WITH 

 
 for 36 tile Classes 
 anlr ^ribate ^tutrents, 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 REV. PROFESSOR MARCUS DODS, D.D., 
 
 AND 
 
 REV. ALEXANDER WHYTE, D D. 
 
 NO IV READY. 
 
 THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. By JAMES MACGREGOR, D.D., 
 late of New College, Edinburgh. Price is. f>d. 
 
 THE POST-EXILIAN PEOPHETS. With Introductions and Notes. By 
 Rev. Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D. Price 2s. 
 
 A LIFE OF OHEIST. By Rev. JAMES STALKER, D.D. Price is. 6d. 
 THE SACRAMENTS. By Rev. Professor CANDLISH, D.D. Price is. 6d. 
 
 THE BOOKS OF CHaONICLES. By Rev. Professor MURPHY, LL.D., 
 
 Belfast. Price is. 6d. 
 
 THE CONFESSION OF FAITH. By Rev. JOHN MACPHERSON, M.A., 
 Finohorn. Price 2s. 
 
 THE BOOK OF JUDGES. By Rev. Principal DOUGLAS, D.D. Price is. &. 
 THE BOOK OF JOSHUA. By Rev. Principal DOUGLAS, D.D. Price is. dd. 
 
 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. By Rev. Professor DAVIDSON, 
 P.P., Edinburgh. Price 2s. bd. 
 
 SCOTTISH CHURCH HI8TOBY. By Rev. N.L.WALKER, D.D. Priceis.ftct. 
 THE CHUBCH. By Rev. Prof. BINNIE, P.P., Aberdeen. Price is. dd. 
 THE REFORMATION! By Rev. Professor LINDSAY, D.D. Price zs. 
 THE BOOK OF GENESIS. By Rev. Prof. MARCUS POPS, D.D. Price 2s. 
 
 THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. By Rev. Principal BROWN, D.D., 
 Aberdeen. Price 2s. 
 
 PRESBYTERIANISM. By Rev. JOHN MACPHERSON, M. A. Price is. 6J. 
 
 LESSONS ON THE~LIFE"OF CHRIST. By Rev. WM. SCRYMGEOUR, 
 Glasgow. Price 2s. dd. 
 
 THE SHORTER CATECHISM. By Rev. ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D., 
 Edinburgh. Price 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK~ By Rev. Professor 
 LINDSAY. P.P., Glasgow. Price zs. dd. 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. By GEORGE SMITH, 
 LL.D., F.R.G.S. Price 2s. 6d. 
 
 A LIFE OF ST. PAUL. By Rev. JAMES STALKER, D.D. Price is. 6d. 
 
 PALESTINE. With Maps. By Rev. ARCH. HENDERSON, D.D., 
 Crieff. Price 2s. 6d. 
 
 [Continued on next page.
 
 HANDBOOKS FOR BIBLE CLASSES. 
 
 THE BOOK OF ACTS. By Rev. Professor LINDSAY, D.D. Two Parts. 
 Price U. 6d. each. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. By Rev. Professor CANDLISH, 
 D.D. Price is. 6d. 
 
 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE. By Rev. JOHN MACPHERSON, 
 M.A., Findhorn. Price is. (>d. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE IRISH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. By Rev. 
 THOMAS HAMILTON, P.P., Belfast. Price zs. 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE. By Rev. Professor LINDSAY, 
 M.A., D.D. Part I., price 2s. Part U., price is. $d. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES AND THE CONCLUSIONS OF SCIENCE. 
 By Rev. W. D. THOMSON, M.A., Lochend. Price 2s. 
 
 BUTLER'S THREE SERMONS ON HUMAN NATURE. With Intro- 
 duction and Notes. By Rev. T. B. KILPATRICK, B.D. Price is. 6d. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF GOD. By" Professor CANDLISH, D.D. 
 Price is. 6d. 
 
 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. By JAMES MACGREGOR, D.D., late of New 
 College, Edinburgh. Two Parts. Price 2s. each. 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN. By Rev. GEORGE REITH, 
 M.A., Glasgow. Two Parts. Price 2s. each. 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. A Historical Handbook. By A. TAYLOR 
 INNES, Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh. Price y. 
 
 THE MINOR PROPHETS. By Rev. Principal DOUGLAS, D.D. Price is. 6d. 
 
 IN PREPARATION. 
 
 THE SABBATH. By Rev. Professor SALMOND, P.P., Aberdeen. 
 
 THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. By Rev. Prof. MARCUS 
 PODS, D.D. 
 
 THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. By Rev. Principal 
 DAVID BROWN, D.D., Aberdeen. 
 
 THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. By Rev. JAMES MELLIS, 
 M.A., Southport. 
 
 THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. By Rev. SIMEON R. MACPHAIL, 
 
 M.A., Liverpool. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. By Rev. Professor LINDSAY, P.P., Glasgow. 
 
 APOLOGETICS. By Rev. Professor IVERACH, M.A., Aberdeen. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. By Rev. Professor CANDLISH, D.D. 
 
 L and U. PETER, and JUDE. By Rev. WM. PATRICK, B.D., Kirkin- 
 tilloch. 
 
 THE PERSON OF CHRIST. By Rev. JAMES MACGREGOR, D.D. 
 THE DOCTRINE OF MAN. By Rev. Professor CANDLISH, D.D.
 
 HANDBOOKS . 
 
 FOR 
 
 I BLE CLASSES 
 
 AND PRIVATE STUDENTS. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 PROFESSOR MARCUS DODS, D.D., 
 
 AND 
 
 REV. ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE: A HISTORICAL HANDBOOK. 
 BY A. TAYLOR INNES. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
 
 PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB, 
 FOB 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 
 LOliDON I SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED. 
 NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER's SONS. 
 TORONTO : THE PRESBYTERIAN NEWS CO.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 A HISTORICAL HANDBOOK. 
 
 A. TAYLOR INNES, 
 
 M 
 
 ADVOCATE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE LAW OF CREEDS IN SCOTLAND." 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 I AM informed that a re-issue of this small volume is desired. 
 Since the first edition, the question of Church and State has 
 been broadly raised for Wales and Scotland. Behind these 
 too there are aspects of that question causing difficulty in 
 England, in Italy, in Russia, and in some other countries. 
 Yet all these are mere fragments of one problem which the 
 Christian world has for two thousand years been working out, 
 on the lines and with the results which the following pages 
 attempt to summarise. 
 
 A. T. I.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGB 
 
 INTRODUCTORY, ....... I 
 
 I. THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH IN ITS RELATIONS WITH THE 
 
 STATE, . . . . . . . . 8 
 
 II. CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION, ' . . 21 
 
 III. THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE, . . . 50 
 
 IV. CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII., .... 69 
 V. BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION, .... 89 
 
 VI. THE REFORMATION : LUTHER AND GERMANY, . . Ill 
 
 VII. THE REFORMATION : CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND, . 136 
 
 VIII. EUROPE, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1789, . . . 154 
 
 IX. BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689, . . . 171 
 
 X. THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE, . . 196 
 
 XT. THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870, ..... 217 
 
 XII. EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870, . . . . 242
 
 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I. THE two most celebrated forms of association in history have 
 been known by the names of The State and The Church. This 
 volume does not attempt to enter upon either of these great fields, 
 the literature of which has been enormous. It deals exclusively 
 with the relation between the two Societies, their points of con- 
 tact, collision, junction, and intersection. Even this intermediate 
 field is vast ; and it may be approached in two ways. On the 
 theoretical side, the doctrinal and legal aspects of this relation 
 have always had a fascination for thinking men, and the conflict 
 of principles upon it fills many libraries. On the historical side, 
 it has moulded our modern civilisation, and " the whole life and 
 character of Western Christendom consists of the incessant action 
 and counteraction of Church and State" (Ranke). It is necessary, 
 therefore, to select a line of treatment. In these pages the ques- 
 tion will be traced historically, and in the chronological order in 
 which it has unfolded itself to the world. 
 
 2. It may be held that the Church existed before Christianity, 
 and outside its pale. It is certain, at least, that every question 
 and every collision which has occurred between Church and 
 State in modern Christendom, might find in the earlier ages a 
 parallel or an equivalent. But with so large a subject it is 
 well to make a distinct start ; and the Christian era may be 
 accepted as the birthday of the Church. 
 
 A
 
 2 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 3. Whether the Church existed prior to Christianity or not, the 
 State did in its fullest vigour. It existed in all its forms, and 
 especially in that which was most characteristic of ancient times 
 the City. But it varied from the small civic State (polis) of Greece, 
 which according to Aristotle should never consist of more than 
 ten thousand persons, up to the world-wide empires of the East. 
 It was patriarchal, regal, despotic, oligarchic, or democratic ; but 
 in none of these forms was it held subject to what are now under- 
 stood as necessary and constitutional limitations. In free republics 
 as well as in tyrannies, it was almost invariably assumed that the 
 individual had given up his whole rights to the State. Absolute 
 power over minorities was conceded to the free State (even when 
 denied to the despot or sole ruler), in a sense and to an extent from 
 which the conscience in modern times revolts. Hence no right of 
 toleration was acknowledged in the individual (even in religious 
 matters), though the State might occasionally find it expedient to 
 be tolerant. Against this State-supremacy over conscience (as 
 against the parallel refusal of rights to the stranger and to weaker 
 nations outside the State), a certain undertone of protest on the 
 part of human nature may be heard in ancient times. But until 
 the era of Christianity the claims and rights of the individual, as 
 conceded in modern times, and in particular his rights as against 
 his State, were never openly acknowledged or made effective. 
 The private man was held bound to conform to the national 
 association in religion and religious practice if required, as in 
 more external matters. So long as this was the accepted opinion, 
 no proper question of Church and State could exist. That 
 question depends on the modern change of view as to the rights 
 of conscience. But the modern change of view is itself a result 
 of Christianity, and of the history of the early Church. 
 
 4. We may define the Church as The Christian Society. More 
 fully, it is the society, instituted by Jesus Christ, of those who 
 believe and worship God through Him. Men differ as to details; 
 but it is admitted that Jesus left it in charge to His disciples, and
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 to all "who should believe on Him through their word," to con- 
 fess His name, to acknowledge, assist, and love one another, and 
 to join together in worship and in the participation of His sacra- 
 ments. Of this society on earth Christ is held the invisible 
 Head. In this the Greek, the Roman, and the Protestant 
 Churches are agreed. The historical and other writings of 
 the New Testament amply prove that it was also held, at least 
 as strongly, by the apostles and others upon whom the duty 
 was primarily laid to " go into all the world " and proselytize it. 
 
 5. It has been questioned whether the Church is essentially an 
 invisible or a visible society, i.e. whether it properly consists of 
 those, known only to God, who inwardly believe, or of those who, 
 truly or otherwise, profess their faith before men, as by baptism. 
 For the present purpose the question is of less importance. For 
 it is admitted even by those who hold the theory of an invisible 
 Church (consisting of true believers), that a primary and im- 
 mediate duty of those who have faith themselves is to confess it, 
 and that a second duty following upon this is to acknowledge as 
 brethren those who do the like. The invisible society thus at 
 once becomes visible. It does more, it becomes a public society. 
 That is, its existence is not merely to be inferred from casual cir- 
 cumstances : it is to be proclaimed, avowed, and extended. The 
 obligation of Christians not to dissemble their faith, to confess it, 
 and to confess each other, had, as we shall see, the most impor- 
 tant consequences for the world in the early centuries. But, in 
 the first place, it made in each place, and throughout the world, 
 a visible Church, a community of men acknowledging each 
 other as Christians. 
 
 6. This visibility, founded on the obligation to confess Christ 
 and acknowledge fellow - Christians, relieves us from another 
 large question. It makes it unnecessary for us to consider the 
 particular forms of Church organization. In order to bring the 
 Church into relations to the State, it is not necessary that it be
 
 4 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Congregational, or Presbyterian, or Episcopal, or Patriarchal, or 
 Papal ; all that is necessary is that it be a visible society. A 
 particular congregation "two or three gathered together" in 
 one locality in the name of Christ to worship together, and obey 
 His laws is a Church. Some hold that this is the only body 
 originally or properly entitled to the name. They make the con- 
 gregation the unit, the mere multiplication or repetition of which, 
 without any organization or interdependence, constitutes the 
 Christian Church all over the world. Others hold that the 
 universal Church is the unit, and that from it the particular 
 congregations derive their powers and privileges. It is not 
 necessary for our inquiry to assume either of these theories, 
 or any intermediate one. The strictest " Independents " main- 
 tain the obligation of all Christians to recognise each other, and 
 to hold communion " in so far as God gives opportunity." And 
 the strongest partisans of a Church universal hold that Christians 
 in each particular district are bound to act as its members, and 
 to gather together there as a visible part of the universal society. 
 Almost all Christians have been agreed that whether the Church 
 be a local or a universal society, it is a public society. And as a 
 public society it necessarily comes into relation with the State, no 
 matter what its government is, or what either its doctrine or 
 worship may be. 
 
 7. The State with which the Christian Church originally had 
 relations was the greatest which the world has seen, and it was 
 then at its highest point of greatness. When Jesus was accused 
 before the procurator of Caesar of making Himself a king, his 
 judge represented the chief magistrate of a republic that ruled 
 over the civilized world. For Borne in form was still a republic, 
 and the emperor was no more than its first citizen, entrusted (as 
 saviour of society) with an accumulation of republican offices and 
 functions. But this centralized republic or empire ruled over a 
 vast assemblage of States, of every type of government, including 
 Palestine.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 8. Rome, like other ancient cities, had its own religion and its 
 own gods. The difference was that this city had come to rule 
 over the nations of the earth. As it conquered these nations one 
 by one, it respected most of their institutions, and in particular it 
 tolerated the local exercise of their religions. So the religion of 
 the Jews became a religio licita a tolerated religion ; but this 
 was only for members of the Jewish race, and perhaps sometimes 
 only for Palestine. Rome did not allow religions which were 
 thus tolerated to proselytize outside their own domain ; least of 
 all among Roman citizens. Over them the civil law, i.e. the law 
 of the city, ruled directly, while it had a certain supremacy even 
 in the provinces, where local laws were in force and where the 
 local religion was allowed to the natives. 
 
 9. This law of Rome enjoined the worship of the gods, and its 
 negative side was expressed in the ancient words which Cicero 
 gives among his Leges Legum : " Let no one have separate gods, 
 or new gods ; and let no one privately worship even foreign gods, 
 unless they have been received by public authority." Hence 
 ordinances against those " foreign rites " sacra peregrina which, 
 when Rome came to have many provinces, tended to flow back 
 into the capital. In accordance with this principle of State 
 religion (i.e. religion as not merely recognised, but authorized, 
 by the State) were the rules, long after recorded by one of the 
 great lawyers of Rome, 1 which denounced death or banishment 
 against those who " bring in religious beliefs or rites which are 
 novel and foreign to usage and to reason, so as to disturb the 
 minds of men." And when the author of the last and most 
 terrible of the persecutions terminated it by an edict tolerating 
 Christianity, the document assigned as the reason of the previous 
 severities a desire to keep everything in the empire in strict accord 
 with " the ancient laws and the public institutions of Rome." 
 
 10. Christianity was more irreconcilable with these laws than 
 
 1 Julius Paulus, 5. 21. 2.
 
 O CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 was the religion of the Jews. The latter held an ambiguous 
 position, and its treatment by Rome varied accordingly. On the 
 one hand, the Jewish was a strongly national religion, and as such 
 was recognised and tolerated, especially by Caesar and his 
 successors. On the other hand, it claimed to be absolutely true, 
 and so condemned all other religions. And this claim on the 
 part of one people explains much of the " odium " attached to it. 
 Christianity, at first confounded with Judaism, was soon found, 
 unlike it, to aim at universality, as well as, like it, to claim 
 exclusive truth. The peaceful character of the professors of 
 the new faith, and their renunciation of national claims, were in 
 its favour. But these were more than balanced, in the view of 
 polytheists, by its essential aggressiveness. A religion which 
 denied the gods of Rome was contrary to the laws of Rome, and 
 as it never claimed protection as being merely local and 
 national, it never could be "licit" or tolerated. And if the 
 religion was unlawful, still more was the Church. 
 
 ii. The Roman law allowed no unlimited right of association. 
 " It is not permitted to men to form at their pleasure an associa- 
 tion or a club, or any body of that nature." Many such bodies 
 existed under the Roman power, but only in so far as expressly 
 permitted. Some of them were of the nature of clans or family 
 gatherings ; others of the nature of guilds or trade unions ; others, 
 again, were very like burial clubs ; while others were associations 
 of the priests of the same divinity, etc. But " neither under the 
 pretext of religion or otherwise" were they permitted to meet, 
 unless the association was first made " licit " by the State. The 
 early emperors restored the rigour of this law against associa- 
 tions, which had begun to be relaxed, and extended it to the 
 whole empire. Under their rule the penalty of forming an illicit 
 association is declared to be the same with that of seizing on the 
 chief points of the city with an armed force, i.e. it was equivalent 
 to high treason. This law, it will be observed, struck alike at the 
 Christian Church, in so far as it was one association scattered
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 throughout the empire, and at each local association or con- 
 gregation ; and the fact that each of these was related to a great 
 whole, was one of the strongest points against both. It may be 
 going too far to hold, with some authors, 1 that this was the main 
 cause of the persecution of Christianity by Rome ; but it was one 
 of the strongest and most permanent. 
 
 It was in a world-wide State of which these were the well- 
 understood laws, that the Church and its Founder now made 
 their appearance. 
 
