at the cost of both these
classes alike, without asking any suffrage of dissen-
tients, and yet without raising any remonstrance.
Now although in this country, where so little has been
done by national means for the fine arts, it may appear
that this is in bulk at least a trifling item of public
expenditure, and therefore of small concern, I answer
that it is quite sufficient, even as it is here exemplified,
to support the principle; and that in other countries, at
least, the amounts which are devoted to this kind of
outlay are in themselves very considerable, and have
sometimes exhausted no mean proportion of the na-
tional fund;s. Expeditions undertaken for the advance-
ment of science, and establishments aided or main-
tained for its promotion, are indications of the same
principle.
12. The connection of the Crown with our Univer-
sities yields perhaps, however, the most emphatic tes-
timony borne by our existing institutions to the con-
cern of Government in the general culture of the
people. In them, according to their idea, all rudi-
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 157
mental and inferior learning is to receive its consum-
mation : and they can only, according to our constitu-
tional practice, exist by the direct act and warrant of
the Crown. And if we recur to our earlier history
we shall find abundant evidence, sometimes, as under
James the Second, from the abuse of the power in ques-
tion ; at other times, and most commonly, from its care-
ful and paternal employment; that this connection was
by no means intended to be nominal or dormant.
13. But the opinion of the day affords me a further
testimony so strong and so palpably relevant, that
with the present generation it ought to be conclusive.
It is the testimony of that sentiment which may fairly
be termed in this country universal, that the Govern-
ment has a legitimate concern in the education of the
people. There are indeed differences among us, both
as to the matter and the organs of that education. But
all the parties which divide the country seem to be
agreed in thinking that the education ought to be pro-
vided; that the Government ought to assist in its
provision ; and that it should be of such a character
as is not limited to external and material ends. Here
therefore we have a concurrent assent, from quarters
the most opposite, to the maxim, that government is
bound to regard the culture of the mind and under-
standing of the people as a portion of its legitimate
province. Although some may say that the people
are to be educated for the security of life and property,
yet none will contend that this is the sole matter of
instruction which the State may propose to regard in
158 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
the assistance it affords to popular teaching. And the
argument which I should derive from this position is
short and simple. The general cultivation, thus re-
cognised as a duty of the State, can only be made
either permanent or beneficial by the application of
religion ; and it follows that if government is bound
to the pursuit of the end, it is also bound to the em-
ployment of the means, so that those who hold the
first have in logical consequence virtually established
the second.
14. I would further ask, why does the State clothe
all its proceedings in the outward forms of dignity or
beauty? Why do we indulge in what has been termed
the expensive luxury of monarchy ? Why are build-
ings for the use of the Legislature to be erected on a
scale of the greatest architectural magnificence? Why
are imposing insignia employed in the discharge of
the most solemn functions of government ? It is not
difficult to reply, that such an exterior most truly
corresponds with, and best represents, the inward dig-
nity of those functions, as they are connected with the
realisation among men of grand but also true and
practical ideas. But how will the question be met by
those who contend, that the State exists only for the
ends of security to persons and property, or the growth
of wealth ? They abstract from the latter : I believe
that they contribute to the former : that as mere ex-
ternal shows they impose upon the uninstructed, and
generate a sentiment of reverence which, in the ab-
sence of thoroughly intellectual habits, is conducive
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 159
to general respect for the laws and to the maintenance
of public tranquillity. But observe the dilemma. If
this be not only a consequence, but the reason and
ground of their existence, then in proportion as we
are emancipated from prejudice, and as we become
more and more creatures of pure intelligence, the
great acts of government will lay aside all those so-
lemnities which are confessedly not of the essence of
its duty, and which on this supposition it would be un-
natural not to disuse, when the purposes they served
for a time are better answered by the direct and un-
aided action of the understanding ; nothing more than
what is absolutely necessary will be allowed for the
discharge of public functions, and the expenses of all
splendour and even of decorum will, if we reason with
perfect consistency, be viewed as so much plunder
from the national treasury. Undoubtedly a perfect
wisdom would be best able entirely to dispense with
all exterior dignity and beauty : yet it would also, I
conceive, be most solicitous, in due proportion always
to the things symbolised, to retain them. But ac-
cording to this false theory it is literally true, that
every advance in the love of knowledge and of truth
will be attended by a commensurate decline in the
love of beauty in its largest sense, their divinely con-
stituted apparel.
15. Let us, then, embrace the contrary position
that the end of government is the discipline and cul-
tivation of the human nature, and the promotion of its
general well-being, by all such instruments as are con-
160 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
formable to its own laws and conditions of being. As
these laws include moral and spiritual elements, so
of those instruments some may, as we are entitled
primd facie to presume, be moral and spiritual. The
effect of such a definition on the argument will be
this : that with reference to the use of any given in-
strument of culture which has not a direct bearing
upon material ends, it must not be refused, in limine,
as inappropriate to the nature of government; but the
question of its harmony or discrepancy must be exa-
mined, and it will be allowable or even obligatory, to
employ or reject the instrument, according as the one
or the other is established.
16. Now religion, or obligation to a Power higher
than himself, is the main condition and instrument of
the general cultivation of man. That it has ever been
so regarded we have abundant proof, independently of
the authentic instruction of Christianity. For a mo-
ment Lucretius might boast, that it had fallen beneath
the blows of 'his master Epicurus :
PrimAm Graius homo mortales tollere contra
Eat oculos ausus, primusque obsistere contra ; . . . .
Quare Relligio pedibus subjecta vicissim
Obteritur ; nos exaequat victoria crelo.*
And such a tradition has revived, at intervals scattered
along the course of the history of the world. But both
the wisest and by far the largest portions of mankind
have reclaimed against its tenour ; and to our human
faculties there is no more satisfactory criterion of truth
* i. 67, 79.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 161
among controverted opinions, than that it is found
where numbers, understanding, and virtue coincide.
As respects the wisest; how does religion form the
staple of the subject-matter of all the higher philo-
sophy of the ancients ! It attracts as a centre the
mysterious questionings of the heart, and the specu-
lations of the intellect revolve around it. Sometimes
acknowledging the need of guidance; TOUTO ye by
iravres, oeroi xal xara 3f^t
ri iravrog 6g|U,Y) xa/ o-jtux^oo xa*
Qeov dei wow xaXou<nv.* Sometimes deploring the
absence of divine revelation ; irore ouv irageo-rai b
;govo ourof, <S ltt)x&aT, xa) ri$ 6 7rajsu(ra>v ; "f
Sometimes admitting the universally pervasive power
of the supreme Deity :
A Jove principium, nmsae, Jovis omnia plena.J
And
Deum naraque ire per omnes,
Terrasque tractusque maris coelumque profundum. $
Sometimes seeming to grasp clearly the combined
character of the Creator and Father of men. Hue
enim pertinet, animal hoc providum, sagax, multiplex,
acutum, memor, plenum rationis et consilii, quern vo-
camus hominem, praclara quadam conditione genera-
turn esse a summo- Deo. \\ Inter bonos viros ac Deum
amicitia est, conciliante virtute. Amicitiam dico ?
* Plat. Timams, 8. f Plat. Alcib. Secund. $ 23.
J Virgil, Eel. iii. 60, from Aratus, Phaenom. v. 1, U &tt *{x*tiirta-
Cf. Cic. de Repub. i. 36.
$ Georg. iv. 221. II Cic. de Legg. i. 7.
VOL. 1 M
162 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
Imo etiam necessitudo et similitudo. Quoniam quidem
bonus ipse tempore tantum a Deo differt, discipulus
ejus {Binulatorque et vera progenies ; quern parens ille
magnificus, virtutum non lenis exactor, sicut severi
patres, durius educat Bonum virum in deliciis
non habet: experitur, indurat, sibi ilium praparat*
It has been thought that Aristotle affords an exception
to this general rule, and that in his Ethics he attempts
to construct a system of human practice without refer-
ence to deity. But in truth it is far otherwise. His
ethical system is avowedly an introductory one, and it
terminates in the exact adaptation of the human to the
Divine life.f
17. And as of science, so also was religion the life of
art. If I further cite in this place its pervading all the
systems of civil government, as a proof of its being the
first instrument of human culture, it is not in ignorance
of the fact that State religions were frequently imposi-
tions deliberately palmed upon a credulous multitude.
In truth the argument is, as we have seen,J hereby
strengthened. For here, according to the supposition,
were governors, themselves void of all belief in the my-
thological worship which they upheld, yet sedulously
impressing it upon the people ; why this but from the
experience of its results ? of its power in part by the
images of beauty and grandeur to humanise the rude
minds of men ; in part by the solemnities of the oath,
* Seneca, De ProvidentiS, c. i. f Eth. Nic. b. x. c. vii. viii.
J Ch. ii. $ 115,116.
$ Polyb. b. VI. C. Ivi. V eturni rijf KO.TO. rir fyxe* trifrtut ruftutri TO a#j*v.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 163
to maintain the cementing influence of a reverence for
truth ; to attract veneration to the person of the ruler
by his participation in sacred offices ; and thus to con-
solidate the social body, as well as through terror to
restrain from crime. Even this last was a great though
negative instrument of civilisation ; it was the best and
only one which, while Paganism reigned, was appli-
cable to the masses of men. It tended to check dete-
rioration at least that would otherwise have been
accelerated, if it did not guarantee actual improvement.
I rely much, therefore, even upon those accounts of
the origin of religion which, as that of Polybius,* for
example, represent it as introduced into States for
the purposes of kingcraft or of social order; because,
however unhistorical in themselves, they afford at least
the important witness of their authors to its power and
necessity as an instrument of general cultivation.
There is also a still lower theory of its first reception,
that of Capaneus in Statius,
Primus in orbe deos fecit timont
which has been expanded by Lucretius J and the whole
Polyb. D. vi. C. Ivi. I/M/ yi ^tj S*ai/-/ rtv
raur TiTmtiKtyni.
ii ft\t yaa nt fitfttf aJjo nXiT'.u^.a. fVia.ya.yCii, 1tn( tvilv r\i a,itt.y*.eut( i raieuros
Toorof. !!( Ji fan r).rit!<>s itrri llMffor X.HI TXtift; ifiluftltn -raoa.ion.ut, loyr,t aXaysa,
tvftev fiiauv' XliVir<, rttf a.1r l >.t>t; Qifcatt x.a.\ <ry rtiauTfi rattyulia. <ri T\r,(n rt/ti-
x'. See also Varro in St. Aug. de Civ. Dei, b. iv. c. xxxi. xxxii.
f Stat. Theb. iii. 661.
J Lucr. v. 1165:
Unde etiam nunc est mortalibus insitus horror,
Qui delubra deum nova toto suscitat orbi
Terrarum, et festia cogit celebrare dicbus.
And ibid. v. 1217.
164 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
Epicurean school. For even these recognise the fixed
belief of mankind, that it was both required and
adapted to exercise that function of repression and
control, which is an essential though elementary part
of our discipline as men. The stratagem was not the
thought of a moment, nor the peculiarity of a single
spot, nor the mean shift of feeble minds, but it was at
least the scheme of all ages and all places, and of the
subtlest and most sagacious wisdom that mankind
could boast.
18. And when we arrive at the case of the Christian
religion,- which effects the restoration of the relation
between man and his Creator, we find at once that the
spiritual principle claims the sovereignty over his whole
existence. Body, soul, and spirit, each and all with
their whole strength, are to be offered up to God.
Life is now no longer a collection of temporal occupa-
tions terminating, as to any calculable results, upon
this world ; nor yet a mixture of such with a separate
system of spiritual occupations belonging to another
state ; but one homogeneous discipline, by instruments
some of which are visible and some unseen ; having
some of its parts directly and exclusively spiritual, some
in their first aspect temporal, but all truly spiritual,
because, whatever may be the outward form and im-
mediate subject-matter, all tend to the formation of
habits in the man, and each of these habits in its degree
disposes him, in a manner either favourable or adverse
to the union and amalgamation of his will with the
will of God. Therefore there is but one absolute end
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 165
of all human functions, although there be many in-
termediate and secondary ends. All the offices
and all the incidents that attach to our condition
are providentially adapted to the elaboration of this
great work. All the actings and all the sufferings
which may mark our earthly destiny are of small
moment when considered in themselves, as compared
with those results which they leave behind them,
stamped inwardly upon us. In religion, then, we see
the one truly supreme and universal form of the human
life, as it was redeemed by Christ, under which and
from which, as from a mould, every other must receive
its proper character and its modifications. That is to
say, in every act of every system, the thing first and
most to be remembered by every man as a man is, that
he is a member of Christ. This consideration is to be
applied by him to any proposed action, both as a
limiting condition and as a moving force ; that which
he omits or does, he omits or does in virtue of it ; all
must be judged by a comparison with it; all must
bear fruit for good, through their conformity to it, or
for evil by reason of their discrepancy from it.
19. And even so, allowing for the interval which
must still separate the conduct from the principles of
men, it has actually been. For in practice, and even
against his will, if not through it, religion is the great
instrument of making man ; of forming, moulding,
educating him. In spite of his inborn aversion to
things divine, the religion of a country is ever found
166 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
by actual experience to exercise a more determining
influence upon its character and destinies, than any
other cause. It penetrates into men through innu-
merable channels, unseen as well as visible, and not
only as proposing motives and reasons from with-
out, but by actually conveying into the breast a
hidden influence, which works at the very roots of
the will.
20. And it has pleased God at times, even apart
from miracle, to command the course of events to
yield the most illustrious proofs of the might of His
revelation. Let us look to the period of the crumbling
away of the great image* of the Roman Empire.
Even as the Redeemer descended into the grave, and
made it the source of a new spiritual life, so did
Christianity go down into that sepulchre of national
corruption, to which the world had already verged at
the time when the Church began to gather sway, and
impregnated it with the seeds at once of religious
energy and of a brighter and better civilisation than
mankind had yet beheld. The Church did place her-
self at the head of speculation, of art, of power, of
social and of military (which were not wholly unsocial)
institutions, and did in a word educate the entire man.
The day came,f when art, unsatisfied with its glorious
career, sought emancipation from the power of reli-
gion, and obtained it ; made the expression of divine
* Dan. ii. 31-35, and 4043.
t Rio, L'Art Chretien ; and Romsbeschreibung, vol. i.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 167
and immaterial beauty the second object, and external
design in its several requisites the first.
Ex illo fluere ac retro sublapsa referri.*
The similar emancipation of philosophy gave us
Lockes and Paleys, instead of Dantes and Lord
Bacons. The man of our own day who has stood
pre-eminent for the powers of speculative thought, far
above all others of his generation in his country, Mr.
Coleridge, has been the man that has also laboured
with might and main to re-establish the maternal
relation between theology and all other science. Let
us hear his own words :
" There is one department of knowledge which, like
an ample palace, contains within itself mansions for
every other knowledge; it is biblical theo-
logy, the philosophy of religion, the religion of phi-
losophy !" f
And again of the middle ages :
" The theologians took the lead, because the science
of theology was the root and the trunk of the know-
ledges that civilised man, because it gave unity and
the circulating sap of life to all other sciences, by
virtue of which alone they could be contemplated as
forming collectively the living tree of knowledge.";};
21. But there is no more striking proof of the power
* JEn. ii. 169.
t Coleridge's Letters, vol. i. p. 13.
J Coleridge's Church and State, ch. iv. p. 51, ed. 1839.
168 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
of religion as an instrument of general culture, than
that refinement and true delicacy which it spreads
throughout all classes of the community. In fact, if
we compare the Christian peasantry (for instance) of
Great Britain, among whom so much of courtesy
without adulation, and of genuine elevation of feeling,
energy of personal conscience, and love of truth, are
to be found, with their heathen ancestors, we shall
find that these qualities are not reasonably to be ac-
counted for by reference to greater intellectual culture
as their source, much less do they proceed from,
though they harmonise with, a state of comfort supe-
rior in many points to that of their remote forefathers;
but that they are usually owing to the presence of
religion as a peacefully indwelling and governing prin-
ciple, the blessed result of a parochial system. It might
also be allowable to cite the experience of those who
have engaged in schemes of benevolence for the civiliz-
ation of savages ; and who still find,* as it was found
of yore, that Christianity alone affords the basis of a
lasting general culture. Considered, then, simply in
the light of an instrument available for the general
cultivation of men, religion is most appropriate to the
service of the State.
22. Montesquieu has summed up as follows the
causes which form, as he says, Vesprit general, that
national character which must be taken as the basis
* Report of the Aborigines Committee of the House of Commons,
1837.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 169
of legislation ; quon nous laisse comme nous sommes.
The constituents of this national life are
1. Climate. 5. Ancestral traditions.
2. Religion. 6. Morals.
3. Laws. 7- Fashions.*
4. Rules of State.
But this idea is more powerfully represented else-
where. I need not apologise for introducing in this
place a passage of no less truth than grandeur, which,
by unfolding the system of instruments whose com-
bined action nourishes and forms a true national life,
likewise indicates how many are the objects which, in
such measure as time and opportunities permit, a
State may embrace within its view :
23. " \Ve will venture to say how, in the mercy of
God to man, this heart comes to a nation, and how its
exercise or affection appears. ... It comes by priests,
by lawgivers, by philosophers, by schools, by educa-
tion, by the nurse's care, the mother's anxiety, the
father's severe brow. It comes by letters, by science,
by every art, by sculpture, painting, and poetry, by
the song on war, on peace, on domestic virtue, on a
beloved and magnanimous king , by the Iliad, by the
Odyssey, by tragedy, by comedy. It comes by sym-
pathy, by love, by the marriage union, by friendship,
generosity, meekness, temperance; by every virtue
and example of virtue. It comes by sentiments of
chivalry, by romance, by music, by decorations, and
magnificence of buildings ; by the culture of the body,
* Esprit dcs Loix, xix. 46.
170 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
by comfortable clothing, by fashions in dress, by
luxury and commerce. It comes by the severity, the
melancholy, and benignity of the countenance; by
rules of politeness, ceremonies, formalities, solemnities.
It comes by the rites attendant on law and religion ;
by the oath of office, by the venerable assembly, by
the judge's procession and trumpet, by the disgrace
and punishment of crimes ; by public prayer, public
fasts ; by meditation, by the Bible, by the consecration
of churches, by the sacred festival, by the cathedral's
gloom and choir ; by catechising, by confirmation, by
the burial of the dead, by the observance of the sab-
bath, by the Sacraments, by the preaching of the
Gospel, by faith in the atonement of the cross ; by the
patience and martyrdom of the Saints, by the sancti-
fying influences of the Holy Ghost Whence
the heart of a nation comes, we have, perhaps, suffici-
ently explained; and it must appear, to what most
awful obligations are held those, from whom this
heart takes its texture and shape; our king, our
princes, our nobles, all who wear the badge of office
or honour; all priests, judges, senators, pleaders, in-
terpreters of law ; all instructors of youth, all semina-
ries of education, all parents, all learned men, all
professors of science and art, all teachers of manners.
Upon them depend the fashions of a nation's heart ; by
them it is to be chastised, refined, and purified ; by
them is the State to lose the character and title of the
beast of prey ; by them are the iron scales to fall off,
and a skin of youth, beauty, freshness, and polish, to
CHAP. III. J WITH THE CHURCH. 171
come upon it ; by them it is to be made so tame and
gentle, as that a child may lead it." 4
24. There is, however, a lower theory of civil go-
vernment, according to which its end is either simply
negative, and lies in the avoidance of certain kinds of
evil, namely of injury to property and persons ; or, so
far as it is positive, is conversant only with the modes,
direct or indirect, of accumulating the means of mate-
rial enjoyment. " Political power, then," says Locke,
" I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of
death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regu-
lating and preserving of property, and of employing
the force of the community in the execution of such
laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from
foreign injury ; and all this for the public good.f
Even according to this restricted view, I contend that
national religion is not only useful, but absolutely re-
* I copy from a fragment (which is cited in a letter of Mr. Basil
Montague's to the editor of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh, vol. i.
p. 159) of a sermon delivered by Dr. Ramsden, in 1800, before the
University of Cambridge. If there be no full record of this magni-
ficent production, it does not speak well for the generation to which it
was given.
+ Locke on Civil Government, ii. i. 3 ; ix. $ 123, 124 ; and First
Letter on Toleration. Warburton's Alliance, b. i. ch. iv. " Whatever,
therefore, refers to the body is in his (the magistrate's) jurisdiction ;
whatever to the soul, is not." Hoadly's Answer to the Representation
of the Committee of the Lower House of Convocation, ch. ii. sect. xi.
Memoire en Faveur de la Libert^ des Cultes, par A. Vinet : Paris, 1826.
A theory somewhat similar is to be found in the Edinburgh Review,
April, 1839, pp. 235, 236, 273, 276. Paley has avoided this rock,
holding " that the jurisdiction of the magistrate is limited by no con-
sideration but that of general utility." Moral Phil., b. vi. ch. x. The
prima mali labes is, I suppose, to be found in the passage which I have
cited from Locke.
172 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
quisite, in order to the full realisation of the purposes
of government.
25. Indeed their attainment must, in strictness, at
the very best, be partial : it follows that, as the means
for ensuring them are at all events defective, we can-
not properly dispense with any of them ; and that a
condition of society in which there are impediments
which prevent any of them from being brought to
bear, is an essentially vicious condition.
Now it is agreed on all hands to be the duty of the
lawgiver to aim not merely at the punishment of cri-
minals, but at the prevention of crime; and indeed that,
in the regulation of penalties, he must take into his
calculations the manner in which they will probably
operate as examples. He may punish crime when it
occurs ; he may weaken the temptations to its commis-
sion by known and efficient provisions for its detec-
tion, and by the intelligibility and certainty of the law.
But he thus acts only on the fears of man, and, indeed,
upon his apprehensions in their grossest form, in which
they most approximate to the brute creation, namely,
as having reference to immediate consequences. Nor
has he any power to act otherwise ; indeed, he may be
materially checked in the use even of these instruments
by circumstances defying his control. There are
morbid states of the public mind, in which sympathy
with the criminal is not duly subordinated to abhor-
rence of the crime, and in which, accordingly, the law-
giver must either lower the scale of penalties beneath
the amount necessary to deter men from offending; or
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 173
he must endanger the whole administration of criminal
justice by placing or leaving it fundamentally out of
harmony with the public sentiment.
26. In this dilemma, Religion offers him her aid. She
points out that it is hers to act more powerfully even
upon the apprehensions of men by denouncing against
sin the terrors of eternal punishment. She adds, that
there are other and nobler means of moving or con-
trolling the human heart. Reward, which the tempo-
ral ruler can so rarely make available, she exhibits to
the view of men in its most durable and majestic form.
But she does much more than this, and operates more
effectually within the pale of the Christian dispensa-
tion, through more legitimate principles of duty. It
is her prerogative to penetrate into the deepest re-
cesses of the heart, and, sitting at the very fountain of
action, to alter and regulate its springs. She provides
the human being with a new canon of right and
wrong ; and, by a subtle and potent influence, she as-
similates his inward composition to the code she has
delivered, with the Divine commission in her hand,
and the promises of revelation as the unfailing support
of her labours. Thus the man, whom she begins to
govern, clings to the acts of duty for their own sake ;
they coincide with the bias of his renewed nature ; and
he will now undergo menaced pains for their sake
under the same law of an inner impulse as would pre-
viously have led him to dare the penalties of statutes
rather than forbear to gratify his appetites. And as
his dispositions are thus brought into radical harmony
174 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
with the commands of the lawgiver, so also he will
have learned through the same agency to recognise in
his rulers an appointed ministry of God.
27. So much for that function of the State which
regards the repression of crime ; and if we look to the
other branch of the definition, and inquire how Reli-
gion will affect the private person with respect to the
positive end of acquiring outward goods, we find that
she forms in him the habits of care, industry, and
forethought, and that she teaches him to regard as
portions of his sacred duty the maintenance of his
family, and the avoidance of all enervating luxury ;
the very results which a secular and even materialising
policy should most desire to secure.
28. If we regard the will of the State in its rela-
tions with that of the private person, it is easy to
show yet more specifically how Christianity tends, by
making men good subjects and citizens, to reconcile
these often conflicting principles. It is by destroying
that law of self-will and self- worship, the ancient idol,
the great lie of this world, which galls and scourges
us even until now. The antagonist truth is, that our
mere will does not constitute a rightful law of action,
but is always to be led by regard to extrinsic grounds
of duty, to grounds assuming a thousand appearances,
which are themselves but signs of the supreme will,
our true and only law. It is by teaching man not
only his actual poverty, but his moral and essential
dependence ; by teaching him, that the mere fact of
his wishing to do this or that does not constitute a
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 175
reason for doing it, unless he can trace that wish up
to some higher cause or object ; that Religion takes
away the grand principle, as of individual, so likewise
of social misery and disorder.
29. Undoubtedly she does not propose to private
persons the will of governors, as constituting in all
cases a law to which they are implicitly to submit ;
this were to substitute one human idol for another.
But she does this : she inculcates absolute obedience
to all law not sinful, while it continues to be law, as
the essential condition of order in societies. And
with respect to the alteration of laws, or the introduc-
tion of new ones, she puts every individual in a condi-
tion to exercise with contentment the function which
the constitution assigns to him, be it that of merely
expressing his desires, or that of giving any suffrage
or decision upon the subject-matter proposed; because
she commands one and all concerned to abjure the
law of private inclination, and to direct their observa-
tion to the common reason and justice of the case,
which all should be, and when they have obeyed those
injunctions all are, able in a considerable degree to
appreciate. If it be replied, men do not obey these
injunctions, it is only equivalent to saying, men are
not thoroughly penetrated by the influence of religion,
and this, instead of weakening, only enhances the in-
ducement to avail ourselves of every probable and
reasonable means of bringing them under her more
effectual control. " Dire que la Religion n'est pas un
motif reprimant, parce qu'elle ne reprime pas tou-
176 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
jours, c'est dire que les loix civiles ne sont pas un
motif reprimant non plus." *
30. We have, then, these distinct heads, under
which the efforts of Christianity, in the due develop-
ment of its functions, directly and most powerfully
aid the purposes of the State; by proposing more
powerful motives to do good and avoid evil ; by the
general development and invigoration of the human
faculties ; by the formation, in particular, of the active
habits most conducive to the order of the State ; by
removing the great obstructions to unity and peace in
societies, caprice, self-sufficiency, arbitrary will; and
thus predisposing the minds of men to submit to reason.
I might well add, by the importance which must be
given, on religious principles, to peace, as a distinct
substantive object, for which, independently of its
positive results, and when considered merely as im-
plying the absence of the opposite evils, much ought
to be sacrificed and endured.
31. There also seem to be more specifically political
uses of religion. It is religion that softens and hu-
manises warfare; it is religion that enables States with
security to economise human suffering, and to mitigate
the sharpness of their penal codes; because, reminding
men (to say no more) of future rewards and punish-
ments, it provides a consideration which stands,
whether more or less, in the place of legal sanctions.!
* Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, xxiv. 2.
t Ibid. xxiv. 14: " Moins la religion sera rcprimante, plus les loix
civiles doivent r^primer."
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 177
It is religion that has often neutralised in part the
evil and the sin of private quarrels, when it has in-
vested them with the form, as in the case of the ordeal
by battle, of simple appeal to God as the final and
supreme Arbiter. The very remission of physical
labour which has belonged to religious festivals in
general, to those of Christianity in particular, and
most of all to the Christian Sabbath, is to be regarded
as a direct and great gift of religion to society at large.
32. But further, religion has not always been a
development of truth differing only in its amount, or
of truth clearly preponderating over error, as the pre-
ceding argument seems to assume. Besides the ge-
nuine substance of revelation, which acts thus bene-
ficially upon men, there are also semblances and
counterfeits, which, though fictitious, yet, partly by
outward resemblance, and partly by their secret un-
conscious hold on human pride, interest, or passion,
are commonly taken for Religion, and, operating under
her name, appeal to those genuine and best sympathies
which she commands, so as to usurp for sinister pur-
poses much of her power. In general, indeed, where
Divine Truth is known, these hostile forms are artful
mixtures of her real substance with falsehood. Hence
it has been under the name of religion that many of
the most anti-social doctrines have been promulgated,
and with the most fearfully disorganising conse-
quences ; as, for example, by the first Anabaptists of
Germany, and by the Fifth-Monarchy-men of Eng-
land. Hence, beyond the Christian pale, we have
VOL. i. N
178 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
seen in Egypt* and in Babylonf religion become the
direct ally of lust : in the Suttee, as formerly in the
worship of Moloch, the actual destroyer of human
life : in the wide-spread institution of caste, the instru-
ment of establishing among men, instead of a law of
love, almost a law of mutual aversion and contempt.
How, then, are these to be repressed, but by the pro-
mulgation of a genuine system which shall appeal
with clearer credentials to the same potent motives,
and shall enlist them on the side of order ? Thus,
therefore, it is directly in the interest of government
generally to enter into alliance with true religion, for
the sake of avoiding those great positive hazards
which, as history shows, are continually apt to arise
from fanaticism in its various forms.