 1 "The Roman empire admitted no association within the State independent 
 of the State (dans VBtat en dehors tie I'Etaf). This point was essential ; it 
 was, in truth, the root of all the persecutions. The law of associations, far 
 more than religious intolerance, was the fatal cause of the violence which 
 dishonoured the reigns of the best of the emperors. . . . The Roman 
 laws, like our Code Civil, attacked by this law an immortal instinct of the 
 human heart. The cold hand of the State should not press upon the inner 
 kingdom of the soul. Life and joy will return to the world only when our 
 distrust of associations, that dreary heritage of the Roman law, has dis- 
 appeared. Association independent of the State, but without destroying the 
 State, is the great question of the future." Les Apdtres, by Ernest Rennn.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH IN ITS RELATIONS WITH THE STATE. 
 
 TIBERIUS ruled as emperor when Jesus Christ, known for 
 some years as a teacher and prophet of the Jewish people, 
 was charged before Pilate, the procurator of Judaea, with "per- 
 verting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, say- 
 ing that He Himself is Christ, a King." The crime charged was 
 known as Majesias, or treason against the supreme "majesty" 
 of the Roman State. All the narratives bear that Pilate, com- 
 mencing his examination with the question, " Art Thou the King 
 of the Jews?" was answered in the affirmative, and yet came to the 
 conclusion that the accused was innocent. This result almost 
 necessarily implies some explanation such as is embodied in the 
 memorable dialogue of the fourth Gospel. 
 
 "Jesus answered, 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 to the Jews : but now is My kingdom not 
 from hence." 
 
 This answer receives illustration from previous utterances of 
 Jesus, and from the following centuries of Church history. It 
 asserts a contrast between His kingdom and the kingdoms of 
 this world, as well as between the instruments to be employed by 
 them respectively. But it did not disown kingship : and 
 
 " Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art Thou a king then ? Jesus 
 answered, Thou sayest it : I am a king." 
 
 This answer put it in the power of the governor to act against 
 
 8
 
 THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 9 
 
 his own half-formed conviction, and send the accused to the 
 cross ; and Jesus added 
 
 " To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the 
 world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that 
 is of the truth heareth My voice." 
 
 Pilate answered curtly, " What is truth ? " and began a long 
 and evasive struggle with the accusers, two points of which are 
 of importance for our subject. Jesus having persistently kept 
 silence from the moment when His judge appeared to act against 
 his better knowledge, "Then said Pilate unto Him, Speakest 
 Thou not unto me? Knowest Thou not that I have power to 
 crucify Thee, and power to release Thee ? Jesus answered, Thou 
 couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given 
 thee from above." The acknowledgment that the power of the 
 Roman magistracy was "given from above" appears again and 
 again in early Christianity. On this first occasion it was not 
 exercised as such power should have been. The accusers con- 
 tinued to clamour for a conviction. The judge still hesitated, 
 and was finally decided by the skilfully suggested threat, "It 
 thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever 
 maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar." The emperor, 
 as we have seen, gathered up in himself the greater offices of the 
 republic ; and so to the old Roman watchfulness against treason 
 was now added the personal suspicion of a despot. 1 Tiberius, in 
 particular, used the treason laws continually against those who 
 disobliged him ; and Tacitus relates that when the provinces 
 came to this emperor with complaints of any kind against their 
 governors, they took care to throw in the charge of treason, " at 
 that time the complement and crown of every lesser accusation." 
 
 1 Dion Cassias preserves "a wise piece of advice," which Maecenas, the 
 Epicurean friend of Augustus, gave to the great predecessor of Tiberius, 
 "Abhor those who make innovations in religious matters ; and coerce them, 
 not for the sake of the gods only, but because men who bring in new divini- 
 ties stimulate the multitude to make changes in the State. Thence come 
 conspiracies, seditions, and cabals, things irreconcilable with the imperial 
 power."
 
 10 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Pilate yielded to the well-chosen argument, ascended the tribunal, 
 and there receiving (in answer to his bitter question, "Shall 
 I crucify your king ? ") the historical answer, " We have no king 
 but Caesar," he sentenced to death by the cross Him who had 
 claimed a kingdom not of this world. 
 
 For a time the visibility of the Christian Church was obscured 
 by its relation to the people and faith of the Jews. The apostles 
 showed no desire to take up a position separate from, much less 
 antagonistic to, the religion of their forefathers. Rather, they 
 urged that their gospel was the crown and divine development 
 of the Jewish faith, and for a time they called upon their nation 
 to receive it. " The Way," as the new brotherhood was vaguely 
 called, formed almost a Church within a Church ; visible by its 
 confession of Jesus as the Christ, but not as yet separate in public 
 worship and scarcely in organization. Soon, however, the re- 
 jection of their message (especially as coming to all men inde- 
 pendent of nationality) by both the masses and the authorities of 
 Judaism, forced them into separate positions and more distinct 
 organization. The relation of the Christian Church to the Jewish 
 civil authority in so far as civil authority was left to their State 
 was thus very peculiar. And as it was also transient, it may be 
 here omitted. 
 
 A.D. 64. Nero was emperor. Within a single generation the 
 religion which confessed Jesus as Lord and Christ had spread 
 along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and its members were 
 now so numerous in Rome as to be the objects of popular 
 suspicion. Nero took advantage of this to divert towards them 
 the charge of having set fire to the city, and to institute a short 
 but most savage persecution. It does not appear that, as Ter- 
 tullian believed, any special " law " was at this time enacted 
 against Christians as such. But Christianity henceforth became 
 notorious under that name as an unlicensed religion, branded in 
 the capital of the world with imputations both of secret flagitious- 
 ness and of hostility to mankind. 1 
 
 1 The terrible words in which the noblest of historians records his belief in 
 the calumny, a whole generation after its invention, can never be forgotten : 
 "This wretched superstition, repressed for a moment by the death of its 
 Founder, soon broke out again, not only in its birthplace, Judaea, but in Rome
 
 THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. II 
 
 About the year A.D. 110 commenced the most illustrious 
 and prosperous period of the empire, with a succession of able 
 and wise Caesars. At its opening under the Emperor Trajan, the 
 relation of Christianity to the law was more definitely ascertained. 
 This is preserved to us in a report from the younger Pliny, who 
 had been sent as governor to Bithynia. On arriving there he 
 found great numbers accused of being Christians, for the faith 
 had spread in the province so that the temples were deserted 
 both in town and country. Pliny examined them, some by 
 torture, and wrote to the emperor that they confessed no secret 
 flagitiousness or crimes hateful to humanity (such as even his 
 friend Tacitus had believed) ; but that, on the contrary, the 
 Christians were said to bind themselves in their assemblies to 
 avoid theft, fraud, falsehood, and adultery, while they met to sing 
 hymns to Christ as God. The course he had taken with them, 
 and which he submitted for the imperial approval, was to give 
 the accused the option of escaping by sacrificing and cursing 
 Christ : those who thrice declined he ordered for execution, " not 
 doubting that, whatever their faith might be, pertinacity and 
 inflexible obstinacy deserved punishment." The emperor, by his 
 Rescript (which had now the force of law all over the empire), 
 approved of the course thus taken. It appears, therefore, that 
 the law of Rome, even as administered by a humane and intelligent 
 proconsul, and confirmed by a wise and able emperor, made the 
 profession of Christianity a capital crime, made it so even when 
 such a profession was relieved from the popular charges of 
 atheism on the one hand, and immorality on the other. 1 
 
 itself, that centre of confluence and celebrity for all that is atrocious and all 
 that is shameful. Those who were first arrested and confessed pointed out a 
 huge multitude of their brethren, and they were found guilty, not so much of 
 setting the city on fire as of hatred of the human race. " Tacitus' Annals, 
 xv. 44. 
 
 1 The ground of punishment was partly obstinacy in a religion which had 
 not the sanction of the State, and (as a similar, though perhaps separate 
 charge) adherence to a community which was not recognised or incorporated 
 by the State. Trajan laid great stress on the Roman laws directed against
 
 12 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 During the period A.D. 110-250, that of the greatest strength 
 and magnificence of the Roman empire, the common law of the 
 State remained as it had been declared by Trajan hostile to 
 Christianity as an illicit religion, and to the Church as an un- 
 licensed association. But in general it was only occasionally and 
 locally enforced, and the illicit association spread through the 
 world. Much in this matter depended on the disposition of the 
 ruling proconsul ; much also on the mood of the populace. 
 Public calamities and portents were dangerous to the Church : 
 " if the Tiber overflowed, if the Nile did not overflow," a cry was 
 raised, " The Christians to the lions ! " So it was especially 
 during the reign of the famous Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, who, 
 however, himself fostered a very general persecution (A.D. 166), 
 partly by the familiar means of inviting informers, and partly by 
 his law, 1 that those should be banished to an island who did 
 anything " to terrify the light minds of men by superstitions about 
 the divinity." Under his successors there was again a respite ; 
 but in A.D. 202 Septimius Severus denounced the punishment of 
 death against converts to Judaism and Christianity everywhere, 
 and directed that those in Rome who joined unlawful collegia 
 should be accused before the Prefect of the city. His successors, 
 again, were more friendly to the Church ; yet it was in the time 
 of the tiger-like Caracalla, mistakenly supposed to have been 
 "brought up on Christian milk," and who admitted the whole 
 
 clubs and societies. Only a few years before he had refused the petition of 
 Pliny to allow a trade union of a hundred and fifty stone and metal workers 
 (fabri) to be incorporated in Bithynia for the purpose of constructing some 
 fire-engines. ' ' Whatever be the occasion of such things, and whatever name 
 we give them," he wrote, "they become leagues or clubs" (hetcsrice}. This 
 prohibition of clubs and associations was published in his province by Pliny, 
 and, no doubt, by other governors in theirs. In an edict Pliny relates how 
 some Christians, whom his threats caused to apostatize, pleaded that from the 
 date of that publication they had discontinued their common worship, or, at 
 least, their custom of partaking in a meal on the evening of the Lord's day, 
 i.e. they had discontinued to share in the sacrament of that society or Church 
 which the law refused to acknowledge. 
 1 Dig. 48. 19. i. 30.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 13 
 
 Roman world to the citizenship, that the famous jurist, Ulpian, 
 gathered into a lost chapter the whole laws against citizens who 
 confessed Christianity. 
 
 The law remained, and though sentiment in some respects was 
 changing, it did not change the practical result. Cato and Caesar 
 had denied a future life in full Senate ; Augustus, with equally 
 little belief, had tried to make the old State religion again 
 fashionable. 1 In the second century it still ruled externally, 
 but internally it was wholly undermined. Neo-Platonism and 
 Stoicism were equally hostile with Christianity to the belief of 
 polytheism ; but the professors of these philosophical systems, as 
 of the new mystical religions of the East, did not scruple at external 
 conformity. And external conformity was all that was now 
 required. More and more the religion of the State became 
 simply worship of the State by its members. Its "majesty" was 
 impersonated in the "august" emperor, and his cult soon 
 became the one universal rite among the varied polytheisms of 
 the world. The progress was gradual : Augustus, when Horace 
 prayed him to "postpone his return to heaven," scrupled even at 
 the title of Lord (Dominus) ; Domitian, his tenth successor, 
 claimed to be called " Our Lord and God" (Deus}. The milk on 
 which Caracalla was fed by his mother, Julia Domna, the cultured 
 wife of the persecuting Severus, may be gathered from the 
 romance of Apollonius, published by her desire. The Platonic 
 saint wanders through the world in those pages, rejecting image- 
 worship and bloody sacrifices ; but he scatters incense on the 
 altars of the sun, and accepts the emperor as head of Church and 
 State. This last worship was the test. The humaner proconsuls 
 avoided asking a Christian to worship a " demon ; " but they con- 
 demned him without scruple if he refused incense to the altar of 
 
 1 To this time beyond any other perhaps belongs what Gibbon, following 
 Varro, has so admirably expressed, "The various modes of worship which 
 prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally 
 true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally 
 useful."
 
 14 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Caesar. Celsus, the enemy of the new faith in the days of 
 Aurelius, admits that a Christian should die rather than renounce 
 his faith in immortality. But why, he urges, should he not adore 
 the emperor, and bow to the gods whom the emperor and the State 
 have for ages sanctioned ? The utterance of imperial Rome to 
 Christianity was thus at all times, " You have no right to be " (Non 
 licet esse vos). 
 
 Under this cold shade of a universally hostile State, the new 
 society of men who gathered round an invisible Chief spread 
 with ceaseless energy. " We are but of yesterday," said Tertullian, 
 addressing the Roman power before the end of the second 
 century, " and already we fill all that belongs to you your cities, 
 islands, fortresses, towns, and assemblies ; your camps even, 
 your tribes and decuries, your palace, your senate, and your 
 forum." And the Christian society was essentially cosmopolitan, 
 much more so than the Roman State itself. As it is put in one of 
 the Apostolic Fathers : x " Christians are distinguished from other 
 men neither in country, nor in language, nor in custom. They 
 neither inhabit cities of their own, nor do they use any peculiar 
 dialect, nor do they lead separate lives. . . . They dwell each in 
 his own fatherland ; but they do so as sojourners. They partake 
 of all things as citizens ; but they suffer as if they were strangers. 
 Their own fatherland is foreign to them, and they find a father- 
 land on every foreign shore." The early Christian precept, to 
 submit to the powers that be as ordained of God his ministers 
 who are a terror to evil-doers and a praise to those that do well 
 was universally and rigidly obeyed, even in the midst of keen 
 persecution. Whether Christians could go farther and accept 
 civil and military offices, was held a much more doubtful question. 
 In the exercise of all such offices, as in the public games and 
 feasts, the recognition of Pagan religion and rites was inevitable ; 
 and it was the reluctance to accept such doubtful honours which 
 made them reproached as a secret and darkness-loving people 2 
 
 1 Epistle to Diognetus. 
 
 2 Natio latebrosa et lucifuga.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 15 
 
 in the glare of the Roman world. But to the demand of Celsus 
 that the Christians should accept civil office, each in his own city, 
 Origen replied, " In whatever city we are, we have another city 
 builded upon the word of God ; and we require those, who by 
 their gift of teaching and by their pious life are competent to the 
 task, to undertake the administration of the offices of the Church." 
 The Christian republic seems to have been at no time and in no 
 sense a secret society, except on the few occasions when the 
 passive hostility of the law was exchanged for active persecution. 
 It was not indeed national, and might be said to be opposed 
 to nationalism. 1 But it was essentially public and cosmopolitan ; 
 it called upon all men, from the senate and the slave-market alike, 
 to join in one faith, and one hope, and one baptism ; and it pro- 
 vided a recognition and bond of union for all. The tessara, or 
 tokens by which Christians on arriving in a city made themselves 
 known to the faithful there, assumed after some time a fixed 
 form as " letters of communion ; " and every such epistle, while it 
 certified that the bearer had been received into the fellowship of 
 the Church universal, became also a new thread woven between 
 the congregation from which he departed and that to which he 
 came. The Church thus became, to put it at the lowest, a world- 
 wide confederation or association, each member of which was 
 bound to every other by indissoluble ties. 
 
 A.D. 250-300. Hitherto there had been no universal persecu- 
 tion ; but in A.D. 250 Decius ordered all Christians to be sought 
 out and required to sacrifice, under pain of death. Imprisonment 
 and torture were thereupon freely used throughout the empire; till 
 in A.D. 259 Gallienus published two edicts of toleration similar 
 to those to be afterwards noticed. Whether these really changed 
 the legal position of the Christian Church, seems doubtful. They 
 were probably mere indulgences. Yet they ushered in a new 
 
 1 So Stoicism, which about this time produced its noblest disciples, held 
 that separate or independent States were an absurdity ; and that the whole 
 race ought to be one community.
 
 1 6 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 period of peace and prosperity, which lasted till the end of the 
 third century. 
 
 Before its close the Christian republic or confederation de- 
 scribed, however, by its members as rather a kingdom (of an 
 unseen king) was certainly co-extensive with the Roman world. 
 It had also become much more distinctly one visible and external 
 institute. This was closely connected with the advance by this 
 time undoubtedly made whether it be regarded as a develop- 
 ment or a corruption in the position of the Episcopate. Cyprian, 
 in the middle of this third century, popularized the idea that the 
 bishops, as distinguished from the body of elders, and especially 
 the bishops of the metropolitan towns and apostolic seats, repre- 
 sented the unity of the Church, each for his own district ; while 
 conjointly they were proclaimed as the successors of the apostles 
 and the head of the living Christian body. Their dioceses gene- 
 rally coincided with the Roman districts and prefectures, and 
 everywhere the Church had begun to run into the mould of the 
 empire and to imitate its organization. Long before this time, 
 too, its congregations had come by some indulgence to possess 
 property, 1 and an incident which now occurred may be used to 
 illustrate how inevitable is a certain connection between Church 
 and State, even when these bodies are most desirous to be 
 separate. 
 
 Paul of Samosata, a brilliant and worldly prelate, was bishop 
 of Antioch, one of the great Christian centres. Certain specula- 
 tive errors having come in aid of the dislike felt for his manner of 
 life, a council of the neighbouring " bishops, elders, and deacons " 
 declared him no longer bishop, and announced the fact to Rome 
 and Alexandria and the Church at large, inviting them to acknow- 
 ledge the successor whom they named. Paul, however, having 
 probably many supporters in his own city, and certainly enjoying 
 the friendship of Zenobia, the Palmyran queen, maintained that 
 he was still the bishop, and refused to depart from the church- 
 house (domus ecclesia}. Aurelian had at this time, A.D. 270, 
 succeeded to the empire, and the question was brought before 
 him, from which side does not appear. He resolved to follow the 
 decision upon it of the bishops of Rome and Italy ; and as the 
 
 1 Probably by means of Fideicommissa, or private Trusts.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 17 
 
 result, Paul was, Eusebius says, driven out of the Church by the 
 civil power. It is the sort of incident which recurs, in innumer- 
 able forms, in every succeeding age and country, but the dis- 
 tinctions involved in it are perhaps more obvious and less 
 complicated than at a later date. 
 
 1. If the church-house was the official residence of the bishop, 
 or the place of Antiochian worship, its possession as such, being 
 claimed by both parties, was a civil question, which could not be 
 settled by the parties themselves without a breach of the peace, 
 or a reference to some judge. But in absence of any judge 
 agreed upon by the parties, the preservation of peace and the 
 settlement of the question (first of interim possession, and then of 
 continued possession and property) fell under the jurisdiction of 
 the emperor, and was proper for his decision. 
 
 2. The emperor did not refuse to decide between the claimants 
 (as his predecessors would have done before the Christians were 
 so far tolerated). But if he was to decide rightly on this merely 
 civil question, he could only do so by inquiring into the Church 
 facts, upon which that civil question turned. 
 
 3. How far Aurelian's inquiry extended does not clearly appear. 
 In order to decide the possession of this church-house, he must 
 have at least put the question to himself, or to the assessors 
 whom he called in to assist him, whether Paul was still bishop of 
 Antioch or had been really deposed. Even this involved a 
 certain investigation into the constitution of the Christian Church, 
 and into the power which that constitution gave to its tribunals. 
 But he may have gone no further. Such a limited inquiry (with 
 or without the help of Italian assessors) might have resulted in a 
 clear conclusion, that Paul had, or had not, been removed from 
 his bishopric by the proper Church judicature (without any 
 inquiry into the question whether the grounds of removal were 
 right or wrong). And that conclusion alone might have been 
 enough for the emperor's decision of the question of property or 
 use. 
 
 4. He might, no doubt, have gone further, and have inquired, 
 with or without episcopal help, not only whether Paul had been 
 really, but also whether he had been rightly, deposed. This 
 might have been necessary in order even to his decision of the 
 question of property, had he found that there was no authority in 
 the Church itself to which the bishop was bound to submit. It was 
 not likely that he should find this a blank, and it would have been 
 awkward in any case that, for want of a Christian tribunal, a 
 heathen judge should set himself to decide whether the morals 
 and doctrine of a Christian bishop were according to Christianity. 
 Yet it would have been necessary in such a case to do so in the 
 interests of justice. The Church could only complain of his 
 action as unjust, if, in order to make himself the judge, the 
 
 B
 
 1 8 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 emperor had reviewed and reversed the judgment of a Christian 
 tribunal, which had been submitted to by the parties, or had 
 declined to remit the case to such a tribunal, though admitted to 
 exist, and to exist for the purpose. 
 
 5. However far the emperor's inquiries might extend (and every 
 judge has the power of inquiring as far as seems to him necessary 
 in order to his conclusion), that conclusion was undoubtedly only 
 accepted and submitted to by the Church on the civil question of 
 property or its use. On that point his decision may have been 
 right or wrong, but it was the decision of the proper and final 
 authority, who was in such matters to them, as to their apostle, 
 " the minister of God." But, as we have seen, there were Church 
 questions upon which it was necessary for him to form an 
 opinion in order to his reaching that conclusion. On these 
 questions, also, he may have been right or he may have been 
 wrong. But on the question of Paul's heresy, or of Paul's bishop- 
 hood, the decision of the emperor, even if true and arrived at 
 with the very best advice, was never held by the Church to be 
 binding upon it ; while if false, or contrary to the belief of the 
 Christians or their tribunals, it was as a matter of conscience re- 
 jected. Yet on questions such as Paul's house in Antioch and its 
 occupancy, his decision, though possibly equally wrong, and 
 perhaps founded on exactly the same error as to Church facts or 
 doctrines, seems to have been at all times promptly obeyed by 
 the Church, as a matter not of necessity merely, but of conscience. 
 On such matters they said with their apostle, " I stand at Caesar's 
 judgment-seat, where I ought to be judged." 
 
 6. It is plain that the same kind of question may have arisen in 
 many places and in many ways while Christianity was outside 
 the State. In every town in Europe and Asia, questions must 
 have occurred between the little Christian community and those 
 outside, whether Jews or heathen ; and these last, as in the days 
 when Gallio was Deputy of Achaia (Acts xviii.), might at any 
 moment draw their Christian neighbours " before the judgment- 
 seat." Gallio, indeed, refused to be judge of the abstract question 
 " of words and names and their law " which they thrust upon him. 
 Yet even he, as the good-natured representative of the haughty 
 justice of Rome, admitted that if it were a matter of tangible 
 wrong u^txniAx it would be reasonable that he should hear the 
 cause. And had he done so, he would have found it difficult to 
 set the wrong right, without knowing the facts upon which it 
 turned. Yet in all this he would remain a heathen judge outside 
 the Church, dealing with civil matters in which the Church was 
 interested, as any other body might be. But if he had attempted 
 any regulation, positive or negative, of the Church's internal 
 administration, or proper Church action, it would apparently have 
 been at once disobeyed. Even Paul the Church no doubt held
 
 THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 19 
 
 to have been driven out of the church-house by the emperor, 
 but out of the Church (if at all) by the Church itself. 
 
 7. The sentiment of the Church, we must remember, was from 
 the beginning strongly against going to the heathen tribunal, even 
 as to matters on which that tribunal might properly judge. It 
 was the same apostle who in Corinth heard Gallic say, " I will be 
 no judge of such matters ; but if there be any question of wrong, 
 or wicked lewdness, reason would that I should bear with you," 
 who wrote to the congregation there rather to suffer wrong than 
 to go to law with each other even upon matters "pertaining 
 to this life." The outlawed position of Christianity, too, during 
 these three centuries, was practically a protection against this 
 often happening, and, of course, still more against the Church 
 referring properly Church questions to the State. It is all the 
 more instructive, therefore, to find one case like this at Samosata, 
 which shows that, after a longer period of toleration than usual, 
 men were found, even in the pre-Constantine time, desirous to 
 get the civil power (when they believed it to be on their side) 
 to enforce their Church views. The story is told us by Eusebius 
 of Caesarea, 1 the friend and biographer of Constantine, an honest 
 and warm-hearted sycophant who did all he could in later days 
 to bring the Church to the foot or the side of the throne. But 
 during the greater part of the three preceding centuries "the 
 most heroic episode of the history of humanity," as Renan calls 
 it the Church, while scrupulously obedient to the civil power 
 in civil matters, was saved from servility by persecution. Even 
 Aurelian before his death departed from his early quasi-toleration ; 
 and the more Roman any Roman emperor was, the more was he 
 expected to enforce the established law against the proselytizing 
 and disintegrating association. In the days of one of the greatest 
 of the whole mighty line, this matter, like many others burdening 
 the perplexed and unwieldy empire, came at last to a head. 
 
 A.D. 303. Just at the beginning of the fourth century, 
 Diocletian, still the lord of the Roman world, though with two 
 Caesars and two Augusti under him, suddenly issued a series of 
 edicts intended to destroy Christianity altogether. By these 
 enactments all Christian assemblies were prohibited ; all churches 
 were to be demolished ; all copies of the Scriptures to be burned ; 
 all Christians who held rank or office to be degraded ; all of 
 whatever rank to lose their citizenship, and be liable, like slaves, 
 to the torture ; while Christian slaves were to be incapable of 
 
 1 Historia Eeclesiaslica, vii. 30.
 
 20 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 receiving their freedom. Soon after an order appeared, under 
 which all the bishops and clergy were to be thrown into prison, 
 and while there compelled to sacrifice. And this was followed in 
 A.D. 304 by a final edict, by which all Christians everywhere were 
 ordered publicly to worship the gods an order carried out 
 against individuals in the great cities by a careful scrutiny, and 
 under the usual penalties of torture and death. This was the last 
 and greatest of the persecutions, a word properly enough applied to 
 special proceedings against the Christians and their faith, whether 
 these proceeded from local governors, or, as in this case, from the 
 palace. For they were all of the nature of following out against 
 individual Christians the existing general law against the body, 
 a law which even Trajan had not enacted, but only declared, 
 and which the wisest and ablest emperors were not wrong in 
 believing to be bound up with the old constitution of the State. 
 
 But the great change was at hand. And it was in the first 
 place not the establishment of Christianity, but the toleration of 
 it and of all religious beliefs and worships.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 
 
 DURING the fourth century the Roman world passed through a 
 mighty revolution in the adoption of Christianity by the State as 
 well as by the people. As regards the State, the change must be 
 held to have been rapid, for it was a change from one extreme 
 to another. In A.D. 311 the empire was actively persecuting 
 Christianity. Seventy years later the same State, by the edicts 
 of Theodosius, commanded all races embraced within it to practise 
 the Christian religion in its purity, threatened the imperial 
 vengeance against those who dissented, and proscribed the 
 characteristic rites of Pagan worship. Within so short a time 
 had the great Orbis Romanus swung from one extreme to its 
 opposite. But a world which turns on such vast poles moves 
 gradually even when it does not move slowly. There were 
 successive stages in the revolution, which may yet be traced in 
 the legislation of the time. And they are of great importance 
 for all who study the question in modern times of more practical 
 importance for us, probably, than the inevitable tendencies of 
 that age permitted them to be for those who took part in them. 
 It is only now that the world is free to work out the problem 
 which Constantine had presented to him. But it is sometimes 
 forgotten that the problem -was broadly presented to him and 
 his time, and that its difficulties were understood and acknow- 
 ledged even when not overcome. 
 
 The most remarkable document on the relation of the Pagan 
 
 21
 
 22 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 State to Christianity more remarkable even than the rescript of 
 Trajan to Pliny is the edict which, in A.D. 311, closed the last 
 great persecution. For it was primarily the Edict of Galerius, the 
 fierce Dacian soldier, at whose instigation Diocletian, his father- 
 in-law, commenced the attempt at suppression. But it bears the 
 names also of the other Caesars, Constantine and Licinius. And 
 while it justifies the motives which had originally led to that most 
 savage and persistent attack, it confesses the futility of the 
 attempt, 1 and extends toleration both to individual Christians and 
 to their churches. Yet what is conceded is a mere arbitrary 
 toleration (venia, indulgentia), grounded on special reasons 
 rather than on general principles. 
 
 " We," the Caesars say, " have up to this time desired to regulate 
 everything according to the ancient laws and public discipline of 
 the Romans, and in particular to provide that even the Christians, 
 who had left the religion (secta) of their parents, should return to 
 a better mind. . . . For we found them so filled with self-will and 
 folly as not to follow those institutions of the ancients which their 
 own fathers had set up ; but they were now, each according to 
 his own will and pleasure, making laws for themselves to observe, 
 and forming associations among the various nations. But when 
 at last our decree came forth, that they should return to the 
 institutions of our ancestors, many of them were subdued by their 
 danger, but many also were rather disturbed. And, seeing that 
 a large number have still persevered in their determination, and 
 observing that these neither show the due worship and devotion 
 to the gods, nor worship the God of the Christians, we, in the 
 exercise of our tender clemency, and according to our unceasing 
 custom of extending pardon and indulgence to all men, have 
 come to the conclusion that the most frank and open toleration 2 
 should be extended to them also, to the effect that they may now 
 again be allowed to be Christians, and gather together in their 
 societies, 8 provided, however, that they take no action against 
 the religion of the State." 4 
 
 Had the policy established by this edict become permanent, we 
 
 1 The Church, said the Huguenot Rivet to Francis I., is "an anvil which 
 has broken many hammers." 
 
 2 Promtissimam indulgentiam. 
 
 * Ut denuo sint Christiani, et conventicula sua componanL 
 4 Contra disciplinam.
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 23 
 
 should have had Paganism remaining the favoured and established 
 religion of the State, while Christianity enjoyed toleration. And 
 the toleration would have been twofold to individual Christians, 
 whose religio was thus no longer illicit, and to the Church as a 
 body or bodies, now no longer struck at by the law against 
 unlicensed associations. 
 
 But greater changes were at hand. Constantino, the brilliant 
 young Caesar who had succeeded Constantius when he died in 
 the city of York, now came rapidly to the front. Like his father, 
 he had been brought up in Neo-Platonism, and was disposed not 
 merely to tolerate the two contending faiths, but to combine 
 them. In A.D. 312, after the death of Galerius, Constantine 
 crushed the forces of his rival Maxentius in a battle at the Milvian 
 Bridge, outside the walls of Rome. And on this occasion his 
 soldiers seem for the first time to have borne a banner with the 
 sign of the cross, which, as one of his friends tells us, had been 
 held out to him in a dream, or, as another says, in a noonday 
 vision, as the pledge of victory. On becoming master of Rome, 
 however, Constantine at once accepted the office of Pontifex 
 Maximus, and for many years after retained a great attachment 
 to the old worship of the sun, a romantic allegiance to Apollo 
 being perhaps suggested by the radiant locks of the royal votary, 
 as well as by the tendency of his school to regard the orb of day 
 as the only worthy image of the invisible Divinity. Immediately 
 after he became sole emperor of the West he seems to have 
 combined with Licinius, who controlled the East, to issue an inter- 
 mediate edict of toleration. Its terms are not certain, but it 
 probably resembled the more celebrated one we are about to notice. 
 
 In the year A.D. 313 the two emperors met in the north of Italy, 
 and issued for the whole Roman world the Edict of Milan. In 
 this enactment the toleration of the Christian religion is made 
 part of a universal toleration of all religions, and it establishes 
 absolute freedom of worship. The motive stated, however, is not
 
 24 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 any principle of indifference on the one hand, or of equal justice 
 on the other. It is the conviction that all religions are ways of 
 worshipping the one God, whom the emperors should render 
 propitious. The involved and roundabout phrases of the edict 
 may partly be explained by its running in the name of two rulers, 
 one a Pagan, the other a philosophic Christian. But Constantine's 
 was undoubtedly the ruling mind of the two, and the unaccustomed 
 phrases are probably also a reflection of his eclectic thinking in 
 matters of faith. The most important part of the Milan Edict 
 runs in these terms : 
 
 "We believe that among the very first things to be settled are 
 what relate to the reverence due the Divinity, an enactment 
 which may give both to the Christians and to all others free 
 power of following whatever religion each man may have pre- 
 ferred ; that so whatever of divine there is in the heavenly seat 
 may be pacified and be propitious to us, and to all who are set 
 under our authority. Therefore this course we take to be dictated 
 by wholesome counsel and most right reason, to hold that the 
 absolute power is to be denied to no one to give himself (lit. ' his 
 mind ') either to the worship of the Christians, or to that religion 
 which he thinks most suited to himself, 1 that so the Supreme 
 Divinity, whose worship we cherish with free minds, may be able 
 to show us in all things His wonted favour and benevolence. . . . 
 We have given free and absolute power to these Christians of 
 exercising their own religion. And as this indulgence has been 
 granted to them, so you understand that a similarly free and 
 unrestricted power is, with a view to the peace of our time, conceded 
 to all others as to their own religion or observance, that each 
 may have the free liberty of the worship which he prefers ; for 
 we desire that no religion may have its honour diminished by us." 
 
 So far the edict is in favour of individuals. But as the in- 
 dulgence of Galerius tolerated not only Christians, but also their 
 " conventicles," so the Milan Edict goes on to deal with Christians 
 as bodies or corporations. It provides that where their churches 
 had been taken from them and sold, either directly by the public 
 Fisc, or by others, they should at once, and without any con- 
 sideration being demanded, be restored carport Christianorum 
 (to the body of Christians), indemnification being promised from 
 the public treasury to individuals who thus suddenly lost property. 
 It adds that the Christians were known to have not their meeting- 
 places only, but " other things," belonging to them in corporate 
 
 1 Religion! quam sibi ipsi aptissimam esse sentiret.
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 25 
 
 right to their churches rather than individuals. 1 These also were 
 to be restored " to the said Christians, that is, to their body and 
 assemblies (conventiculis}? 
 
 If the edict of Galerius made Christian societies no longer illicit 
 or criminal, this of Constantine at Milan gives them the acknow- 
 ledgment and sanction of the law. It recognises the Christian 
 Church, perhaps as one body or corporation ; certainly as a world- 
 wide union of congregations. But with regard both to individuals 
 and societies, "this rescript contained far more than the first 
 edict of toleration published by the Emperor Galerius. By the 
 latter, Christianity was merely received into the class of the 
 religiones licitcz ; while this new law implied the introduction ot 
 a universal and unconditional religious freedom and liberty of 
 conscience a thing, in fact, wholly new" (Neander). 
 
 Two points in this great transaction deserve to be noticed, as 
 raising a curious historical problem. 
 
 1. It was the chief act of disestablishment recorded in history. 
 Paganism was by the edict disestablished at a stroke throughout 
 the civilized world. But this was done only by putting it on an 
 equality with other religions before the law, and the edict itself 
 anxiously professes to attempt no " detraction " of the honour due 
 to any form of faith. 
 
 2. No religion is established by it. No religion is endowed by 
 it. The enactments in it in favour of Christianity are merely a 
 restitution to its professors of what had been taken from them, 
 and an admission of their worship to the common freedom 
 granted to all others. Constantine, indeed, contrary to the 
 popular idea, never established or professed to establish Chris- 
 tianity. And not till two generations after this date, when his sons 
 and their successors in the purple had all passed away, do we 
 find a statute which may fairly be represented as the act making 
 Christianity the established religion of the empire. 
 
 1 "Ad jus corporis eorum, id est, ecclesiarum non honiinum singulorum 
 pertinentia."
 