33. Now, further, it is a general maxim of State
policy, that in order to civil unity the sovereign power
ought to be in direct alliance with all the greater social
forces which act upon the community. That, too,
which is intended to be first in a nation, ought to be
separated by a considerable interval from what is
second, lest the distinction be too fine to be perceived
by the common eye. If we consider the tendency of
religion in proportion to its vital prevalence to draw
forth generous gifts, and consequently to accumulate
endowments, we shall find that, in respect of mere
property, the Church, in the natural course of its ex-
tension,^: tends towards a condition in which the re-
* Herod, ii. 49. f Ibid. i. 199.
X See Bishop (J. B.) Sumner, Charge I.
CHAP. Ill,] WITH THE CHURCH. 179
gulation of its property might wholly derange the
social machine unless it be placed under some special
supervision and control of the civil authority, to
which all property is of right subject. Yet mere
property affords no adequate measure of the social
power and magnitude of religion.
34. It was the misfortune of France under the Ca-
petian dynasty, that her monarch was but one degree
more powerful than several of his great feudatories ;
it was the simultaneous felicity of England, that, from
the time of the Conqueror generally, a very broad
line was drawn in respect of possessions as well as of
prerogatives between him who sat on the throne and
those who surrounded it. Now religion, as long as it
has any sort of unity, and dwelling as it does in
earthen vessels, may, if apart from the State, become
too strong for the State, and its professors may use
their power against the legitimate designs of civil
government. It is true that we find a remedy for
this dilemma in the sorer evil of such an extensive
prevalence of schism, as shall prevent the growth of
a common religious feeling, by placing what ought to
be its constituent parts in a state of reciprocal anta-
gonism, and leaving them as rival interests to neu-
tralise one another.* But such an alternative we may
dismiss from our consideration, as far more pernicious
even than the great mischief it averts.
35. It is true, on the other hand, that religion, even
when allied with States, may become too powerful for
Wealth of Nations, iii. 210212.
N 2
180 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. Iir.
them : as when in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
the exorbitant ambition of the papacy had reached
such a pitch of boldness as to claim the patronage of
all the benefices of Christendom, an authority to un-
bind the social compacts of Christian nations, and the
entire sovereignty of the heathen world. But the
tremendous collisions which these claims must have
produced were softened or averted by the subsisting
alliance. The great war of investitures was the crisis
of the general connection between Church and State.
It was through that war that the terms of their rela-
tion were mainly defined. But the length and obsti-
nacy of the struggle shows us that, where the religious
element was vigorous and one, there was no alterna-
tive between the dissolution of society and the blend-
ing together of its two great laws of sympathy the
composition of its grand moving forces, the principles
of political and of Christian organisation. And. lastly,
when the spirit of English nationality was still too
tightly curbed by the papal dominion, the remedy
which, following out the instincts of nature, it sought,
was not breaking the ties which bound the Church to
the State, but drawing them closer by assigning to
both these bodies a single and domestic centre of
ordinary motion. So that the menacing consequences
of perverted religion, and the hazards of ruinous dis-
organisation from detached religion, combine with
other and positive reasons to offer to the State the
strongest inducements to cement an union with the
spiritual power.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 181
SECTION II.
TO THE CHURCH IN PARTICULAR.
36. I have thus far considered the general induce-
ments by which religion, regarded at large as a system
of relations to a superior power and to a future state,
to a Being and a life beyond the limits of visibility,
attracts the State, independently of moral obligation,
to form friendly connections with itself; only here
and there letting into view the peculiar principles of
Christianity, and not at all touching upon the preg-
nant controversy that is at issue between the claims
of its several forms.
I proceed to contend that the argument of induce-
ments, independently of Christian principles binding
upon the conscience, determines among these com-
peting claims in favour of that advanced by the one
Catholic and Apostolic Church, which providentially
still holds, and promises to hold, among us, the double
sanction of ordinance human and divine.
37. Undoubtedly the political and general princi-
ples, which lead us to the conclusion that a religion
ought to be established, will likewise lead us some-
what farther, and show us that it ought to be esta-
blished along with the best guarantees for its perma-
nence that can be obtained. That which the ruling
powers, which the wisdom and virtue of the nation
have expressed as the truth of religion, and chosen
amidst rival and surrounding, but in their judgment
182 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
inferior, forms, they ought also to gird about with
fixed institutions and practices, and to embody in
permanent records, in order that it may not thereafter
relapse into one of those inferior species, and leave
the nation for whose benefit it was designed a loser to
the extent of that inferiority.
38. It is the wisdom of man, and especially of the
public man, placed upon the watch-tower for the ad-
vantage of his fellows, to look beyond the present,
whether of time or place, until his eye fails him in
the distance, because that which is future has as real
and as important relations to us, who are immortal
creatures, as any one of the moments ticked away
within our hearing ; and we may observe, in corrobo-
ration of this general maxim, that even human laws
deal with some rights not yet in operation as having
real existence, and as entitled to consideration on
principles of justice. This truth holds not only with
reference to our state after death, but likewise as re-
spects our span of earthly life; much more does it
hold of nations, whose future in this world bears a
larger proportion to their present than that of indivi-
duals; and of rulers and lawgivers, as acting for
nations. In all laws and institutions therefore they
will esteem their durability a capital element, and
they will beware of being entrapped into the fallacious
assumption, that whatever system can upon the mo-
ment show the greatest amount of activity and effect,
is, therefore, the one which in the longer tracts of
time will give a similar result. In short, the fable of
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 183
the tortoise and the hare is applicable, in its moral, to
institutions, as well as to individuals.
39. The fixity which is obtained by laws is inope-
rative and dead, unless there be a corresponding senti-
ment animating the human beings by whose instru-
mentality they are to be carried into execution. But
upon the other hand, that motive principle, which man
alone can supply, is capable of being incited, assisted,
governed, and perpetuated by the existence of a fixed
extrinsic record having all the veracity and authority
which can attach to any of our acts. The statesman,
therefore, if for a moment we suppose him in the
situation of one choosing the modifications under
which a national faith is to be established, would see
that preference is to be given to a scheme, such as
that commonly termed Quakerism, over any such
forms of Christianity as decline to receive the entire
word of God, and claim the right of denying its divi-
nity where it clashes with the preconceived opinions
of its readers ; because there exists in the one case,
and not in the other, a permanent unchangeable at-
testation of the principles professed at one period of
time, which attestation is in the nature of a moral,
though of course not infallible, security for their being
preserved at another.
40. But further. To a form of Christianity like
Quakerism he would, and still on principles purely
political, prefer a form like that of Independency, or
that adopted by the sect of the Baptists ; because, in
addition to the volume of the revealed Word, they
184 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
adhere to the use of certain significant institutions
termed sacraments, which, setting aside for the time
all consideration of their higher uses, are witnesses in
attestation of the sacred Scriptures, by which they
also are themselves attested.
41. Again, he would prefer to these communions,
which reject all summaries of doctrine formed from
the Scriptures, a system like that of the Church-esta-
blishment of Scotland, which, by adopting a stated
Confession of faith, limits the interpretation of the
sacred volume, and tends to fix a belief more definite
than that which follows all the fluctuations of mere
individual or traditionary judgment.
42. And lastly, and upon the same human consi-
derations as before, he would again prefer to this the
polity of the English church, which, as it is extrinsic-
ally viewed, and independently of its highest or
" transcendental " * character, superadds to the evi-
dence and guarantees of the Word, of sacraments, of
creeds, and of primitive practices, a perpetual succes-
sion of clergy by whom these have been received, as
they were delivered, in regular order from hand to
hand ; and which thus supplies ns with a living voice
of perpetual witnesses, in addition to those which are
not active without a human agency to set them in
motion. Indeed, schemes of ecclesiastical polity, in
proportion as they found themselves wholly or par-
tially upon private or local opinion, have no choice
except between these two alternatives : either to be
* Chalmers' Lectures, Icct. vi. p. 178.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 185
subject to perpetual and unlimited fluctuations, if their
definitions in theology be few and their scheme li-
beral; or, on the other hand, to push dogmatic in-
struction into extreme rigour and detail, and, by the
severe method of preliminary subscription to an im-
mense multitude of propositions, to restrain, as by bit
and curb, the free action of inquiry. Our Church-
history will supply abundant examples of this propo-
sition : it might not be difficult to illustrate it by the
decrees of the Council of Trent, as well as by the
Westminster Confession of Faith,* and by many inci-
dents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We
may judge, on the other hand, how dangerous liberal-
ity of temperament itself becomes under a scheme not
founded on Catholic principles, when we find so ex-
cellent a person as Dr. Doddridge protesting against
requiring an unity of belief from teachers of religion
with respect to the Trinity, f Therefore the State, in
allying itself with the Church, adopts the course not
only of utility, but of a greater indulgence to tender
and uninstructed consciences.
43. Another prudential reason which would induce
the statesman to prefer a form of religion provided
with fixed guarantees of permanence in itself to one
without them, is this that the religious system, of a
country cannot be administered directly by the State
itself. The practice of mankind, unless with the pecu-
* Vide inf. ch. viii. 52. Cardwell's History of Conferences, pp.
132, 178, 185, confirmed by Neal's History of the Puritans,
f Doddridge's Correspondence, iii. 293.
186 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
liar exception of the papacy, has been to separate, almost
universally, the functions of civil government from the
persons of the priesthood, or those of priesthood from the
persons of civil governors, when society has attained
any considerable magnitude. The State, therefore, can-
not be immediately and permanently cognisant of the
doctrines taught, in the sense of exercising over them
that supervision from day to day, which belongs to
ecclesiastical superiors. Consequently its relations are
formed with institutions ; and as teaching is always,
though in different degrees, liable to vary and dege-
nerate, it is the interest of the State to contract with
that which shall offer the fairest probability of retain-
ing all the features which it had when the contract
was made, so as to save the necessity of revision and
the risk of rupture.
44. Thus much of permanency. But now of truth,
which is its foundation. As a statesman believing in
God (for we have not yet invested our ideal person for
the purpose of the present argument with the responsi-
bilities of a member of the Catholic Church) will prefer
revealed to unrevealed religion, the one coming to him
as matter of knowledge, the other of conjecture ; or,
at the least, the one as determinate, the other as unde-
fined ; even so, still on the same principle of theism,
he will be bound to prefer the entire revelation of
God's will to any partial exhibition of it. The two
conditions, therefore, for which he will naturally look,
are these : all that is attainable of truth in the religion
itself, and of fixity in the institutions appointed for its
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 187
maintenance and propagation. And these conditions
meet in the Church, attested as she is by eighteen
hundred years of chequered, indeed, but never inter-
rupted existence.
45. But the State has this further and very great
advantage in alliance with the visible and perpetual
society which is appropriately termed the Church of
Christ. It is most difficult and invidious for govern-
ors to select any one form of mere opinion as such,
and to endow it, or to prefer any institution simply
for the reason that the doctrines taught in it are
agreeable to the views entertained personally by them-
selves. Now the Church professes to be an institution
not deduced by human reason from any general de-
claration of God's will, but actually and (so to speak)
bodily given by God, founded through his direct
inspiration, and regularly transmitted in a divinely
appointed though human line. The State, therefore,
does not here propose a conception of its own for the
approbation of the people, but something more pal-
pable and objective, an institution, to which it has itself
yielded faith and homage, as of Divine authority; and
the homage which it has thus paid is done not upon
grounds of opinion alone, but with these to the autho-
rity which that institution possesses from its historical
connection with Christ ana* his Apostles, corroborated
as well as conveyed by the cumulative witness of all
the succeeding generations. The difference is twofold :
it is that between inheritance and acquisition; it is
that between an attested and a conjectural authority
from God.
188 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. III.
46. The inducements, of which the enumeration has
now closed, are all matters intrinsic to the Church ;
and up to this point I have endeavoured to show, that
rational men, entertaining the average belief of men
in a Creator, and serious in it, and being called to
exercise the functions of government, ought to apply
to the acts of government the offices of religion, for
the discharge of their own and of the national respon-
sibilities before God ; and that in inquiring, not al-
ready under Christian prepossessions, what is the best
religion for the profession of the State, they will, even
without taking into view the scope of particular doc-
trines, arrive naturally at the adoption of the Christian
Church.
47. If, however, the claim of the Church be pre-
ferable for State purposes, it does not seem at once to
follow that it should be exclusive,* as against sects of
Christianity professing to concur in its fundamental
doctrines. Yet some considerations of utility will lead
us towards this result, though they may scarcely reach
it. Some kind of unity is not only desirable but need-
ful for public decency and order. Now an unity of
opinion can never be absolutely insured, and it is pro-
perly a question of degree; and it would be impossible
for a government permanently to contract with any set
of opinions as such, because it could not be competent to
detect deviations in their subtle and nascent forms, so
that it might only become aware of their existence
when they were too strong to be corrected and repressed.
* This question is further pursued in chap. ii. $ 103 112 ; and in
chap. v.
CHAP. III.] WITH THE CHURCH. 189
And the name of Christianity affords no security what-
ever for the substantial unity or convergency of the
doctrines taught. There must be, for example, a far
wider space between Catholic Christianity and Unita-
rianism (regarded in the abstract), than there need be
between Unitarianism and the religion of the works of
Plato. We might, then, argue for the Church on
principles of reason, as offering, in her oneness and
permanency of communion, the only adequate guaran-
tee of that unity which is so important to the State.
190 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
CHAPTER IV.
THEORY OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND THE STATE.
PART III.
THE ABILITY OF THE STATE IN RESPECT TO RELIGION.
SECTION I. AS TO ITS EXTENSION.
1. IN the foregoing chapter it has been argued at
length that the State, as such, has a true and moral
personality, and should therefore profess and practise
a religion. That this sphere of duty includes the
particular obligations to adapt the laws to the princi-
ples of the State religion on all points of definite
contact between them, and to hold them generally
subordinate to such a regulating power; and to make
provision within its limits for the maintenance, and the
perpetuation from age to age, of the chosen system of
belief and worship ; by the instruction of the young
as they grow into consciousness and responsibility;
by supplying sacred ordinances to the poor, who are
so engrossed by physical necessities that they have
not the means of providing and supporting them on
their own account ; and by a pervading machinery for
soliciting the unwilling and the spiritually dead
through the agency of suasion. It has likewise been
shown how the law of interest coincides with the
higher yet parallel law of duty. The reasoning,
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 191
when it has arrived at this point, is met by a counter
allegation now to be described and examined.
2. Those writers upon national religion who are
hostile to the alliance between the civil and the
spiritual powers, avoiding for the most part the ethical
examination of their subject, have made amends, as it
were, for this timidity by their courage in contesting
even the modest proposition, that the powers of this
world are competent to render some amount of service
to religion. And they do not hesitate to assert, on
the other hand, that the agency of States, when em-
ployed for such a purpose, both deteriorates the quality
and curtails the quantity of religious observance
among the people.
3. Now it has at least the appearance of the very
extreme of paradox to contend that, while Christianity
confessedly demands the offering up of the whole
heart of every man to God, while art and science, and
even material pursuits, are capable always of substan-
tial, and generally of direct, consecration to Him, that
the greatest of all earthly powers, the very crown of
that human nature which the Gospel claims entire,
and the most conversant, after the domestic authority,
with moral subject-matter, namely, the governing
power, should be hopelessly and permanently dis-
qualified from all direct service to religion, and that,
too, contrary to the uniform persuasion and practice
of mankind.
4. Let us, however, attempt to grapple with this
paradox, and to show in succession, first, that govern-
192 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [cHAP. IV.
merit is qualified to be an instrument for the profession
and extension of religion ; and this both, 1 . by pecu-
niary, and, 2. by moral means, which last embrace the
various heads of worship and of the examples that it
affords ; of the adaptation of law to the rules of reli-
gion in all subject-matter determinable by them ; and
of indirect influence upon the tone and fabric of reli-
gion itself: secondly, that its putting such instrument-
ality into action is not naturally calculated to dete-
riorate, but, on the contrary, to improve the tone of
personal religion.
5. With respect to the first proposition, that the
State is competent to aid in the extension of religion,
it is chiefly contested so far as it regards the point of
pecuniary support : and it is contended * that the
spiritual condition of the United States of America is
more thriving than that of Great Britain ; that a
public expenditure on account of religion checks and
freezes the streams of private beneficence, and thus
prevents greater contributions than it supplies. With
this is incongruously associated the proposition, that
State assistance engenders a plethoric habit in the
teachers of religion, and that through the influence of
wealth they sink into a general torpor. But it often
happens that two forms of assertion, which can
scarcely be true together, may well be false together.
It may be that such is the case in the present instance,
and that we need decline neither the first question,
* For example, in the ' Narrative of a Visit to the Churches of
America,' by Messrs. Reed and Matheson.
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 193
whether the intervention of the State, as such, dimi-
nishes the aggregate of pecuniary aid to religion, nor
the second, whether it contaminates its moral cha-
racter by extravagance and corruption.
6. Now if it be true that religious worship, upon
the whole, is starved among us, is it really owing to
the legislative aid which it has received ?
In the first place, we should contend that Britain
is better supplied with religious ordinances, as far as
they are measured by quantity, than the North Ame-
rican republic ; and that those countries of the conti-
nent where the development of popular principles has
not yet been sufficient to cripple the ecclesiastical
action of the government, Prussia for example, are
more amply supplied than either ; the latter a fact
hardly, I believe, subjected to question, and of itself
apparently conclusive with reference to the objection.
7. Again. It is admitted that individual liberality
did once endow the Church sufficiently, at the very
least. It is said, Remove State agency, and individual
liberality will do the same again. But we are to ob-
serve that the same spirit which engendered individual
liberality, likewise elicited the contributions of the
State. The first has now decreased. It is proposed
to remove the second, which grew out of the first and
was a part of its increase ; but was not its excess, for,
on the contrary, the State, as will soon be shown,
restrained that excess. It followed the first, however,
in the way of natural consequence. And now it is
proposed to remove it, in order that the first may grow
VOL. i. o
1 94 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
again. Is it then so agreeable to reason, that a prin-
ciple should acquire strength by the utter eradication
of a germane principle ?
8. But is it then some peculiarity in the English
climate or constitution which inverts for us the laws
of human nature, and poisons religion in this island
by the very diet that sustains it elsewhere ? Does the
national spirit usually run counter to the tenor of
public law, instead of being represented in it ? Eng-
land has been long and honourably distinguished by
its pervading, full, and systematic legal provision for
the poor : and yet it is not less true that no circum-
stance in our social condition more excites the admira-
tion (I could name instances) of illustrious foreigners,
than the abundance in this country of charitable insti-
tutions for the aged, the orphan, the ignorant, the
helpless, the diseased, the deranged, which are sup-
ported by private and voluntary gifts. The mere
statement of such a supposition is its best refutation.
9. I conclude, therefore, that, according to all gene-
ral rules of prudence and reason, the contributions of
the State to religion are really additions to, and not,
as has been paradoxically taught, subtractions from,
the sum total of those means levied off " the mammon
of unrighteousness," which God has appointed and
experience has shown to be upon the whole among
the instruments for the maintenance and extension of
religion. I do not deny that in particular cases these
contributions may put a convenient excuse into the
mouth of the miser " why should he be at pains to
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 195
do what is done already from other sources?" but all
private liberality would have the very same effect.
These are exceptions, and not rules. Further, I do not
dispute that among sects which are not endowed by the
State, the sums which are given in charity will pass
in a narrower channel, and will be more specifically
appropriated to advancing the objects of the party,
while they leave the objects of general benevolence
almost without provision ; and thus there may be an
appearance, in some cases possibly more, of a greater
zeal for the temporal service of religion ; but though
I admit that their sympathies are differently distri-
buted, I deny that, according to our experience, the
members of national establishments are upon the
whole, when we take into view the entire range of
Christian liberality, more scanty givers than the re-
mainder of the community, however true it be that all
classes, as classes, are lamentably in arrear of the de-p
mands of Christian duty, not to mention Christian
gratitude and love.*
10. With respect to the second head of charge, let
us observe, that the objections to a state -religion,
grounded on the abuses connected with the control of
endowments, are not levelled, by those who use them,
at endowments in general, but at State endowments
in particular. But, upon looking coolly at the ques-
* See the able, heart-stirring, and pungent volume of the Rev.
H. W. Wilberforce, entitled 'The Parochial System.' I should also
refer to Dr. Wardlaw's ' Lectures on Establishments,' pp. 276 278, an
eloquent and powerful passage.
o '2
196 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
tion, we find that the abuses themselves attach to the
practice of endowment in general, not to that of State
endowment in particular. Undoubtedly, wherever
there is considerable property devoted to a particular
purpose, it holds out temptation to worldly men to
step in, with a view of enjoying the property and
neglecting the purpose. But this temptation exists in
full force, whether that property have been so dedi-
cated by an individual or by the State. Rather, in-
deed, the argument herefrom is in favour of national
establishments: because the State has much better
means, by its own perpetuity, of securing the perma-
nent administration of its gifts from abuse, and of
enforcing responsibility, than the individual who dies
and is forgotten, or at least is more uncertainly and
feebly represented in his descendants. Upon a gene-
ral survey, I do not see the slightest ground for main-
taining that, of two churches equally endowed, one
acknowledged and aided by the State, and the other
deriving equivalent revenues from private sources, the
latter will, cceteris paribus, be more effective as a reli-
gious society than the former. If, as an example, we
compare the Roman Catholic religion as professed in
Ireland with the same religion on the Continent, we
are testing the argument at a disadvantage ; because
in Ireland it is an unendowed as well as an unesta-
blished church ; but neither here do I think any infer-
ence can be drawn unfavourable to the above positions.
11, Doubtless, it remains to the adversary to con-
test the expediency of endowment generally, whatever
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 197
be its source, and to maintain that the Church ought
to live only from day to day ; although he would do so
in the face of all precept and all practice, with such
exceptions only as scarcely break the uniformity of the
rule. It is manifest that he would thus get over the
temptations afforded by endowment to indolent per-
sons ; but it is far from being equally clear that he
would exclude a yet more dangerous class, of those,
namely, who speak to the passions, and the fancies,
and the prepossessions of men, and who not merely
neglect, but positively pervert, the truth of God.
12. The notice, however, of this objection, which
properly lies, not against establishment but endow-
ment, naturally introduces in this place an argument
tending to show that endowment has among its se-
condary results some which are positively beneficial as
well as some that have their hazards. Wherever the
pecuniary maintenance of religion and its ministers is
not referred to the will of the congregation, a system
of appointment other than that of popular election has
usually prevailed. Endowment does but ill harmonise
with the very nature of sectarianism, inasmuch as it
tends to introduce something of independence into the
religious institution itself, and liberates it, at least in
part, from the dominion of those successive wills which
are too apt to revel in its arbitrary control. And be-
sides, it seems at least to be reasonable that the parties
who endow, or their representatives, should appoint
those who are to receive the fruits of the endowment.
I am not here, however, to inquire into the justice of
198 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
this principle ; but only to observe that history and
long experience prove a connection de facto between
fixed property or stipends for the clergy on the one
hand, and what is termed patronage on the other.
Although I am not prepared to say that the converse
holds equally good, and that, where the sacred order
have depended on voluntary and occasional support,
there the pastor has always been designated to his
office by the flock.
13. The principle of endowment, thus connected in
practice with patronage on the one hand, is likewise
historically associated with the national or public esta-
blishment of religion on the other, to such an extent
that, while every religious establishment is ex vi termini
more or less endowed, no Christian society has ever
acquired income or possessions large enough to form
an item of any moment in the national wealth, unless
when associated with the State; so that endowment
leads to establishment as its natural consummation.
I do not knpw that even the Church, before the time
of Constantine, can form a substantial exception to the
truth of this rule; and wherever an historical con-
nection is found to be nearly universal, we may safely
infer the existence of a moral bond. Establishment,
then, is connected with endowment, and endowment
with patronage. But further, endowment and pa-
tronage imply that the minister is, in a considerable
degree, independent of the mass of the people.
14. And first of the religious uses of endowment. As
having a tendency to give to the minister of religion
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 199
some degree of exemption from the arbitrary influence
of his congregation, it has also a tendency to preserve
the purity of doctrine. Plato deemed it scandalous
and at variance with the laws of virtue, to teach for a
fee. St. Paul claimed that those who ministered in
the Gospel should live by their ministry:* but the
vital powers given to the Church enable her to admit
many popular influences, which, if she dealt with
mere abstractions of philosophy, and not with a living
covenant of grace, she would be obliged jealously to
exclude. And yet who does not see that the Apostle
himself, in writing to his converts, that he had laboured
for his own support, because he would not be charge-
able unto any of them,t affords an express recognition
of that truth for which we here contend, namely, that
when the Christian flock are placed habitually in the
position of paymasters, notions of pride and self-suffi-
ciency will infallibly associate themselves with that
function, and men will claim the right to determine
upon the doctrine, for whose inculcation they are con-
tinually reminded that they supply the pecuniary
means ? Perhaps it was also a similar principle of
delicacy in the management of temporalities, which
induced the Apostles to commit to the brethren the
choice of the persons who were to be ordained dea-
cons,;); and which led St. Paul to take with him on
his journey, to distribute the funds raised for the
churches of Palestine, a companion chosen, not by
one particular congregation, but by the generality
* 1 Cor. ix. 14. + 1 Thcss. ii. 9; 2 These, iii. 8. $ Acts vi. 1.
200 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
o5 6 STTCLIVOS sv TtS sua-yyeTuo) 8ia TraoYov rtSv exxXijtnaJv*
OM fMVov 8, aXXa xa) ^s<goTOV>)9s<j 6flro TO>V ixxtojeruoy,
x. T. X.*
15. From this principle, that the purveyor of the
pecuniary means is ever apt, rightly or wrongly (in
most cases rightly, but in all he is inclined), to be-
come the judge of the work performed, arises the
undue dictation of the State, where the clergy are
supported by annual and revocable votes, or in
any manner depending on the will of the existing
secular administration a dictation which it requires
very stringent rules and precautions to prevent.
Hence also the tyranny of the people, of the com-
bined many or the wealthy few, where they close
or open the purse at pleasure. Hence the blessing
of a provision in fixed property, which operates
as a part of the permanent law and organisation
of the country, and which does not immediately
depend, nor js it at all felt to depend, upon the fa-
vourable or adverse fluctuations, from time to time,
of human will. As the first of these arrangements
tends strongly to Erastianism, so the second is calcu-
lated to give an unbounded scope to the exercise of
private judgment in religion, and to the disregard of
all the restraints of authority and of the general
reason : and this the more, in proportion as those,
who by payment control their instructors, are nu-
merous.
16. This is not a period in which an individual can
* 2 Cor. viii. 18, 19.
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 201
contend against numbers, without calling to his aid
some auxiliaries, such as custom, authority, prescrip-
tion. A single patron, therefore, in presenting a
clergyman, does not, in general, look for an organ of
his own sentiments as suck, but for one who will
convey the principles which are received in his par-
ticular religious communion or party ; and he relies
on the fact of their habitual reception as a counter-
poise to any movement which a popular disapproba-
tion at the time may seem to carry. The patron,
therefore, does not claim the right of moulding the
doctrine which is to be inculcated in the same manner
as it is claimed and exercised where the people elect,
since numbers have, according to the present senti-
ment, an intrinsic weight, which the individual has
not. Hence patronage becomes a conservative ele-
ment in religion ; and popular election, on the other
hand, gives great encouragement to innovation in the
matter of teaching ; independently of the other results,
beneficial or injurious, which have been found to
attend each mode of settlement respectively.
17. And indeed, more generally, it seems hardly
too much to assume, that, upon the whole, religious
truth, of whatever amount, is safer in the hands of
teachers than in those of the taught ; in those of men
who devote their minds specifically to the subject, and
accept it in lieu of any worldly profession, than in
those of the crowd, who have other objects upon which
to bestow their chief energies, and who, for the most
part, bestow upon this such a residue only of their
202 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
attention as fails to be absorbed by the material wants
and interests of life. Not that in the hands of either
it is absolutely secure ; nor that it can anywhere be
pure, except under the safeguards which God has ap-
pointed. But such elements or fractional parts of
truth as are embodied in any system of religion, will,
upon the whole, be better preserved by those most
devoted to that system, than by the mass of its nomi-
nal adherents. It follows that a considerable degree
of freedom in the condition of the clergy from the
control of their immediate flocks is advantageous to
religion. Doubtless the watchmen require to be
watched, and a compound action, of the teachers and
the people reciprocally, affords a better guarantee than
that of each taken singly would supply : still it re-
mains true, that the voluntary method tends to give a
preponderating influence, in determining the doctrine
which shall be taught, to the less qualified class ; and
the method of endowment, and therefore of establish-
ment, which is so much akin to it, verges in the opposite
direction. Thus by a chain of causes we find a real
connection practically established between the union
of Church and State, and that permanency of religious
teaching, which is one of the notes and conditions of
its purity.
18. If then we are to assume the principle of en-
dowment, is it meant to be seriously alleged that there
are fundamental objections to its being put in practice
by the State, as introducing lethargy, extravagance,
and corruption ? that, while private vigilance is able
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 203
for itself to secure the efficient management of pecu-
niary resources, all services which the Government
superintends, conducts, or aids, are distinguished by a
spirit of inaction, or of wasteful extravagance ? On
the contrary, it is notorious that the wholesome jea-
lousy of the people, the exposure and free discussion of
our public accounts, a comprehensive scale and an ex-
tended agency, and the credit that in every well-regu-
lated State attaches to public employments, enable the
Government upon the whole to realise, not perhaps
everywhere a rigid economy, but a measure of it at
least greater than that which the average of private
agency would secure.
19. But there is another material distinction : its
aid would have one obvious advantage, that it would
more nearly conform to a regular and permanent
standard, and would be less likely either in an age of
superstition to load the priesthood with a corrupting
excess of wealth, or in a selfish and worldly period to
reduce it to an indecent poverty and dependence. It
was the lavish profusion of private persons which, be-
fore the Reformation, had placed in the hands of the
Church so large a proportion of the landed property
of this and of other countries. It has been stated that
it actually reached one-third of the whole in England,
and one moiety in Scotland. If we admit that the
tithe was given by legislative enactment, still it was
not the tithe, but the bequests of estates, which caused
the enormous temporal aggrandisement of the Church.
In the mean time the State was endeavouring with a
204 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
wise economy to restrict this practice by enacting and
re-enacting the statutes of mortmain. Upon the other
hand, the present disposition of the national endow-
ments of religion in Scotland is commonly quoted as a
model of economy ; and it is certainly entitled to the
praise of working great results from very limited
means, with as little of evil motive or conduct min-
gling in their administration, as the infirmity of hu-
man nature will allow us under the most favourable
circumstances to expect. And yet this most thriftily-
ordered system is not the result of any private economy,
but of a statute of King Charles the First. Further ;
not only is this a religious system supported by the
State, but it is one in which the government exercises
directly a very considerable proportion of the pa-
tronage.
20. Upon the other hand, I think experience proves,
that it has been reserved for some other than nation-
ally-recognised systems of religion to demonstrate by
experiment, upon what scanty supplies of the goods of
this world the teachers of religion may be maintained,
Independently however of the shame, the scandal, and
the sin of refusing the decencies of life to those whom
we acknowledge as ministers of the altar, I contend
that this excessive fluctuation in the scales of private
liberality is itself a most serious misfortune to religious
interests ; and that the religious action of governments
has been beneficial, as upon other grounds so on this ;
that it has tended to reduce the wealth of the clerical
estate in lavish times below exorbitant excess, and
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH, 205
that it now tends to sustain the provision for that body
above the level of a miserable penury.*
21. I would further observe, that this opinion of the
actual inability of the State to promote the pure de-
signs of religion is one opposed not less to authority
than to the results of general reasoning. Endowments
of every kind, and of infinite variety in amount and
form, have prevailed from the days of Abraham at least
until our own, among Pagans and Christians, among
members of establishments and dissenters, in sects and
in the Church. They have been given by all; but by the
best and wisest, more than by the weak and bad. They
have been given under the direct sanction and ordi-
nance of God : and it is difficult indeed to reconcile
this recorded fact with the novel and extravagant
supposition, that they intrinsically tend more to the
depression and extinction of religion in the hands of
its legitimate ministers, than to its maintenance and its
propagation.
* In Wilberforce's Correspondence, Mr. Crosse, a clergyman of
Bradford, writes that the dissenters are gaining ground, and " must
accomplish the downfall of the Establishment." One of the causes
he assigns is the small expense at which they can supply them with
ministers: " Mr. H. here has not, I suppose, above 20/. per annum ;
but then he teaches a school and keeps a shop." See the Correspond-
ence of Dr. Doddridge (vol. i. pp. 217, 257, 296, &c.), who thought
himself at Kibworth " passing rich," not " with forty pounds a year,"
but under it ; the Autobiography of a Dissenting Minister ; and the
Account of the Distribution of the Parliamentary Grant to Protestant
Dissenting Ministers, printed for the House of Commons, Sess. 1837,
No. 127. It is painful to add, that perhaps the most wretchedly pro-
vided of all classes of ministers in the Christian world at least until
within the last three years, during which something has been done to
mitigate the evil were those of the Scottish Episcopal communion.
(See Reports of the Scottish Episcopal Church Society.)
206 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
22. But further : this opinion is one that has all the
marks of an impression received through inward bias
and through an accommodation, unconscious I doubt
not, but yet not the less real, to outward circumstances.
Let us consider who are the parties that declare them-
selves to repudiate on principle the pecuniary aid of
the State to religion. They are, so far as my know-
ledge goes, a few of the members of the Roman Com-
munion in France, a large number of their fellow-reli-
gionists in Ireland, and the majority of the Scottish
and English Dissenters. As respects the former,
they are so few that they can hardly be termed a
class; and the state of things in France is so tho-
roughly inconformable to nature, that they may have
grounds for their opinion there which it would be
ridiculous to apply to a more regularly organised soci-
ety. As respects the two latter classes, we are at once
struck by the fact, that the aid which they condemn
is to them inaccessible ; while it is given, under their
very eyes, to schemes of religion which they consider
spiritually, in some instances also fiscally, their rivals.*
Further : there are in the British Colonies members
of the very same bodies. But in Canada, in New
South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, and elsewhere,
where the assistance of the State is not confined to the
pale of a single establishment, these very classes, hold-
ing the same discipline and faith, show no repugnance
to receive endowments from the State. Most remark-
ably has this case been illustrated during the year
* Address of the Board of Scottish Dissenters, 1835, p. 9.
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 207
1 840, when a Bill passed through Parliament, assign-
ing certain proportions of the lands called Clergy
Reserves, in the Canadas, for the use of the English
and Scottish Church Establishments ; and referring the
remaining portion to the disposition of the Governor
of the Colony for religious purposes, avowedly and
notoriously in order that he might be at liberty to ap-
ply it, in obedience to the general desire of the people,
to the endowment of Romanism and of Protestant
Dissent in various forms ; yet no voice was raised in
Parliament, nor in any part of the United Kingdom,
to avert this pollution. Am I not, then, justified in
saying, when I find that this opinion does not among
its own advocates stand the test of experience, that it
has evidently been formed under the influence of a
ruling though secret bias ?
23. As it has now I trust been shown, that the State
is able to contribute at least something to the exten-
sion of religion by pecuniary means, the only remain-
ing question to complete its obligation to act is this :
whether that something be required ? or is the zeal of
individuals at all times, is it in particular under the
present circumstances of society, sufficient to secure
that the ordinances of religion shall be brought within
the reach of every member .of the community, and
shall fully address their solicitations to his con-
science ?
24. Now, of all the parts of this subject, probably
none have been so thoroughly wrought out as the in-
sufficiency of what is termed the voluntary principle.
208 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
It has been shown that, while a real want, under the
circumstances of modern society, ordinarily produces a
supply of most things necessary, advantageous, or
agreeable to men, and while therefore it is needless to
use adventitious means in order to provide any com-
modity or good for which there is a natural desire, in
the case of religion the desire is least when the want is
greatest, and those who are most indifferent upon the
subject most require to be solicited by the public in-
stitutions of religion, not less for the welfare of the
State than for the salvation of their own souls. It has
also been unanswerably shown, that there are very
large portions of the community whose temporal
means are insufficient to enable them to bear the ex-
pense of religious establishments : and perhaps no
one, who looks at the competition for employment in
an old arid thickly-peopled country, will be of any
other opinion than that such inability is likely to con-
tinue. Arid those who are at first merely unable to
pay will, if neglected, in no long course of time, add
to inability a rooted and inveterate unwillingness.
25. The next step in the argument is, to point
to the actual amount of voluntary exertion, and to
require from the adversary, as we fairly may, the
acknowledgment of its total insufficiency. On this
subject no details need be adduced. It is admitted on
all hands that the religious provision of our town po-
pulation is lamentably scanty. The conclusion is yet
more inevitable, if we observe the internal workings of
all that sectarian machinery which depends upon the
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 209
voluntary principle, for we find that its general law is
to provide for those who can pay for the provision, but
that its whole structure is such as to leave no room for
the argument that the agency of government paralyses
its exertions ; inasmuch as it evidently does not con-
template or tend towards supplying on a large scale
the wants of the really poor ; it leaves indeed for them
a decent margin as a subsidiary appendage, but ap-
plies its main efforts merely towards organising a
system, of which value received shall be the law, and
in which the wine and the milk are to be bought with
money and with price.*
26. Perhaps, however, there has been something of
sanguine overstatement by the advocates of establish-
ments, when they have magnified the efficacy of go-
vernment aid in opposition to the feebleness of isolated
and individual exertions. The truth seems to be, that
we require both. The tithe system of Europe arose,
it can hardly be doubted, not according to either of
the extreme opinions which have been held respecting
it, but from the combined action of public law and pri-
vate will. We want in this day a similar concurrence.
The assistance of the State should be so given as to
stimulate the benevolence of individuals, not to super-
sede it ; as the national personality and responsibilities
do not supersede the personality and responsibilities of
individuals.
27. The question at issue, then, is not fairly repre-
sented, when it is said that it is between what is termed
* Isaiah Iv. 1.
VOL. I. P
210 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
the voluntary principle on the one hand, and an esta-
blishment by the State on the other. In truth, it is
between the voluntary principle alone on the one
hand, and that principle in association with the co-
operating principle of an establishment on the other.
When the State has done its uttermost there is still
ample scope left for the voluntary principle, or indi-
vidual beneficence, both in the spiritual and in the
corporal works of mercy; and that which genuine
distress may supplicate, whether for soul or body, is
the request of Christ. There is no example of a reli-
gious system brought to a condition of repletion by
the largesses of the State. In our own times and
country at least there is, by common confession, a
great void, which neither public nor private exertion
has yet filled. While we are told that State contribu-
tions have deadened the action of personal generosity,
we are quite as free to reply, that it is. the stint of right
example in the conduct of the State to which we owe
it, that single persons have not been effectually re-
minded of their duty. While it is clear that the State,
as a supreme,, a permanent, and a pervading power,
has means of giving a degree of system and univer-
sality to its exertions, which no individual or minor
association can command.
28. The objection which has now been considered
is held for the most part by those who hold the scheme
of what is called Voluntaryism ; a term which has
gained considerable currency in Scotland, but whose
introduction into the controversy of Church and State
CHAP. IV.J WITH THE CHURCH. 211
has been unfortunate. It tends to confusion rather
than elucidation, for it is as inappropriate in its signi-
fication as ungainly in its structure. The principle
which it designates is of the very life and heart of
Christianity, and no one professing obedience to Christ
can deny the imperative duty of using the utmost
exertions with the freest will for the promotion of His
glory in His kingdom. But that which is thus gene-
ral and elementary has been applied as if it were spe-
cific and distinctive : and with excellent reason those
to whom the appellation is sometimes given as a term
of something like reproach or depreciation, reply,* that
they glory in the name. Persons who have thus been
compelled or provoked to usurp a designation to which
they have no title, do, in fact, hold precisely the same
affirmative principle with the advocates of a State
religion. That in which they differ from us, that
from which they ought to derive their distinctive epi-
thet, if such they need, is their negative principle, the
principle by which they forbid that which we would
encourage, namely, the participation of the nation
collectively in the glorious work of promoting the
Gospel.
29. It is natural enough that those, who will admit
nothing of the world to be in the Church, should also
deny that anything of religion can be in the State.
Founding religious societies upon the basis of personal
experience, certain classes regard the generality of
baptized persons, who do not live according to their
* Wardlaw'a Lectures, i. p. 38.
P 2
212 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [cHAP. IV.
obligations, as actually out of the Church ; and thus
regarding the Church as in a separate precinct, and
the State as essentially though not nominally heathen,
they are consistently led to regard any incorporation
of the Church with the State, or of the State with the
Church, as an unnatural attempt at the combination
of spiritual life with spiritual death. In short, where
men hold these two opinions : first, that the Church,
which is the body and spouse of Christ, is visible; and,
secondly, that it includes not all who are baptised in
its communion, but only a certain select number out
of them : then it seems to me to be a logical conse-
quence, that they should regard the connection of
Church and State as adulterous and accursed, just as
we should have regarded it if it had been adjusted,
in all its particulars, under Nero or Domitian.
30. But it is one among the strange features of the
different forms of human opinion, that the combina-
tion of a true proposition with a false one sometimes
leads men to a practical error, from which the substi-
tution of another falsehood for the truth they still
retain might preserve them. Those described in the
former section, together with the false doctrine that
the baptism of the Church does not make a member
of the Church, have the true doctrine that the Church
is properly visible. Hence they say, let there be no
union between the Church and the State. Now, if
with the first untrue opinion they held a second, that
the Church is invisible, then they would be consistent
in saying, that though it would be impious, if it were
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 213
possible, to unite the Spouse of Christ with the State,
a society of which, perhaps, but very few members
belong to her, yet there is no impiety, or even impro-
priety, in uniting the external and, as it were, figura-
tive Church, which is partly of Christians and partly
not, with a State similarly composed. Thus, in the
particular case, by a double error congruity is attained,
and a tendency mischievous in practice is avoided
And the supposition is not wholly imaginary. There
are some among us whose opinions correspond to the
latter as well as the former of the two classes which
have just been described. But the latter class appears
to be relaxing, by a parallel process, in both those tenets
which I have described as erroneous ; and the general
mind more and more clearly apprehends, in the Church
of England, the positions that the Church is visible,
and that those whom she baptizes are Christians bound
to obey all the commands of Christ, and therefore
furnished with the means of doing so ; and if neglect-
ing them, neglecting them at their peril and to their
greater and heavier condemnation. So that we may
hope, together with a fuller appreciation of the truth
of Christianity so far as it respects the Church, her
members will likewise attain a deeper and more con-
sistent conviction, that her connection with the State
is a fulfilment and not a violation of the Christian
obligations of the country.
31. Again, however, it has been largely and forcibly
argued, particularly in the Scottish controversy re-
specting establishments, that the territorial division of
214 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
a country is a powerful instrument, or a necessary
condition, of maintaining at a maximum the social in-
fluences of religion. By such a division is meant a
distribution into districts of such manageable size
that the minister or ministers of religion within each
may be held responsible for offering, and therefore
may be physically, at least, able to offer, to the whole
population, the ordinances of the Church ; and where
they may stand to avail themselves of the thousand
collateral opportunities of access to the heart, and of
influence upon conduct, which their admirably favoured
position and the innumerable contingencies of life
afford. It is contended that such a territorial division
as this, or, to call it by its proper appellation, that the
reality along with the name of the parochial system,
imply almost of necessity the agency of the govern-
ment. It would be too much, perhaps, to say that
such a measure could not be effected except by this
means ; but there has been no example of it ; and I
believe it is beyond dispute that it was not until the
State had become the auxiliary of the Church, in the
period of the Roman empire, that she was able to
strike her roots throughout the remote and rural dis-
tricts, as well as those of dense population, and to give
universality to her sway by draining off the whole of
the votaries that so long continued to crowd the rival
worship of the temples. In this manner, by a moral
action she prepared the way for those legal prohibi-
tions of Paganism, which were at length issued by
imperial authority.
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 215
32. But suppose it to be said, that the effect of the
agency of the State by endowments is, in matters of
religion, not to convince but to corrupt ; is to raise up
a host of illegitimate secondary motives of advantage
and detriment, to attract men to one scheme and repel
them from another, independently of their truth, thus
perpetrating a double enormity ; that is to say, first,
where the truth is received, vitiating its reception by
the admixture of inferior motives ; and secondly, esta-
blishing an authority which is as notoriously capable
of being used for the support of falsehood in religion
as of orthodoxy. This is, in fact, to take refuge in
generalities from the pressure of argument. The an-
swer to such a double-pointed objection is this, that it
lies against the entire moral government of God, who
has sanctioned the use of secondary motives for draw-
ing the minds of men upward, and who has also filled
the world with influences annexed to responsible
beings who may use or abuse them, but must answer
strictly for their application of the Divine gift. From
that liability to abuse with which State power is
charged, no human instrumentality is exempt. On
the other hand, as respects that admixture of temporal
inducements which must enter more or less into the
application of our theory to practice, they form a sys-
tem of instruments sanctioned by revelation within
due limits : the influence of this system is not more
likely to transgress those limits when the State is the
agent, than when it is employed by individuals : its
abuse is a thing occasional and collateral, an accident
216 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
and not a law of the system, which, like every other,
must claim to be judged by its laws and not by its
accidents.
33. At this point, however, we are encountered by
an objection which is conspicuous among the inven-
tions of the day, an objection of a political rather than
a religious cast, and one that seems to form, after all,
the staple and the groundwork of the generality of
the reasonings, as well as the passions, that are mar-
shalled against the principle of national religion. It
is commonly couched in this form ; that governments
have no right to apply funds of the State, which are
the produce of taxation, to the promotion of religion ;
and that in so doing they are actually guilty of mal-
versation and breach of their trust; because these
funds belong to the individuals who have paid the
taxes, and not to their rulers. This seems to be unhe-
sitatingly laid down as an universal affirmative propo-
sition. I will* however, state the objection in the
words of one of those who advance it. " The indi-
vidual devotes that which is his own, in the exercise
of a natural and inalienable right, to his own ends ;
the sovereign, in endowing a particular faith and wor-
ship, devotes what is not his own, but his people's, to
ends that please himself, without consulting them."*
34. I begin by asking, in what sense it is meant to
be asserted, that the funds in the public treasury are
* Dr. Wardlaw's Lectures on National Church Establishments, lect.
vL p. 251. See also pp. 32, 33, 47- See also the Voluntary System,
pp. 151, 189.
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 217
the property of the tax-payers ? Surely it cannot be
in a legal sense. They have neither the custody, nor
the power to appropriate, nor the power to alienate.
But are these funds constitutionally, if not legally, the
property of those upon whom they were levied ? I
know not whether, in any of the conventional consti-
tutions of recent years and generations, there be such
a phenomenon as a limitation of the taxing power ;
but if there be, it has no application to countries
which have ancient prescriptive constitutions, as, for
instance, England, where deeds such as Magna Charta
and the Bill of Rights, however important their prac-
tical operation, are in their principle purely decla-
ratory, because they purport to state and to guarantee
the security of pre-existing and indubitable civil claims,
which had formerly been liable at particular times to
be questioned, or to be overridden by power. It
would be very difficult to argue that the constitutional
practice of England gives any sanction even to the
doctrine, that the money of the State is strictly the
property of the tax -payers, subject to the condition of
being administered at the will of their representatives ;
and this proposition, if proved, would still be very far
from satisfying the objectors, who impugn the right
of these representatives themselves to dispose of the
produce of taxation for the purpose of promoting a
national religion.
35. The arrangements of the British constitution
appear to have been elaborately and wisely con-
structed, in the manner least calculated to favour
218 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
abstract theories of right, but most likely to avoid all
real difficulty and injustice. The members of the
House of Commons bear the mixed character of repre-
sentatives of the people and counsellors of the sove-
reign. They have the exclusive right of passing
money resolutions, and of introducing and altering
money bills. But no such resolution can be passed,
that is to say, no money can be given by the House of
Commons except upon the motion of the crown, to
which the initiative is reserved ; and no money bill
becomes law unless it receives the assent of the Upper
House and of the crown in its legislative capacity.
It is true, indeed, that monies are from session to ses-
sion* made applicable to their specified purposes, on
account of the inconvenience resulting from the sus-
pension of funds necessary for the immediate demands
of the service of the State, after they have been voted
in the Lower House, but before they have been defini-
tively appropriated. This, however, is an arrangement
of public convenience, made under an ordinary act of
the legislature, not grounded upon any constitutional
right or principle ; and the power thus conceded, we
are to remember, is granted upon conditions which
are to be fulfilled, not by the single action of the
House of Commons, but by the joint action of the
House of Commons and the Crown.
36. Thus, then, the immediate power of granting
money is divided between the executive and the
popular portion of the legislature ; and only by
* By a clause in the Bills of Ways and Means.
CHAP. IV.J WITH THE CHURCH. 219
annual statutes is the House of Lords, with its own
consent, limited in its means of intervention to a
subsequent stage. And those who, on behalf of the
people, enjoy a portion of this power, are them-
selves as truly called to act for the Crown and the
State in general as for the people themselves. If
their power were absolute, and their character were
absolute, it might with some colour of plausibility be
contended, that by virtue of such exclusive derivation
the funds of the State were still in a constitutional, if
not in a formally legal, sense, the property of the tax-
payers ; but, on the contrary, we see that their power
is partial, and their character is mixed : they are free
to refuse, but not free to give ; and their freedom to
refuse implies, not that the funds of the State when
legally granted, are still the property of the people
at large, but that every security ought to be pro-
vided on behalf of the people, through the instru-
mentality of their representatives, against the undue
and improvident abstraction or waste of that which
is their property until granted, but ceases to be so
when granted.
37. Great confusion, over and above all other evils,
infallibly arises, when things that have received their
determinate form only from positive institution, are
attempted to be dealt with as matter of natural and
inalienable right. Such is the case with the right of
property. Paley, indeed, has pronounced it to be
really the creature of law;* for it was his habit to seize
* Moral and Political Philosophy, b. iii. ch. iv.
220 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [cHAP. IV.
upon some clear, palpable, and proximate idea for the
solution of questions, which have a deeper ground in
the nature of things ; he is therefore much more per-
spicuous than true. Were his doctrine unequivocally
sound, it would reach far beyond the purpose of my
argument; but let us admit, in qualification of his prin-
ciple, that certain real rights must have arisen out of
the original grant by the Creator of the earth and the
things appertaining to it.* Yet still those rights only
receive their determinate form from civil law, which
divides among individuals that which was given to the
race, and draws the lines of demarcation which pre-
vent the right of one man from growing into the
wrong of another. Undoubtedly the grant to man-
kind at large implied the necessity of such subsidiary
regulations, and therefore, when considered in general,
they are under Divine sanction ; but the details of the
arrangements are most clearly referable, when con-
sidered singly, only to human law as the efficient
cause of their existence. How, therefore, can any
natural and inalienable right be pleaded to a particular
form of that, which only receives its definite palpable
existence from positive institution ? How can any
such right be termed property, when all property is
essentially determinate and precise, and when such a
right is essentially indeterminate and vague ? How
can a right of property, strictly so called, be pleaded
against the power from which alone it derives its ex-
istence? There may, indeed, be moral or constitu-
* Gen. i. 2629 ; ix. 3.
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 221
tional obligations, which ought to restrain the legis-
lature in its dealings with property. These, however,
are objections, relevant not to the question of the com-
petency of the agent, but to that of the propriety of
the act. It is with the former inquiry alone that we
are at present dealing.
38. So far, then, it has been argued, that there is
no consideration flowing out of the nature of property
which, in limine, precludes the question whether go-
vernors may rightfully apply the funds of the State in
the promotion of a national religion; and that, if there
be a disqualification of this kind, it must have its
origin in some special provision inserted in the
contract of government for a particular State. It
follows that this can have no application to a country
which has no such provision in its contract, much less
to one which has no such contract. Both those,
therefore, who regard the monarchy of England as
paternal, and those who hold it to be founded more
properly on an original covenant, should agree that
there is no bar of this kind in the case with which we
are more immediately concerned.
39. Now, I would submit, that the funds in the
State treasury, so far as they are property at all, are
the property of the nation ; of course it is meant be-
fore they have been specifically appropriated. But
the nation is not an aggregation of individuals ; it is
a collective body, having an organ to act on its
behalf, and empowered and bound to apply these
funds for its benefit. To say they are the property of
the nation is one thing ; to say they are the property
222 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
of the tax-payers is another, and widely different.
And this, although the sum of the individual tax-
payers may nearly compose the entire nation. Why,
then, this distinction ? Firstly, because there is a con-
cealed fallacy in the phrase. It is intended to support
the claim of individuals to protest against a particular
appropriation of what they call their money. But, in
truth, as individuals, in no sense, or shadow of a sense,
have they any property in the funds of the State.
An individual not only does not possess, cannot ap-
propriate, cannot alienate them; but further, he has
no claim to have them employed for his individual
advantage, otherwise than as he may conform to the
conditions of the laws, of which conditions the State,
and not he, is the judge. Therefore, for this reason
do I object to the proposition, that the funds of the
State are the property of the payers of taxes ; because
it really contemplates them as individuals while
seeming to carry all the rights of the nation, and
that, regarded in that capacity, they have really
nothing approaching to the nature of a property in
those funds.
40. In admitting them to be the property of the
nation, I may afford to regard the term in its full
unrestricted sense, as carrying with it the power of
disposal, and not merely the right to receive the use
and benefit to arise out of them ; for it will still
remain true, and decisive against the objection, that
the property of the nation is to be administered by
that organ of the nation, which has given to it its
determinate character as property, and which has
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 223
authority and discretion to decide upon the mode of
its application, with no other appeal than such as the
constitution has given. It in no way follows from
this admission, that the popular will is to be cbn-
sulted ivith respect to the appropriation of public
funds, further than as that will is expressed through
the most authentic medium which the constitution
has provided. The tax-payers are entitled to such
application of the funds of the nation, not as tax-
payers but as subjects. For, under an altered system
of revenue, it might happen that the majority of them
should pay no taxes whatever, and yet their equitable
rights would remain wholly unimpaired.
41. And I believe the common notion", which forms
the real groundwork of the proposition I have quoted
above from Dr. Wardlaw, is not a formal claim of
property in the State funds, but this, that there is an
injustice on the part of the legislature in such an
employment of the monies obtained from ikdividuals,
as that which is warranted by the theory of a State
religion. That it is hard and unfair to take from the
private person what he has industriously earned or
lawfully inherited, and to apply it in a manner per-
haps independent of, perhaps even opposed to, his
positive will.
42. When this plea is advanced, we are entitled to
ask the question if this money was earned by in-
dustry, how was that industry made available ? How
is the exchange of commodities facilitated and ad-
justed, how is the market of industry kept open, how
224 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
are the fruits of industry secured against violence and
fraud, but by public law ? If this money was in-
herited, how is the right of inheritance framed and
guaranteed, and its regular courses realised, except by
the same public law ? If, therefore, the justice or
injustice of the levying of money for the support of
religion be placed simply upon this issue, whether the
individual has not contributed greater advantages to
society at large than he has received from it, and
whether, therefore, there can be any residuary balance
in favour of the nation, entitling it through its organ
to demand and exact somewhat more of the indi-
vidual, the answer is plain. I admit, indeed, that the
tendency of our own economical condition, the rapid
growth of commercial and manufacturing, and the
relative decrease of agricultural occupations, with the
collateral circumstances, must be to diminish the
debt of the individual to the great family into which
he is born, and to make him regard society, less and
less as a mother, more and more as a mistress, or
even as a foe. Yet still it remains true, that in every
tolerably, nay, every however wretchedly regulated
State, the individual is much more a debtor than a
creditor to that social constitution in which he has
been by nature thrown, and without which he must
have been satisfied with ministering to the most im-
perious necessities of his animal life, and must have
held that life itself on a tenure liable at all times to
determine through violence or want. The worst of
all actual or, humanly speaking, possible govern-
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 225
ments appears decidedly preferable to anarchy ; and
in the same proportions individuals lie under some
positive debt to the community.
43. The true condition, under which the State is
"morally bound to administer the property of the
nation, is this : that its disposal be such as, times and
circumstances fully considered, is, according to the
judgment and conscience of the State, conducive, in
the highest attainable degree, to the best interests of
the nation. Nothing can be more absurd than the
idea, that a right of property remains in individuals
after the money has been legally demanded by the
State. Nothing can be more untenable than an
argument against the competency of the State to
demand by law payments for religious purposes, from
any notion that it is already a debtor to the indi-
vidual, and so may not ask anything more from him ;
or, that it is incompatible with the idea of property.
Whatever is for the best interests of the nation as
such, is matter for the consideration of the State as
such, so far as it is intrinsically and extrinsically
qualified. As a State it is, according to the idea of
government, competent to entertain every question
which has relation to the interests of the nation as
such,* and to apply and define its own agency there-
upon.
44. It may, however, appear to some as if this
were a stringent and arbitrary doctrine, alien to the
spirit of free institutions ; but a little consideration
* Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy, b. vi. ch. x.