 26 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 It is one of the most curious problems in history, What would 
 now be the condition of things had the Roman empire persisted 
 in this policy of religious equality formally inaugurated in the year 
 A.D. 311 ? But it is an inquiry curious rather than useful. The 
 facts of the world at that time made any such persistence most 
 unlikely, if not impossible. And some of these facts are reflected 
 in the Edict of Milan itself, (i) It does not proceed upon any 
 right on the part of the people to freedom of conscience or of 
 worship. It proceeds upon the convictions and will of the 
 emperor, and his motive is, that he may be divinely prospered. 
 It is thus a purely despotic enactment in its grounds. (2) The 
 personal conviction founded on is, that the Divine Being is pleased 
 with worship, whether it be Christian or polytheistic. But this 
 eclectic view, though long held by Constantine, was rejected by 
 both the great communions with which he dealt, and by the mass 
 of his subjects. (3) It follows, that in the event of Constantine or 
 any succeeding emperor coming to think as they thought (and 
 whether he came to lean to the Christian or to the Pagan side), 
 he might be expected, on the despotic principles of this very 
 edict, it would, indeed, on those principles, probably be his duty, 
 to establish the religion which he had come earnestly to 
 believe, and to suppress the other. And if this were his duty, it 
 would be so irrespective of the question whether his subjects, or 
 the majority of them, agreed with his religious convictions. And 
 this was no mere theoretical danger. Despotism was the great 
 and fatal characteristic of the time. Christianity was born into 
 the Roman world at the moment when that world had just 
 exchanged the republic for the empire. And now it was ex- 
 changing the empire under constitutional forms for one of open 
 and undisguised absolutism. The imperial power, which for 
 three centuries had been accompanied, but not restrained, by 
 republican traditions and formalities, was at this very time 
 migrating to its Eastern seat, and had already surrounded itself 
 with Oriental servility and adulation. The change in this respect 
 had commenced before the days of Constantine. " From the
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 27 
 
 accession of Diocletian, the government becomes avowedly a 
 monarchical autocracy, and the officers by whom it is administered 
 are simply the nominees of the despot on the throne " (Merivale). 
 The Imperator of a free republic had become the Dominus of a 
 bureaucratic empire. 
 
 Such an age was one of the most unlikely in the history of the 
 world for any of the principles of "representative government" 
 to be originated. Accordingly, the question was never even 
 raised whether the people of the empire had authorized, or wished 
 to authorize, their ruler to settle their religion. Still less, of 
 course, was room made for the question of modern times, whether 
 the people themselves have the right to settle this question by a 
 majority for their minority. The whole matter would be settled 
 by the personal convictions of the ruler. No doubt the ruler in 
 such cases is immensely influenced by the stream of feeling 
 around him. In the present case, Constantine, in addition to his 
 eclecticism, had the nerve of conscience touched by the heroic 
 suffering of the Christians, which he had often witnessed in 
 Diocletian's pretorium. But when these Christians, with their 
 intense convictions, should have themselves become a victorious 
 majority, how long would the Christian ruler be able to keep his 
 official neutrality and equal-handed justice ? 
 
 This tendency of the time was the real danger, and not, as we 
 shall see, the personal disposition of Constantine. That great 
 ruler has indeed never had justice done to him in this matter. 
 Throughout his life he honestly strove to keep the pledge which 
 he had given, and when his Christian convictions became more 
 intense and definite than they were now, his sense of the duty of 
 toleration became at the same time (a rare thing in the history of 
 mankind) more vivid. It will be our work in the present chapter 
 to trace the steps by which the empire which persecuted Chris- 
 tianity before A.D. 31 1, which respited it in that year, and in A.D. 313 
 admitted it to a general liberty of worship, proceeded to favour, 
 to endow, and to establish it, and at the same time to discoun- 
 tenance or persecute other worships and faiths. But we shall
 
 38 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 find that in the earlier part of the century during the long reign 
 of Constantino there was little injustice or intolerance, and there 
 was no reversal of the Edict of Milan. At the same time there 
 was change, and it is most interesting to mark the cautious steps 
 of legislation by which the pure and humane spirit now glowing in 
 the minds of men left its mark year by year upon the colossal 
 wisdom and selfishness of the old Roman law. 
 
 We confine ourselves, in the first place, to the time during 
 which Constantine was emperor of the Western world alone. In 
 A.D. 313, the first year of universal freedom, a law, confirming one 
 also by Constantine of the previous year, gave Christian " clerics " 
 the freedom from municipal duties already enjoyed by heathen 
 and Jewish priests. In 315 it was forbidden to brand men con- 
 demned to the arena or the mines on the face, for the human face 
 is modelled on the "heavenly beauty;" and, more significant still, 
 the " ancient and dreadful punishment " of the cross or gallows, 
 with leg-breaking, is abolished. In the same year a very unequal 
 law (the foretaste of centuries of intolerance to come) menaces 
 Jews who stone Christian converts from Judaism with death by 
 fire, while converts to the synagogue from the outside are threat- 
 ened with " deserved pains." In a law of 319, Constantine, like 
 several of his heathen predecessors, drew an important distinction 
 between public Pagan rites and those which, being secret, were 
 often the cover of conspiracies. Haruspices and all priests were 
 by it absolutely forbidden to pass the threshold of any private 
 man's house. On the other hand, public sacrifices are expressly 
 allowed. "They who desire to be slaves to their superstition 
 have liberty for the public exercise of their worship. . . . We do 
 not forbid the rites of an antiquated usage to be performed in the 
 open day." Already the state of matters was the converse of 
 what it was in the days of Galerius, only six years before, when it 
 was the Christian religion that was tolerated, but denounced in 
 the act of toleration. And, though the new toleration may be 
 said to be partial, it was at least free and frank, so long as 
 the public " superstition " of Paganism was allowed. For Christian
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 29 
 
 worship, on the other hand, and for the voluntary support of the 
 Christian Church, two remarkable provisions were made by the 
 Roman law about the year 321. On the one hand, the Churches 
 and their "reverend assemblies" (venerabile concilium) were 
 declared to be bodies to which bequests (and by implication 
 endowments) might legally be given. The reason assigned for 
 this law, it should be remarked, is not the merits of the object, 
 but the respect due to the will of the deceased. But whatever 
 the reason of it, this law remained for many centuries the great 
 foundation of Church property. Constantine himself commenced 
 his benefactions by sending about ^18,000 to the African 
 Churches. On the other hand, rest from daily labour is ordained 
 for all courts of law, artisans, and city populations generally, on 
 what Constantine still calls the Sun-Day {Dies Solis). Indeed, 
 while his Christian convictions had all these years been strength- 
 ening, the symbols of Apollo do not disappear from his coins till 
 the next crisis of his life now to be noticed. 
 
 The Eastern and Western emperors had long been jealous of 
 each other. Licinius had dealt harshly with the rising Chris- 
 tianity of the great Oriental cities, and in A.D. 323 war broke out, 
 which was largely a contest between the two systems. Constan- 
 tine was victorious, and in his fiftieth year became sole sovereign 
 of the united Roman empire. It was a most critical time for the 
 question of toleration. The conqueror : had by the constitution 
 absolute power over his subjects, and those who had fought 
 against him had done so as against the partisan and representa- 
 tive of Christianity. Nor did Constantine refuse the part thus im- 
 puted to him. On the contrary, he now, for the first time, openly 
 took it up. In an edict recalling Christians from the exile or the 
 slavery to which they had been sentenced, he expresses with 
 profuse energy his faith in God, who had guided him so far. 
 But in a document suggested, as he tells us, by a rumour that 
 
 1 Constantine the Conqueror was the name now officially assumed by him, 
 whom his successors preferred to call Constantine the Great.
 
 30 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 he was about to forbid temple worship, his Proclamation to the 
 Peoples of the East, he now deals with the difficulty expressly. It 
 is a remarkable document, in form not so much an edict as a 
 sermon, addressed to his people, with biographical reminiscences 
 and appeals to heaven intermixed. The following are the im- 
 portant passages : 
 
 " I hasten, O God, to put my shoulder to the work of restoring 
 Thy most holy house, which profane and impious princes have 
 marred by their violence. But I desire that my people should 
 live at peace and in concord, and that for the common good of 
 the world and for the advantage of mankind. Let the followers 
 of error freely enjoy the same peace and security with those who 
 believe : this very restoration of common privileges will be power- 
 ful to lead men towards the road of truth. Let no one molest his 
 neighbour. What the soul of each man counsels him, that let 
 him do. Only let men of sound judgment be assured that those 
 alone will live a life of holiness and purity whom Thou callest to 
 find rest in Thy holy laws. But for the others who keep apart 
 from us, let them, if they please, retain the temples of falsehood. 
 We have the resplendent house of Thy truth given us as our 
 inheritance. But this we pray for them also, that they may come 
 to share the gladness of a common belief." 
 
 And the close is as follows : " Let all men henceforth enjoy 
 the privilege placed within pur reach, i.e. the blessing of peace ; 
 and let us keep our consciences far from what might hinder 
 it. Whatever truth a man has received and been persuaded 
 of, let him not smite his neighbour with it. Rather, whatever 
 he has himself seen and understood, let him help his neigh- 
 bour with it, if that is possible ; if it is not, let him desist from 
 the attempt. For it is one thing voluntarily to undertake to 
 wrestle for immortality it is another to constrain others to 
 it by fear. These are my words, and I have enlarged on this 
 more than my forbearance would have prompted, because I was 
 unwilling that my trust in the true faith should remain secret 
 and hidden." 
 
 Views like those of this proclamation are to be found in the 
 writings of Justin and the apologists, and occurred naturally to 
 the Christians while they were yet under persecution. "The 
 rights of man and the law of nature," said the stern but noble- 
 hearted Tertullian, " give every one the power of worshipping as 
 he thinks proper ; and the religion of one man neither injures nor
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 31 
 
 benefits another. Force is indeed foreign to religion." But 
 it is more important to observe that the Christian conscience 
 was confronted by the same principles when the new faith 
 rose into power. In the reign of Constantine we find Lac- 
 tantius (the tutor to the emperor's son, and a convert to Chris- 
 tianity during the Diocletian persecution) giving vigorous 
 expression to the ideas which now found their way from the 
 conscience of the emperor into the legislation of the world. 
 " Religion cannot be compelled ; it is by words rather than 
 wounds that you must bend the will. Nothing is so much a 
 matter of free will (tarn voluntariun) as religion. Our God is 
 the God of all, whether they will it or no ; but we do not desire 
 that any one, whether he will it or no, should be compelled to 
 worship Him. . . . Religion is the one region in which liberty 
 has fixed its domicile and home." 
 
 The Eastern proclamation of Constantine fonns the third step 
 in the only world-wide experiment of toleration which has ever 
 been made. In one respect it is a distinct advance on the 
 previous Edict of Milan. That edict had implied a certain 
 approval on the part of the emperors of all kinds of worship, and 
 on this grounded their toleration of the old and the new. Now, 
 however, the emperor expresses his strong personal convictions 
 in favour of the one faith, and yet enacts the toleration of the 
 other, apparently on general grounds of liberty of conscience. In 
 short, 
 
 The toleration of Galerius, in A.D. 311, was a toleration of 
 indulgence ; 
 
 The toleration of Constantine, in A.D. 312, was a toleration of 
 comprehension ; 
 
 The toleration of Constantine, in A.D. 323, was a toleration of 
 justice. 
 
 This last basis, involving the idea of liberty of conscience, 
 was, as we have seen, the only foundation for permanence in the 
 structure. It alone would give security against the changing
 
 32 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 opinions of a despot, or of a dominant majority. And, on the 
 whole, Constantine adhered nobly to the pledge to Paganism 
 which had been so nobly uttered. The question might indeed be 
 raised, even as to that pledge and proclamation, whether the 
 strong expression of personal conviction, made in the proclamation 
 of a despotic emperor, was not itself an act of pressure. The 
 imperial utterances were sure to be regarded in that age as 
 expressing the religion not of the man, but of the magistrate. 1 
 But the proclamation went a step further than mere expression 
 of opinion. It announced the emperor's intention to use personal 
 and lifelong exertions to use the whole of his world-wide influ- 
 ence in favour of Christianity. And in fulfilling this, Constantine 
 made little attempt to separate his private from his imperial 
 patronage. In the case of an autocrat it is as difficult to do so, 
 as it is to say whether his benefactions are from his own or the 
 public purse. The general rule at least followed by Constantine 
 is clear. To tolerate all religions, but to favour Christianity, was 
 the idea of his reign ; and this idea seems expressed rather 
 felicitously in a word which now occurs in his statute-book on 
 the subject. So early as A.D. 326 a statute (Cod. Theod. 16. 5. l) 
 speaks, as a well-understood thing, of the "privileges which are 
 conceded to religion," and which, it is there provided, must only 
 be enjoyed by Catholic Christians. The word " privilegium " 
 (a legislative favour to a private party) something not wholly a 
 public right on the one hand, nor a mere private gift on the other 
 expresses very well the kind of benefaction which the great 
 emperor allowed himself to bestow on the Church, or on its parts. 
 His own liberality was occasionally munificent, and it was exer- 
 cised not only in building charities in important towns, but in 
 giving rich rewards to places which had early declared for 
 Christianity. In some instances he even appointed that the 
 churches in a city should have a revenue out of the municipal 
 funds a step distinctly in advance of anything which he might 
 
 1 "At no time could it be truly said of the Roman emperor that it was 
 merely ' un citoyen de plus ' who had turned Christian " (Beugnot).
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 33 
 
 do with the properly imperial revenues. Then came the second 
 great event in his protracted career. 
 
 In A.D. 330 he left Rome, which was still predominantly Pagan, 
 and made Constantinople, which he took care should be chiefly 
 Christian, the seat of government. While on the throne there, he 
 prohibited the more immoral forms of Pagan worship. He con- 
 fiscated sometimes for Christian uses the revenues of some of the 
 less frequented temples. He presided at Christian councils, and 
 surrounded the Church with the strength and wealth of the 
 empire. He is even said, in his closing years, to have prohibited 
 the ordinary public sacrifices, as well as those of magicians and 
 conspirators. But this is historically doubtful ; and it seems certain 
 that if such an enactment was passed, it was never enforced. 
 There is indeed no record that Constantine (while interfering 
 very strongly, as we shall see, in the internal affairs of the Church 
 and with the convictions of its members) ever to the last pressed 
 the consciences of those that were without. But he had latterly 
 used his imperial as well as personal influence so undisguisedly 
 to favour the one faith, that the further step of attacking the 
 other was sure to follow. The great emperor died A.D. 337, 
 and 
 
 A.D. 341 his sons, Constans and Constantius, issued a law 
 beginning : " Let superstition cease ; let the madness of sacrifices 
 be abolished." In many parts of the empire, however, this was 
 not obeyed, till in A.D. 353 Constantius ordered all the temples to 
 be closed, and added : " We will that all abstain from sacrifices : 
 if any be found doing otherwise, let him be slain with the 
 sword." 
 
 Already, therefore, the toleration of indifference (or of compre- 
 hension) expressed in the Edict of Milan, and the toleration of 
 justice combined with personal conviction of the Eastern circular 
 of Constantine, had passed away. His early fancy that the 
 two faiths might be united under a comprehensive Deism had 
 also long ago faded, and he had become the energetic and munifi- 
 cent patron of Christianity. The religion of the emperor had no
 
 34 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 doubt, before Constantine's death, appeared to many as, by 
 necessary consequence, the religion of the State. And under his 
 sons, even the nominal toleration of other religions and their rites 
 was withdrawn. 
 
 Then came a reaction, which gave one more opportunity for 
 that solution of the question which the world was in the mean- 
 time to reject. 
 
 Julian, the nephew of Constantine, and, like him, educated in 
 Neo-Platonism, came to the throne in A.D. 361, and used all its 
 moral influence in favour of the ancient State religion. But while 
 he, of course, took away all " privileges " and preferences from the 
 Christians, he promised them full toleration, and on the whole 
 kept his word. His position was thus the exact converse of that 
 which had been taken up latterly by Constantine. " I do not 
 maltreat the Galileans," he said ; " but I prefer the worshippers 
 of the gods. ... It is just to distinguish the men and the towns 
 which honour the immortals." But beyond distinguishing them 
 by private acts, and perhaps privilegia, he did not go. Indeed, 
 in this reign, as in that of his greater relative, the spectacle was 
 often seen of the ruler of the world earnestly arguing with one- 
 half of his subjects, whose unconvinced consciences he refused to 
 coerce. And this experiment was prolonged in another form 
 after Julian's death, for 
 
 A.D. 363 Jovian, himself a Christian like all his successors, 
 restored their privileges to the Christians, but proclaimed a 
 toleration to all. You allow us, said Themistius, the Pagan 
 consul, to worship " God, not the purple ; " and " while you will 
 be sovereign as to everything else, you command that religion 
 should be left to the free choice of each individual." Valentinian 
 reigned much longer, his favourite residence being Treves ; for 
 the empire was now again divided into East and West. In his 
 first year, A.D. 364, he published " freedom of worship " to all 
 (colendi libera facultas). Yet in later years, Valentinian and 
 Valens forbade "bloody sacrifices" partly, perhaps, from their
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 35 
 
 supposed connection with conspiracy ; and throughout the empire 
 the class of magicians and soothsayers were hunted down. The 
 public worship of the old faith was however tolerated, though 
 by this time it has come to be known, even in statutes, as 
 Paganism, the religion of the" Pagani i.e. villagers or " rurals." 
 Gratian, his son, went further. He was more scrupulous than 
 any of his predecessors as to anything which might seem to make 
 the emperor responsible for acts of heathenism. On succeeding 
 in A.D. 375, he refused the robe, if not the name, of " Supreme 
 Pontiff." He removed the altar of victory which had lingered in 
 the Roman senate-house. He took away from the college of 
 priests the corporate right of receiving legacies of real estate ; 
 and he in many cases declined to allow temples and their 
 guardians to retain endowments of which he had the power to 
 deprive them. Yet he does not seem to have been held to be 
 intolerant in his legislation ; though one statute, preserved by 
 Justinian, is so sweeping in its terms as to cover all possible 
 applications : " He who offends the divine law, whether by 
 ignorantly failing to obey it, or by negligently violating its 
 commands, is guilty of sacrilege." l But a more powerful influ- 
 ence, to which this enactment may have been due, was already 
 rising in the Eastern empire. 
 