VOL. I. Q
226 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
will remove any such idea. Be it remembered, that
the intent of those constitutional arrangements which
go to establish genuine freedom, is by no means to
narrow the scope and impoverish the functions of
government, but the reverse. Their immediate pur-
pose is, to give security to life, person, property, and
all private rights. And they imply so much of parti-
cipation in, and control upon, the political action of
the State, as is needful for attaining the highest de-
gree of that security. But they pay regard to each
of such rights in its due measure. For example, they
will take something from the property of a man in
order to secure by an efficient judiciary and police his
life and person from harm, as well as to ensure to
him the peaceable possession of the remainder of that
property. And their general and highest purpose is,
by guaranteeing negative and material advantages, to
leave room, and likewise to give aid, for the positive
and superior development of his nature. No one can
reasonably contend that, having thus made this sub-
sidiary provision, free institutions are thereby dis-
qualified from filling up the outline they have drawn,
from building on the ground which they have cleared;
from operating actively, that is to say, in pursuit of
any end, to which a State as such is competent, and
which is both advantageous to the people, and practi-
cable with regard to the circumstances of the time.
45. In fact, the constitutional question which has
been considered, is one that provides its own solu-
tion. The will of the people has a certain sphere
CHAP. IV. J WITH THE CHURCH. 227
prescribed by our constitutional laws for its action.
Within that sphere it works freely and energetically ;
beyond it, a person pretending to sobriety of judg-
ment will, I think, for ordinary purposes, decline to
recognise it at all. If he do not so decline, yet how
can he ascertain it ? Its sphere of direct action on
the State, considered extrinsically, is that of voting,
which is the privilege of some, and of petition and
reasoning, which are the right of all. Its effect in
the working of the State, considered as a part thereof,
is represented in the decisions of the House of Com-
mons. With respect to one most important point, it
is absolute ; namely, the refusing to levy money on
the subject. All this harmonises entirely with the
argument of these pages; but the objection to the
principle of State religion, which is now under con-
sideration, is one which does not contend for, but
against, the powers of the popular division of the legis-
lature ; which does not stand upon its competency to
withhold, but upon its incompetency to grant money
to certain purposes of the State. If the majority of
the representatives think fit to refuse pecuniary sup-
plies for the maintenance of religion, we have no
more to say but to acquiesce in the present decision,
and to attempt to work upon their minds and upon
those of the people whom they represent, in order to
bring them to what we think a juster conclusion. But
on the other side, it seems actually to be held that
the House of Commons is not politically competent
to give an affirmative judgment in the matter ; that
Q2
228 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
the bond of social union ought not to include
question of religion ; that, no matter how nearly
unanimous the people, the right of the dissentient
minority to withhold its support from the religion of
the State is sacred ; although upon other subjects the
minority, or that which in the scales of the constitu-
tion weighs as such, is bound to submit to the will of
the majority for one general welfare, and the State
is admitted to be the judge what those subjects
are. Resistance to the law is palliated and even justi-
fied in this point, while it is admitted in others to be
criminal.
46. The private person, however, is not disregarded
by the Constitution. Entering, through his political
privilege or interest, into the mind of the State itself,
he contributes in effect his voice, with the weight
which may constitutionally belong to it, towards the
general decision. But then his right to participate in
the formation of the sentence, as it is ascertained, so
also it is limited by the privileges which the law al-
lows to him. He has acquitted his conscience when
he has used his privilege according to its dictates ; and
having discharged his responsibility, it is plain that
he has also exhausted his right. Thereafter the State,
deciding as its component parts may preponderate, in
this direction or in that, must not be charged with
breach of faith, or with tyranny, or with the violation
of the rights of conscience. The minority in a State is
like the rejected alternative in the deliberative decision
of an individual man. If every disease which may
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 229
have infected a portion of the people is to be not only
felt but indulged and fed, to be represented in public
acts and functions, tainting, crippling, and debilitating
them one after another, then, indeed, the State falls
wholly away from its idea, from sustaining and carry-
ing out that national life whereby we are truly incor-
porated as a political society.
47. In short, this is, in a political sense, a radically
disorganising principle, and it threatens, if recognised,
to break up all society from its foundations. It im-
plies the right, on the part of individuals, to establish
a separate and contrary action to that of the body
politic, in matters not of discretion, but where positive
obedience is required. No law can stand if such a
principle be allowed, and without law there is no
society. There is no limit to the scope of this li-
cence. If a few may do it, an individual may do it ;
and thus there may be any number of distinct and in-
contestably valid claims to disobey the law. The State
requires, as its essential condition, unity of action ;
and it requires to be itself the judge upon what sub-
jects unity of action shall be enforced ; being content
sometimes with passive unity, sometimes even with
positive diversity. Now there are matters morally
beyond the province of the State : but yet it is diffi-
cult to limit its legal competency by any definition,
which, if it excluded anything, would not exclude too
much. Besides, the question is not now whether the
State would be right or would be wrong in the active
support of national religion ; but whether, in the event
of its giving such support, that interpretation which
230 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS CHAP. IV.
some have recently placed on the rights of conscience
be not wholly incompatible with the maintenance of
national unity and order. It is proper that those, who
may be inclined to countenance such an interpreta-
tion, should have this inevitable consequence fully and
clearly before them.
48. In sum, the case stands thus. In all ages and
countries where the Christian religion has been pro-
fessed by the body of the nation, without any excep-
tion, until the single case of the United States of
America in the end of the last century, it has been
held in theory, that the State ought to lend its aid for
the maintenance and propagation of that religion ; and
the theory has been carried out into practice. The
State of England still adopts that principle. But now
it is held by a considerable body of persons (though a
very small minority of the entire nation), that such
policy on the part of the State is a violation of the
rights of conscience, and therefore wholly unlawful.
And many of these persons have actually resisted the
law in conformity with this principle ; and in the
manner in which it is professed, it generally tends to-
wards that consummation. This is no common discre-
pancy of opinion, but the deepest of all roots of social
discord. The State and the State-religion are involved
together. The binding power of the decree of the
body upon the individual members is denied : and it
is denied in respect of that which other ages and
nations, and the majority (by supposition) of our age
and nation, have deemed an object of the most sacred
obligation and of the highest national importance.
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 231
The first result is, a keen, perhaps an almost intermi-
nable conflict, with an appeal to all the angriest pas-
sions of the human heart. But suppose the minority,
still continuing a minority, were to succeed by deter-
mined resistance in making it impracticable for the
majority to carry their principle into effect. If such
were the issue of the struggle, a great positive social
result would be realised, besides the negative conse-
quence of the failure of the design to maintain the
national religion. It would be this : the principle
would have been most conspicuously and authenti-
cally affirmed, that against whatever sanction of au-
thority, numbers, or constitutional preponderance, a
minority may not only dissent, but disobey. Of course
this principle would be applied to other matters and
by other parties. Already we see how, with respect to
the laws, indifference, having supplanted veneration, is
itself merging in dislike, and even hatred. Every body
of men, engaged in the pursuit of evil which public au-
thority had been wont to repress, must gain the more
hardihood and power in their resistance under such an
example. Every element of lawlessness would be
called into tenfold activity, when law, in the most
sacred subject-matter, proved an empty name. So-
ciety having lost its principle of unity, the source of
all its moral and even physical energy and life, would
remain an inorganic mass, capable only c engendering
corruption.
49. I conclude, then, that it is for the Legislature
to choose the purposes of public taxation, and to ap-
232 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
ply its proceeds for those purposes. Of course, if it
should demand of the subject any compliance which is
really sinful, and he resist, the guilt of that resistance
is on its head. If, however, it inflict hardship upon
him without requiring him to commit sin, of course
as a Christian he will yield it obedience. The question
whether the Legislature has duly or wrongly exercised
its prerogative, is one perfectly distinct, and must be
determined by the essential rightfulness of its decree,
not by any human opinion : but I have wished to show,
that the constitutional existence of that prerogative is
incontrovertible, and that the recent opinion to the
contrary leads, and that by no circuitous process, to
the utter demolition of the social fabric.
50. But there are other respects, besides the com-
mand of extensive funds, in which the State, as such,
appears naturally to possess powerful means of increas-
ing the influence of religion.
The question that naturally suggests itself upon the
manifestation of an intention, in the providence of God,
for universalising the application of religion, is, what
would be the machinery best calculated to carry it out?
For obviously, if it could be so truly realised, sin and
sorrow are at an end, and the will of God is again
enthroned and acknowledged in all the workings of an
obedient creation. Obviously, too, its full and perma-
nent effectuation is a difficult, and has hitherto been
found an impracticable, task. For how, as long as
the mass of men are in juxtaposition with evil as a
body, should they fail to be tainted by it ? and how
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 233
should its elasticity and self-propagation prove, among
such materials, less powerful over a congenial dispo-
sition than the operation of the antagonist principle
over an adverse one ? The Divine Spirit alone could
maintain the truth of Christianity in the world from
hour to hour. Without Him it would have passed
away, like primitive revelation from the greater part
of the descendants of Noah. Still, He works with
human means. Human means seem insufficient for
the whole of his work, even when they have received
from Him a capability for advancing it; but never does
He fail to use that capability where it exists.
51. Now, when men wish to give to a language
every chance of perpetuation, what course do they
pursue? They associate it with public law, with
judicial pleading, with the authentic acts of the body
politic. As, on the other hand, if the object be its ex-
tinction, they studiously exclude it from all these. Not
that the adoption of either the one or the other set of
measures guarantees the attainment of the end, but
they are respectively in the nature of means towards
it; and likely to reach it, if it be attainable at all.
And so, if the purpose be to perpetuate or abolish a
custom, or to imprint permanently, or erase tho-
roughly, any mark from the face of human character
taken in the mass, the same course is pursued. The
power of public law, and the moral influence of
public authority over men, in respect of their social
sympathies, and their sense of honour and shame, as
well as grosser motives, are brought to bear as the
234 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
probable and prudential means of arriving at the pro-
posed object.
52. And with justice : because the minds of indivi-
duals are variable and uncertain ; that is, of by much
the greater number of individuals. A part of their
inclinations set one way, and at a given time prevail :
another part set in the opposite direction, and they too
have their own season of superiority. But when in
some general practice or law, which stands for an ex-
pression of sovereign will, corroborated by the testi-
mony of public concurrence, there is embodied a real
influence which favours the one and obstructs the
other of these drifting tides ; this, while it secures for
the sympathetic principle free scope and action under
its own shelter, likewise stands as a fixed barrier against
the antagonist principle in its alternate predominance ;
so that, for the most part, it is fully able, between two
conflicting tendencies, to cast the balance, ultimately
and permanently, in favour of that which harmonises
with itself.
53. We are all, in a greater or a less degree, the
creatures of sympathy, and the general authority of a
public law and sanction is a fact that cannot be
doubted. It lies deep in our nature, as does the prin-
ciple of which it is an individual manifestation ;
namely, that man, gregarious as an animal, is, in a
more comprehensive sense, as a being, social. Qudd
autem socialem volunt esse vitam sapientis, says St.
Augustine, multd magis approbamus. Man is open to
the influence of opinion from those around him, and
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 235
the more so as the pressure of that opinion is either
proximate, or rendered powerful by the number or
weight of those who concur in it, or by the form of
its expression. Now public law, generally speaking,
has all these advantages ; especially if it has, as in the
case before us, great antiquity on its side. And I speak
designedly of those powers only which it exercises
through the medium of opinion, avoiding, as wholly
irrelevant to the matter, the physical force which may
be exercised in its proper place, but there alone.
54. Not only, however, has public law an advantage
in its fixity, for confirming and perpetuating the hold
once taken by a principle upon the mind of a people ;
but by other means, too, does it operate in the same
direction. It operates upon the cold, calculating, and
worldly-minded man, who will support a good law to
avert the confusion from which he thinks his interest
will suffer, as he would support a bad one which ap-
peared likely to have the same effect. It operates
upon the timid who are friendly, enabling them to do
what, in fact, they wish, without the shame or the
sense of affectation, by casting the balance of opinion
in their favour. It operates upon men in general
through the sentiments of loyalty and patriotism, be-
cause whatever is comprehended in the great outlines
of the institutions of the country becomes a part of
the proper object of those sentiments. It operates
even upon the most hostile, not only by arraying sub-
stantial strength in favour of what they oppugn, but
by showing, under ordinary circumstances, such a
THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
presumable amount of that strength as either to ren-
der active proceedings useless, or at least greatly to
discourage and retard them.
55. In truth, national organisation is evidently of
Divine appointment, as growing out of the primary
necessities and impulses of our nature, and tending to
its highest developments. Nations are the families
into which the human race has what may be termed
its primary distribution. The rulers of nations are as
the heads of families ; whether the power be less or
more restricted, its essence is akin to that of the cor-
responding station in the smaller society. The power
of the rulers and ruling institutions in a nation (and
in the division between these two let as large a space
as is possible be given to the latter) is as real, over
practice and opinion, through the medium of opinion,
as is that of parents ; setting aside for the moment, in
both cases, all resort to coercive authority.
56. Thus, then, may it be shown, that there is in
law and government a capacity to give universality
and stability to the effect of great principles in gene-
ral, which individual agencies, and those of smaller
organised bodies, possess in an inferior degree ; and
that consequently, under ordinary circumstances,
when the latter fail, the former may succeed. But
where the former fail, the case seems to be hopeless.
It must always be borne in mind, that we are here
speaking of principles which do not come self-recom-
mended and acceptable, at first sight, to our natural
propensities; those undoubtedly may maintain them-
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 237
selves in individuals without the aid of law ; and will
even work themselves up through individual minds to
such a degree of power as to alter or violently over-
throw the law. But if nature be on the whole ad-
verse ; if time be required for the operation of the
influences which are to counteract that hostility ;
then, if we cannot universalise and establish a prin-
ciple by the aid of the law, h fortiori we cannot
usually expect to do so without it.
57. The application to religion is obvious; it is
alien to our natural inclinations, and teache? us to
deny them ; it comes to our carnal view discredited by
(apparently, nay sometimes really) teaching us to part
with enjoyments that we have, in the hope of obtain-
ing others that we do not see, and have not yet ac-
quired the capacity to appreciate ; it urgently needs
all the assistance of authoritative opinion and example,
to keep men within the range and reach of that voice
of the Church, which conveys the promise of divine
grace, and which may mollify and awaken them.
But in order to raise a set of prepossessions favourable
to religion, in order rather to create influences which
may neutralise and repress the prepossessions of a
nature unfavourable to religion, we require to bring to
bear upon men every secondary instrument which is
legitimate in its mode of operation ; and the upper-
most of all these, that which combines, embodies, and
(so to speak) perpetuates the rest, is the influence of
fixed law.
58. It is possible also to present the argument for
238 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV
the permanence of State religion in a lower and more
mechanical form, in which, however, it is not wholly
unworthy of attention. The very fact that, according
to our theory, sacred truths are attested and deter-
mined under a double guarantee, has a tendency both
to exclude the interpolations of interest and prejudice
in their first adoption, and also to defend them against
rash and precipitate innovation. The religion of the
Church and the State has more stability and power,
as a social force, than that which relies upon the word
of its peculiar ministers alone. Upon a principle of
dualism somewhat similar, the general sentiment of
politicians views with favour the constitution of a
double as compared with a single, legislative chamber ;
both in order that projects may be originally subject
to examination under a double rather than a single
set of motives, and that when they have taken the
form of law, it may be less easy to divest them of it.
59. It will, however, be asked by way of objection,
how then did Christianity find its way up to thrones,
and establish and incorporate itself in systems of law?
The answer is this it arrived at the summits of
society by the miraculous impulses of its original
propagation, whose vibrations had been measured, no
doubt, with reference to the space they were to
traverse, and did not exhaust themselves till they had
reached the farthest point to which they were des-
tined. The unity and the orthodoxy of the faith sub-
sisted in its greatest moral fulness during that period.
But if the vigour of Christianity in its best days
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 239
aimed at the places of human authority as affording a
vantage ground for the Church, and attained them ;
and if after attaining them her heavenly powers shall
be found in the allotted time too weak to leaven the
whole mass, or to secure their own predominance at
the summit; then, in their fall from that elevation, the
deciders of national religion may indeed obtain a
triumph for themselves, but it will be one full of
melancholy demonstrations, and yet more melancholy
forebodings, regarding the religious condition of the
world. And the possibility that it may be in the
counsels of God to afford other aids, which we know
not of, to His Church in her future needs, neither
recommends nor justifies our dispensing with those
present instruments which He condescends to employ,
and which we are now engaged in considering. So
much for the power of law and government, extrinsi-
cally considered, to be instrumental in the promulga-
tion of religion.
60. The whole Roman history may be appealed to
in proof of the augmented influence which nationality
gives to the forms of religion, considered independently
of their substantive truth or falsehood. In the midst
of the strangest anomalies, we find, from indisputable
and indeed universal testimony, these facts : firstly,
that in Rome, more than in any other ancient polity,
the will and the energies of the individual were sub-
ordinated, throughout all ranks, to the State. The
oligarchical privileges held by the patricians suffici-
ently account for their narrower patriotism ; but the
240 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
conduct of the Roman people, their moderation, disin-
terestedness, and self-devotion, cannot be similarly
explained. Never, probably, was human nature, on a
large scale, without the aid of revelation, carried so
much out of itself, as by that pervading principle of
patriotic honour which filled the ranks of the Roman
armies for centuries together with men who had little
of their own to defend, and little to sacrifice but life,
which to them was much, and which they spent so
freely upon the summons of the State in the field of
battle.
61. Now combine with this the second and equally
unquestionable fact, that in Rome, as we learn from
the unsuspected authority of Polybius,* the stamp of
public religion was impressed not only upon all the
institutions of the State, but upon all the actions of
life ; and as we thus find the influence of things
unseen (under however corrupted forms) simultane-
ously at a maximum in the individual and in the State,
we cannot but infer a natural harmony, and a reci-
procal causation, between these two parallel manifest-
ations ; and by how much the more it may be shown
that the religion was impure, and that the influence
exercised was not that of truth, by so much the argu-
ment for nationality is corroborated, because the re-
sults produced must in the same proportion be set
down to its credit. It is true that one distinguishing
* VI. 54. Montesquieu, in his Dissertation sur la Politique des
Romains dans la Religion, has pursued the subject of the " politic use
of religion " among the Romans into some detail.
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 241
feature of the Roman policy was its joint adoption of
all religions that were not mutually aggressive. If
we set aside the fact of a revelation, such a course may
riot deserve blame. When all forms of belief were of
human device, there was no sufficient reason why ah
exclusive preference should be given to one. The
doctrine, therefore, of unity in the national religion
will not apply to such a case, or rather it assumes a
form far less determinate and more apart from visible
communion.
62. I am tempted to illustrate the foregoing argu-
ment by a passage relating to present circumstances,
and extracted from a work at least of such ability, and
so much in accordance with the sentiments of a pecu-
liar class, as to have obtained the prize offered in
1838 by the " Protestant Society for the Protection of
Religious Liberty," for an * Essay against State
Religion.'
"The office of the clergyman is ever an office of
influence and honour ; that of the dissenter an office of
proscription and weakness. The presence of the one
is ever expected at the tables of the wealthy, and
gratefully welcomed in the cottages of the poor ; the
presence of the other is generally regarded with cold-
ness and suspicion, excepting among his own people,
whose hearts have been won over by the attractive
power of his piety and usefulness. The one is * our
respected clergyman ;' the other is * the Methodist
parson.' In all schemes of Christian philanthropy, at
all meetings for benevolent or religious objects, the
VOL. I. R
242 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
one, if he think it right to attend, fills the first place ;
the other, as constantly, the second. Even the pious
of the neighbourhood warn their families against ' the
seductions of the meeting-house;' and when they
hear, still incredulous, of the devotedness of the
minister, hint fears of schism, methodism, delusion. . .
The evils of a bad name, and of contracted usefulness,
these, therefore, are among the persecutions of the
dominant sect Dissenters do not occupy the
position in the hearts of the people which from their
piety and acquirements they deserve."*
No allegations can be more relevant to show that in
the opinion of the opponents of State religion, the
State is not without power to add influence and
repute, as well as pecuniary means, to a clergy.
63. It seems, then, to be the height of paradox,
unsustained by argument, to say that, as a general
rule, the alliance of the government with religion
tends to indispose the people to its reception. That
must be indeed an ill-ordered State, and one in
which those associations have been rudely torn from
the popular affections which naturally cling around
them, where the sanction of the State does not gene-
rally harmonise with, where it is riot presumably and
cceteris paribus a passport to the approbation of the
people. There are, indeed, moods in the individual,
when passion avenges itself on conscience, by learning
to detest and repudiate its dictates simply as such,
and the tendency of all vicious conditions is to this
* The Voluntary System, by J. Angus, pp. 63, 67-
CHAP. IV.J WITH THE CHURCH. 243
extreme. It may be thus, or analogously, in societies
of men. I have been seriously told, that religious ob-
servances declined in Paris during the period of the
Restoration through the general unpopularity of the
government ; but that they have considerably revived
since the year 1830, when the State ceased as such to
profess a religion. Hence it is that we find French
writers of abundant ability, M. 1'Abbe La Mennais*
and M. de Tocqueville,t treating the dissociation of
religion from the State as a practical means of its
advancement ; additionally incited, it may be, to the
adoption of this doctrine by the unseemly and undue
dependence in which the ministers of religion are
placed, when their provision depends upon the annual
votes of the legislature and the presumable fluctua-
tions of the popular will. But nothing could be more
absurd, than to found a general rule upon this isolated
and clearly exceptional instance. Let us adopt the
conclusion, when that natural law of social commu-
nion is abolished amongst us, which makes provision
for the unity and continuity of the national life, and
with this for the fair representation of the permanent
national convictions in the public institutions of a
country then, and not till then.
64. It is not necessary to do more than specify, that
the ordinary religious action to which governments
are thus competent, is an indirect and mediate action.
As in the cases of science and art, so in that of reli-
* La Mennaia, Affaires de Rome, vol. ii. ch. iv.
t De Tocqueville, Democr. en Amerique, vol. ii. ch. ix. p. 234.
244 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
gion, which has a science and an art, the State ope-
rates upon its members mainly through an instructed
and professional instrumentality ; because it is of
course morally bound to select that agency which has
the greatest degree of competency for the attainment
of its ends ; thus, like the mechanical powers, gaining
more in effectiveness than it loses in proximity. In
this country, for example, the Crown has aided art
through the medium of a professional Society, the
Royal Academy. So it aids the designs of religion
through the Church ; upon the ground of its intrinsic
fitness, as rationally regarded, as well as upon the
higher and specifically Christian ground that it is the
instrument Divinely ordained for the purpose.
65. Having dwelt chiefly in this chapter, with a
reference to the circumstances of this country, upon
replies to objections, let me now briefly enumerate the
modes in which it is possible for the State to lend aid
to religion. They are these :
First, by the example of its profession and worship.
Secondly, by the adaptation of its laws to the rules
of religion, wherever the same subject-matter is within
the view of both.
Thirdly, by the constitutional recognition of a
clerical estate as one of the great forces of society, and
suitable provision for its action in that capacity.
Fourthly, by supplying the temporal or pecuniary
means for the propagation of the national creed.
Fifthly, by repressive measures, such as the laws
against blasphemy.
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 245
Sixthly, by such general and indirect influences
upon the quality of subjective religion, and upon the
permanency or purity of sacred institutions, as result
from a connection between the Church and the State.
I have treated of this action upon religion in general.
It may also affect in particular the tone of individual
piety, and that subject will now receive a separate
consideration.
SECTION II.
AS TO ITS QUALITY; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN
THK CHURCH AND THE STATE UPON THE TONE OF PERSONAL RELIGION
IN THE CHURCH.*
66. There is another objection, of the widest scope,
to the principle of the national establishment of reli-
gion, which relates more immediately to its results
upon personal character, and is not dependent upon any
peculiarity in the terms under which the Church and
the State may in a given case be united, but rather
confronts the entire argument, and, if founded in fact,
undoubtedly overthrows it ; it is this, that union
with the State is proved by our own case to be detri-
mental to the inward life and health of the Church,
and to lower the tone of religion in her individual
members. If this be false, it is not difficult for the
Church to bear the scoffs which are aimed at her in
respect of her legal establishment, and patiently to work
* Mrs. H. More has touched upon this question in her ' Hints to-
wards forming the Character of a Young Princess,' ch. xxxvii.
246 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
out anew in herself the destiny of her Divine Founder
and living Head, glorification through suffering.
But if it be true, then, however apparently complete
be the fortifications of external argument, however
reasonable or even resistless the antecedent grounds
of the connection may appear, the foe is within the
walls, and at the rear of the defenders. No abstract
argument can stand against the proof (if proof could
be given) that a diminished amount or deteriorated
quality of personal religion in the aggregate is the
result of that alliance, which we have alleged to be
not less grounded in the nature and truth of things
than affirmed by the general suffrage of mankind.
For the evidence of facts must be esteemed a clearer
indication of the will of God against it, than any
human speculations could afford in its favour.
67. There arise, however, from the circumstances of
the day, some influences, which tend to prepossess
certain classes of minds in a manner favourable to the
objection now before us. Every man will admit that
the loss of the temporal endowments of the Church, and
of the national homage which is still awarded to her,
is, at least, within the bounds of political possibility.
And such a prospect, even though to be regarded as
remote, still has set many affectionate minds at work
to store up topics of comfort as preparatives for ac-
quiescing in such a dispensation, should it be God's
will to send it. Looking back to history, as well as
inward upon the heart and mental constitution of
man, they are glad to recognise, in the case of churches
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 247
as well as individuals, the recorded and experienced
benefits of affliction, and to find with what literal and
palpable truth it is, that " all things work together for
good to them that love God." They conceive that
the result of the present trials has already been, and
that the consequence of protracted and extended
trials will be in a still more eminent degree, to pro-
duce intelligence, fortitude, and devotedness in the
children of the Church. As the temporal advantages
which have belonged to her are more and more ques-
tioned or curtailed, higher motives will in many
minds gradually supersede those which are more
sordid. Those who have only known her in her ex-
terior semblance will take refuge from the altered and
inclement atmosphere in the inner recesses of her
bright and glorious tabernacle; and entering by degrees
into the depth, the unity, and the spirituality of her
character and scheme, her disciples will be more and
more united in heart and soul to their forefathers in
the Church of God, and will rejoice in the identity of
their hope, love, and life, with those which animated
and nursed the primitive and apostolical saints.
68. It is, however, a common, though as I think an
unwarranted corollary from these pious and reasonable
anticipations, that the overthrow of the Church as an
establishment will in natural course advance its inte-
rests as a Church ; and therefore, that it exists as an
establishment for the benefit of the nation, but pur-
chases that benefit at the expense of a certain portion,
perhaps a large one, of its own purity and strength.
248 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
69. There can scarcely be any who, upon reflection
at least, will not feel shocked and startled at this sup-
position. The well-being of the Church is surely an
object too sacred for compromise or exchange. The
value of spiritual truth utterly transcends every other
so-called advantage, and none of them are in any way
commensurable with it. No political gain can justify
our incurring religious detriment. In vain shall we
have succeeded in proving that national recognition
is able to confer social competency and respectability
upon a clergy, to secure external advantages and
favourable predispositions for their doctrine, and to
afford guarantees of its permanency, if in the mean
time it is secretly tainting the inward and vital es-
sence. So it seems as if either we must be bound to
surrender the national establishment in virtue and by
direct consequence of our love of its inner principles
and system, or that a fallacy somewhere lurks in the
idea, that the interests of the nation as such have
demanded and obtained a sacrifice, however partial, of
the interests of the Church as such.
70. Of all trials which wound and lacerate the sus-
ceptibility of the heart, perhaps none is so afflictive as
a case which appears to be one of contradictory duties.
There exists in reality, indeed, no such thing. There
is not, there cannot be, reciprocal opposition among
the commands of God. All duty has one source in
the Eternal Mind, and one direction, for the purposes
of love, conceived in that Mind. One duty is never
sacrificed to another : but that which in one combina-
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 249
tion of circumstances would be duty, in another is not
duty ; some of the conditions necessary to constitute
duty have failed; the minor obligation is intercepted, as
it were in embryo, and in this sense only is superseded
by the major one. But the law which makes it a duty
to obey a parent or ruler in all but sin, and the law
which makes it a duty to disobey him in sin, are not
conflicting laws, nay, they are not even parallel and
concurrent laws, but are identical; and the conduct
adopted under each is ultimately referable to one and
the same ground- work.
7 1 . This is one of the eternal truths which belong
to a pure theism, but which readily escape the super-
ficial glances of the human mind. It sinks into
retirement and desuetude, and when it is, as it were,
exhumed, it comes like a stranger among men, and is
questioned as a novelty. But in truth, if we had
several duties, we should have several gods : for every
proper and original law of action would be the index
of a several and independent deity.
72. For every such case, then, as that before us,
there must be a real solution ; yet the difficulty of
finding it may be extreme. But such cases, at all
events, will not be held to arise out of the immediate
ordinances of God. Social order and government is
so evidently and directly by Divine appointment on
the one hand ; and the good of the Christian Church
so manifestly the most palpable object on earth of
God's dispensations, upon the other, that an opposi-
tion between these two, each so strongly claiming the
250 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
highest and most irrefragable authority, upon the bare
mention distracts and confounds the heart.
73. It does indeed often happen that, when an
authority, given by the Almighty, is perverted in the
hands of its earthly steward, one subjected to it may
be much perplexed in the endeavour to fix that point
in the progress of abuse at which the subsidiary right
becomes absolutely annulled, and duty commands him
to resort to the original and comprehensive law of
God, which cannot be contravened. Thus, supposing
a parent enjoins that which is sinful ; since his au-
thority is undoubtedly such as to render obligatory
what is in itself indifferent, we may find it a serious
matter to determine the point at which that binding
power loses its validity from being placed in opposi-
tion to the general and less determinate, though more
authoritative will of the Creator.
74. But in a case where human agency does not
intervene at all ; where we have recognised the prin-
ciple of a church-establishment, not indeed as matter
of directly and definitely imposed command, but of
investigation into fundamental laws, and of conviction
therefrom resulting, that its principles were intimately
interwoven and its interests uniformly parallel with
those of the body politic; in such a case we may
surely hope, that any incompatibility or discrepance
which it is attempted to show or to assume, must be
a semblance only, and destitute of any foundation
whatever, either in theory or in practice. The essen-
tial oneness of the Divine will ; the manifest conver-
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 251
gency of the Divine dispensations; the stamp of
concord on all practices or institutions whose origin
is from heaven, impress so strong and deep and
general a persuasion, as ought to fortify us before-
hand in the particular case, against any supposition
that the interests of the Church are at variance with
those of the Establishment.
75. It would not, however, be wise or warrantable
to rest in such a persuasion alone. For two classes it
may indeed suffice: those, namely, who cannot or
need not inquire further, and those who have inquired
thoroughly, and have summed up their thoughts upon
the special instance in a full and deliberate ratification
of the general principle. But there is much scepticism
which cannot and ought not to be thus laid asleep ;
many minds habituated to half perceptions of truth,
and to practical error as their ordinary result ; many
aroused to honest and unsatisfied inquiry, which may
already have glanced at the obvious conclusion, " if
the nation should hereafter show a disposition to cast
off the church, let it do so at its peril ; we will acqui-
esce, as the church will be the better for it."
76. To supply the verbal defects, and to unfold the
ambiguities of such reasoning as this, is exceedingly
important, inasmuch as the defenders of the union
between Church and State cannot, until it has been
refuted, gird up their loins for the conflict with a
clear persuasion of the rightfulness of their object, or
without a dim suspicion that it is not only unjust as
252 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
regards others, but suicidal as regards themselves,
their attachments, and desires.
77. The foundation of the sentiment, which is wont
to embody itself in the foregoing argument, has pro-
bably been an impression, commonly entertained
among the advocates of principles hostile to a legal
recognition of religion or of the Church, that a greater
degree of religious activity is found to exist within the
compass of the unestablished bodies of this country,
relatively to their numbers, than partiality itself can
allege to pervade the great masses of the Established
Church.
78. If the allegation have reference only to an ac-
tivity, and that activity one conversant with religion,
we cannot doubt that it is true in point of fact, while
we may totally deprecate, and may be prepared to re-
pel, the inferences which have been hastily or inimically
drawn from such an admission. In the first place, let
us observe, that the term activity applies much more
to outward than to inward vitality ; and that its appli-
cation is more readily allowed to that which produces
palpable and sudden change, than to causes of simple
and regular progression ; while yet the power that
feeds a tree is more truly generative, and in the end
fruitful of greater results, than that which might tear
it down.
79. It may appear invidious, but it is necessary, to
mark the distinction between the system calculated to
produce most activity at a given time, and that which
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 253
will most effectually perpetuate its own existence un-
impaired in essential points. For there is a common
notion or assumption, that these two characteristics
are coincident. We need not go far to exemplify the
reverse. It may be fairly allowed, that there was,
under the later Stuarts, more religious energy, rela-
tively to their numbers, in the congregations of the
expelled ministers, than in those of the national
Church of England. Many of the former we know
were organised and endowed by the zeal of their mem-
bers, as well as adorned by their piety. What is at this
moment the comparative state of the two ? The Esta-
blishment has arisen from her torpor, she is awake and
has put on strength; and in an age august and vene-
rable, she manifests the vigour of the earliest youth :
In eta matura
Pariinente mature avea il consiglio
E verdi ancor le forze.*
But those seceding bodies have forgotten the faith
for which once they were forward to contend, and
almost without an exception have lapsed into Soci-
nianism. Doubtless we have here to consider the
Catholicity as well as the legal nationality of the
Church ; but the illustration may properly serve to
impress upon us the necessity of distinguishing per-
manent from transitory energies.
80. Dissenting bodies naturally act upon the prin-
ciple of selecting individuals from the mass of the
nation, by applying to them the stimulants of reli-
* Gerusalemme Liberal*, vii. 61.
254 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
gious menaces and inducements, and associating them
into congregations. The care of the dissenting minis-
ter is for a congregation, not a locality ; he deals with
persons, each of whom is supposed to have more or
less a special reason influencing severally his mind
and actions, by which alone, and not in consequence
of any appointment independent of himself, he has
become a member of the flock to which he belongs.
81. How widely different is the case of an establish-
ment ! Her ministers are not to act upon this prin-
ciple of preference, but to offer, and, so far as they
are permitted, to administer, the ordinances of religion
to every living soul. Not that their attentions are to
be divided into shares of a strict equality, but none
are to be excluded : while they cherish the best with
peculiar fondness, their regards are ever to be directed
towards the reclamation of the absolutely profligate,
and the retention of the worldly-minded within some
at least of the restraints of religion. It is one of the
peculiar offices of the Establishment, and often forms,
to the minds of superficial observers, the gravamen of
the charges against her, that she sustains in an out-
ward, and partial, and accommodating religion, a
large number of persons who are not animated by its
living and life-giving principles. Now this is termed
lending encouragement to hypocrisy, and lulling into
delusive slumbers the souls of a perishing people.
82. Bring them to an inward religion if possible by
love ; if not thus, then by the hope of happiness ; if
not thus, then by the fear of perdition : if again there
CHAP. IV ] WITH THE CHURCH. 255
be no inward attraction of the soul to God, and they
have no principles higher than those of nature, keep
them even in the human religion rather than let them
be in none : let them attend Christian ordinances from
habit, from deference to society or to superiors, from
fear of infamy, constantly if they will, or if not, yet
frequently, or if not, yet sometimes : the smallest de-
gree of religious observance is better than none at all,
however inefficacious for practical purposes be the life
within it ; because while there is life there is hope.
This is the principle and language of a pure establish-
ment, which deems all spiritual life so precious that it
would gather and save its very atoms, like the dust of
gold, so long as that little which is done is done by
the right means and in the right direction so long
as the defects in subjective religion are not derived
from any fault in its ordinances or any compromises
of its ministers. And such should its practice be.
83. But upon comparing the condition of a country
blessed with a church establishment, and not solely
dependent for religious ordinances upon the results of
voluntary exertions, with that of another bearing the
Christian name, but without any such institution, we
find the difference to be that, while in both cases there
are large numbers professing and cherishing indivi-
dual religion, in the first a larger proportion of the
people observe Christian ordinances, and there are in-
finite shades of character filling up the wide space
between the children of God and of Satan, without
256 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
any broad line of discernible demarcation : in the se-
cond, to a given amount of religious profession there is
a greater amount of religious activity, and there is a
more fearful mass of persons wholly cut off from the
public profession of the Gospel and the appointed way
of immortality.
84. Now when we change the subjects of our com-
parison, and take the case of our own country alone,
we find, I apprehend, that a similar relation obtains
between the Establishment and the Sectarian bodies.
The former does not cast off the dross of the commu-
nity, or rather, that which appears dross but contains
much pure ore. She attempts and professes to secure
a feeble, a partial, and an outward observance of reli-
gion, in default of, and she hopes in preparation for,
that which is vigorous, complete, and operative with
a transforming power upon the inward nature of man.
She is content to be encumbered in her course with
the inert and lifeless weight of large numbers of per-
sons who are strangers to conscientious and individual
religion ; and although she is ever busied in searching
among the mass for the capable recipients of a vital
principle, and dealing to each man according to his
strength, and seeking to extract from each man what-
ever of religious love and service he is qualified to
render, yet such a heavy and unprofitable residue she
must always bear upon her, inasmuch as while the
good are drafted off one by one into the enjoyment of
her loftier discipline, new crowds of the indolent and
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 257
the worldly-minded are continually entering within
her pale, there, she trusts, to be educated into Christian
maturity.
85. She must be contented, however irksome the
office, to provide for those whom the dissenting mi-
nister cannot attract to his congregation because they
do not care enough for religion to contribute to its
expenses, as well as those who are precluded by the
real pressure of poverty, or by the rarity of popula-
tion in a particular district, from joining any such
voluntary assemblage ; and again, for another large and
important class who resort to religious observances
primarily on the score of deference to public practice
and opinion, which practice and opinion is itself gene-
rated and maintained chiefly by the influences of an
establishment.
86. But granting, as a consequence, that the average
religious principle of the members of the Church in
England is lower than that of dissenting bodies, it
remains obvious in the first place, by general admis-
sion, that this circumstance belongs essentially to its
condition and office as an establishment : in the se-
cond, as we may think, and shall strive to show, it
does not imply any compromise between spiritual and
political interests, a thing (if the phrase be taken
strictly) in its own nature impossible, and whose ex-
istence, at least in this particular instance, it will now
be attempted to disprove.
87. What, then, can be meant by those interests of
a church, which it is said, or felt, or feared, we com-
VOL. i. s
258 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
pound for the sake of state-expediency ? The interests
of a church are not the mere attachments of its mem-
bers to its peculiarities, so far as they are inessential to
its existence as a church : if they were, we might yield
our point, and admit that the effect of an establishment
such as our own should be, to induce a Catholic spirit,
and a liberal discrimination between matters necessary
and matters indifferent. Discouraging in all things
the capricious exercise of individual will, and setting
little value upon the authority of mere opinion, its.
practices have been severely proved, and have acquired
their claim to observance in the lapse of generations,
so that the full force of our individual self-will and
pride is much less brought to bear in exciting our at-
tachment to an established church, than where innova-
tion is easy and perpetual, and each man stands to
defend what has been, in a great degree, either pro-
duced, or at least subject to modification by, his own
personal agency and judgment.
88. The true interests of a church are best to be
ascertained by considering its nature. It is an or-
ganised body, governed by the laws and ministers of
Christ, having the charge of the Word, and the exclu-
sive administration of the Sacraments, and dispensing
both for the promotion of a spiritual life. Her end,
then, at least her immediate end, is " the greatest ho-
liness of the greatest number." Her inanimate ma-
chinery has no capability of pleasure and pain ; has no
interests in any intelligible sense. Her living mem-
bers have all one and the same interest : the aggre-
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 259
gate of that interest constitutes the interest of the
church, and it is the production, not of the greatest
possible excitement connected with religion, nor of the
greatest possible enjoyment connected with religion,
nor of the greatest possible appearance of religion ;
nay, not even the greatest possible quantity of actual
religion at any time or place ; but the greatest possible
permanent and substantial amount of religion within
that sphere over which its means of operation extend.
By religion, I would be understood to mean conformity
to the will of God.
89. Now we, who hold the principle of national
establishments, believe, that although a higher average
of active religious motive may be found in limited and
sectarian bodies, yet this is simply because the Esta-
blishment is set and appointed to embrace, along with
her more spiritual and intelligent children in Christ,
those who are too timid to make a religious profession;
those who hesitate between this world and the next ;
those who give a limited and insufficient scope to the
action of Christian principle ; those who attend Chris-
tian ordinances only in compliance with human opi-
nion ; and those who see nothing in Christianity but a
system of outward forms, in an establishment nothing
but a method of preserving social order, and of repress-
ing religious extravagance.
90. And it may doubtless be said, that the very
constitution of an establishment, as thus represented,
indicates an unsound state of things ; that the observ-
ance of Christian ordinances ought not to be exacted
s2
260 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
by the force of human opinion, but rendered by the
spontaneous and joyful action of the heart; that these
false and imperfect services of so many differing classes
cannot be satisfactory to God. And unsound, indeed,
is the condition of human society ; but the question is,
would it not be more unsound were the restraining
influences of an establishment withdrawn ?
9 1 . Certainly her faithful members must be content
to stand side by side with many who care little for reli-
gion. Simul enim cum iniquis vivimus, sed non una
vita est omnium : in occulto dirimimur, in occulto sepa-
ramur ; quomodo grana in ared, non quomodo grana in
horreo* But the promises of Christ may secure them
from the danger of contagion ; and they may also ac-
quire from their position a livelier remembrance of
that lesson, that we may not say one to another, Stand
by, for I am holier than thou. I say, the promises of
Christ ; for the establishment does but fulfil His pro-
phetic declarations, in not attempting any universal
separation of the tares from the wheat ; of the good
fish from the bad : content with the laws of her mixed
condition upon earth, emulous of the example of her
Lord, who ate with publicans and sinners, and gene-
rous as her heavenly Father, who sends rain and light
upon the just and the unjust, rendering benefit, but
not therefore receiving pollution. Not, indeed, that
the establishment of the Church necessarily or of right
involves that destruction rather than relaxation of dis-
* S. Aug. Exp. in Evang. Joan., Tract xx. ; and see Bishop Pearson
on the Creed, Art. ix. (i. 537).
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 261
cipline, which at the present day is so much to be de-
plored in this and in other countries, both where she is
established and where she is not. But that which legal
establishment does perhaps preclude, is the modern,
sectarian, and, as I conceive, unwarrantable principle,
of assuming as the original and proper criterion of
Church membership, not Christian Baptism, but a
distinct personal experience of conversion, unconnected
with that sacrament. This assumption, which it may
be argued that national establishment hinders or pre-
cludes, seems also to be precluded by the doctrines, and
inconsistent with the practice, of our Lord.
92. It is undoubtedly well for the State, that the
hopes and fears of a future life should be used in aid
of those which have reference to temporal prosperity
and punishments ; that religion should check the ig-
norant and the irreligious ; that men should worship
they know not what, rather than not worship at all :
but is it ill for the Church ? Her principle is, to ga-
ther up the very crumbs of devotional offerings ; to
feed the babes with milk ; not to break the bruised
reed, nor to quench the smoking flax, until the Re-
deemer shall come in His glory, to send forth judg-
ment unto victory. A small obedience is better than
none. To think of God seldom, is better than not to
think of Him at all. To love Him faintly is better
than to be in utter and unvarying indifference or aver-
sion towards the Giver of all good. Better not as
though our acts were strictly and truly good ; but
because these states of life and feeling indicate a
262 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
mental condition less hopelessly inaccessible to the
influences of the Spirit of grace, than that of total
alienation from the means of grace. Better for the
pupil, provided the face be set invariably forwards;
and for the instructress, provided she be always leading
and beckoning him in the same direction. The Church
lives in the use of means ; and trusts in God for the
production of results.
93. Did we, indeed, believe, with the foes of the
establishment of the Church, that the natural effect of
this operation was to keep these dark worshippers in
their darkness, we must all join their ranks, and emu-
late their zeal for the work of demolition. But, while
seeing plainly that the Established Church brings
crowds of persons to the outer courts and the lower steps
of the temple, we may likewise believe, that she is well
calculated to use every effort for their advancement to
those which are inner and higher ; and that but for
her beneficent agency, they would remain utterly re-
mote from the sights and sounds of worship, from the
impressions and associations to which now, by the laws
of bare humanity, they are subject, and which, though
not universal, nor infallible, nor intrinsically efficacious,
yet may be blessed, and often are blessed, and are the
natural means and channels of blessing.
94. Is the Church, then, wounded or injured by this
charitable operation of the Establishment ? It is suf-
ficiently credible, that her members may be less doat-
ingly enamoured of her lesser distinctive marks, as
distinctive marks, than would be the case were she
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 263
severed from the State ; and we may admit that their
liberality may receive a tinge so far latitudinarian,
that they may confound hex essential with her unes-
sential peculiarities; or again, there may be those, who
regard her human trappings more than the unearthly
lineaments which these are intended to adorn. But it
is not credible that, except it be from adventitious
causes, in no way inseparable from, the connection, she
has a smaller number of members under the influence
of active religion, than, on the other supposition, she
would possess. There is no just ground for consider-
ing that their Christianity is of an inferior quality be-
cause they belong to an establishment ; but, on the
contrary, that it is, on the whole, more calm, more
catholic, less alloyed by the contagion of spiritual
pride and selfishness ; more comprehensive in its views
of the manifold functions and capacities of human na-
ture. There is no reason to apprehend, that they suffer
detriment from iuxtaposition with the less heavenly-
minded members of the establisnment; because, though
it is written of gratuitous and unordained communion
with the kingdom of Satan, that a man cannot touch
pitch without being defiled, yet surely no one, recog-
nising the manifest prohibition of our Lord to aim at
an entire local separation (as it were) of the hypocrites
from the saints in this life, can anticipate for the
former any evil from that contact which may occur
in the discharge of duty ; and there is in view the
animating prospect of their thus arousing many a dor-
mant spirit into holiness, and rescuing many a tender
264 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
lamb of the Redeemer from the fangs of the roaring
lion.
95. It is true that there may be a certain class of
persons, who are alienated from religion simply be-
cause it is established ; and who, startled at the appa-
rent paradox of an authority jointly divine and poli-
tical, may be repelled from the very examination of
the Gospel by that primd facie incongruity. And
though it be true that that paradox is capable of easy
explanation, that the divine and the national charac-
ters of the Church establishment are capable of real,
and generally of easy discrimination, yet this risk, so
far as it extends, must be admitted to be in the nature
of a sound and fair objection.
96. But the question before us is one of spiritual
expediency ; and we must inquire, whether there be
not more who will be attracted towards religion by
the instrumentality of an establishment as such, than
those who will be driven from it. Look to the thou-
sands with whom worship is matter of sheer usage,
and unconnected with any active exercise of the mind
upon Divine truth. Thus the beneficial action is upon
masses. But those whom the paraphernalia of a
national church, or the bugbear of a law church,
frighten from the sanctuary, are units here and there,
thinly interspersed through the community. A pecu-
liar tone of character, a singular mixture of intellect
and caprice, of philosophical rashness and timidity,
can alone account for the rejection of a religion
by no means necessarily associated with the State,
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 265
because it happens under certain circumstances to be
so allied ; and, as this temperament is rare and idio-
syncratic in the extreme, so it is entitled to propor-
tionably less weight in our calculations. Not, there-
fore, to no weight at all : but remote dangers like
these are not to preclude a course attended with such
large and immediate benefit to the spiritual interests
of masses of mankind.
97. In the long-run, and upon a large scale, as I
have already had occasion to argue more at length,
the prejudice of mankind is in favour of establish-
ments, political as well as religious. The destructive
spirit has characterised particular and critical periods ;
but, upon a comprehensive average, a tendency to
acquiescence in existing institutions is the rule, and a
tendency to disturb them the exception.
98. I am prepared, then, to assert it generally of a
national Church, that it brings human and secondary
motives to bear upon mankind in favour of religion,
with a power greater than that which would belong to
it, cceteris paribus, when unestablished, because ordi-
narily it would not occupy the same station in public
estimation. The fashion which might, in a wealthy
and luxurious country, choose to reject attendance at
church, is enlisted in its favour. A narrow and feeble
provision, no doubt ; but we must not despise the day
of small things.
99. And if we are warranted in assuming that the
nationality of a church does not diminish the number
of its actively devoted members, or its quantity of vital
266 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
religion ; so neither has it been often even alleged,
that its tendency is to deteriorate what we may term
the quality of that piety. As its besetting sin is tor-
por, so its most natural virtues are calmness and
stability ; and that fixedness of institutions, which the
addition of nationality tends to give to any religious
system, is certainly calculated to impart both a finer
and a firmer tone to spiritual character. The abhor-
rence of mere individual will as such, which properly
belongs to the Catholic Church, and which renders
her odious or unattractive to turbulent spirits, has a
beautiful effect upon the chastened mind, and presents
man before God in the attitude which befits him, not
as a creator, or an inventor, or even a reproducer, of
a system, upon which he shall read Self everywhere
or anywhere inscribed, but as a recipient of pure
bounty and compassion. The idea of inheritance,
with all its at once ennobling and subduing effects, is
perfectly realised in that body alone, where we are the
heirs, not merely of antiquity, but of inspiration, and
where the long line of Christian generations brightens,
instead of fading, as it recedes.
100. Now it is necessary to be very cautious in
comparing any results of a political institution with
those which flow immediately out of God's appoint-
ment. The mere adoption and establishment of a
religious body by the State does not supply the want
of any conditions which are required to constitute the
Church. Establishment and dissent present to us one
contrast ; catholicity and sectarianism another. But
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 267
still, so far as there can be an adumbration of what is
palpably divine in systems of church polity con-
structed, in some at least of their parts, according to
human conjecture, we do find that religion, when not
authenticated by apostolical descent, does certainly
appear under less disadvantage when honestly united
with the State, than when presented in the form of
mere private association.
101. The Scottish establishment has deprived her-
self of the episcopal succession, and therein, I cannot
but apprehend, of her strongest argument as an esta-
blishment against the competing claims of any other
religious body ; but, if we compare her in respect of
evangelical doctrine, or of the general spirit of her
members, or of the capacity she has evinced of im-
pressing a definite religious character, and of trans-
mitting it from generation to generation, with other
Protestant bodies not having the succession, whether
in Germany, or Switzerland, or America, or France
(the cases of Denmark and Holland would be less in
point), she appears, by the side of each and all, in a
light manifestly favourable. And what better reason
can be assigned for this remarkable fact, than that, in
her case, the idea of a national clerisy, or estate of reli-
gion, has certainly been wrought out, upon the whole,
with greater accuracy and fidelity than in any of the
others which have been named, and the instruction,
both of old and young, has been long ago systematically
provided for, and solemnly committed to her charge ?
10'2. Habituated to the false or secondary concep-
268 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
tions which arise out of our inveterate political secta-
rianism, we are very apt to look upon the State in an
irreverent or careless temper, and to forget that, next
to the Church, it exhibits the grandest of all combi-
nations of human beings. It is a venerable idea, in
which the supremacy of law as opposed to mere will
is asserted, by which the sociality and interdependence
of our nature are proclaimed, and the best acts and
thoughts are arrested and perpetuated in institutions,
and a collective wisdom is made available for indivi-
duals, and the individual is humbled and disciplined
by being kept in qualified subordination to the mass.
The adoption of a moral principle, or scheme, or in-
stitution, by the State, is among the most solemn and
the most pregnant of human acts : and although it
cannot place what it adopts upon a ground higher
than its own, any more than water can rise above its
level, yet that ground is one of an order having more
of natural justice, more of experimentally demonstrated
permanence, more of divine authentication, than any
other, except the Church, which it feebly though per-
ceptibly imitates ; and certainly much more than that
private will, which, sooner or later, finds so much space
to wanton in the spirit and practice of dissent; reversing
every fundamental law of the universe, and asserting
the isolation, and deifying the arbitrary caprice of man.
103. The individual then, adopted into such a na-
tional estate of religion, is in a situation of advantage
with regard to his inward discipline, as compared with
that which he would occupy in a system theologically
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 269
similar, but unestablished. Law is the highest of hu-
man authorities : thus he is taught to obey and to
revere, the essential and first conditions of our well-
being. The proportion of the single person to the
mass is smaller as the aggregation is more extensive :
therefore, and in the same ratio, the spirit of self is
more repressed in the nation than it would be in some
voluntary association carved out from the larger body.
104. Again : not only is the numerical importance
(so to speak) of the individual less in proportion as
the society is large, but his temptations to self-suffi-
ciency and pride are likewise liable to be curtailed in
proportion as the society is permanent. The more
permanent the society, the greater becomes the autho-
rity attached to it ; the minds of men are predisposed
to submission, and the notions of domineering will are
in a commensurate degree repressed. Now the State
as such is less permanent in its nature than the
Church, but more so than any scheme of individual
device : and thus again nationality, perpetuating as
well as conspicuously exhibiting the body of a public
religion, gives it the aid of all the venerable associa-
tions which it commands, and affords another emphatic
contradiction to the exorbitant pretensions of self-will.
105. While, then, the noblest form of religion, and
the authenticated form of Christianity, is presented in
the Catholic Church, whether it does or does not
occupy the vantage-ground of legal establishment, it
yet appears that the instrument next in point of
efficacy for the propagation, the perpetuation, and the
270 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
custody of religion, is that nationality which, among
the uncertain conditions of our human state, embodies
what has least of uncertainty.
106. Thus much upon the broad and general ques-
tion. When we regard more specifically the case of
England, where the Church claims catholicity, and
realises accordingly the hereditary principle even
more perfectly than the State, it may seem incon-
gruous- to ascribe to her legal incorporation those
beautiful characteristics in her offices of religion
which belong more properly to her divinely-written
charter. And the more so, because the particular
conditions of our nationality have never yet been
carefully and permanently adjusted since the reform
of religion. I do not now speak of the difficult ques-
tions which arise in mixed matter between the Church
and the State, but there can surely be no doubt in the
mind of any man who has reflected with care and
candour on the question, that some powers, most
naturally and indefeasibly inherent in the ecclesiastical
body, are at present heavily and unduly fettered, either
by acts or through omissions of the State. The dis-
cipline of this Church appears to require more than
executive diligence and wisdom can supply : an effi-
cient reorganisation, and a development of principles
which, in the long continuance of lax and vicious prac-
tice, have almost escaped from our view. Legal recog-
nition, however, neither according to its idea ought
to be, nor in point of fact always has been, adverse
to efficiency and vigour in the internal government of
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 271
the Church : who, then, will deny, that these great
objects are yet attainable, and that we may live to see
greater accessions of strength derived from actual ex-
perience to the argument of these pages, that the
nationality of religion is favourable alike to its quality
and its general extension ? Nor will I deny, that even
at the present moment the Church derives much of
strength not only from the more palpable provisions
of the law, but from those ancestral associations of
immemorial date, with which she is inseparably bound
in the minds of Englishmen.
107. Those who dwell most fondly upon the spi-
ritual prerogatives of the Church, considered as she
is Catholic, will, nevertheless, do well to remember,
that the promise of perpetuation, which is absolute to
the body at large, is, to the members in particular, con-
ditional and contingent. It is, therefore, not too much
to say, that the nationality may materially contribute
to the permanency, and thus to the general power
of any given branch of the Church. Supposing her
unjustly robbed of her secular patrimony, it might be
that danger would accrue to her from pecuniary de-
pendence ; the necessity of eleemosynary support
might preclude her from occupying a position of suf-
ficient dignity and authority towards her own mem-
bers. Except possibly in such a case as that of
Romanism, which so commonly founds its peculiar
action upon the spirit, if not literally on the dogma of
sheer spiritual slavery, I can scarcely believe that it
would, at least in these times, be possible to preclude
272 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. IV.
the use of undue influence upon a clergy sustained by
what is termed the power of the purse ; the Church
might thus, whether by a slower or more rapid, a
direct or indirect process, be starved into heterodoxy.
108. It has now been attempted to take a view of
the question of connection between Church and State,
which, though very incomplete, inasmuch as it looks
to consequences alone, and further, only to a part of
the consequences belonging to that union, is neverthe-
less full of interest, because it touches vital consider-
ations, which are decisive, if determined against us, of
the whole matter at issue. For if religion be injured
by the national establishment of the Church, it must
forthwith and at whatever hazard be disestablished ;
but if not, we need be little moved by the taunts of
those who reproach us with being of a " law Church."
The Church in England is a law Church : we rejoice
in the fact: but how? Just as by the sovereign's pro-
clamation against vice, the morals of the nation a're
crown morals. The law in one case, the crown in the
other, adopts and attests the truths of God, and does
them homage.
109. For we have found the supposition, that religion
is secularised by contact with the State, to be fallaci-
ous. We have found, that the most devoted piety en-
joys in an Established Church a climate not less genial
than elsewhere ; it might perhaps be said, more so :
that in respect of liberal views of smaller peculiarities,
and of discouragement to individual egotism, a national
Church has, as such, especial advantages for elevating
CHAP. IV.] WITH THE CHURCH. 273
and purifying personal religion : that she has a great
and appropriate work, particularly in exercising a
partial dominion over the indifferent and even the un-
godly, by bringing to bear upon them, in favour of the
gospel, and of their own happiness, a great force of
human and secondary motives; and that, from the
comparative independence of her position, she is also
peculiarly adapted for the permanent conservation of
Divine truth. If these things be so, we must get rid
of that superficial impression, unfavourable to the
nationality of the Church, which arises upon the first
view of the very mixed character of her component
parts, and must remember that, in containing together
the good and the bad, in tolerating the hypocrite
while she nourishes the saint, she is fulfilling, for the
time of her dispensation, the clear intentions of that
Lord whose coming she awaits with joy.
VOL. I.
274 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
CHAPTER V.
THEORY OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THB CHURCH AND THE STATE.
PART IV.
THE FUNCTION OF THE STATE IN THE CHOICE AND THE DEFENCE OF THE
NATIONAL RELIGION.