 Theodosius the Great, when baptized in A.D. 380, before his 
 campaign against the Goths, issued an edict in his own name 
 and in that of Gratian and Valentinian. It was addressed to the 
 city of Constantinople. But in its terms it is an establishment of 
 Christianity throughout the whole world, and that by imperial 
 authority. 
 
 " We will," it begins, " that all the nations, who are ruled over 
 by our moderation and clemency, shall cultivate and exercise that 
 religion which the divine Apostle Peter originally introduced and 
 has since handed down to the inhabitants of Rome, and which is 
 publicly professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of 
 1 Cod. Just. 9. 29. i.
 
 36 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Alexandria." He goes on to define some of its articles of faith, and 
 adds, " Those who follow this doctrine we authorize (jubemus) to 
 assume the name of Catholic Christians ; and all others, judging 
 them to be senseless and insane, we ordain to bear the infamy of 
 holding heretical dogma ; nor must their congregations (con- 
 ciliabula) assume the name of churches. On the contrary, they 
 must expect to be visited, first by the divine vengeance, and then 
 by that also of the authority which we have received from the 
 will of heaven." 
 
 This edict expresses the full theory towards which, as we have 
 seen, legislation had been tending. It implies not merely the 
 personal belief of the emperor, but his official faith as head of 
 the State. It proceeds to impose that faith indiscriminately on 
 all the peoples under his power, no matter how far their con- 
 victions may in each case have gone. And it threatens penalties, 
 in conclusion, on all who oppose this faith, and even on all who 
 do not hold it in Catholic purity. ' 
 
 The Goths were vanquished, and in A.D. 381 Theodosius, 
 reigning at Constantinople, commenced the legislative suppression 
 of Paganism in detail, by decrees against apostasy to idolatry and 
 "forbidden sacrifices." Whether all sacrifices were meant was 
 left ambiguous ; but the tide ran more and more strongly against 
 them all. Yet there were exceptions and centres of reaction ; 
 and in A.D. 384, Valentinian II. was met in the West as colleague 
 to Theodosius by the same question which had troubled Gratian. 
 But on this occasion it came up in a very instructive form. For 
 it was settled upon a dangerous general principle, urged by a very 
 great man, against the pleading of the chief city of the world. 
 
 Rome, though not now the capital, had still a population of two 
 and a half millions, instead of the few thousands to which in later 
 centuries it sank. The city and its senate were still predominantly 
 Pagan, and they now skilfully urged that the old religion should 
 be publicly continued there, and that on the very ground of 
 toleration adopted by the recent emperors. All they asked of
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 37 
 
 Valentinian was to distinguish between his own private religion 
 and the religio urbis the religion of the city of Rome. This 
 last he, as emperor, was merely asked to tolerate, that is, to suffer 
 it to be what it had always been. The argument, of course, 
 ignored the existence of a Christian minority in the city and in 
 the senate. They, however, were not disposed to efface them- 
 selves ; and, at their request, the prefect of the city was con- 
 fronted by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who wrote the young 
 emperor a letter on the subject, which still exists, and is of great 
 importance in the history of opinion. In it, without formally 
 abandoning the whole ground of toleration, he denies the right of 
 the emperor to hold merely private opinions on religion. " Wrong 
 is done to none of your subjects," said Ambrose, "when Almighty 
 God is preferred before him. To Him belong your convictions, 
 and you must carry them out. You force no one to worship God 
 against his own will : let the same right be conceded also to 
 yourself. But" (he went on to argue) " if you, the emperor, 
 advise Pagan sacrifices, if you decree sacrifices on the Roman 
 altars, you really offer those sacrifices yourself ; and, after that 
 idolatry, the Church cannot receive you. Choose ; for you cannot 
 serve two masters." Weak as this argument might be if addressed 
 to a constitutional or limited monarch, it was weighty and plausible 
 as an appeal to the conscience of one whose power, and, there- 
 fore, whose responsibility, seemed unlimited. The emperor, too, 
 had felt already much veneration for the great prelate who now 
 addressed him ; and as the result, all public sacrifices ceased to 
 smoke in the city of the old Caesars. There were still, however, 
 many altars and temples throughout the world supported by the 
 decaying munificence of Paganism. But the patriarchs of Milan 
 and of Constantinople maintained their urgency ; and 
 
 A.D. 386 a law of Theodosius, for the East, ordered the 
 Prefect Cynegius to shut up all the temples, and abolish temple 
 worship. In A.D. 391 a law of Valentinian, for the West, forbade 
 any one to "pollute himself by sacrifices," and fined all who 
 should enter temples for any such purpose. And in A.D. 392
 
 38 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Theodosms, on Valentinian's death, consolidated his legislation 
 for the whole Roman world, by a law which, among other things, 
 ordained that both sacrificing and soothsaying should be held 
 public crimes, "like high treason" ad exemplnm majestatis. 
 The wheel had now come almost full circle ; for not only was 
 Christianity now established, as Paganism had been before, but 
 the open exercise of the one religion was declared a crime against 
 the State in the same way and even in the same words in 
 which in the previous century the law had bent itself against the 
 profession of the other. 
 
 In this chapter we have now traced the fourth century revolu- 
 tion from the outside, and in its more public aspect. We have 
 seen, that is, how the State, by the year A.D. 380, had reversed its 
 former general relations to Paganism and to Christianity. But 
 the result of this change was a certain mutual recognition and 
 alliance of the State and the Church. We have now to inquire 
 what that result amounted to in detail what during the same 
 period were the chief internal and administrative relations uniting, 
 or at least connecting, the two bodies. 
 
 When the world became Christian, there was no deliberate 
 intention in the mind of any one to mix the functions of Church 
 and State. Indeed, for two centuries or so thereafter, any such 
 mixing took place only occasionally and inferentially. The main 
 fact of the time rather was the relation of independence, un- 
 paralleled in history before the Christian era, which the two 
 systems the ecclesiastical and the civil still maintained. A 
 thousand years were to pass from this date before that indepen- 
 dence came to be theoretically denied. And in the first instance 
 it was in general practically maintained, now that the two bodies 
 were in alliance, as it had been when they were in separation. 
 Yet a close connection was formed, and an increasingly close 
 connection was in that age inevitable.
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 39 
 
 The State, on its side, was affected in respect both of its legis- 
 lation and administration. The legislation of the empire became 
 suddenly tinged with Christian feeling. On all hands, and 
 especially in its treatment of women, children, and the poor, it 
 showed a new tenderness for the helpless, and a new reverence 
 for the individual. Yet this remark must not be carried too far. 
 It seems undoubted that the chief changes of this critical 
 time were made not so much by positive as by permissive legisla- 
 tion. What Constantine and his successors chiefly aimed at in 
 these statutes, was to make channels in which the new and living 
 stream of feeling could flow. Take, for example, the institution 
 of slavery, and the slow work, protracted through centuries, of 
 emancipation. That work was not carried out by imperial legis- 
 lation not even by that of the Church. The empire, at the most, 
 provided facilities for the work being done by private generosity 
 and justice (stimulated by the spirit of Christianity, though not 
 by the command of the Church) ; while in the meantime it 
 tempered the absolute power of the slave-master by humane 
 enactments. But the Church had been recognised by the law as 
 the organ of the moral sense of the community ; and while its 
 officials were apparently held entitled to criticise not only the 
 private actions of magistrates who were its members, but also 
 their public proceedings, a special provision was made for assisting 
 the claim of humanity. A formal " right of intercession " was 
 now granted to the bishops, to be exercised on behalf of all in 
 helplessness or misery, and especially of those condemned to 
 death. The State, it is clear, retained the whole right and duty of 
 administering public justice, and of tempering it with mercy. But 
 as a help to its exercise, it invited and sanctioned a certain inter- 
 position of the Church. 
 
 A similar relation of the State to the Church is found when we 
 turn to the important subject of Church maintenance and property. 
 The empire, as we have seen, gave to the Church a number of 
 unfair and unequal privileges. But it never assumed the duty of 
 its support. The main support of the Church after A.D. 381 was
 
 40 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 what it had been for three centuries before the liberality of the 
 faithful. The gifts of the emperors were often munificent ; and 
 they, no doubt, came indirectly (and sometimes directly and 
 expressly) from the treasury of the State. But they were of 
 importance chiefly as an example to private donors. And private 
 donation and endowment of the Church, illegal while it was an 
 illegal association, tolerated when it was tolerated in A.D. 313, 
 was now formally legalized by the law of Constantine in A.D. 321. 
 Yet even that law providing that bequests to the local assembly 
 (concilium}, which represented the Catholic Church, should be 
 valid only provided a channel, or only recognised the existing 
 channel, for private and voluntary liberality. The channel of 
 bequest itself, we know, was not an ancient one. In this, as in 
 some other things, the Christian Church was fortunate in the time 
 of its appearing on the stage if for a Church obtaining wealth 
 is good fortune. Among the Romans, as among the Northern 
 races now mixing with them, the individual had originally no 
 power to divert his property by his will from the surviving family. 1 
 Gradually that had been changed, and before the Constantine 
 revolution took place, the only reason why heathen and Eastern 
 religions did not become constantly richer by inheritance was, that 
 men had ceased to care about them. To that opportunity, Chris- 
 tianity, by this law emphatically recognising the last wishes of 
 donors, 2 now succeeded. So this, which was little more than 
 toleration under the common law, became the foundation for the 
 great European edifice of Church property. There was more 
 
 1 ' ' The barbarians were confessedly strangers to any such conception as 
 that of a will. . . . Soon after they became mixed with the population of the 
 Roman provinces, they appropriated it from the imperial jurisprudence. . . . 
 To the Romans belongs, pre-eminently, the credit of inventing the will, the 
 institution which, next to the contract, has exercised the greatest influence in 
 transforming human society" (Maine's Ancient Law). 
 
 2 After allowing the testator to leave to the Church "what he chooses," 
 Constantine adds : ' ' There is nothing to which men have a stronger right 
 than that the expression of their last will (for there can be no later) shall be 
 unfettered, and that the choice, which they have no opportunity of changing, 
 shall at least be free."
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 41 
 
 necessity for the law to interfere in questions of interpretation and 
 administration. Thus it appears that, under the powers of testators, 
 acknowledged by the law just cited, men were occasionally in use 
 to name as heirs or legatees (heirs to the whole or legatees to 
 part) of their property "the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, or one of 
 the archangels, or one of the venerable martyrs." Was the law 
 to maintain the bequest, and to what effect ? It provided l that 
 in such a case the bequest was good against the deceased's 
 relatives, and that it was to be held as given to the church of the 
 deceased's district, or to the nearest church dedicated to the 
 martyr or archangel named. The general purposes to which 
 these and all gifts to the Church were held by it (and by the law) 
 to be destined, were threefold the support of the clergy, the 
 relief of the poor, and the maintenance of church buildings. But 
 the threefold administration was given now almost exclusively to 
 the bishop, who, of course, had to be assisted by his economus 
 and other officials in dealing with the growing mass of ecclesi- 
 astical property. 
 
 The acknowledgment of the bishops as the administrators of 
 Church property made them at once, in a sense, great civil 
 officers. The law acknowledged, at the same time, their proper 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Church matters, and this was stretched 
 to include civil questions arising between clerics, as well as all 
 things relating to their discipline. But even as to purely civil or 
 pecuniaiy questions arising between laymen, when these agreed 
 to refer them to the arbitration of the bishop (as Christians had 
 been in the habit of doing since Apostolic times), the law now 
 sanctioned his jurisdiction. These rights, each taken singly, were 
 not much greater than had been enjoyed by the elected officers, 
 first of the Jewish and afterwards of the Christian congregations. 
 What was new was that the tide of charitable enthusiasm 
 throughout the world was now running in the channel of Chris- 
 tianity, and that in the Church the resulting responsibilities were 
 accumulated upon the episcopal, as in the State upon the imperial, 
 1 Justinian's Code, i. 2. 26.
 
 42 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 functionaries. It was not surprising that in many cases the 
 emperors now began to exercise a right themselves to appoint the 
 bishop or patriarch, without very clearly defining the ground of 
 the claim. 
 
 Yet the empire at first refused to interfere with the Church in 
 most internal affairs. Constantine, indeed, called Synods, and 
 exercised immense influence over them. But when he attended 
 them, leaving his guards at the door, '' he seated himself (with 
 the permission of the council) on a low stool in the midst of the 
 hall, and professed himself the minister, not the judge," of its 
 decisions. 1 " I am a bishop as well as you," he said to one of his 
 guests. " You," he explained, " are bishops (overseers) inside the 
 Church, and I am God's bishop outside it." He never hesitated to 
 accept the theory of his earliest adviser, Hosius : "Do]not yourself 
 meddle with things of the Church ; do not even instruct us about 
 them. Rather learn from us ; for God has entrusted the empire 
 to the emperor, but the Church to the bishops." 2 And the 
 independence conceded to the Church by the earliest Christian 
 emperor was openly claimed by it and by its representatives 
 from his successors. We have had occasion to mention the 
 great name of Ambrose in connection with the rise of a system 
 of intolerance. Unfortunate as his influence in that direction 
 was, no part of it was gained by unworthy means. It was the 
 same Theodosius the Great, who was now becoming the legislator 
 of Christendom, whom Ambrose for eight months shut out from 
 communion with even the humblest members of the Church, 
 until, with diadem and mantle laid aside, he uttered amid groans 
 and tears his repentance for the seven thousand men slain by his 
 soldiers in the streets of Thessalonica. 3 Ambrose was a powerful 
 noble, elected by the Milan Church to be its bishop while he was 
 
 1 Gibbon, after Eusebius. 2 Eusebius. 
 
 3 Vandyck, following Rubens, has painted the scene, which, according to 
 tradition, took place on Christmas day A.D. 390 on the steps of the great 
 Lombard church, and his picture in the London National Gallery is perhaps 
 the noblest record of the historical relations of Church and State which the
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 43 
 
 yet a catechumen, and his character was at all times more 
 impressive than even his high position. But his chief strength 
 on this memorable occasion was neither personal nor prelatic ; it 
 was that he represented the purity and independence which the 
 Church claimed equally after its establishment as before, and of 
 which the Christianized State did not attempt to deprive it. 
 
 Yet Constantine and his immediate successors were led in an 
 unexpected, but by no means unnatural way, while maintaining 
 the divine origin and independence of the Church, at the same 
 time to interfere very seriously with its internal relations. 
 
 The Donatiat Controversy in North Africa, which raged while 
 Constantine was still merely emperor of the West, gave the first 
 occasion for imperial interposition on a large scale. The rigid 
 or Puritan party there, upon the election in A.D. 311 of a bishop 
 who was held to be too indulgent to the "lapsed," refused to 
 recognise him, and elected another. Both parties seem to have 
 gone to the newly - converted Constantine. He referred the 
 matter to nineteen bishops at Rome in 313, and thereafter to a 
 council at Aries in 314 ; but the Donatist party, having lost their 
 cause before both ecclesiastical tribunals, appealed to the emperor 
 himself. He too, in 316, decided against them ; but the attempt 
 to enforce his decision was met with the most obstinate resistance. 
 Constantine, who all this time refused to interfere with Pagans, 
 urged submission upon the Donatist Christians. Sometimes this 
 was on the ground that the matter had been decided by the 
 Church, from which he now said (somewhat too late) there should 
 be no appeal. At other times he took the same course on the 
 stronger ground, expressed in his law of 326, that "privileges" 
 (i.e. legislative favours) "given to religion are available only to 
 those who observe the Catholic rule ; heretics and schismatics 
 
 world of art has to show. On the one side the laurelled emperor, his strong 
 Spanish features working with emotion, stretches suppliant hands from amid 
 his indignant guards. Above him towers, in chasuble, crozier, and mitre, the 
 unbending figure of Ambrose ; but even while his repellent arms confront 
 the shrinking monarch, a majestic tenderness fills the aged face.
 
 44 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 are not only to be deprived of these advantages, but to be con- 
 strained by burdens and disabilities." The Donatists' persever- 
 ance, however, wore out the adverse determination of an emperor 
 always disposed to revert to toleration ; and he seems latterly 
 to have granted them a full "liberty of action" in matters ecclesi- 
 astical, though he no doubt still refused to let them share the 
 imperial "privileges." His son Constans, in 340, went further, 
 forcibly depriving them of their church buildings on the one hand, 
 while on the other he offered money and rewards ; and the Church 
 in North Africa was called back to the unity of " Christ the lover 
 of unity," by a proclamation of the emperor. " What has the 
 emperor to do with the Church?" was the reply of the fiery 
 Bishop Donatus ; but the imperial persecution of his too fanatic 
 followers lasted till Julian, in 361, restored them to the churches 
 of which they had been spoiled. The successors of Julian 
 renewed a pressure which rather tended to perpetuate than to 
 cure the North African schism. It lasted all through the fourth 
 century, and in the beginning of the fifth the evil results of this 
 hundred years of division had much to do with the passionate 
 zeal of Augustine for the visible unity of the visible Church. 
 That unity, he maintained (against the Donatist bishops), a 
 Christian emperor was bound to demand of his subjects. If 
 possible, the demand should be gently made ; but as the emperor 
 was now held by all rightly to forbid heathen sacrifices on pain of 
 death, he was surely also entitled to apply in some milder form to 
 schismatics and heretics the words of the gospel, and "compel 
 them to come in." 
 