SECTION I. AS TO CHOICE.
1. UP to this point, however, I have been regarding
the State as the national person simply, in its active
unity, in that unity to which all the elements of the
public life must be reduced, before it can take effect in
a common decision on the part of the whole nation.
This activity is of necessity a compound principle in its
inward composition, though it ought to be simple and
uniform in its development without. A thousand ten-
dencies and powers may sway the deliberations, which
finally issue into a resolution opposed to many of those
moving forces. It is not therefore enough to have con-
sidered the relations of the State as it is extrinsically
viewed, of the national person with all its elements
equilibrated, and prepared for final decisions through
its active will, to religion, under the heads of duty and
inducement. We must also regard the State in its
narrower sense as the governing body, upon which
the various interests of the nation may exercise, as
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH.
among ourselves, a twofold influence ; first, directly
upon the choice of its members, and next, indirectly
by the permitted sway of opinion. We must inquire
by what law these various and often contending ingre-
dients are to be combined among themselves and a
common result obtained ; not, indeed, so far as to de-
fine with exactness, as a quantity, the degree of influ-
ence to be allowed to each, but so far as to determine
whether the governing body be indeed presumably
qualified and entitled, as a general rule and in the
natural course and postures of affairs, to discharge, on
the part of the national person, those obligations to-
wards religion which have already been investigated,
as well as the other functions of political society ; and
in the last resort to decide on propositions as they
arise according to the criterion which the prevailing
colour and form of its own conviction, that is to say,
the aggregate of the convictions of its members, may
supply. In a word, we have hitherto chiefly treated
the question as between the nation and its duties or
objects ; we must now treat it rather as between the
people and their government.
2. If the duty of religious unity were adequately
regarded, and its results proportionably realised
among us, it would seem little more than a self-
evident proposition, that the conscience and mind of
the nation, which take effect in the acts of its organ
the State, should be charged with the choice of its
religion ; for ruler and subject would then be at one ;
T 2
276 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
but as it is otherwise, as our witness does not consent
together,
ov yap iravTwv >Jev ofiog Spoog, oud' la yjjpve,*
we are met by the embarrassing question, Where a
diversity of religious denominations prevail, what is
the true criterion by which the State is to determine
its religion ?
Thus it is that the sin of division in the communion
of Christians is closely followed up by the most intri-
cate of all social perplexities. As we here deal with
the State in its narrower sense, we must consider its
choice as something separate from the choice of the
people ; and it must be inquired, whether the former,
as responsible for public order, must submit to the
latter, or may seek to modify or direct it ?
3. I propose successively to examine,
1. The intrinsic qualifications of the State to
choose the national religion.
2. The means, by which the State ought to sus-
tain and guard from danger the religion of its choice.
4. In speaking of the choice of a religion, I do not
mean that it is a matter, in which either the State or
the private person can acquit its conscience by the
mere act of choosing, or that the choice is arbitrary
and not governable by determinate and fixed laws ;
but only that in the one case, as in the other, choice
is a legitimate element in the case ; just
* II. iv. 437.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 277
as, in speaking of the inducements displayed by dif-
ferent forms of religion, I would not be understood to
have overlooked the higher consideration, that there
is a society on earth, whose claim imposes a religious
obligation, paramount and antecedent to all calcula-
tions of relative advantage. We are here to examine,
not the objective moral laws of this choice, but those
which affect it relatively, as between governors and
governed. Again, with regard to the question, Who is
to choose the national religion ? In the State, as the
natural organ of the nation, are evidently concentrated
and represented both its intellectual and its moral life.
Upon all questions whatever, no permanent act or
proceeding is properly the act or proceeding of the
nation, except such as has been done or ratified by the
State. A very general movement of the people may
be presumably national ; but it is not demonstratively
or determinately such, until it has taken effect in some
resolution of public authority. It is something more,
then, than this kind of choice for which we have to
look.
5. According to the principles which have been laid
down in this volume, it is evident that unity of reli-
gion is a condition of the highest practicable well-
being of the State; that it is an object which the
State should endeavour to realise ; that when its abso-
lute form can no longer be retained, the nearest ap-
proximations to it should be embraced ; that m the
ordinary course of things, so long as the principle of
civil support to religion is recognised, both the State
278 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
will be coloured by the religion of the people, and the
people will tend to conform to the religion of the State.
6. For where discrepancy exists between the creed
of the ruler (by which phrase I mean the ruling body)
and of the law on the one hand, and that of the actual
people on the other, there are several modes of solution
which may avoid the collisions that would naturally
ensue. Either the one body may surrender absolutely
to the other, or the one body may assimilate uncon-
sciously to the other, or the whole subject-matter in
dispute may by the common consent of both parties
be abandoned. One of these courses must prevail.
If the last is followed, and if the considerations of re-
ligion be excluded from the relations between gover-
nors and governed, the sovereign element of national
life is resigned, and results may be expected to arise
which I have considered elsewhere. If the internal
discord grows to a crisis, and surrender on one side or
the other becomes necessary, physical force is the final
arbiter. This latter contingency does not fall within
the view of the present argument : but if, as is more
commonly the fact, the crisis be adjourned, if the case
is trusted to the power of moral assimilation, will the
ruling body be attracted towards the people, or the
people to the ruling body? The answer must be
given with reference to times and circumstances. In
earlier stages of society one would not scruple to say
that the State was not merely supreme in point of
available force, but likewise so decidedly the eye of
the body politic, that the latter would certainly walk
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 279
according to the light of the former. In modern
times this broad line of demarcation has been in many
places obliterated or obscured. The State is in some
instances much mixed up personally with the people ;
in others much subordinated to their influence. Yet
it has always an extrinsic action, an action upon
them ; and if it be rightly and skilfully constructed,
so as to be replenished in due proportion by the seve-
ral social forces of the country, there is no reason
why it should not still have a great and even in some
cases a paramount influence, and lead the general
mind insensibly towards its own conclusions.
7. Undoubtedly it has been presupposed through-
out the whole course of these arguments that, upon
any considerable spaces of time, the creed of the sove-
reign and that of the people must harmonise or tend
to harmony ; we must otherwise anticipate one of two
disastrous alternatives either disorder and disruption
of the social life, or its declension and moral torpor.
I do not dispute that a period may come* when the
true profession of Christianity may not preponderate
over rival schemes in any given country ; nay, when
no one form, whether of truth or error, shall stand
palpably distinguished as a social force, and superior
to all its rivals. In such a case, probably no one of all
the competing systems can possess itself of the vantage
ground of government.
Either the extent of religious division in a country,
or the positive amc ant of indifference and unbelief, may
* Paley, Moral Phil., b. vi. ch. x.
280 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
stifle and extinguish the religious element in its nation-
ality. The physical force, which existing law has at
its command, cannot permanently maintain that which
is opposed to the profound, pervading, and permanent
convictions of a nation. The State must be the imme-
diate arbiter of the form of the public creed ; but the
composition of the governing body, and the action of the
State, must both be finally determined, with respect to
this vital question, by the impulses of those social forces
which move and actuate it. Nobility, wealth, learning,
genius, active energy, permanency and prescription,
public authority, numbers or the simple engine of the
human will, and Christian virtue these are, in va-
rious measures, the constituents of power in a body
politic ; and it is idle, with relation to those principles
of political freedom which prevail in modern society,
to talk of the moral being of the State as a thing set
apart, self-derived, independent, or otherwise than as
it is determined by the composition of these forces in
a duly organised community. Among these forces,
law and the State are themselves an item, but they
are no more. Equilibrium must be established by
their general result. The preponderance of these forces
must fix the form of the national religion.
8. But the State is one of them ; and if the re-
mainder are duly and wisely represented in it, it may,
as it should, lead the whole. Although there must
be, in order to realise a permanent national religion,
an ultimate and general coincidence between the doc-
trinal belief of the ruling body and that of the subjects
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 281
at large ; and although a prolonged discrepancy is
more likely under present circumstances to terminate
in the surrender of the disputed points by than to the
Government, yet our phases of transition in this
world occupy no small space upon the tract of na-
tional history ; and it may often happen, at particular
points of place and time, either,
1, that the convictions of the sovereign or govern-
ing body are actually weaker, according to the
enumeration of social forces which I have recently
made, in the entire body politic, than some com-
peting system ; or,
2, that, though not actually weaker in the aggregate
of their social power, yet they are apparently
weaker, because a majority of voices may refuse
and resist them ; or,
3, that, though not actually weaker in the sheer
amount of numerical adhesion, yet by reason of
the tardy action of those who dislike change, and
of the proverbial sedulity of those who desire it,
the creed sanctioned by the State may seem to be
repudiated by a majority of the people ; or,
4, that without any just pretension to represent
even a numerical superiority, nevertheless a mi-
nority dissentient from the State religion may,
by restlessness, produce such a feverish irritation
throughout the nation as to tempt the governing
body to abandon that creed which is the occasion,
and is put forward as the cause, of discord.
9. In all those perplexing combinations which I
282 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
have just enumerated, the State, represented in the
law and in the governing body (both executive and,
more especially, legislative), possesses a powerfully
assimilating moral influence upon the people; and
can do much to relieve itself from its dilemma by
giving fair scope to its own qualifications as one of
their habitual and appointed guides. This may not
indeed be the case where there are no wise constitu-
tional provisions for opening and holding open to the
great interests of a country a way into the places of
authority and public counsel ; but where there is a
real unity, a profound and energetic national life, it
absolutely requires, as a pre-condition, this facility of
circulation, this reciprocating influence between the
members and the heart. Without this the State may
be a fabric, but is not a growth : it may be elaborated
by art, but the deeper wisdom of Nature and Provi-
dence disowns it.
10. It was the abuse of some former periods, that no
legitimate influences were admitted to pass upwards
in the social body : it is the fault of the present day to
doubt the correlative truths, that legitimate influences
of a moral and a religious description may be exercised
by the State upon the people, as well as by the people
on the State. Against this I argue that the State,
when rightly constituted, is eminently competent by
intrinsic as well as extrinsic attributes to lead, and to
solicit, the mind of the people ; to exercise the func-
tion, modified indeed, but yet real, of an instructor and
even of a parent ; and that the denial of the presump-
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 283
tive title of the State, in virtue of these qualifications, to
prompt and to advise even the numerical mass of the
people, and much more its fractional and minor parts,
in the matter of religion, is a manifest prelude both to
the general degradation of its functions, and to the
dissolution of the social bond.
11. That the State, then, must enact whatever is to
take legal effect, it is not required to contend here, nor
is it disputed elsewhere. In this technical sense, of
course, the State must choose the national religion.
The true question is, by what rule should it regulate
this function of choice? Now if my arguments be
sound, then, in order to a healthful state of society, the
conscience of the ruling body should be the measure of
the national religion ; not only because in rigid theory
this is required by the idea of its moral personality,
but also because it is presumably nearer to the truth
than the average of individual impressions or conclu-
sions.
12. It does not follow from the fact that any given
agent possesses the external means of promoting
an object, as for example wealth and influence, that
therefore universally he ought to set about it, or
even to select those who shall set about it, or to lay
down rules for their selection, if he have not the inter-
nal qualifications of mind which will enable him
rightly to discharge that office ; but if he have these
internal along with those external qualifications, then
the evidence is complete, and we read his duty in the
simple possession of them, just as we are enabled to
284 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
infer the habits of creatures from their structure ; as
for example from the specific conformation of the teeth
or the digestive organs in man, and in the inferior
animals, we learn by what kind of food they were pro-
videntially ordained to be supported. Now the true
moral right of pre-eminence, as Burke has observed,*
essentially resides in talent and virtue, not in a limited
but in the largest acceptation of the words ; in talent,
having reference to men as well as things, to practice
as well as study ; in virtue of a personal kind, or ac-
cording to a social standard ; but most of all, and with
a transcendent sense, in that which flows out of reli-
gious principles of God's appointment. These quali-
ties are found to pervade the masses of men in very
varying degrees. Wherever there is a tendency to-
wards equalisation of talent and virtue, the relation of
governor to governed should become one regulated
more by opinion, and less by coercion. But there
always has been inequality enough to make it obvious
that some men are better fitted to command than
others, and therefore that their being in places of
authority is a benefit, not merely to themselves,
which is a secondary question, but likewise to the
community at large.
13. We have seen, then, that there are in govern-
ments generally certain external means of a nature
calculated for the propagation of religion. We have
seen that the mere possession of those external means
is not enough to prove the obligation, unless there be
* Thoughts on the French Revolution.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 285
in governments intrinsically a competency of character,
such as shall enable them to use those means aright
and effectually for their purpose. Further, we find
that there are dispersed through the mass of the nation
men so far endowed with qualifications superior to the
average, that they are by nature marked out as empow-
ered to lead in civil society, and to discharge political
functions. Now if there be a tendency in the institu-
tions of a country to draw such men to such duties,
then surely we find in the governors a competency to
choose in matter of religion better than the average of
the people will do it for themselves, and, commen-
surate exactly with that superiority, an obligation to
exercise that choice, and, as it were, to advise or pre-
dispose the people to accept and follow that religion
which the governing body has adopted as the best.
14. I do not say that individual convictions in an
opposite direction are to give way to such an influence,
or to follow the course of the patronage of the govern-
ment; but simply this, that if the judgment of the
legislature be upon the average better qualified to find
and attest the truth in such a matter than that of the
people, then, to that very same extent, it is entitled
and therefore bound to be the instructor of the people.
And I think this may be proved almost from the
mouth of the opponent ; for he will surely admit that,
in a case where the people are wholly uninstructed,
and the government emanates from the bosom of a
Christian and an enlightened nation, this duty of in-
struction exists. Now suppose the people advanced
286 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
nearer to the government in point of intelligence by
one or by several degrees, surely the. previous obliga-
tion has not therefore terminated. It may have under-
gone modification in proportion to the growing com-
petency, and, as it were, manhood of the community,
in respect of religion ; but it must still exist, and can
only cease and determine at the time when the mass
of the people is equally well qualified to choose with
the government, or at least when the difference be-
tween them in point of competency, if any, has become
indiscernible ; for by the amount of that difference the
nation is a gainer in being reminded, as it were, of
the purer faith, and thereby, God willing, called to it.
And who shall say that in subject-matter so precious
any difference, whose definite reality has been ascer-
tained, can be unimportant ?
15. Now is not every government worthy of its
name, and valuable to the people over whom it rules,
just in proportion to the degree in which it gives over
and entrusts the destinies of the nation to the best and
wisest of the mind of the nation ? The dictates of that
mind, of the highest abilities, and of the most upright
and trustworthy characters which the land can boast,
are to be elicited, and by sound and good institutions
are elicited, from the recesses of private life, and the
best men are to be adorned with pre-eminence and
power ;* or if not fitted for administrative duties, still
* This accordingly is commonly assumed to be the case. See, for
example, the Speech of Mr. Roebuck in the House of Commons, on
the Criminal Law Mitigation Bills, May 19, 1837. " We, Sir, are or
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 287
they are watched accurately and heard respectfully,
and their views, if not their voices, are made effective
in the construction of laws and the direction of policy.
Is it meant that this high end is universally, or gene-
rally, or anywhere perfectly attained ? No ; but simply
this, that every government is good exactly in propor-
tion as it attains thereto ; that if we believe our go-
vernment to be essentially good, it is because it pos-
sesses and exhibits this power, and that in proportion
as our institutions attract into the governing body the
best wisdom of the nation, they endow it with the
capacity, and impose upon it the obligation, so far to
choose for the people in matter of religion as to pro-
pose to them what it has chosen.
16. If, then, the government be, in this general
sense, good, let it have its natural duties and powers
at its command ; but what, if not good ? The answer
is, that it is no more possible for us to lay down rules
for a state of things in which the State is totally with-
out directive capacity and inferior to individuals, than
to apply the established formulae of mathematics to a
system in which the laws upon which they rest should
be inverted. In considering abstract principles, we
argue, and this of necessity, concerning all men and
things, upon the supposition that they have, when
they are taken for all in all, a tolerable aptitude for
the purposes which they are appointed to accomplish :
both because man, as such, has from nature such an
ought to be the (lite of the people of England for mind : we are at the
head of the mind of the people of England."
288 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [cHAP. V.
aptitude for secular objects ; and because, by Chris-
tian grace, there exists a similar aptitude with refer-
ence to religion. We follow therefore the legitimate
course, in looking first for the true iSea, or abstract
conception of a government, of course with allowance
for the evil and the frailty that are in man, and then
in examining, whether there be comprised in that JSsa
a capacity and a consequent duty on the part of a go-
vernment to lay down any laws or devote any means
for the purposes of religion; in short, to exercise a
choice upon religion. So that the principles which
have been established in theory, have an obligatory
application to States and societies in their ordinary
historical or experimental forms, as having a tolerable
and relative competency for their functions.
17. I will now endeavour to evolve in their order
those considerations which are the efficient causes, and
the general measures, of the presumable superiority of
the State to the individual, considered as an organ for
the choice of a religion.
First, then, I have shown that governments ought
to be, and it will hardly be disputed that even from
the necessities of their position they actually are,
higher in the scale of intelligence than the fluctuating
elements of average opinion. Let us distinguish, how-
ever, between such opinion, and the stable convictions
of a nation, the laws of its character ; these I conceive
will themselves enter largely into the composition and
action of the ruling body, and the differences of senti-
ment between the governors and the governed will
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 289
commonly have reference to matters which, whether
true or false, are in a crude inorganic state, and lie in
the region of mere opinions.
18. Nor do I mean to hold that the sentence of
actual governors has intellectually the conditions of
truth beyond that of the wisest among private per-
sons. But this class is small, silent, and retired ; and
though the truths, which by meditation it elicits, do
not die, but grow gradually into power, yet they
exercise a very limited influence at the moment, and
enter but little into the formation of the popular
opinion of the current generation. In many cases
they find their way, indeed, from the study of the
philosopher into the cabinet of the monarch ; from
thence they take the form of law, and gradually re-
concile and attach the general mind. It was thus
with the reformation of religion in England. It was
thus with the Hanoverian succession. It was thu?
with the treaties of commercial reciprocity, from the
efforts of Mr. Pitt to that of Mr. Huskisson. It was
thus with the Roman Catholic Relief Bill. It has
been thus with the Amendment of the Poor Law. I ,
has been thus with the abolition of slavery ; for
though, in the latter stages of that career, the popular
wish decidedly outran the legislative and the execu-
tive bodies, yet it was in the first instance the action
of statesmen, orators, and philanthropists, in the legis-
lature, which formed and set in motion the feeling or'
the people. Intellectually, then, the persons com-
posing the legislature or wielding the sovereign power
VOL. r. u
290 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
are as a general rule superior to those whom they
govern.
19. Next, if we regard the ethical character or per-
sonal morality of rulers, by which I mean their prin-
ciples of Christian, and in a minor sense of human
virtue, I do not know that it can be fairly taken as
inferior to that which upon the whole characterises
the mass, notwithstanding the grossly exaggerated
statements which have been put forward by writers
desirous to limit or degrade their function.*
20. But the great fallacy which it is requisite to
expose lies in the assumption that the standard of the
moral action of the State is not more elevated than
that of the personal morality of governors ; whereas,
in truth, there are many causes which tend to raise it
to a considerably higher level, particularly where, as
in England, the principle of publicity so conspicuously
pervades the national institutions. An active super-
vision, and the knowledge that it is in constant wake-
fulness, the sense of shame, the fear of the conse-
quences of exposure, all these act for the most part
beneficially and in aid of inward virtue upon the
* " Would he (Dr. Chalmers) commit the conservation of the nation's
health to men who, instead of having made the healing art their spe-
cial study, and acquired a thorough acquaintance with its hest esta-
blished principles and most approved practice, had hardly ever opened
a medical book, or inspected a single organ of the human frame?
With equal reason might he do so, as entrust the interests of religion
to the kings and the statesmen of this world. There have been, there
are exceptions ; but of how many of them has it ever been sadly true,
that the religion of the Bible has been of all subjects the one with
which they were least conversant! what religion they have being based
on politics, official, not personal." Wardlaw's Lectures, lect. iv. p. 159.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 291
holders of political power, from the statesman down
to the elector. The theory of men is acknowledged
to be in general above their practice ; and therefore it
is that the sentiment which we call public opinion
(but it is really more) represents to a great degree the
defecated mind of the entire community. Further,
the generality of men apply their theory of right
with a good deal of rigour to their judgments of
others, and reserve any occasional relaxations of the
judicial tone for the exigencies of their own private
practice.* Now, governors are subject to the view
and the animadversions of the entire public ; and in a
polity of balanced powers and of extended popular
privilege, they are eyed with a wakeful and whole-
some jealousy ; their action therefore in the same
proportion (and it is a very considerable one) in which
it is influenced and controuled by " public opinion," is
effectively drawn upwards as respects its morality,
and does thus truly, in no small degree, represent the
purified and theoretic sense of the community. It
follows that, in the same degree, the public practice of
governors, that their acts (for I speak not here of their
motives) reach to a higher standard than that of the
average of individual conduct.
21. This most salutary action, however, upon the
* " Les hommes, fripons en detail, sont en gros de tres honnetcs
gens ; ils aimcnt la morale ; et si je ne traitois pas un sujet si grave,
je dirois que cela se voit admirablement bien sur les theatres ; on est
sur de plaire au peuple par les sentimens que la morale avoue, et on
est stir de le choquer par ceux qu'elle reprouve." Montesquieu, Esprit
dea Loix, xxv. 2.
292 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
State from without by an indeterminate yet powerful
sentiment, which is one of the most felicitous charac-
teristics of the political system of England, seems to
require as one of its conditions that moral personality,
that distinctness of agency and of responsibility in
the State, for which it is my whole aim to argue. If
we suppose the relations of representative and consti-
tuent to become those of agent and principal ; if w \
suppose the parliament, by annual elections, to be in-
cessantly reconstructed under the impressions of the
moment; if we suppose the deliberative function to
degenerate into that of exhibiting, according to the
rules of a just arithmetic or algebra, the absolute and
relative quantities of popular will then any moral
demarcation between the governed and the governing
body becomes unintelligible and impracticable. Why
should a sovereign advise the envoy whom he has
bound by absolute commands ? Why should a people
trust to an indirect and indeterminate action upon
those whom, under this hypothesis, it could tie down
by words and syllables to give effect with the utmost
precision to its inclinations ?
22. It is, however, the topic most material to this
part of the argument to insist, that there is in States a
higher and more influential element than the personal
will of the ministers or the legislators by whom from
time to time they may be piloted. That is the best
law which leaves least to the breast of the judge.
That is the best constitution which enshrines most of
what is material to the national well-being in fixed
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 293
and traditionary forms, arid limits, as far as may be,
the residue which is dependent (not in point of com-
petency only, for this all must be, but in point of
necessity and of practice) on living flesh and blood.
Now, the standard of virtue, to which law and fixed
institutions may attain, is certainly, as a general rule,
far above the average of the practical conscience of a
people. The reasons seem to be such as these : the
existing law, as a body, in a well-ordered realm, has
been, for the most part, originally formed by a dispas-
sionate deliberation. It has had, presumably, the
benefits of intellectual power to aid in its composition.
That process has been carried on under the supervi-
sion, more or less, -of a wholesome jealousy excited by
a general concern, and consequently with a livelier
play of the springs of honour and of shame : the in-
fluence of immediate interest and of corrupt bias will
have less generally prevailed. It has stood the test of
generations ; it has been viewed from many different
points, under many diversities of circumstance, and
has proved itself more or less adapted to all. And in
the discussion of enactments and the representation of
competing interests there is this immense advantage
that the several forces of human selfishness from oppo-
site quarters come into collision, and eliminate or
neutralise one another. In proportion to these condi-
tions of moral superiority, is the voice of constitutional
law relatively a voice of truth.
23. A deduction is to be made from this calculation
of the intrinsic and presumable advantages of law
294 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
over recent and private opinion, upon the score that
some classes of vicious principle, when they have
made their way into law, are more tardily and with
more difficulty reached by the processes of correction ;
but the benefits greatly preponderate over this occa-
sional detriment. For if, upon the whole, it be correct,
and none I believe dispute it, that national organisa-
tion has been a real and great blessing to man, and
has raised him above the level of his individuality, it
must be also plain that the laws and institutions, which
are to nations what mental habits are to the individual,
have upon the whole been nearer to truth than the
generality of individual conclusions.
Thus then, upon the whole, a well-ordered State
has a greater degree of competency to fix on truth in
religion than the private person as such, and according
to that degree is able to assist his choice.
24. I am aware that many readers will be apt to
stumble at the proposition that qualification or autho-
rity, that the icia-rig yQixri,* under any form, is to be
regarded in investigations of which truth is properly
the end. They will be apt to exclaim, that authority
cannot make a falsehood into a truth, or a truth into
anything more than a truth, and that our allegiance is
due to what really is true, not to what is told us as
being so. But this objection is as wide as the entire
range of those Divine dispensations under which we
live, and it is connected with a tissue of the most dan-
gerous fallacies. It presumes, either that each man has
* Art. Rhet. I. ii. 3.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 295
an incorrupt and steady perception of truth, or at least
that the corruption and instability of the individual
faculty are not capable of being in a greater or less
degree corrected by subjecting its exercise to extrinsic
conditions, which are themselves grounded upon our
actual and fallible nature. It overlooks the fact, that
God has made it a positive duty incumbent upon us to
obey teachers, parents, magistrates, though they are all
fallible and sinful like ourselves ; and it sets aside the
reasonable presumption, sustained both by universal
experience and by these expressions of the Divine will,
that abstract truth in circulation among men may
enjoy upon the whole a greater currency, if the propo-
sitions which purport to belong to it be examined with
a mixed regard in part to their nature separately con-
sidered, and in part to the character and capacity of
those who offer them. Were there no corrupt bias of
the heart, and were the light of the intellectual eye
perfect, this provision would be superfluous. But so
long as we are all confessedly defective in both these
respects, and are thus defective in very various degrees,
we must each, according to the law of common sense,
be content to make proper use of results realised by
faculties either notoriously or presumptively better
than our own ; the wisdom of those set over us must
be relied on as a substantive presumption of truth ;
and the general doctrine of authority, as a distinct
and legitimate element of credibility, thus rests upon
a basis no less comprehensive than that of the intel-
lectual, and likewise of the moral, fault of our nature,
296 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
either of which taken alone would suffice for its
support.
25. I have next to notice one of the commonest but
most superficial and valueless objections to the doc-
trine of national religion. It is this : " Surely that
cannot be a true theory which teaches that the Soci-
nian State is bound to support Socinianism, that the
Mahometan State is bound to support Islamism ; that
these may raise funds, of which part may proceed from
the labours of Catholic Christians, for the support of
their own \rorship, and that they are bound to do so
if their constitutional circumstances enable them." I
reply to this objection by asking, what was the sin of
Saint Paul in persecuting the Church before his con-
version ? He declares himself that he was guilty
therein. He believed the Church to be a. fiction op-
posed to divine revelation. Having that belief, was it
wrong in him to use all lawful means against it ? His
guilt lay in his refusal of the truth, not in the con-
sistency wi- 1 ! which he followed out that refusal to its
logical consequences. His guilt would have been not
less, but greater, if, conceiving the Gospel to be a
forgery, he had made no efforts against it.* It is the
* Compare the following passage: " He that doubts whether it be
lawful to keep the Sunday holy, must not do it during that doubt, be-
cause \vhatsoever is not of faith is sin : But yet God's mercy hath taken
care to break this snare in sunder, so that he may neither sin against
the commandment nor against his conscience ; for he is bound to lay
aside his error, and be better instructed, till when the scene of his sin
lies in something that hath influence upon his understanding, not in
the omission of the fact.'' Jer. Taylor, Serin, xxvii. part iii. On the
Miracles of the Divine Mercy.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 297
" scene of the sin " which the objector misapprehends.
The consequence flows out of a larger premiss: that
every man, as a logical being, ought to act in con-
sistency with his principles. May not an individual
propagate his belief? Yet, if he be a Mahometan, he
must propagate Mahometanism.
26. It is true that the religion of the State may,
upon the general principles of national religion, in
many cases be far from perfect ; but its faultiness will
belong to the original process by which the particular
view that has given rise to it was attained, not to the
obligation of governors as such to uphold it. When we
see the professors of a false creed indifferent to its
propagation, although we may bless God for the result,
we cannot but regard the fact as aggravating the case
of the holders of such creed.* The fault lies in the
creed, not in the propagation, although it be continued
and transmitted through it. It does not arise between
the premisses and the conclusion, but we are to look
for it in the premisses themselves. It is the fault of
the materials, not of the structure; and the way to
amend it is, not by repudiating the principle of a
national religion, but by endeavouring to recast that
religion according to the laws of truth ; to change, not
its nationality, which is an accident, but its error,
which is of the essence. The obligation holds both as
to the points of truth which false religions may con-
tain, and with regard to their errors if held as truths,
so long as they are thus held.
* Locke's Third Letter on Toleration, chap, i., Works (1824), v. 146.
298 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
27. Probable evidence, be it remembered, is binding
upon us as well as demonstrative ; nay, it constitutes
the greatest portion of the subject-matter of duty ; and
thus a dim view of religious truth entails an obligation
to follow it as real and valid as that which results
from a clear and full comprehension ; as real and va-
lid, although it be true that different degrees of guilt
are incurred by the disregard of the one or the other.
So, if I find a purse, which I conjecture to belong to
my neighbour, I am as truly bound it is as legiti-
mate a part of my moral duty to take it to him and
ascertain the fact, as it would be at once to restore it if
I absolutely knew him to be the owner ; and yet the
sin of withholding it would vary according to the de-
gree of probability in the evidence. Now this law
holds good as well with regard to partial as to an
ambiguous view of truth ; and thus a more limited
perception of .religion still leaves a case of obligation
to profess and promote it, while any substantial pro-
position continues to be believed : just as, if our ap-
prehension of the Divine will be indistinct and uncer-
tain, we are nevertheless bound to follow it so long as
a reasonable balance of probability remains in favour
of the reality of our impressions. There is a close ana-
logy between the two cases ; in both there is a frac-
tion or residue of truth, which residue we are bound to
obey.
28. Here, however, let us make a distinction. There
are men even among us who view religion, and espe-
cially State religion, as a deceit intended to tame and
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 299
subdue the people. It is to be feared that among
Mahometans and other believers in false creeds this is
more extensively the case. I do not say that such a
class of men are bound to propagate religion : but this
I do not scruple to affirm, that, if a Mahometan con-
scientiously believe his religion to come from God and
to teach Divine truth, he must believe that truth to
be beneficial, and beneficial beyond all other things,
to the soul of man; and he must, therefore, and
ought to desire its extension, and to use for its exten-
sion all proper and legitimate means ; and that, if
such a Mahometan be a prince, he ought to count
among those means the application of whatever influ-
ence or funds he may lawfully have at his disposal for
such purposes.
29. For example, let us suppose that the truth he
holds to be revealed is the unity of God. I say that
the sight of this portion of religious truth entails the
obligation to pursue it. Nay further : that the errors
which he holds along with it are errors which he sees
as truths ; that as such he is bound upon his own prin-
ciples to seek their propagation ; and that, if he does
so, the fault lies in the original conception, in the
manner by which he came to conviction, and not in
the acting upon that conviction, supposing it fully
formed : whereas, if he does not so, then he betrays
what he believes falsely to be truth, as much as we by
the like conduct should betray what we believe truly
and know to be truth, and our view being confined
300 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
simply to the fact of convictions of equal strength in
similar subject-matter entailing the same obligation
upon the individuals entertaining them the fault in
both cases would be the same.
30. It can hardly be required to mention, that the
obligations of the State to religion must of course be
limited by the subsisting constitution of a country. It is
because means of promoting religion naturally accrue
to governors, that they are bound to use them for that
end : as the individual finds in the fact of his possess-
ing capacities, opportunities, or fortune for doing God
service, the obligation to perform that service. But
means contrary to the constitution, instead of accruing
naturally, would be acquired most unnaturally. A go-
vernment can only, with propriety, be said to have
what statutory or customary and fundamental law
may assign it. If an executive organ should venture
on an illegal exaction of funds for religious objects
or if a legislative body, contrary to what are termed
fundamental laws, should frame an enactment for the
purpose, and give it effect by pure power it would
be offering to God what belongs not to itself, but to
another ; and it would no more be rendering to Him
a legitimate or acceptable service, than if a private
man should commit robbery and dedicate the proceeds
to sacred uses.
31. There are, however, I freely admit, cases in
which national association exists only under conven-
tional, and therefore always partial or mutilated, forms;
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 301
and in which the State may have lost, or may not
seek to gain, or may not yet have gained, but may be
on the way to gain, that amplitude of relations to
the people, without which it cannot discharge a pa-
rental duty. Under cover of these forms of exception
I do not seek obliquely to introduce the State of
Great Britain. By special compact, indeed, its dis-
orders have been removed, deviations from its con-
stitution rectified, and needful definitions supplied :
but it has its foundation upon earlier and far deeper
principles. Our nationality is yet entire. And in
particular, the national estate of religion embodies,
in its present form, the convictions of the numerical
majority, as well as the yet greater moral prepon-
derance of the people : and the conclusion for which I
argue is, the duty of that majority to uphold it, by the
constitutional exercise of their privileges, in its present
position.
32. But if we look abroad, we find for example the
State of Saxony, where the royal family is of the
Roman, the people mainly of the Lutheran commu-
nion ; the great State of Prussia, where the royal
family and the majority of the people are Lutheran,
but where a minority adheres to the Pope. Now this
minority is actually predo^ninant in some particular
provinces of the realm ; and it was annexed to Prussia
by compact simply, and under conditions, of which
one was the continuance of the public arrangements
that had already been made for the support of the
302 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
Roman communion by the State. Government in
such a case is less natural than conventional, and can-
not discharge all the duties that would appertain to a
more comprehensive and ordained relation, as it is
hard for a step-mother, however well disposed, to bear
the full maternal responsibilities. But the clear obli-
gation of such a government is, gently, yet consist-
ently, to aim at infusing into its regimen vigorous
moral elements in proportion as there are stamina to
bear it.
33. The same general rules may guide us to right
conclusions concerning an instance still more peculiar,
that of British India, where a small number of persons
of a higher civilisation, and professors of revealed
religion, exercise in various degrees the powers of
government over an immense population, made up
not only of individuals but of nations, and professing
(with trifling exceptions) various forms of heathenism.
With some of these our relations are only mediate ;
and though we virtually move the springs of their
civil administration, it is in part by compact and in
part by sufferance. These are for the most part those
termed Subsidiary and Tributary States. With respect
again to those who are under our more direct ordinary
control, we hold the post of power, not as having
grown up with them out of the cradle of nations, nor
yet in strict propriety by conquest; but rather because
British arms have rid them of their former masters,
and British authority, in consequence, with the free
CHAP. V.] W,ITH THE CHURCH. 303
will of those whom it has relieved, stands in their
place.*
There was no speech that truce to bind,
It was a compact of the mind.f
Here are no relations immemorially subsisting, no
vestiges of primitive and patriarchal rule to afford a
basis for the structure of government. We rule by
opinion and consent ; I trust not by force, and that
general consent and good will are the actual, as they
are the rightful, title of our empire. Reserving there
our own freedom, we must agree to be limited in our
extrinsic action by the desires of the native race, unless
in points which by tacit or express arrangement are
given over to our discretion. In such an instance as
this, what are the religious obligations of the British
government ? First, it should seem, to show a Christ-
ian example; next, to afford direct countenance or
aid to the proffer of Christianity so far as the people
are willing to receive it ; and lastly, to study the
encouragement and enlargement of that willingness.
The denial of these obligations to introduce the true
guarantee and basis of a moral life into the relations
between the British government and the people of
India, I conceive to be an error far more pernicious
than would even be the attempt to precipitate their
discharge. In short, our religious duties in India are
* Edinb. Rev., April, 1839, p. 257- In the first editions of this work
the text conveyed a meaning more precise than I intended to give it
t Rokeby.
304 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
those of example and progression. They have met
with but very tardy arid scanty recognition.*
34. Again ; there may be a state of things in the
United States of America, perhaps in some British
colonies, there does actually exist a state of things in
which religious communions are so equally divided,
or so variously subdivided, that the government is
itself similarly chequered in its religious complexion,
and thus internally incapacitated by utter disunion
from acting in matters of religion ; or, again, there
may be a state in which the members of government
may be of one faith or persuasion, the mass of the
subjects of another, and hence there may be an ex-
ternal incapacity to act in matters of religion. It has
been sufficiently shown that such a case involves de-
reliction of the true functions and responsibilities of
government; and it is enough, therefore, for the
present, to have marked each of these combinations of
circumstances as a social defect and calamity.
* Wilberforce's Correspondence, ii. 128, 132, 138, 231, 268, 271,313,
330, &c. It is satisfactory to state, that the noble design of the Bishop
of Calcutta (Wilson), for the erection of a cathedral, has met with the
liberal support of the East India Company.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 305
SECTION II.
AS TO DEFENCE.
35. I now proceed to complete the more abstract
portion of this inquiry, by considering the objection
that the doctrine of union between the Church and
the State as a condition of the true national life, and
as a result of the law of conscience in the State, tends
to disqualification of citizens who are worthy of public
charges, and even to persecution for religious belief.
I am not however aware that any man has attempted
to demonstrate this consequence by serious argument.
It has indeed be"en said, if you may tax, why may
you not disqualify by tests ? If you may disqualify,
why may you not persecute?* As, however, I have
distinctly held that the State should aid the Church
by all appropriate means, and as coercion is clearly an
instrument very commonly appropriate for the em-
ployment of the State, I freely admit that the onus of
showing that the anticipated consequence does not
legitimately arise, lies with the defenders of the con-
nection. I shall endeavour first to consider whether
the State ought to persecute, whether for the illustra-
tion and advancement of religious truth directly and
pro salute animce, or in order to avoid the social
dangers which religious error generally must produce.
36. With regard to penalties applied to blasphemies,
they do not come under the category of persecutions.
* Edinb. Rev., April, 1839, p. 248.
VOL. I. X
306 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
These are punished not as opinions, not as sentiments
reached through any sort of intellectual process, but
as appeals to gross passion,* which wilfully put aside
the common reason and understanding of man, as
well as the sense of decency ; they set out with over-
throwing the primary laws of his nature, by which he
is separated from the brutes, and the character as well
as the tendency of this outrage is intolerable to society.
Whether such legal penalties be politic or impolitic is
a separate question, to be resolved according to cir-
cumstances.
37. With regard to coercion, applied to particular
religious opinions which have specific consequences
hostile to social order, this is altogether a political
question ; and such a practice might with entire con-
sistency either be disavowed by a State owning reli-
gious obligation, or adopted by one renouncing it.
The penalties inflicted on Romanists under Queen
Elizabeth, and on the Episcopal Communion of Scot-
land under George II., are examples of coercion of
this kind. At the same time, those who inflict suffer-
ing so as to discourage the truth of religion, though
they may do it with a distinct design, or aliud agentes,
have the guilt of persecution. In this, the most
proper sense of the term, no one can raise a question
concerning its guilt. But, together with all violent
opposition offered to the truth in the persons of its
professors, there is also according to common use sig-
nified under the general name of persecution a sepa-
* Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy, b. v. ch. ix.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE^CHURCH. 307
rate idea ; namely, all intentional infliction of restraint
or pain on account of religious opinion. Restraint or
pain, however, which may incidentally and not de-
signedly be consequent upon political enactments,
coinciding with a given state of mind in the subject,
are not necessarily proofs of persecution. It is the last-
named signification alone which is here to be considered.
38. After these explanations upon the meaning of
the phrase, I observe that it is erroneous to ascribe as
a consequence to the foregoing theory, either
1. That there need be persecution, or
2. That there ought to be persecution.
The first, because it is not true that the function of
the State is universally or of necessity coercive. Any
notion of this kind is grounded upon a confusion of
different conceptions. A State, indeed, coerces wher-
ever it commands, but not wherever it encourages ;
and undoubtedly it sometimes encourages without
commanding. The whole function of reward is in the
nature of suasion or inducement. Practically the
springs of government have been worked in England
for a century and a half past in no small degree by
the same instruments, under the form of political
patronage. The entire system of titles and distinctions,
of public thanks, pensions, monuments, and estates, has
always been deemed a distinct department of the duties
of government. The State may therefore offer as well
as enforce, and give as well as impose. Its functions
must be coercive so far only as they are prohibitory,
that is negative. The other is their nobler side, although
x 2
308 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [cHAP. V.
the narrower in quantity of subject-matter. But it is
also generally allowed, that a State should promote
learning and the fine arts, as powerful engines of
civilisation. No man could dream of pursuing such
objects by the method of coercion. The State em-
ploys national funds to provide galleries, museums,
libraries, observatories, and invites the people volun-
tarily to avail themselves of these advantages. It is
true, indeed, that in our own country the sphere of
the State's action is limited in this department. But
among other and perhaps more imaginative nations,
the kunstleben, the art-life, is one of the leading
elements of our humanity, and the service rendered to
it enters largely into the occupations of governments.
But such service, whether less or more, appeals only
to the free-will and the higher faculties of the subject.
I may also quote, by way of further illustration, the
aid rendered in this country from the national funds
to popular education, an assistance in no way com-
pulsory, yet very acceptable to the general sentiment.
And the testimony here borne by opinion in its present
state among us is the more remarkable, because it
proceeds most freely and largely from those who are
either hostile to the national establishment of religion,
or lukewarm in its support.
39. Neither, again, is the charge against this theory
supported by the circumstance that, according to its
tenets, the State is and ought to be a discerner of
truth and falsehood in religion. For the Church is
far more than the State an executress of that office ;
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 309
nay, she discharges it with authority.* And yet
(excepting with the immediate sanction of the Spirit
of God, as in the case of St. Paul's command to the
Corinthiansf) she has never claimed to exercise the
penal functions, unless under very peculiar and partial
circumstances, and from savage bigotry. Her doctors
have indeed been divided on the question, whether
religious error ought to be repressed through civil
penalty, under the sentence of any human tribunal ;
or whether, when incurable, it should be removed,
lest it should become to the uninfected a source of
corruption ; but they seem ever to have taught that at
least the matter did not belong to her province^ and
have referred the whole subject to the civil power.
40. And as there need not, in logical or moral con-
sistency, so neither ought there, according to the
principles of this work, to be such a thing as persecu-
tion. If we contemplate any ordinary case, if we
suppose the tenets in question to be of secondary im-
portance, the proposition seems so clear as not to merit
a discussion. When, however, we remember, that there
are many truths revealed by God, which we may not
admit to be of anything less than primary moment to
the soul of man, and when we recollect what the his-
tory of many centuries records, the inquiry must not
* Art. xx. t 1 Cor. v. 5.
J Richerius, de Potestate Ecclesia?, has a chapter entitled, ' Con-
sensus Catholicus Patrum et Doctorum Ecclesise, de potestate minis-
terial! spiritual! Ecclesiac, vacua omni potestate cogendi extrinsece
per poenas temporalcs.' b. iii. ch. iii. Among his authorities he alleges
Tertullian, Athanasius, Ambrose, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine,
Gregory, Anselm, and Bernard.
310 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
be overlooked. I may proceed, then, to suggest, that
the State ought not to use coercion for the propagation
of religious truth, or for the repression of erroneous
opinion, because the employment of force by man
upon man is essentially inappropriate for such a pur-
pose. And as the principle of the theory is, that the
State should aid religion by appropriate means alone,
it follows that it should not employ penal measures
for that end.
41. First, then, even the arguments which have
been incidentally urged respecting the incompetency
of a government to exercise constant and minute super-
vision over religious opinion, and consequently to
enter into relations of co-operation with persons pro-
fessing particular religious opinions upon the ground
of those opinions, seem also to point out that a go-
vernment exceeds its province when it comes to adapt
a scale of punishments to variations in religious
opinion, according to their respective degrees of devi-
ation from the established creed. To decline affording
countenance to sects, is a single and simple rule. To
punish their professors according to the magnitude of
their several errors (even were there no other objec-
tion), is one to arrive at which the State must assume
functions wholly ecclesiastical, and for which it is not
intrinsically qualified.*
4'2. Again, it may be said, that if the government
be more competent to choose than the individual, and
be consequently both entitled and bound to offer to
* Locke's Third Letter for Toleration, ch. iv.
CHAP. V.J WITH THE CHURCH. 311
the individual the result of that choice, the same argu-
ment must go to the extent of proving that the go-
vernment is also bound to force its religion upon the
subject, as carrying with it a greater likelihood of
truth, and thus a probable advantage to the recipient.
The answer is, that it requires much more than such
a probability to warrant any human agency in break-
ing down the natural freedom which God has given
to man. I will not indeed argue that this inward
liberty is so sacred and indefeasible a right, that of
itself it is an insuperable argument against religious
coercion. It seems to me to be rather an instrumental
than an essential good ; to be in truth an absolute
condition of our highest well-being, but also to add
nearly or quite as much to our guilt and misdeeds
when we are inclined to evil, as to our true felicity
when we are effectually inclined to good. Abstract-
edly, it might be for the profit of a resolute unbeliever
to be physically punished ; much more it might con-
duce to the welfare of society, that he should be re-
strained from putting his poison into circulation ; but
before acting upon this speculative possibility of ad-
vantage, we must inquire whether human nature and
society possess the means nece:*ary to realise it in
practice without the admixture of greater evil. And
as the corporal freedom of the subject is the first care
of the most excellent constitutions, and as liberty is
much more essentially the property of his mind than
of his limbs, the well-constituted State will not under
312 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
ordinary circumstances supersede his moral agency
by restraining it.
43. To solicit and persuade one another are privi-
leges which belong to us all; and the wiser and better
man is bound to advise the less wise and good ; but
he is not only not bound, he is not allowed, speaking
generally, to coerce him. There are indeed imagin-
able degrees of superiority, which might raise a proba-
ble argument for coercion, especially where the inferior
party is very low in the social scale ; but these suppo-
sitions are rather exercises for ingenuity, than argu-
ments founded on experience, and suited to the direc-
tion of conduct. In general, even a parent would, it
is obvious, decline the attempt to force the religion of
his child ; and the moral authority of the State over
the private person, and its responsibility for his full
training, are far less determinate. In the same pro-
portion must the circumstances of the case be extra-
ordinary to warrant even the entertainment of such a
proposition ; that is to say, it lies beyond the range of
practical discussion. It is untrue, then, that the same
considerations, which bind a government to submit a
religion to the free choice of the people, would there-
fore either demand, or even justify their enforcing its
adoption.
44. I have already observed upon the fact that
laws and institutions, having it for their object to
bring before the people some mental or moral benefit,
such as establish, for example, institutes, in order to
CHAP. V.J WITH THE CHURCH. 313
the promotion of literature, art, or science, rarely
attempt to force upon the subject the advantages they
are designed to convey. What is the probable ground-
work of this nearly universal rule ? Doubtless it may
rest in part on the supposition, that there will be
found no want of readiness to appreciate, accept, and
use the benefits thus tendered ; but it seems to have a
deeper foundation in the fact that there is an obvious
incongruity, felt by the general sense of men, between
the notion of force on the one hand, and of advantage
or access to the higher faculties on the other. And
here, in truth, we come to one of the strongest reasons
against religious compulsion. In proportion as we
ascend from the lower to the more elevated desires and
capacities of mankind, we escape from the region of
coercion, and enter upon that of freedom and choice.
Our animal life deals with us as with slaves. Our
intellectual wants are chiefly felt when a higher stage
of refinement has been reached ; and yet even they are
discernible in an atmosphere where the subtle forms of
spiritual beings, which are the objects of our spiritual
faculties, would be wholly lost. These are not forced
upon our attention : witness the thousands who care
not for them. And indeed there is a radical incom-
patibility in the nature of things, which ought to ex-
empt the domain of religion from the intrusion of force.
The service which God requires is the service of the
will. The conversion of the will to God is the funda-
mental change which Christianity aims at producing.
The will, by its very essence, by its very definition,
314 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V-
cannot be coerced ; for if his moral conduct be practi-
cally brought under the dominion of force, the human
being no longer has any real will or inward freedom.
45. In one point of view, however, this argument
may still not suffice to preclude religious persecution.
For it may be further held, and not wholly without
truth, that although coercion cannot produce convic-
tion by its own immediate agency, it may set men
about searching into the truth, and so bring them to-
wards conviction, and put them in the way to arrive
at it. Here, indeed, the question would incidentally
arise, whether in general, and, particularly, whether
in the temper of the present day, any such degree and
kind of coercion could be used as should not be more
than counterbalanced by the reaction it would excite ?
But this does not touch the merits: and it is more
fairly pleaded that coercion may be available in re-
pressing error, than that it can actively assist the
reception of the truth. At least it seems difficult to
dispute that, under many possible forms of circum-
stances, it may have the negative but great merit of
checking the dispersion of error, and thereby of pre-
venting minds from being tainted, which might, if it
moved freely, come under its influence.
To the argument against persecution from the
nature of the faculties conversant with religious in-
quiry, some may be inclined to add that which has
been developed with extraordinary power and learning
by Jeremy Taylor in his ' Liberty of Prophesjang,'
from the circumstance, that the evidence must, with
CHAP. V.J WITH THE CHURCH. 315
respect to most tenets, fall greatly short of certainty.
Questions, however, may be raised, whether, if com-
pulsion be justifiable at all, it may not be vindicated
in the case of highly probable, as well as in that of
demonstrative propositions. And moreover, the rea-
soning of this great writer will not cover the whole of
my present conclusion, inasmuch as he excepts from
toleration " whatsoever is against the foundation of
faith."*
46. These reasonings, however, upon the whole,
though they may fall short of a demonstrative charac-
ter, clearly converge to a conclusion in favour of the
principles of full toleration. I add yet one more of a
similar description. It is derived from the corrupting
influence of coercive power in religion upon those who
wield it. I will admit that this consideration appears
to me to be entitled to great weight. Let it be conceded,
that in theory a specious argument may be raised
against the total surrender of this power; but I ask, by
whom is it to be administered ? Were there a tribunal
of untainted and seraphic spirits, who would administer
penalty for such unbelief or misbelief as implies de-
linquency, with justice, with wisdom, with sympathy,
with sorrow, I allow that the abstract reasoning might
be entitled to take a practical form. But are we not
warned by the experience of universal history, that
the use of this power by man, except when he has
acted under the express and known authority of God,
has had a deteriorating influence upon those who have
* Works, vol. vii. p. cccciii.
316 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
employed it ? I am brought, then, to the conclusion
that it is an instrument which the Almighty has re-
served to His own exclusive control.
47. There are parallel cases : for example, can any
thing be more specious than the arguments which
may be framed for the ordeal of battle as the arbiter
of disputes ? for the drama, as a school of morals ? for
the confessional, as a guarantee of religious purity ?
And yet I fear it is too clear that all these have, upon
the whole, operated unfavourably for the vital recep-
tion of Divine truth. The hazard of bringing the
lower and animal passions of mankind into immediate
contact with an excitement seemingly directed to un-
selfish and spiritual objects is far too great. The
ostensible design is so good that it forms a perfect and
impenetrable shelter to the workings of self-deceit,
and the passions of demons, covertly insinuated in
their sheep's clothing, sit upon the throne of our
hearts and are worshipped as God. Let us leave to
Him that which is His.
Vidi et crudeles dantem Salmonea poenas
Dum flammas Jovis, et sonitus imitatur Olympi.
*##**
Demens ! qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen
JEre et cornipedum cursu simularat equorum.*
48. There are other topics of great importance con-
nected with this branch of the argument. For ex-
ample, in periods of intellectual inactivity, men of
indolent and worldly minds are ever ready to trust to
* JEn. vi. 585.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 317
coercion, provided it be within their reach, for the main-
tenance of the truth. The sure effect of this is, that they
become by degrees indifferent to the purely spiritual
weapons of the Church. Then comes an age of men-
tal excitement, when men will not endure the servitude
of their fathers ; and the class I have described, who
usually form the great majority of persecutors, finding
that under the altered circumstances the mechanical
instrument of coercion has failed them, and never
having learned the use of any other, are apt to abandon
persecution and all maintenance of determinate belief
together. The very motives and dispositions which
predispose many to laxity in the present day, and thus
endanger the creed of the Church, would have in-
duced the very same persons, had their lot been cast
in the twelfth, the fifteenth, or the sixteenth centuries,
to concur in the most savage proceedings against in-
novators in religion. Thus do coercion and the re-
liance upon it tend to undermine the true moral foun-
dations of the Church of Christ.
49. I apprehend, however, that the determinate and
conclusive reason against persecution is this that the
authority to inflict it has not been expressly given to
man, and that it is an authority which, except by ex-
plicit commission from God, he cannot have. Un-
doubtedly there are many things uncommanded which
are lawful ; but there are also some which would not
be sufficiently warranted by the general laws of duty,
and which are only allowable under express injunction.
It appears to me that when we dispassionately re-
318 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [ciIAP. V.
gard the whole subject of persecution, both in its
speculative and in its historical forms, we find it to be
one in which any contingencies of good are so closely
and inextricably mixed up with those of evil, and in
which there is so much doubt (on the best supposi-
tion) as to the balance between them, that the human
understanding can find no warrant for action in the
general rules under which we are placed. If indeed
there be a direct command of God applying to these
entangled problems, such command of itself becomes
a guarantee of solution, and supplies us with a chart
in a province otherwise trackless and impassable. But
if there be no such express injunction, the case falls
back into the category of those where to refrain is a
duty, and to act a breach of obligation.
Affliction is, as we know, independently of a penal
character, an instrument of our most salutary discipline
in the hand of our Heavenly Father. Yet men are not
allowed to take in hand the scourge for this cause;
and if a parent were asked why he had deprived an un-
offending son of his livelihood, it would be no suffi-
cient vindication to reply, that he had reduced him to
beggary in order that he might learn to trust the more
fervently in God.
Saul was condemned for sparing anything in his
conquest of the Amalekites ; yet, but for the explicit
Divine command, would he not have been guilty had
he destroyed " Agag, and the best of the sheep, and
of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs?"
We take away the lives of harmless animals, and con-
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 319
sume their flesh ; but it is by the direct permission of
God.* Except for this, it would be sinful ; and under
this it may still be proved sinful to destroy those
which are neither noxious when living, nor available
for our support when dead.
50. Once more. We have the right to enforce the
civil laws of the land, in suitable subject-matter, by
pains and penalties, because it is expressly given by
Him who has declared that the civil rulers are tof
bear the sword for the punishment of evil doers, as
well as for the encouragement of them that do well.
And so in things spiritual, had it pleased God to give
to the Church or to the State this power, to be per-
manently exercised over their members, or mankind
at large, we should have the right to use it ; but it
does not appear to have been so received, and, conse-
quently, it should not be exercised. As we have seen,
the Church appears to have afforded a very general
attestation to this truth so far as regards herself, by
referring to the civil power, under almost all circum-
stances, the office of executing the most sanguinary
decrees of punishment for offences ecclesiastical. Now
the principle of toleration simply affirms for the State
what the Church has in practice generally affirmed for
herself an exemption from that painful office, by dis-
claiming the right to punish in loss of goods, liberty,
or life, for error or heresy in religion.
51.1 would almost go so far as to say that religious
coercion is actually forbidden by the declaration of our
* Gen. ix. 3. t Rom. xiii. 4.
320 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
Saviour " My kingdom is not of this world : if my
kingdom were of this world, then would my servants
fight, that I should not be delivered unto the Jews :
but now is my kingdom not from hence." * In this
passage our Lord explains why He did not allow force
to be employed by His disciples for His defence. On
which it is to be observed, first, that the reason given
is not one connected with time and circumstance
alone, but is laid in the essence of the Christian dis-
pensation ; secondly, that if it accounted for the non-
employment of defensive weapons, it seems a fortiori
to preclude their use for offensive purposes. Were
the words to be interpreted without reference to the
occasion on which they were spoken, they might be,
as they have often been, arbitrarily assumed to mean
that none of the instruments which this world sup-
plies could lawfully be used for the extension of the
kingdom of Christ; but this interpretation is alike
opposed to the ordinary tenor of Scripture and to the
rudimental rules of common sense ; and on general
principles also, the occasion of an indeterminate alle-
gation is its best expositor. A similar argument might
perhaps be raised from other passages. But we need
not rely upon controvertible senses of particular texts.
It is quite enough to occupy the purely negative
ground that the prerogative of persecution has not
been given us, and therefore is not ours.
52. It is not, therefore, because we believe civil
rights to be more important than religious doctrines,
* John xviii. 36.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 321
that we would use a power for the defence of the one
which we decline to employ for the propagation of the
other ; although too often some such vicious inference
is drawn by persons reasoning ill or not at all, from
such a conduct on the part of the State. But it is
because God has seen fit to authorise that employment
of force in the one case, and not in the other ; and be-
cause we, as creatures under conditions of fallibility
essentially kindred in rulers and in subjects, have no
right to administer pains and penalties, either on
social or religious pretexts, to our brethren, upon any
circuitous inference or conjectural speculation of our
own.
53. We have now arrived at the second question
proposed. If, then, the State may not persecute for
matter of religion, may it notwithstanding disqualify ?
And first, what is political disqualification ? It is not
exclusion from all social power, for the unenfranchised
multitude has power. The bodiless apprehension of
violence, the hold of consumers over those who supply
them, the ability to derange the whole industrial
operations of a country and its physical life by sus-
pending the action of the strong arm of labour, the
mere voice of human solicitation these are all indi-
rect, yet real and weighty, elements of social power.
But disqualification is exclusion from social power in
those determinate and current forms which the consti-
tution of a country recognises, and to which it gives
legal effect. Social power, reduced under- such forms,
we may denominate political power. May a State,
VOL. I. Y
322 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
then, disqualify for religious opinions not immediately
adverse to social order ?