 Augustine, in his earlier days, had held the full principles of 
 toleration which so many apologists of Christianity had pro- 
 fessed before Christianity succeeded to the power of persecuting. 
 And even to the last he maintained that the civil authority was 
 bound to put no one to death for his heresy or unbelief. But 
 Augustine was the convert and grateful admirer of Ambrose, and 
 he took up for the whole world the theory of responsibility for 
 others, which his teacher had urged upon the emperor. Accord-
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 45 
 
 ingly, persecution during succeeding centuries has founded itself 
 upon the words flung out from the glowing intellect and pure 
 heart of the African saint, more than upon the views of any 
 other man. It is therefore not without importance to notice how 
 fitted the history was which we have just summarized, to lead 
 aside a Churchman whose opinions were being formed amid the 
 strain of practical difficulties and duties. The questions which 
 arose with the Donatists could not be truly represented as 
 wholly unfit for imperial decision. Which of two congregations 
 should occupy a particular building was a matter to be decided, 
 not by violence between the parties, but by the civil power, whose 
 duty it is to prevent violence. It was so even when Christianity 
 was outside the Roman State and law altogether (p. 17). But the 
 civil power could not well decide this question without forming 
 an opinion which of the two parties best represented the Christian 
 Church, or perhaps the original congregation of the locality. 
 And when the emperor or his prefect had formed this opinion, 
 formed it, too, at the request of the parties concerned, were they 
 not bound to enforce it ? It was here that the ambiguity and risk 
 of error crept in. That the civil power was to enforce it against 
 the property and civil claims of the party which had lost its cause 
 was by this time conceded on all hands. And the further step, 
 that the civil power should enforce its own view of orthodoxy 
 upon the consciences of the losing party by demanding active as 
 well as passive obedience, should summon them to abandon 
 their own convictions as to Church duty, and to act in the Church 
 upon the Church views adopted by the State, under penalties in 
 case of disobedience, all this did not appear so vast an additional 
 stride then as it does now to us. At least it did so only to 
 those who suffered under the theory, to Paul when beaten with 
 rods, to Athanasius struggling against the world, and to Donatus 
 facing the imperial ban, not to Augustine, who hailed the powers 
 of earth as at last buttressing the invisible city of God. 
 
 Still more important, in this point of view, was the relation of
 
 46 CHURCH AND STATE, 
 
 the great emperor at a somewhat later period to the great 
 questions of Council and Creed. In A.D. 321, Arius, deposed by 
 the Egyptian bishops, appealed to the Christian world, and 
 especially to the Eastern Church. Constantine had just become 
 sole emperor, and now sent a letter to both parties, urging them 
 not to raise questions, "which Alexander ought not to have 
 pressed upon his clergy, and about which Arius ought to have 
 kept his differing views to himself," questions as to which they 
 should forgive each other, and live peaceably as philosophers of 
 the same school. The well-meant advice ignored the strength 
 and earnestness of the current of Christian thought in that age, 
 and remained unheard. In A.D. 325 Constantine summoned a 
 general council of all bishops to meet at Nicaea, which he opened 
 himself with great pomp. It was a council memorable as the 
 first representative assembly of the now world-wide Christian 
 Church. The questions at once arose (i) How much truth, 
 especially as to the nature of God, such an assembly should pro- 
 fess and define ? (2) How far it had a right to bind its own 
 definition on the Church as a whole, or on its members ? But we 
 must treat these questions as subsidiary to the one with which we 
 have specially to do, the relation of the Church, represented by so 
 many bishops, to the State, represented by one man. At the 
 council the emperor very soon went over to the opinion opposed 
 to Arius, and his leaning seems to have influenced the members, 
 most of whom had desired a middle course, not only to adopt a 
 definition opposed to that teacher, but to enforce it. Accordingly, 
 when the council deposed and excommunicated Arius, the emperor 
 banished him, and directed that his writings should be burned, 
 and even that those who concealed them should be slain. In 327, 
 however, before a year had passed, his dying sister Constantia 
 induced him to place confidence in Eusebius (not the historian), 
 who again persuaded him that the views of Arius were speculative 
 and harmless. He was therefore recalled, and the new bishop, 
 Athanasius, commanded to receive him under pain of exile. 
 Athanasius persistently refused, and being assailed also with
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 47 
 
 charges of violence, was ordered to be tried before a Synod meet- 
 ing at Tyre in 335. From its proceedings Athanasius appealed 
 to the emperor, who, in 336, banished him, and brought Arius 
 back in triumph to Constantinople, where, however, the sudden 
 death of the latter was followed by that of Constantine himself in 
 337. The new emperor, Constantius, was a much keener theo- 
 logian and a much weaker ruler than his father, from whose 
 toleration of Pagans he made haste to depart. At two Synods, 
 called by him in 353 and 355, the bishops were obliged to 
 subscribe a condemnation of Athanasius, while the latter slipped 
 out of his church in Alexandria, through the swords of the 
 soldiers, and escaped to the desert. In 360 a council at Con- 
 stantinople forbade all propositions as to the substance of the 
 divine nature as unscriptural ; but next year Constantius died, 
 and Julian, who succeeded, was of course neutral in Church 
 disputes. Jovian (died 364) and Valentinian (died 375) were 
 Christian emperors, but proclaimed the principle of not inter- 
 fering either with the religion of their own Church or with that 
 of polytheists. Valens, however, the colleague of the latter, was 
 a keen Arian, and annoyed the professors or enforcers of the 
 Nicene definition throughout the East. But by this time that 
 creed, already dominant in the Western Church, was beginning 
 to be received in the East. Athanasius was recalled in 373, and 
 both emperors issued an edict in 375 disclaiming persecution 
 under pretext of religion. What was at hand, however, was the 
 triumph, not of toleration, but of Nicaean orthodoxy. Valens died 
 in battle against the Goths, and his avenger, Theodosius, entered 
 Constantinople in 380 as emperor, having already issued the 
 decree that all peoples under him should, under heavy penalties, 
 profess the Catholic faith. And the Catholic faith he went on to 
 define, in a twofold way, as that of the Bishops Damasus of Rome 
 and Peter of Alexandria, and as " the belief of the one Godhead 
 of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, under an equal 
 majesty and under a pious trinity, according to the teaching of the 
 apostles and the doctrine of the gospel." Those who so believed
 
 48 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 were exclusively authorized to call themselves Catholics, and 
 all others were threatened with the vengeance of God and the 
 emperor. The creed thus imposed on the world was confirmed 
 next year, 381, by a council at Constantinople ; the Arians were 
 instantly stripped of their churches, and Arianism thenceforward 
 suppressed all over the empire. 
 
 In the Arian as in the Donatist controversy, the emperors did 
 not take the initiative. Constantine's great desire was for peace, 
 and he would have preferred that this had been attempted by the 
 bishops not defining the truth or not enforcing their definition. 
 But when this method seemed hopeless he readily took the other, 1 
 and his first unjustifiable step an imperial command to those 
 who conscientiously disagreed with the decision of the council, to 
 submit to that decision naturally led on to others. For an 
 imperial command was of course backed by imperial sanctions ; 
 and these came to be exile and other forms of persecution. So, 
 when the emperor afterwards changed his own view, he naturally 
 felt that truth and God demanded of him at least as much 
 support, and support of the same kind, as he had formerly given 
 to a Church council which he knew to be swayed largely by 
 human passion and his own personal influence. So for two 
 generations the Church rolled in the trough between waves of 
 alternating intolerance, and the final triumph of orthodox defini- 
 tion became unfortunately that of persecuting theory also. 
 
 For A.D. 380 the same seventieth year but one from the tolera- 
 tion of Christianity, which made its profession legally binding 
 upon all men gave that profession a legal definition. It was 
 defined, not so much by the whole great creed of Nicaea, as by 
 the one article of that creed which had divided the minds and 
 exercised the thoughts of the Christian world. The definition of 
 orthodoxy was, of course, also a definition of heresy. And with 
 
 1 To a bishop who agreed with the dogmas of the Nicene Council, but 
 stood out from it in favour of a stricter discipline, the emperor said : " Take 
 a ladder, Acesius, and climb up to heaven by yourself."
 
 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 49 
 
 the persecution of heresy within the Church was combined the 
 persecution of all without. Indeed, the legal suppression of 
 heresy 1 and the extermination of heretics were sanctioned by the 
 same law and even in the same all-embracing words 2 which 
 finally abolished the toleration by Constantine of those outside 
 the Church, and made it penal to be an infidel, a polytheist, or a 
 Jew. 
 
 1 After the Council of A.D. 381, laws rapidly appeared, (i) Turning Arians, 
 etc. , out of the churches. (2) Forbidding their erecting others. (3) Appoint- 
 ing "inquisitors" to follow them out. (4) Forbidding their meeting for 
 worship, and confiscating their corporate property. (5) Banishing all Apol- 
 linarians, and deposing their bishops. (6) Confiscating all bequests to 
 Eunomians. (7) Fining and flogging those who lent their houses to heretics 
 to hold conventicles and ordain ministers of religion. (See the Sixteenth 
 Book of the Theodosian Code. ) 
 
 8 Cunctos in tali religione volumus versari.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 
 
 THEODOSIUS died in A.D. 395, and the empire of his successors 
 shrunk together under the attacks of the barbarians. The end 
 of all things seemed at hand as the fourth century ended, but in 
 truth it was new life that was pouring into the withered veins of 
 the world. Already the Goths and other nearer Teutonic tribes had 
 been Christianized by missionaries and captives, who had carried 
 the gospel there without the definitions of Nicasa ; and as the 
 Burgundians settled in Gaul, the Suevi in Spain, the Vandals 
 in Africa, and the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, they all professed 
 Christianity, but generally in the Arian form. Most of the bar- 
 barous conquerors tolerated, though Genseric and his Vandals 
 persecuted, the orthodox creed ; and that creed, strenuously 
 maintained by the Roman bishops, became more and more the 
 confession of the West. 
 
 A.D. 410. Rome was stormed and sacked by Alaric, and the 
 world trembled at the fall of what had been so long its centre. 
 Even Christianity had failed to perform the promise which some 
 of its representatives had rashly made in its name. " O good 
 nail," said Ambrose, addressing the Nail of the True Cross, 
 " which boldest compacted together the empire of Rome ! " 
 That empire had now finally lost its old centre of cohesion, but 
 Christianity still offered to the world a future. So on this occa- 
 sion Augustine wrote his book, Of the City of God, claiming 
 for the Church existence at all times alongside of the kingdoms 
 of earth, as a world-wide city whose builder and maker was 
 
 50
 
 THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 51 
 
 God. New Rome, as Constantinople was called, could give no 
 assistance to the West in its troubles ; it could at best protect 
 the Church in the provinces near it. Indeed, soon after this time, 
 Italy, like Africa and Spain, came to be held by its Teutonic 
 conquerors with scarcely a nominal submission to the emperor. 
 HereTheodoric, "a Gothic king who might have deserved a statue 
 among the best and bravest of the ancient Romans " (Gibbon), 
 during most of his long reign, while himself an Arian, toler- 
 ated and protected the Catholics. It was he who addressed to 
 the Emperor Justin these "golden" words, "That to pretend to a 
 dominion over the conscience is to usurp the prerogative of God ; 
 that by the nature of things the power of sovereigns is confined 
 to external government ; that they have no right of punishment, 
 but over those who disturb the public peace, of which they are 
 the guardians ; and that the most dangerous heresy is that of a 
 sovereign who separates himself from a part of his subjects, 
 because they believe not according to his belief." But by the 
 swords of Theodoric and weaker men, the whole West was now 
 torn from the empire. In ecclesiastical matters the result was 
 remarkable. The Eastern Church, cowering under the imperial 
 protection, lost most of its strength and all its independence. 
 The Western Church, cast upon its own faith and courage, 
 became the most powerful element in the confused forces that 
 were re-shaping the age, and civilizing its barbarian conquerors. 
 But the centre of the Western Church was Rome, and so the 
 Bishop of Rome continually increased that authority over his 
 quarter of the world, which the other Patriarchs of Antioch and 
 Jerusalem originally held also over theirs. 
 
 The East, however, was still the centre of the empire, and 
 therefore of the Church when called to meet in council, as it 
 had been twice early in the century at Ephesus, and again, 
 in A.D. 451, at Ohalcedon. The first of these councils divided, 
 and each party appealed to the emperor ; the second and 
 third were scenes of violence, and both the opponents and 
 friends of Eutychianism, as soon as they were condemned by
 
 52 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 the council, were imprisoned and exiled by the civil power. 
 That power generally leaned against making new definitions 
 of doctrine ; but when driven to accept them, it showed 
 jealousy of any dissent, especially when the dissent found a 
 centre in national feeling, and so tended to disintegrate the 
 unwieldy empire. In the Church, at least, huge disintegrations 
 now took place. Nestorianism had been condemned by the 
 earlier Council of Ephesus, and the views thus excluded were 
 crushed out of Syria, but had taken refuge in Persia ; and a great 
 Christian Church of similar views was now also founded in 
 Chaldasa, under the Patriarch of Babylon. For several centuries 
 it prospered and grew, sending out missions as far as India and 
 Tartary, until, in the eleventh century (from which it began to 
 decline), the Patriarch at Bagdad had under his sway twenty-five 
 metropolitans and a large portion of Christianized Asia. The 
 Council of Chalcedon worked in much the same way. Its chief 
 act was to condemn the Monophysite view of the nature of 
 Christ ; and the maintainers of this heresy in Syria, persecuted 
 there, transferred themselves to the Tigris, where the Jacobite 
 patriarchs still rule over a remnant of the ancient community. 
 In Egypt the results were still more serious. In it the people 
 refused the Chalcedon definition, and formed a national or Coptic 
 Church with Monophysite views, which has survived the oppres- 
 sive measures not only of Justinian and the emperors, but of 
 Islam in later times. The Egyptian minority, exposed to the 
 imputation of accepting orthodoxy on the authority of the 
 emperor, were named Melchites, or King's-men. In vain did the 
 Emperor Zeno, in A.D. 482, issue a henoticon, or proclamation of 
 unity. It not only described the points on which parties were 
 agreed as the " imperial creed," and described those who con- 
 fessed additional truths as being outside the Church ; but it was 
 followed up by the State enforcing the unity which it recommended, 
 and refusing liberty of discussion of the points controverted. 
 Another great Church affected by the council, that of Armenia, 
 was without the empire, and perhaps had always been. It was
 
 THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 53 
 
 probably indeed the earliest of national Churches, if it is true that 
 the nation with its prince, Tiridates, were converted as early 
 as A.D. 276 half-a-century before the Roman empire became 
 Christian. Armenia was now under the power of Persia, and 
 though it subsequently regained its independence, it has long 
 since again lost it; and the members of the race, now scattered 
 throughout the East, find only an ideal centre around the base 
 of Ararat. But before the end of the fifth century it was an 
 acknowledged Christian Church and body, and it also broke off 
 on occasion of the Council of Chalcedon. 
 
 And while the Church suffered these losses in the East, the 
 empire had already lost the West as a whole. The last emperor 
 residing in Rome resigned his office in A.D. 476 ; and from the 
 Grampians to Mount Atlas the barbarians ruled. But as their 
 tribes pressed southwards one by one, the light of Christianity 
 struck upon their faces. The conquerors were again conquered ; 
 and with a boundless surprise and hope, they prepared to adopt 
 the old civilization which a new religion had re-inspired. 
 
 Justinian became emperor in A.D. 527, the year after the death 
 of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Famous in his day as the temporary 
 restorer of Africa and Italy to the empire by his generals 
 Belisarius and Nances, he has become famous to all time as the 
 consolidator and transmitter to modern Europe of the "written 
 reason of the Roman law." In the digest of that law his Chan- 
 cellor Tribonian went back to its great age under the Antonines, 
 and excluded Christianity so completely from the colourless and 
 majestic structure, as to incur the reproach of irreligion. There 
 was the less reason for such a suggestion, that Justinian had 
 already, indeed in the very first year of his reign, issued a Code or 
 consolidation of the legislation of his Christian predecessors. 
 And in it the laws specially relating to, and inspired by, Chris- 
 tianity take a foremost place. Justinian's Code, indeed, enables 
 us to trace with ease the progress made in the relations of Church 
 and State during the two centuries since Constantine. It opens 
 with the Njcene Creed, as the confession and law of the
 
 54 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 empire ; it goes on not merely to condemn, but to " anathe- 
 matize " the chief schools of heresy ; and it builds up the whole 
 growing intolerance of the statute-book since the days of Theo- 
 dosius into a system against heretics within and unbelievers 
 without. And when the imperial power dealt so authoritatively 
 with the spiritual region of creed, it was sure to overstep more or 
 less the whole separate province of the Church. Justinian, 
 indeed, holds the ecclesiastical rulers in great reverence ; but he 
 issues enactments which control and limit their "appointment, 
 organization, subordination, and authority." The canons of the 
 Church, he says, are to have the force of his own laws ; but his 
 own laws are uttered as if directly binding in ecclesiastical 
 matters, without any statement that they have been sanctioned or 
 demanded by the Church. Throughout, indeed, he bears himself 
 as the Church's legislator, acting apparently not only at its desire 
 and in its interest, but also by the ordinance of God. The mixing 
 of the functions of Church and State, which commenced under 
 Constantine, had thus by this time become almost a union of the 
 two bodies ; and of the twofold system the emperor is the centre. 
 The Church, on the other hand, had during the whole time been 
 consolidating its power as an administrative body. It was during 
 the sixth century that the so-called apostolical canons were 
 collected and received by the whole Church. Justinian, too, at 
 its commencement, followed up the policy of his predecessors in 
 giving the bishops civil as well as ecclesiastical power. They 
 were made the legal guardians of prisoners, minors, foundlings, 
 waifs, insane persons, and oppressed women ; they had an 
 official share in the choice of civic and other magistrates, and in 
 the oversight of city funds and public establishments ; while they 
 were entitled to interfere when the judges had refused justice, 
 and in special classes of cases were themselves authorized to hear 
 the complaint and decide the cause. This large power of inter- 
 ference in civil matters was accompanied, but scarcely balanced, 
 by a. power given to magistrates to see that the bishops observed 
 the ecclesiastical laws. This, however, apparently related chiefly
 
 THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 55 
 
 to the inalienableness by them of Church possessions, and to the 
 regular holding of Synods ; and, besides, the magistrates could 
 not punish the breach of such duties themselves, but could only 
 give warning and then report to the emperor. The real power 
 pressing the Church from outside, indeed, was that of the throne. 
 The emperors sent down their laws to the patriarchs on many 
 matters as to the external and some even as to the internal 
 constitution of the Church ; to be communicated by them to the 
 metropolitans, and by these to the bishops generally, and to be 
 obeyed by all. The Eastern Church generally obeyed, except in 
 times of popular commotion, and the Greek bishops became more 
 and more subservient. The Latin Church, again, clustering 
 round Rome, accepted or anticipated the civil privileges granted 
 by Justinian, but used them to promote the Church's indepen- 
 dence alike of the distant Caesar, of his barbarian lieutenants, and 
 of the independent Western kingdoms. 
 
 For the West, now crowded with the new barbarian invaders, 
 was becoming consolidated, and alongside of Justinian's we find 
 the Barbaric Codes. They were issued amid the new races, not by 
 the authority of an absolute emperor, but by the king, his great 
 council, and the people supposed to be present or represented. 
 But the substance of them was borrowed or imitated from the 
 jurisprudence and Christianity of the empire, modified according 
 to the peculiarities of each Gothic or Prankish tribe. The minor 
 modifications were innumerable, 1 but the general relations of 
 Church and State, and the extent to which the two systems were 
 intermixed, were not very different from what we have seen them 
 to have become under the empire. The toleration of Theodoric 
 fell away like that of Constantine ; the stedfast adherence of the 
 Western Church to Nicene orthodoxy was rewarded by the con- 
 version from Arianism of all the tribes of the north ; and in 
 result, every king and chief of the new order of things came 
 
 1 For English readers the most accessible comparison of the Christian 
 jurisprudence of the new kingdoms and the old empire will be found in the 
 opening chapter of the second volume of Milman's Latin Christianity.
 
 56 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 to take up the same relation to the Church of friendship or 
 patronage which had been assumed along with the purple by 
 Theodosius or Justinian. 
 
 In the matter of Church Property the imperial and barbarian 
 codes were equally favourable to ecclesiastical aggrandisement 
 Constantine, as we saw, gave individuals the questionable power 
 of bequeathing property away from their families to the perpetual 
 use of the Church. Subsequent laws, now consolidated, 1 made 
 all such property, whether land or moveables, absolutely inalien- 
 able, even if the Church itself should desire alienation ; while 
 other provisions began to exempt the Church from public burdens. 
 The result was, that the Church became "the sole proprietor 
 whom forfeiture or confiscation could never reach ; whose title 
 was never antiquated ; before whose hallowed boundaries violence 
 stood rebuked ; whom the law guarded against her own waste or 
 prodigality ; to whom it was the height of piety, and almost 
 ensured salvation, to give or to bequeath, sacrilege to despoil or 
 to defraud." 2 And the power of bequest now conceded, not only 
 to parents against their families, but to princes against their 
 peoples, and to chiefs against their vassals, had immense results 
 in that age of universal turbulence and conquest. In Italy, for 
 example, which before the end of this sixth century was reduced 
 to extreme misery in consequence of the Lombard invasion, the 
 great private possessions which the metropolitan Church of Rome 
 held all through the peninsula, enabled and almost compelled the 
 bishop of that Church, Gregory the Great, to act the part of a 
 public benefactor or a private prince. The mere ecclesiastic had 
 become more influential, even in civil matters, than the exarch, 
 
 1 The seventh chapter of Justinian's Novels is devoted to statutes against 
 Church alienation. The second section, however, permits the emperor to 
 change one gift for a better, with the significant reason added : " After all, 
 there is not so much difference between the Church and the State (sacerdotium 
 et imperium), nor between things sacred on the one hand, and things public 
 and common on the other, seeing that all its wealth and status continually 
 come to the most holy Church from the imperial munificence." 
 
 2 Milman.
 
 THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 57 
 
 who, shut up in Ravenna, professed to represent the distant 
 Caesar of the East. 
 
 Gregory became bishop or pope (for the latter name, formerly 
 applied to the Alexandrian patriarch, was now used also in Italy) 
 in A.D. 590, and the eminence of this great ruler had a powerful 
 influence on the claim of Rome to ecclesiastical supremacy. Yet 
 he was but one of a series of able and faithful men who now 
 maintained that claim, the history of which we may shortly 
 resume. 
 
 Before Constantinople or New Rome existed at all, Old Rome 
 was in one sense the centre of the Church, simply as being the 
 centre of the world. But its Christian community then claimed 
 precedence (not authority) over other Churches, rather because of 
 its legendary connection with St. Peter and its undoubted visit 
 from St. Paul. Of these two grounds for supremacy, the original 
 and more historical one was soon taken away. The " donation 
 of Constantine " is now admitted to be not only a forgery and a 
 fiction, but the converse of the truth : for while Constantine gave 
 nothing to the Roman Church, he took away from under it the 
 seat of empire, and so perhaps postponed the papacy for hun- 
 dreds of years. Yet even he, like the Council of Nice, admitted 
 the Roman bishop's honorary precedence among the other 
 patriarchs a primacy inter pares. Nothing more seems at this 
 time to have been claimed. But more was certain to spring out 
 of the passion for visible unity of the hierarchical Church. Visible 
 unity, indeed, does not imply a visible head. But it suggests it 
 especially to a monarchical or feudal age. The desire of it, in 
 combination with the growing sacerdotal principle, had already 
 raised the bishop from being one among the other bishops of the 
 congregation, and set him over even the other congregational 
 bishops of his province. It made the provincial bishops through- 
 out the world subject, to a certain extent, to metropolitans, and 
 now (A.D. 425) the metropolitans, in like manner, subject to the 
 Patriarchs of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. Among these 
 Rome had the primacy of honour ; and in a community which
 
 58 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 had been taught for centuries to decide all its disputes by 
 domestic arbitration, it was natural to refer disputes to the 
 primate. But the arbitration or appeal to Rome, which the 
 Athanasian Synod of Sardica in A.D. 347 had recommended in 
 the questions then in dispute, was soon claimed by the Roman 
 bishops as matter of right. Innocent and Zosimus in the begin- 
 ning of the following century, the Ephesian legates in 431, and, 
 above all, the famous Bishop Leo, who flourished 440-465, had 
 for the first time taught that the See of St. Peter had as such the 
 right of deciding all " graver ecclesiastical causes," that all could 
 appeal to it, and that its sentence was final. The East and the 
 ecumenical councils never conceded this, but an emperor of the 
 West sanctioned it by his edict of 445 ; and in the end of the 
 fifth century the Bishop Gelasius could write that his See "has 
 the right to decide and judge in all matters concerning the faith," 
 while his successor, Symmachus, demands even of the emperor 
 whether he will strive with St. Peter in the person of "the 
 pontiff," whose dignity consists in this, that " while the emperor 
 has the care of human things, the pontiff has the care of things 
 divine." A hundred years had now passed since these daring 
 utterances. The Christian community had long before this 
 become quite dependent upon the hierarchy, both in faith and 
 practice. Within that hierarchy the character and the claims of 
 the one patriarch of the West had risen high in contrast with 
 those of the three who in the East sheltered under the emperor. 
 And now that the West, politically, was beginning to be severed 
 from the East, everything pointed to ecclesiastical schism and 
 Western independence. 
 
 A great preacher, a great administrator, and a great legislator, 
 Gregory raised Italy from what Gibbon calls "the lowest period of 
 its depression ; " guarded and dispensed for its benefit the already 
 vast possessions of his Church ; mediated between the Lombards, 
 the Italians, and the Greeks ; reconciled to the Church the Arians 
 of Spain, the Arians of Italy, and the Anglo-Saxon Pagans of 
 Britain ; judged the bishops of the West in cases of complaint,
 
 THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 59 
 
 and brought even the bishops of Africa to submit to the appeal 
 to Rome ; kept the Church more and more independent of 
 emperor, exarch, and king ; and, above all, transmitted to his 
 successors that instinct for governing men, which, after a thou- 
 sand years, had again begun on the Tiber side to work for the 
 welfare and subjugation of the world. Two incidents in his life 
 call for record. One marks the exact stage reached in the 
 supremacy question. John, Patriarch of Constantinople, now the 
 undisputed centre of the great empire restored by Justinian, 
 thought it was a fitting time to claim the title of " ecumenical " 
 or universal bishop. Gregory wrote a protest, which, while not 
 forgetting the injury done to the precedence due to the See of St. 
 Peter, founds upon the injurious and "blasphemous" nature of 
 such a claim, by whomsoever made. " What wilt thou answer 
 to Christ, the head of the Universal Church, who by this name of 
 Universal wouldst subject all His members to thyself? No one 
 has ever before used such a phrase, or taken so daring an 
 appellation." And what he denied to others, he refused for him- 
 self. The Alexandrian patriarch had addressed Gregory as a 
 " pope of the whole Church." In answer, he earnestly deprecated 
 the phrase, as taking from his brethren the honour which it gave 
 to one of their number. " For if your holiness calls me Universal 
 Bishop, the quality which you ascribe to me you necessarily deny 
 to yourself." Another incident defines his relation as bishop 
 primus inter pares to the imperial power. " Monasticism," it 
 has been said, "ascended the papal throne in the person of 
 Gregory," and nothing could wound him more than the emperor's 
 new ordinance, that no soldier should abandon the ranks to take 
 refuge in the cloister. Yet he was called on not only to listen 
 to this edict, but himself to promulgate it an additional step, 
 which, in countries like Scotland, has often changed the mere 
 protest of humble presbyters into absolute refusal. Gregory 
 protested. " Christ answers, by me, the lowliest of His servants 
 and of yours, ' From a notary I made you captain of the guards ; 
 from captain of the guards, Caesar; from Caesar, emperor.' By
 
 60 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 that terrible judge, I beseech you, either mitigate or alter this 
 law." But he obeyed. " As for me, submitting to thy order, I 
 have sent this law to the various countries of the earth, and I have 
 said in writing to my serene lords, that it is a law which goes 
 against the law of the Almighty. I have therefore fulfilled my 
 duty upon both sides : I have rendered obedience to Caesar ; and 
 I have not been silent as to what appears to me to be against 
 God." 
 
 In A.D. 632 Mahomet died, accepted by Arabia as the prophet 
 of God, and the flood of Saracen conquest which followed changed 
 the face of the world. In particular, it greatly weakened the 
 power of him who was still nominally the sole emperor of East 
 and West. Before 640 the Saracens had torn from the Roman 
 empire the great provinces of Syria and Egypt : before the end 
 of the century they had conquered Africa to the Pillars of 
 Hercules, and had beseiged Constantinople. In the East, the 
 empire and the subject Church trembled for their existence : in 
 the West the freer Church, remote from the danger, strength- 
 ened and grew. The Monothelite controversy (whether there 
 are one or two wills in the person of Christ), which raged 
 during this century, brought out the single-minded vigour and 
 energy of Rome in contrast with the feebleness of the East. The 
 Emperor Heraclius, in A.D. 638, issued an Ecfhesis, which, like the 
 previous decree of Zeno, forbade discussion of the debated subject 
 under penalties. His successor, Constans, exchanged this, in 
 A.D. 658, for a doctrinal compromise, or intermediate Type as it 
 was called. Both decrees while they lasted were enforced upon 
 the members of the Church by civil sanctions ; and it thus became 
 a point of conscience to resist them, and to keep the controversy 
 open. Martin, the Roman bishop, convoked a council at the 
 Lateran (of course without the consent of the emperor), which 
 affirmed the two wills, and condemned opponents. He was 
 dragged to Constantinople, and died in exile ; and his adherents 
 in the East were scourged and imprisoned. But his Church 
 persisted, and the succeeding emperor, Constantine, invited the
 
 THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 6 1 
 
 succeeding Bishop of Rome to a conciliatory council in Constan- 
 tinople in A.D. 680. The council, after long discussion, adopted 
 the Roman view, with suitable explanations ; and the empire 
 duly proceeded to persecute those who dissented from the views 
 which for half-a-century it had tried to crush. 
 
 Another interference of the empire, not so much in this case 
 with doctrine as with ritual, had more disastrous results. About 
 this time Leo III., a great soldier and administrator, who had 
 begun his reign by hurling back the Saracens from the walls of 
 Constantinople itself, committed the throne to a long and 
 disastrous conflict with image-worship. It lasted, with some inter- 
 missions, for a century, and though the prohibitory legislation 
 was sanctioned by a general council of bishops called in A.D. 754, 
 its enforcement was protested against, even in the East, as being 
 an act of the State beyond its province. The West resisted 
 altogether. The emperor's deputy was killed at Ravenna, he was 
 himself excommunicated by Gregory of Rome and the Latin 
 bishops, and on the accession to power, in A.D. 780, of the Empress 
 Irene, a strong opponent of Iconoclasm, another council, with 
 representatives from Rome, was found willing, even at Constan- 
 tinople, to restore the images. But the division of East and 
 West was now at hand. 
 
 Rome, though pressed by the Lombards, had steadily grown 
 as the spiritual centre of the invading Teutonic tribes. One of 
 the latest of these, the Franks, had now consolidated its power in 
 France and Germany, just in time to become the bulwark of 
 Europe against Saracen invasion from the South. These in- 
 vaders had already conquered Spain, and early in the eighth 
 century they descended upon France ; but in A.D. 732 were driven 
 across the Pyrenees, after Charles MarteFs victory at Tours. 
 In 754, Pepin, Charles' son, on the pope's proposal, overthrew the 
 Lombards ; assumed the title of patrician, which the emperor's 
 exarch had formerly held ; and made a gift of Rome and the 
 adjacent territory, now the most important part of that exarchate 
 (of course without the emperor's consent), to the pope. In A.D.
 
 62 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 774, Charles, called the Great, succeeded, broke the Lombard 
 power, assumed the iron crown at Milan, and ruled as patrician or 
 protector of the city of Rome for twenty years. Meantime he 
 beat back the heathen Danes, Saxons, and Slavs on his furthest 
 frontiers, and governed a mighty kingdom from the Baltic to the 
 Ebro. Yet up to the close of the century he was nominally 
 patrician under the Roman emperor, whose awful authority had 
 remained unbroken even in the decline and fall since the days of 
 Augustus Caesar. The sole power which had existed coevally 
 with the empire, was that of the Church ; and even the Western 
 Church, in all its pride of independence, remained unable to con- 
 ceive of the world as wanting an emperor. But a great change, 
 long prepared for, was coming. Irene, the regent-mother of Con- 
 stantine VI., had deposed and blinded her Iconoclast son, and 
 now reigned at Constantinople, surrounded by subservient bishops. 
 Why should the head of the Roman empire be sought so far 
 from Rome in the person of a woman and a usurper, when it 
 might be found in Rome itself, in the person of a kingly hero 
 and a defender of the faith ? Such was the question put to 
 himself by Leo the pope, when, delivered in 798 and restored to 
 his temporal power by the arms of the great Charles, he meditated 
 the revolt and schism of one-half the world. The answer was 
 given at the memorable coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas 
 eve of the year A.D. 800. At the high mass on that day, in the 
 ancient Basilica of St. Peter, the barbarian monarch stood in the 
 sandals and chlamys of a Roman magistrate before the high 
 altar. Suddenly, the Pontiff of Rome, as successor of St. Peter, 
 placed on his head the diadem of the Caesars, and hailed Charles 
 the Frank as " Charles Augustus, emperor, crowned of God." 
 
 It was the end of the old world, and the beginning of the new. 
 Henceforth there was an emperor of the West as well as an 
 emperor of the East. Henceforth, too, there was, and there is, a 
 Latin or Western Church, as well as an Eastern or Greek Church ; 
 and they were already really, if not formally, separated. From
 
 THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 63 
 
 this point, accordingly, the problem of Church and State had a 
 double history. In the West that history has been long, varied, 
 and strange, and it still awaits its consummation. In the East 
 there was a permanently arrested development, and during the 
 four and a half centuries down to the fall of Constantinople there 
 is almost no change to record. Before going on, therefore, to 
 the great Middle Age history of Church and State in the West, 
 we may complete what has to be said of the same period in the 
 East. 
 