54. Now I first observe, that the five first of the ar-
guments * which have been deemed available against
persecution, are also arguments, in their degree,
against disqualification. For civil function and office
is in the nature of a benefit as well as a duty ; and to
this benefit all members of the body politic have,
in equity, a presumable inchoate right, according to
their several capacities. Something therefore, namely,
that presumable or inchoate right, that fair and equal
chance of an actual privilege, is taken from them by
civil disabilities. Accordingly disqualification is ca-
pable of being represented as, relatively to the indivi-
dual, in the nature of a penalty, not often perhaps
considerable, yet equal in amount to the difference
betwen the burden and the benefit of civil office, with
possibly the addition of whatever may, under particu-
lar circumstances, be lost by the incapacity suffered
in point of general repute. Disqualification is open
therefore, in a less degree, to the more general objec-
tions against coercion : on the other hand, it does not
derive the full advantage of such arguments as tell in
favour of the other. It often galls far more than it curbs.
It may induce men to dissemble their faith when it has
not stringency enough to make them abandon it ; but
conscience fares worse, perhaps, at least scarcely better,
in the former case than in the latter. Persecution com-
monly will produce a crisis which may result in the
* $ 41, 42, 44, 46, 48.
CHAP. V.^ WITH THE CHURCH. 323
triumph of one of the contending principles, and then
the establishment of an equilibrium. But disqualifi-
cation alienates and embitters by a more tardy process,
and, gradually deepening the seat of social discord,
engenders contentions, which, if less passionate while
they continue, are likewise less powerfully and rapidly
borne towards their issue, and consume the heart of
society by a slow and wasting fever.
55. And yet, upon the principles of this work, dis-
sent from the national faith is in the nature of a dis-
advantage for the performance of public functions ; for
if the State be intrusted with the administration of a
Divine authority, its maxims must be determined and
its laws moulded according to the revealed will of
God : now that revealed will, in the view of the State,
is represented by the Church ; how, then, should it be
a matter of indifference whether those who are to con-
duct the action of the State, are or are not imbued
with the spirit of the Church ? And again, yet more
specifically, the disqualification of dissidents is in its na-
ture, and so long as it can be maintained with security
to the State, in the nature of a bulwark to the direct
profession and active support of the national religion ;
and few will deny that, under some circumstances, it
may be lawful for the State to discourage diversities of
creed.* It is better, cceteris paribus, for the pre-
* " Voici done le principe fundamental des loix politiques en fait de
religion. Quand on est mattre de recevoir dans un etat une nouvelle
religion, ou de ne la pas recevoir, il ne faut pas 1'y etablir ; quand
elle y est etablie, il faut la tolerer." Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix,
xxv. 10.
324 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
servation of that vital spirit, that the influences of the
hostile and the lukewarm should be remote, than that
they should be proximate. If the personal composition
of the governing body be wholly conformable to the
Faith of the Church, then the agency of those influ-
ences is extrinsic to the State organic, though not to
the State diffusive ; but if it be checquered, then the
agency has become intrinsic and familiar, and is more
likely to take effect in the action of the governing body
itself, by which, as in the case of persons, its moral
habits must be finally determined. Now it is more
practicable, I say, to preserve the religious action of the
State entire (and therefore to keep it moral), when
dissidents are excluded from the governing body, than
when they are admitted into it. .Shall the State, then,
adopt for its immutable canon the resolution to ex-
clude them ? If so, the inducement which brought
it thus far will assuredly conduct it much farther.
56. For, upon the other hand, the arguments for dis-
qualification are of a kind which are not fully satisfied
by it, although to a certain degree it meets their pur-
pose. If it be dangerous, that men not possessed of all
the conditions of national life (of which the national
religion, as has been shown, is one and the highest)
should enter into the composition of the governing
body, it is also as truly, though less directly, danger-
ous, that such men should exist in the body of the
community, and should make use of those indetermi-
nate yet substantial engines of social power which the
unprivileged masses must, whether consciously or un-
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 325
consciously, possess. The argument, therefore, would
require that, in order to obviate the whole of this
danger, expatriation, at the least, should be enforced.
And I apprehend that writers, who insist upon " the
Test," as the one essential guarantee of national reli-
gion, might, by logical antagonists, be forced to admit
that their theory was severer than their intentions.
57. For it is evidently more practicable still, to
give effect to the principle of national religion when
the faith of the nation is uniform, than when dis-
sent is permitted by the law. Shall the State, then,
expatriate dissenters? If it does, can it logically
stop there ? Upon the same principle it might expa-
triate all profligates, all sinners, that is to say all
men ; because there is no doubt that not only heresy,
not only religious error, but all inward roots of sin
whatever, are, in the nature of causes, tending to dis-
able men from realising, so far as their own public
agency on behalf of the nation is concerned, the true
religious principle and spirit of a national life. Such,
then, are the absurd anomalies in which we are
finally lost, if, in pursuing a theory, we overlook one
of the sets of its conditions. What, then, are the
conditions, which are omitted from the above argu-
ment?
58. They are those belonging to the truth of poli-
tical science, and mainly this ; that the well-being of a
State presupposes and requires its being. Therefore,
in order to be capable of realising a spiritual, it must
actually have realised an animal life. As all the
326 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
beautiful forms of sculpture lie potentially in a block
of marble ;
Non ha 1' ottimo artista alcun concetto,
Ch'un marmo solo in se non circoscriva
Col suo soverchio ;*
so do the posssible excellencies and glories of the
social union dwell in the unhewn corporeal mass of its
members provided it be, indeed, a mass of parts
firmly joined together, and not a loose congeries of se-
parate elements. Therefore the efforts to realise a
moral and spiritual life of the nation must be met
and limited by the preliminary condition of retaining
its animal and material life : in more popular phrase,
of preserving it from anarchy and desolation.
59. This limiting law of the action of the State, in
matter of religion, is not grounded upon the suppo-
sition that its external and material life is more pre-
cious in itself than the moral and spiritual life ; but
simply upon the fact, that its attainment of the latter
is preconditioned by its possession of the former. Reli-
gion is more precious than property ; but civil society
can for a time better cohere where the government takes
no care for religion, than where it makes no provision
for the security of property. Hence, as it appears, it
is that the Church, in her Litany, prays for " unity,
peace, and concord " in " all nations," before she be-
seeches " an heart to love and dread Thee, and dili-
gently to live after Thy commandments : " not be-
cause public peace is a greater blessing than general
* Rime di M. A. Buonarroti, son. i.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 327
piety, but because it is a condition precedent and ne-
cessary to it.
60. Thus to eat, to drink, and to sleep, are functions
much lower to the individual man, and much less ma-
terial to his final happiness, than the worship of God ;
yet without the worship of God he may, according to
ordinary laws, exist in bodily health ; without eating,
drinking, and sleeping, he cannot. That is, the per-
formance of animal functions is more necessary to
animal life than the performance of spiritual functions ;
and animal life is an absolute condition of all life, and
therefore of spiritual life to us, the children of earth,
while we remain on earth. And this prolongation of
our earthly life is not a process grounded upon servile
fear or interested calculation, but a Divine law imposed
upon us as a part of our discipline; a law that, as
Plato has so well said,* we should remain at the post
where God has placed us, until the same authority, or
a necessity imposed by it, shall summon us away.
That summons becomes, indeed, articulate and clear,
when the choice is between animal life and sin ; yet,
even here, many intricate questions of casuistry might
be raised; as, for example, respecting those virgins,
who, in the sack of Rome under Alaric, drowned them-
selves to avoid the violence of ravishers.f But this, I
apprehend, is indisputable. If the friend of a believer
in Christ should have become a gross profligate and a
hardened infidel if the believer should be engaged in
warning and urging him to repent and if the infidel,
maddened by the powerful claims of Truth instead
Phaedo, c. 6. f S. Aug., de Civ. Dei, i. 1720
328 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
of being melted by her loveliness, should produce a
dagger, and exclaim, " If you persist, I stab myself
on the instant," and should seem to mean what h e
said, then, in such a case, the believer would be
bound to desist from his task, in order to save the life
of his brother, although knowing that that life, so
long as it remained without inward change, would be
an offensive and an accursed thing in the sight of
God ; and only an instrument, unless he should repent,
of accumulating, by its prolongation, tenfold of guilt
and ultimate suffering upon the head of its possessor.
So, then, not only are we prohibited from taking away
the life of another for sinfulness, but even in certain
cases it may be imperative to desist from an action,
otherwise lawful and Christian, lest he should himself
abandon it. Thus the animal life, in a moral being,
is a state at best purely negative a state of derelic-
tion of duty, and consequently of evil, in the sight of
the Supreme Judge : and yet we must endeavour to
maintain it in the individual against death, and, in the
State, against anarchy, which is the death of the State.
6 1 . For further illustration, let us now proceed to
compare the conditions of the State with those of the
Church, after having thus compared them with those
of the individual. The Church is an organisation,
Divinely charged with the maintenance of the Faith
and moral law, and the administration of Sacraments.
Were the Church, in this country, for example, wil-
fully and deliberately to deny the Faith, or to cease
to administer Sacraments, it would be no longer a
Church. The State, on the other hand, is the or-
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 329
ganic body, which acts for, from, and upon the nation :
it is a being free and moral by the law of its nature,
in which the national life operates centrally, and with-
out which it cannot be fed in individuals, nor their
own individual nature effectually cultivated. But this
national life is a threefold cord, physical, intellectual,
and moral (for which term moral, in the case of Chris-
tianity, we should read spiritual) ; and if the State re-
pudiated its higher life, and wilfully and deliberately
contravened its moral laws, it would still remain a
State, and must still be maintained and obeyed. The
State, as such, is logically anterior to Revelation : it is
a part of the law of nature ; and, when the law of re-
velation has been renounced, the law of nature is still
binding, and still, at least for a time, may remain.
62. I say, at least for a time. The State must be
maintained, even without and against all determinate
hope for it as a State, for the sake at least of the indi-
viduals who are within it, and whose peace is a sacred
charge, for the heart of man is still the sanctuary of his
God. But we stand in a probationary dispensation.
Social organisation, like corporeal life, is a 8uva/u, an
instrumental power, not having in itself the nature of
evil or of good, but both promoting and repressing the
nature of evil or of good according to the manner of
its use, and ultimately by habit growing into insepa-
rable incorporation with that on which it has been fed.
But this is the limit or final goal of its earthly career.
As long as that career is in progress, these powers of
human nature and society remain essentially neutral,
though extrinsically most prolific of good or of evil :
330 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
and from this neutrality it follows that each of these
powers may be detached from good and given to evil,
or may again be detached from evil and applied to the
production of good ; even as the same arm of strength,
in the days of chivalry, would plunder the wealthy
and relieve the poor. It is for this contingent capa-
city, or potentiality, of good, that they are spared
during their appointed time, like the fig-tree,* in the
hope of a future fruitage. But the day must come
" when the axe is laid unto the root of the trees ;
therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good
fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." f
63. If, then, there be cases where the State has not
yet a full moral life, but still tends and struggles to-
wards its attainment, such a State has the promise of
well-being. If there be cases where the State has
once possessed that inestimable treasure, and has lost
or is losing it, the condition of that State is indeed,
and perhaps most of all, to be deplored : it has the
double blame ascribed by Sthenelaidas to the Athenian
rule, that, from having been substantively a good, it
had passed through zero and then had become sub-
stantively an evil. If there be cases where the State
neither has nor seeks a moral life, and yet years seem
to pass and retribution to linger, let it be inquired
whether it be not the very abundance of God's bounty
in the provision of animal sustenance, of soil, of climate,
of rivers, of mechanical power, of mineral stores,
which, satiating for the time the human appetites,
lulls into repose the fiery elements of disorder. Let it
* Luke xiii. 69. t Matt. iii. 10. t Thuc. i. 86.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 331
then be seriously inquired, what will be the probable
course of events, when the multiplication of numbers
shall have overtaken the resources of Nature.
apt fiat 8' eVt'XoiTroi
If there be growths of high excellence in countries so
circumstanced, let it be examined whether they spring
out of its prevailing institutions, or whether they owe
their existence to some distinct and even antagonist
influence ; even as Athens was fertile of great and
good men, who were almost invariably ill affected to
her democratic polity. Let us now gradually contract
our path until it tends to the single point which has
been proposed for present inquiry, namely, political
disqualification.
64. According to the foregoing principles, are the
conditions of the spiritual element of national life, or
any of them, to be maintained forcibly by a State?
I do not mean against the fancies of this or that indi-
vidual, but in cases that hazard its own social dissolu-
tion ? So far as this question admits of a general
answer, it must be in the negative. We may here
again recur to the text " My kingdom is not of this
word ; if my kingdom were of this world, then would
my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to
the Jews ; but now is my kingdom not from hence."f
Was that, which our Saviour here, as it appears, dis-
claimed, the doctrine, that even the objective truth of
religion should be defended by force against constituted
* Pindar, Ol. i. 53. t St. John xviii. 30.
332 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
authority ? Defended of course it may and must be
by inobedience or moral resistance, by refusal to act
upon unlawful commands. But when we come to
questions such as this, we find ourselves entangled in
a maze of considerations that seem scarcely to be
threaded by any such general rules as human wisdom
has been able to enunciate. Is an authority transgress-
ing its legal limits a constituted authority? I sup-
pose then a weak tyrant whom a breath will dethrone,
an oppressor of religious truth, like James the Second,
on the one hand ; on the other, co-ordinately constituted
though inferior authorities, holding by truth and by
one another, and assured, humanly speaking, of their
possession of the means to remove him. In such a case
there seems no great difficulty in saying that it may be
done. But if we suppose the latter weak, and, though
certain of the tyrant's offences against the truth, yet
not certain that the social forces are so set against him
that they maybe exercised without hazard of anarchy;
here is a difficult case, a case for cool and masculine
understandings, for reverent and tender hearts, for pro-
found supplications to God when it may arise, and one
to which I can only apply an indeterminate proposition.
Although it has pleased God to supply both private
and political life with a better ordinary criterion of
duty than the calculation of results, yet there are un-
doubtedly painful and difficult passages in both, in
which the lineaments of abstract right are so obscured
by intermediate objects, that Faith herself must be
content, conscious of the heaviest responsibility, to
guide her steps by an estimate of consequences, never
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 333
indeed in contravention of right, yet as affording the
best clue to it.
65. Before entering further into this part of the
discussion, I would remark that as responsible beings
we are not wholly dependent on its issue. These oc-
casions are rare, and need not dwell much upon the
mind of the individual. It is not difficult to see that
the general rule of private duty is simple obedience.
If there be enactments which, as the private person
thinks, make him instrumental in promoting evil, let
him use the powers which the constitution allows him
for their removal. Then he will have discharged his
own conscience before God, and he may walk at peace
with a quiet mind. He is only to use force against
being made to sin ; he sins not by suffering what the
law requires. Therefore, if I be persuaded that a
given war is unmanly, shameful, cruel, wicked, still I
must not refuse the taxes that are demanded for its sup-
port. I am unable then to conceive the case, in which
individuals may hazard social order for the purpose of
relieving themselves from disabilities which demand
from them no agency whether direct or indirect, and
cannot, therefore, involve their consciences in sin.
Thus the line of private duty is usually clear, although,
when it has been transgressed, the deviations from it
may raise questions for the State such as defy solution.
66. But now let us examine what is the legitimate
canon of the action of the State. Christian maxims,
which enjoin a sufferer to bear wrong, do not permit
a superior in power to inflict it. The State must not
therefore disqualify, simply for the reason that the
334 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
subject seems bound in the last resort to submit to
disqualification. The general rule of the State must
be, to seek for the discharge of civil duties the most
competent men. And yet this must be with relation
to circumstances ; for clearly it is not obliged to secure
absolutely the ablest men for all public employments,
or to claim the exercise of a pre-emptive right upon
the services of every individual in the nation ; that then
to which it is bound really is, to prefer the mor3 able to
the less, when both can be had ; to apply to candidates
for office all the practicable criteria of competency.
According to these principles, the question which we
are now considering is not whether the State has any
right to injure or punish for religious non-conformity,
but simply in what manner it is to provide the fittest
persons for the discharge of what we have ascertained
by the previous inquiry to be its duties.
67. Now a certain grade of understanding, in a
form of instruction more or less professional according
to the particular case, is one of these criteria. Chris-
tian holiness and purity of life is another ; for surely
no man will dispute that cceteris paribus political
duties would be better performed, if they were always
intrusted to those who make it their first study in life
to follow the Redeemer. Profession of the national
faith is another of these criteria ; lower than the last,
yet naturally and obviously tending to realise the
spiritual element in the national life, both externally,
and as connected with the necessary inward disposi-
tions. A morality reaching some standard of social
decorum is the last criterion that I shall name; and is
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 335
requisite, according to the lowest theory of the obliga-
tions of the State, to guarantee the fidelity of the
functionary himself, and to avoid public scandal.
68. Of these criteria the first and the last belong to
the lower forms of nationality, the second and the
third to the higher. The former pair are the most
absolutely required, but also the least permanently
beneficial. By them a State has material consistency
and life ; but with them it may sink into moral death.
As, however, the sedond criterion of fitness is the one
which ultimately would most conduce to the realisa-
tion of a perfect national life, so also it is the one
which under the conditions of humanity the State can
hardly ever ascertain and secure. Indeed, if this cri-
terion were practicable, I know not whether there
might not be an absolute and indefeasible obligation
to apply it, and a positive sin in using any other
without it. For it implies not a condition or presump-
tion of moral excellence, but excellence itself. And
as the third is, next to the second, most allied with the
morality of the national life, so also it is pne, the
beneficial working of which absolutely presupposes a
degree both of religious and also of national coherency,
a moral freshness and youth, a love and a pursuit of
truth among the people, keen as that of the morning
hunter,* without which it can be no better than the
very skeleton of a corpse long ago abandoned by its
informing spirit.
69. No : God still in practice vindicates, suffici-
ently for full attestation, the law of national oneness,
* Coleridge.
336 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
by the experienced impossibility of reversing its con-
ditions, by the essential parallelism of all the motions
of life in the State and in the people. A people that
morally lives, will naturally throw itself into aggre-
gate and social forms that throb sympathetically and
answer to its own impulses. A people morally dead
will not create, nor long endure, institutions that are
impregnated with moral life. The State must die
also : though the vital flame will flicker yet about the
nobler region of the heart, though
The grudging ghost doth strive with the frail flesh,*
yet, if the limbs be cold for ever, the struggle cannot
long continue.
Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras, t
Yet is it indeed a gallant and a stirring sight, when a
ruler, whose soul is lighted with the flame of other
days, battles painfully, unsuccessfully, hopelessly,
against a degenerate time, like a lofty ship against
the insuperable tempest. To see Clarendon and
Southampton in the polluted court of Charles the
Second; or, in ancient times, to see Phocion in Athens,
the second Agis in Lacedaemon ; Theodosius, Boniface,
Belisarius, amidst the colossal ruins of the Roman
empire ; for these are husbandmen whose toil is spent
freely through a faith in unseen good and surely
somewhere in the future it shall grow into a golden
harvest.
70. These therefore are the laws of reason and ex-
* Spenser, i. ii. 19. t JEn. xii. 952.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 337
perience. Yet the State is an agent. It surely must
not yield, before it has expended the resources of its
agency. It has a power, a mighty power, to act upon
the people, as well as a liability to be acted upon by
them. Inasmuch, therefore, as dissidence, taken in
the whole, however the rule may be qualified or even
reversed in particular cases, implies a failure in one of
the conditions of full national life ; it also implies a
defect, be it more or be it less, of competency for
public office, whose holders act on behalf of the nation.
The State, therefore, in certain circumstances, may
disqualify. It does not thereby persecute, because it
inflicts a negative penalty, not for its own sake, but.
incidentally and by the way, while it is engaged in
seeking the most competent men who are to be had
for its instruments. It does not, under such a suppo-
sition, exclude a man with the intention that he may
suffer, but because he wants one of the conditions of
fitness which it has the power to secure elsewhere.
Accordingly the State of England uses disqualification
to a moderate, and (as I think) prudent and war-
rantable extent. It excludes on account of religion,
not from the franchise, but from municipal and poli-
tical office generally, those who decline to fpund their
promise to fulfil its duties aright " upon the faith of a
Christian." So runs the oath, or declaration, which
political officers elect are bound to make.
71. I will not pursue far through the labyrinth of
detail the intricate questions of political duty which
arise in this portion of my subject. Let me, how-
ever, suppose a case, in which the friends of a national
VOL. I. Z
338 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
religion hold the insignia of power ; where its 'adver-
saries evidently preponderate in the possession of
equally real though less recognised and determinate
social forces, and evidently menace violence and con-
vulsion. Now we are agreed, that religion as religion
ought not to be upheld by physical power. But in
the case supposed, religion is law. Shall it not be
defended as law ? If not, what means the omnipotence
of a legislature, the supremacy of law ? If one law
may be disobeyed and remain without vindication, so
may the rest ; where, then, is public order ? Or if
the legislature hasten to repeal the law, is not the up-
shot practically the same ? Upon the other hand,
there is perhaps a point, at which force itself becomes
not only inappropriate but ineffective for maintaining
those elements of suasion, which may have found a
place in public legislation, and which undoubtedly
may imply coercion in a secondary sense ; that is to
say, the maintenance of actual law against violence, or
the levy of funds to support establishments, as for art,
learning, or religion. I am not able to define in terms
the point at which the firm control of rebellious parts be-
comes perilous to the corporate existence of the whole,
and at which therefore it must be abandoned. But
in any view it is socially a most mischievous result, as
well as one implying guilt in its wilful authors, when
the fasces of public authority require to be lowered in*
deference to the exactions of the disorganising prin-
ciple of partial and private will.
72. It may, however, possibly be said, that to admit
that cases may arise in which deviation from the idea
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 339
of State religion is to be allowed without the employ-
ment by its friends, even to force, of the legal power
actually in their hands for the prevention of such a
calamity, is a sacrifice of principle to expediency. It
may, I admit, be such ; it is even likely to be such ;
but it should not and need not be such. It might
rather be an accommodation similar to those which
have been delivered to us upon the authority of the
highest precedents. Such was the act of Moses, the
legislator of God, when by reason of the hardness of
the Israelitish heart he allowed to the nation a licence
of divorce incompatible with the genuine conception
of the marriage union.* Such was the act of God
Himself, when, condescending to their sensual temper-
ament, He gave them a king that their eyes could
see and their hands handle, instead of His own imme-
diate sovereignty.*!" As it is vain to confer the best
institutions on a people unprepared for them, so it
may be impossible to retain them when they have lost
the fitness they once possessed ; and that impossibility
may often be well discerned without an appeal to
force. But the people will suffer by its own degrada-
tion, and the offering, which was demanded by their
depraved appetite, will whet their hunger and exaspe-
rate their disease. And as they lower the tone of the
governing function, they will also lower the tone of
those who discharge it, and mar in the same propor-
tion the prospects of national felicity.
73. In a former section we arrived at the enuncia-
* Matt. xix. 8. t Judges viii. 7.
z2
340 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
tion of a general limiting law for the extrinsic action
of the State upon the people in matter of religion.
To this limiting law let us add, as among the palpable
results of the foregoing discussions, these maxims of
practical policy.
1 . The wise State, or the provident statesman, must
be studious to discern in their initial forms those
movements in the body politic which threaten, in the
event of their reaching maturity, to produce a crisis,
in order that he may either resist them with effect, or
concede to them with grace ; or, by dividing the subal-
tern forces that compose and impel them, reduce their
strength to insignificance.
2. With this rule he will combine another. Before
resigning to clamour, pertinacity, and a disobedient
spirit, anything that is of magnitude and value in its
bearings upon the invigoration of national life, he will
probe the national mind and heart upon the subject,
to ascertain whether there be not latent there other
more peaceful but not less powerful convictions, which
may be able to make good an effectual resistance ; and
he w^l manifest, at least, every personal disposition to
give free and full scope to the action of those convic-
tions ; so that he will neither strain the action of the
State upon the people, nor shrink from making a fair
experiment of its effects.
3. The last canon must likewise be limited in its
turn, in order that it may not destroy itself in prac-
tice, by his being careful to warn those who hold in
their hands the little weights that, when collected,
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 341
sway the scales of social power, that they must fairly
accept the consequences of popular institutions, and,
having allowed the causes of innovation to become
active, must keep the elements of guardianship, which
are entrusted to their own hands, in a state of cor-
responding energy. While the might of law repressed
the former, the State needed not to tax the latter, but
did their work for them vicariously, and, as it were,
mechanically. They must now adapt their habits to
its altered system ; just as, where there is no con-
stabulary, the inhabitants must keep the peace.
4. Together with these precepts it will follow, that
the friends of any contested principle, say of national
religion, throughout the nation at large, must not rely
on the State to overbear, as by an extrinsic weight,
the permanently and morally preponderating senti-
ment of the nation, but must trust, under God, for the
right composition and direction of the State itself, to
the enlightened rectitude of that conscience that is in
each man as man, and that never fails to answer to
fidelity of spiritual culture by corresponding Jesuits.
The State can only hear advice, or yield to suasion, or
imbibe the spirit of genuine improvement, through
the medium of the individuals of whom it is composed.
5. The last and greatest maxim of practical conduct,
which the theory of connection between Church and
State inculcates upon the individual, is, the personal
avoidance of all that leads to religious divisions. We
cannot but see how they tend to every social evil, and
how they are faithful to the source from which they
arise ; what dilemmas defying solution they are in-
342 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS [CHAP. V.
trinsically calculated to produce ; how they draw law
into disrepute and dishonour, and either at once shake
social order to its centre and its base, or, by robbing
the State successively of all the conditions of a true
national life, carry political organisation and the na-
ture of a State out of the place to which God appointed
them into one for which He appointed them not. The
very obscurity, which from this cause overhangs the
determination of political problems, does but the more
illustrate the bright and broad light which Scripture
throws upon the line of private duty, when it declares
that parties in religion are the sign and the result of
a carnal mind.*
74. I am more than satisfied, without pretending to
any feat of controversial arms, if we bring back from
the labour of this inquiry any acquisition of practical
rules, and any influence tending to confirm and elevate
our mental habits ; and we must not be dismayed at
inability to obviate beforehand, in such subject-matter,
all the forms either of danger or of objection. Be it,
however, recollected, that those persons have a very
great polemical advantage, who in the philosophy and
practice of politics may be inclined to lower the tone
of actually existing institutions, in conformity with a
prevailing inclination of temporary opinion ; and this
most of all in a country where that tone has originally
been pitched, as to its theory, so high, that the faulti-
ness of our human nature and conduct must needs fall
greatly short of it. They are as men who float along a
stream or who drive down a slope ; gravitation nearly
* 1 Cor. iii. 3.
CHAP. V.] WITH THE CHURCH. 343
does their work, and the chief part of what is required
of them is a little to moderate the rate of the descent.
As controversialists they are placed in a position of
great relative facility. Their theories are new and
bright-burnished they have not yet been exposed to
the rough weather of experience ; and we know not
whether they will thaw in the sun, or crack in the
frost, or leak to the rain, or perish, with a crash as of
thunder, in the tempest. Every application of prin-
ciples must under the law of things human be de-
fective ; and the more the subject-matter is complex,
and the range of the application wide, the more nu-
merous must be the flaws which it is the business of
the objector to count and to exhibit, and not unfre-
quently to exaggerate or to feign.
75. And while he is discharging this his function,
he administers a perpetual balsam to the smarting
consciences of those possessors of unappreciated and
undeveloped blessings, who were, perhaps, beginning
to awaken to a sense of their past neglect and of their
present and instant duties; who had been warned
from without by menacing omens, and from within by
the rising motions of the heart, that they must change
either their principles or their practice ; who, having
been thus led to the examination of both, had found
in the one the lineaments of ancient glory and of for-
gotten truth, in the other the guilt of a disobedience
indulged in spite of knowledge ; whose self-love and
indolence were not strong enough, if unaided from
without, entirely to quench the generous resolution to
make an attempt at raising the practice towards the
344 THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS, ETC. [CHAP. V.
principles ; but in whom, as in most men, the scales
seem to quiver even when good preponderates, and
nothing is wanted but an ingenious display, on the one
hand, of the defects, the inconveniences, the anoma-
lies with which the application of those principles ever
has been marred, and, on the other, of the gay ward-
robe which has never yet been weather-beaten, to turn
the uncertain balance of opinion ; and so, without fur-
ther question, men relax their high mental and moral
tension, acquiesce in the promptings of their lower
nature, and escape from the pain which the previous
discrepancy has occasioned them, by gradually and
gently lowering their principles towards the level of
their practice. But the poison rankles within ; and
the nation,
graves oculos conata attollere, rursus
Deficit ; infixum stridet sub pectore vulnus.*
* JEn. iv. 688.
END OF VOL. I
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