 Leo the Armenian renewed in the ninth century the Icono- 
 clastic war which Leo the Isaurian had commenced in the preced- 
 ing, and it was compromised in A.D. 842 by the restoration of pic- 
 tures without " images " throughout the whole Greek communion. 
 This century and the next were distinguished by the missionary 
 zeal of the East ; the conversion of Bulgaria and Moravia and 
 other portions of the Slav and Turanian populations, was followed 
 by that of the rising empire of Russia. In these new commu- 
 nions the metropolitans were Greeks ; the doctrine and ritual were 
 derived from the Greek Church ; and the throne and Patriarch 
 of Constantinople were regarded as the centre of ecclesiastical 
 affairs. But all this failed to arrest the breach with the West. 
 The addition to the ancient Nicene Creed of a Filioque clause 
 by Pope Nicholas I. was protested against promptly by a 
 council of the Greek Church. But this innovation was probably 
 of less practical importance than the recognition by the same 
 pontiff of those new decretals, on whose forged evidence the 
 supremacy of the Roman bishop was alleged to have existed even 
 in the early centuries. The pope and the patriarch had already 
 mutually excommunicated each other, but in the regions where 
 each ruled and even in Byzantium and Rome the worship of 
 the other rite was for nearly two hundred years permitted. In the 
 eleventh century even this came to an end. Basil II. sought to 
 avert it by proposing, in A.D. 1024, to acknowledge the primacy 
 of Rome in exchange for its acknowledging the independence of 
 the East. But soon after this an attempt at negotiation gave
 
 64 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 occasion for an open breach ; and the Latin legates, in A.D. 1054, 
 left Constantinople for the last time, placing on the high altar of 
 St. Sophia an excommunication of its patriarch and of all who 
 adhered to him. Christian feeling, however, was deeper than 
 doctrinal or national division, and when, before the end of this 
 century, the Seljuk Turks captured Jerusalem, and settled at 
 Nicaea as the Sultans of Rome, it blazed up in the West into 
 repeated Crusades. Unfortunately the friction occasioned by 
 the passing of the Western armies through the East, and in 
 particular the Latin annexation of Constantinople in A.D. 1204, 
 restored the sense of hostility. Before this century closed, the 
 emperors of the house of Palaeologus had recovered Constan- 
 tinople, but by this time the new or Ottoman Turks had commenced 
 to annex the Eastern empire, not in Asia only, but in Europe. 
 Another century of trouble passed, and now Constantinople was 
 in extremity. The emperor, with his patriarch, went in A.D. 1438 
 to Ferrara and Florence ; and, in hope of succour, conceded the 
 points demanded by the pope. The sacrifice was in vain. The 
 population of Constantinople protested against the defection, the 
 expected succour never arrived, and on 29th May, A.D. 1453, the 
 Eastern empire fell in the breach of the wall of its capital with 
 Constantine Palaeologus. 
 
 The decapitation of the Eastern Church paralysed its limbs. 
 The bishops had been accustomed to be ruled by the emperor, 
 directly or through the Patriarch of Constantinople, and its Sla- 
 vonic and other populations had no idea of ecclesiastical self- 
 government. Besides, the greater part of the area of the Church 
 was now under Ottoman rule ; and the great conqueror Mahomet 
 II. planned skilfully to put himself into the relation to it of Jus- 
 tinian and other Christian despots. Accordingly it was the 
 Sultan who now appointed the patriarch and bishops, and he 
 granted them judicial powers, not in Church matters only, but in 
 civil questions, to be enforced over members of their own com- 
 munion by excommunication as by other penalties. The result 
 was that within the empire of Islam the rulers of the Greek
 
 THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 65 
 
 Church came to be Turkish, as they had been Byzantine, officials 
 and administrators ; while outside it those who had learned 
 their creed from Byzantium leaned with more than Byzantine 
 dependence on Slav and other rulers. But a new and great 
 power was already on the horizon. Exactly a quarter of a cen- 
 tury after Constantinople fell, Russia freed herself from the Tartar 
 Moguls ; and her Christian metropolitans at Moscow, no longer 
 confirmed by or in communication with the patriarch, were hence- 
 forth elected by her own prince or his bishops. In the sixteenth 
 century Ivan the Terrible took the title of Czar, and his successor 
 receiving, in 1587, a visit from Jeremiah, whom the Turks had 
 dispossessed from his patriarchate of Constantinople, persuaded 
 or forced him to consecrate the Metropolitan of Moscow as 
 Patriarch of Russia. As Russia rose in power, and pressed 
 eastward, westward, and southward, the scattered fragments of 
 the Greek Church" more willingly acknowledged the independence 
 of the new kingdom and of its patriarch. But while independent 
 of those outside, the Moscow primate never ventured to differ 
 in Church matters from the ruling of the Czar ; and his whole 
 patriarchal dignity came to a sudden close, as we shall afterwards 
 see, in the days of Peter the Great, when the Russian Church 
 received from the moulding hands of that great civil ruler its 
 present form of government. 
 
 In Charlemagne and the empire of the West the Christian 
 Church once more found itself, A.D. 800, in relation with the 
 world-wide State. It was at least no national or provincial power 
 with which it had to deal. Again, as when the one Kingdom was 
 preached under Tiberius, and the one Church was set free under 
 Constantine, its universal claims were met by an almost universal 
 civil authority. The rise of separate nationalities in Europe was 
 not yet thought of the nations did not even exist. What was 
 really in prospect, what did exist everywhere in germ, if not in 
 attainment, was feudalism. The Northern tribes within and with- 
 out the new empire refused to gather into cities, as the subjects of
 
 66 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Alexander and Augustus had done. In field and forest they 
 remained freemen and freeholders, and only followed the men 
 who could lead. But where a man could lead, they followed pas- 
 sionately, and grouped themselves around him. As yet, indeed, 
 each man held his land in independence, " allodially ; " but already 
 the chiefs around the king were receiving from him " benefices," 
 which their dependants occupied under them on a tenure of mili- 
 tary service. On the same pattern the holdings all over Europe 
 were yet to be converted into feus held of the lords. The primitive 
 clan system was about to give way to that of a landed aristocracy. 
 But in the meantime the half-fluid mass was held together in the 
 centre of Europe by the strong hands of the Emperor Charles. 
 
 Charlemagne was a Christian king before he became emperor. 
 His grandfather, Charles Mart el, had found the Church already 
 very strong among the people of the Franks, and in order to 
 lessen the dangerous influence of the territorial bishops, he 
 assumed the power of appointing and even of deposing them. 
 This was not changed even when St. Boniface in 713 commenced 
 the organization of the German Church in subordination to Rome 
 a subordination which previous missionaries from Britain 
 had declined. Henceforth the whole body was held in much 
 stricter hierarchical order, though the son of Martel maintained 
 a firm feudal hold over many ecclesiastical possessions as feus of 
 the State. But it was his grandson Charles who made a more 
 celebrated settlement of these matters permanent, by his great 
 bargain with the papacy. Crowned emperor by the pope, with- 
 out any title except his conquest of Rome, he felt bound to carry 
 out more than ever in his own kingdom his views in favour of the 
 Church. He sanctioned the canon law. He abandoned the 
 administration of the Church to the hierarchy, in its due grada- 
 tion. He encouraged their holding provincial synods, whose 
 meeting was convoked, and whose resolutions were confirmed, 
 by himself. He confirmed the donation of the exarchate, and so 
 founded the Temporal Power, though it was a power to be held 
 of himself as Over-Lord. In his own dominions he not only
 
 THEODOSIUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. 67 
 
 gave rich gifts to the Church, but he established everywhere 
 a tithe^ or tax on land, one-third of which went to support the 
 bishops and clergy, one-third to maintain the edifices of the 
 Church, and one-third to the poor. Another great change re- 
 lated to patronage. Before his time the landholders who had 
 endowed Churches claimed the right of appointing the minister. 
 It was often protested against in vain, but a few years after his 
 coronation as emperor, Charles ordained that no cleric should be 
 appointed to or dismissed from any charge without the consent 
 of the bishop. In two points especially he still maintained a 
 certain supremacy over the Church. One was the appointing 
 and deposing of the bishops, which he kept in his own hand, their 
 benefices being held feudally of the emperor, and their vassals 
 being bound to do the usual service in war. Another was the 
 power of legislation. The emperor's capitularies regulated much 
 even of the discipline of the Church, though the carrying out of 
 these regulations was done generally by the ecclesiastics them- 
 selves. 
 
 More important even than these arrangements for his own 
 realm was that primacy in Christendom and among its sovereigns 
 which Charlemagne was the first to erect, and which became 
 known through all the ages of mediaeval Europe as the Holy 
 Roman Empire. The long supremacy of ancient Rome over all 
 peoples had suggested the idea of their being really one, and a 
 universal religion and a universal Church had familiarized men 
 still more with the same idea of unity. Another step was now 
 taken. "As the whole Christian people throughout the world 
 forms one republic, it must of necessity have one chief," was 
 the Middle Age theory (Engelbert, A.D. 1331). In spiritual matters 
 this had already transformed the Christian republic into a papacy. 
 In secular matters the same instinct now led feudalism to a similar 
 subjection. Each of the two potentates had his own sphere. 
 "It matters not whether we call the Pope a spiritual Emperor or 
 the Emperor a secular Pope" (Bryce). But as the one ruled over 
 the souls of men, so the other ruled over their bodies. Indeed,
 
 68 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 the favourite Middle Age metaphor to express the relation of the 
 Church to the State, of the papacy to the empire, is that of the 
 soul to the body. Only, in this new theory, the empire (differing 
 thereby from that of Augustus and even of Constantine) was 
 essentially holy as well as Roman : the emperor was necessarily 
 Christian, and his empire could be neither more nor less than 
 Christendom. The electoral oath described him as "the tem- 
 poral head of the Christian people," and one of his highest titles 
 was the " Defender and Advocate of the Christian Church." For 
 as the pope was God's Vicar in spiritual things, so the emperor 
 was God's Vicar in temporal things. Such was the devout 
 imagination that shone with a twofold splendour before all the 
 feudal ages. In its details the theory was not always the same. 
 Some gave the pope a merely honorary authority over his 
 bishops, as some gave the emperor merely a nominal authority 
 over his princes. Others made the former an absolute monarch 
 in the Church, and the latter an absolute monarch in the State. 
 All alike forgot the representative rights of the people, as dis- 
 tinguished from the rights of princes and bishops, emperors and 
 popes. Some, again, in judging between the two powers, gave a 
 certain superiority to the emperor, others to the pope. And all 
 these inequalities of theory were rudely reflected and exaggerated 
 in history. But the theory itself the union of the two distinct 
 and contrasted powers always remained. And the influence of 
 the theory on the mind of mediaeval Europe at any particular 
 time, is not to be measured by the degree in which it happened 
 at the time to be realized. Often there was a weak emperor. 
 Often there was a wicked pope. But that did not shake the 
 system. On the contrary, men clung all the more to their ideal 
 because of the miseries which falling short of it, on either side, 
 seemed invariably to bring upon the world.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII. 
 
 CHARLEMAGNE'S death in A.D. 814 introduced a period of con- 
 fusion and weakness. His feeble successors tried in vain to keep 
 the Roman people and their ecclesiastical sovereign faithful to 
 their Frankish over-lord. The popes, on the other hand, being 
 without character and influence, lost their authority in Germany. 
 But the weakness of the central authorities, the dismemberment 
 of the empire, and the disgrace of the papacy, gave all the more 
 strength to the power that was pressing up under them in detail. 
 That power was Feudalism in the State and Episcopacy in the 
 Church. The great barons and the great bishops more and more 
 assumed the rule of the world. The princes independent of 
 Caesar, the prelates independent of the pope, ruled each in their 
 own sphere ; the strong ruled wisely and the good ruled well, but 
 in most cases as arbitrarily and with almost as little title as 
 either the Caesar or the pope. It follows, of course, that each 
 corner of Germany and of Europe must have continually re- 
 produced the same question of Church and State, the same 
 counterpoise or collision of the secular and spiritual, which we 
 can only trace when it is illustrated on a world-wide scale. 
 
 Otto the Great, in A.D. 852, reconstituted the empire of Charle- 
 magne on the same ecclesiastical foundation. Crowned at Rome 
 by the pope, he had first taken an oath to protect the Holy See 
 and the liberties of the city of Rome. The citizens, on the other 
 hand, took an oath to elect no pontiff for the future without the 
 emperor's consent, and the pope acknowledged his secular sub- 
 
 09
 
 70 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 jection to the emperor. In the hands of the great Saxon, and in 
 those of his successors, Otto II. and Otto III., the imperial power 
 rose to its height. The licentious intrigues of Italian princes, 
 and the turbulence of the Roman populace, were the chief dangers 
 to the Church. But the Saxon emperors used their right to 
 confirm the election of each pope so as to make it almost a right 
 of nomination, and a succession of able Northern bishops in the 
 Holy See did much to purify and advance the papacy. 
 
 Under the Franconian emperors the papacy reverted to Tuscan 
 princes, whose profligacy and venality gradually disgusted the 
 world. At last, in A.D. 1046, Henry III., the most powerful of all 
 the emperors, crossed the Alps, and convoked a synod, which 
 deposed three contending popes. Thereafter a right of nomina- 
 tion was conceded to the emperor during Henry's reign in three 
 successive vacancies of the popedom : the Romans sent formal 
 deputations to the emperor to know whom in each case he would 
 approve as successor. The German prelates whom he suggested 
 were generally such as the Christian world would have chosen 
 had the election remained in its hands ; and during his reign the 
 organization and purification of the universal Church within the 
 Holy Roman Empire prospered more and more. The Church 
 was indeed so strong in the allegiance of the whole West, that it 
 was certain it would not long submit to the subjection, or at least 
 limitation, imposed on it by the imperial prerogative. Church and 
 State were both at their height of power, and their greatest con- 
 test for supremacy was at hand. The signal was given when, in 
 A.D. 1056, Henry died, succeeded by a son four years old. 
 
 The papacy had no minorities, and the Archdeacon Hilde- 
 brand, now the most influential man in Rome, saw that the time 
 had come for curbing the interference of the civil power in 
 Church elections. The foremost question was the election of the 
 pope himself ; and a singularly rapid succession of these gave a 
 great opportunity. First Victor and then Stephen were elected 
 without the previous nomination of the Empress-Regent. A 
 third pope, Nicolas II., under the guidance of Hildebrand, now a
 
 CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII. 71 
 
 cardinal, revolutionized the ancient election of the Bishop of 
 Rome, which, like that of all others, had been by the concurrence 
 of clergy and people. His decree of 1059 now gave the initiative 
 of the election to the cardinal bishops in the neighbourhood 
 of Rome and the cardinal priests in that city. (Certain chief 
 functionaries, in the Roman as in other Churches, being the 
 " hinges " on which the rest of the machine moved, had come to 
 be called " cardinals ; " and their elective assembly was after- 
 wards known as the "conclave.") On being elected, the new 
 pope was still to be presented to the emperor, but whether for 
 the tetter's confirmation or his mere acknowledgment was left 
 doubtful. Accordingly the next pope, Alexander II., on his con- 
 firmation being refused by the Empress-Regent, was consecrated 
 notwithstanding (in 1061) ; and after a struggle, in which the 
 German princes and prelates sided with the pope against both 
 their own emperor and the Roman laity, he was universally 
 acknowledged. The victory on this head was gained, but a 
 greater battle was to be fought ; and at the next vacancy 
 Hildebrand himself ascended the papal chair. 
 
 Gregory VII., most famous of popes, succeeded in A.D. 1073. 
 Born the son of a carpenter, he commenced his career as the 
 monk Hildebrand ; and knowing thus how celibacy binds to the 
 Church by detaching from all else, his first act on becoming pope 
 was (1074) to issue a bull excommunicating all married priests, 
 and to send legates with it throughout Europe. His next, in 
 1075, was no less than a prohibition of that investiture of bishops 
 and other dignified clergy which the emperors had for three 
 centuries exercised in their dominions. The great question thus 
 raised lasted far beyond his own struggling life, and must be 
 looked at in next paragraph independently of any particular pope. 
 The conflict for which this pope is most celebrated was one of a 
 more personal and picturesque kind. Hildebrand, it should be 
 remembered, never went so far as (with some of his successors) to 
 deny that the secular sword also was held immediately of God. 
 His was the general Middle Age theory, which accepted the
 
 72 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 relation of Church and State as something like that of the soul to 
 the body. What was new was not the theory but the man who 
 held it. Here, at last, was a pope who was penetrated with the 
 conviction that the soul and the Church were in their own 
 nature entitled to ascendancy over the body and the State ; and 
 who, above all, had himself that ascendancy of will which made 
 him shrink from no act, however daring, which could illustrate 
 such a superiority. The occasion at once presented itself. 
 
 Henry IV. had now emerged from the long minority of which 
 the popes had made so good a use, and the arbitrary and vicious 
 acts of the young monarch were complained of by some of his 
 northern subjects. Gregory at once summoned him to appear at 
 Rome, and be judged. The emperor, irritated, convened a synod 
 of the German Church at Worms, which declared the pope to 
 have forfeited his high place, and called on him to " come down." 
 Gregory saw that the time had arrived to strike a tremendous 
 blow. From a council in the Lateran he excommunicated the 
 yet uncrowned emperor, interdicted him from ruling his kingdoms 
 of Italy and Germany, and absolved all his Christian subjects 
 from their oaths. The spiritual stroke paralysed the unwieldy 
 secular power. The great northern bishops shrank from the side 
 of their excommunicated lord ; Swabia and Carinthia prepared to 
 follow the Saxon revolt against him, and most of his princes 
 called upon Henry to submit. Suddenly, in the midst of the fierce 
 winter of 1077, the monarch crossed the Alps to seek absolution, 
 and made his way to where Gregory dwelt as guest of the 
 Countess Matilda in her fortress of Canossa. For three days 
 successively, the lord of the world stood from morning to evening 
 in the outer court of the castle, in woollen shirt and with feet 
 bare, petitioning in vain for admittance. Not till the fourth day 
 was absolution granted to his weeping submission. Gregory lost 
 not a moment in publishing the astounding transaction to the 
 world. But his fickle penitent soon repented the memorable 
 repentance, and the pope found he had gone too far. The 
 German princes, indeed, elected Rudolph instead of Henry, and
 
 CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII. 73 
 
 the pope was said to have sent him a crown with the inscrip- 
 tion : 
 
 " Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodolpho." 
 (What Christ to Peter gave, Peter to Rudolph gives. ) 
 
 But Henry, again excommunicated, prospered and strengthened, 
 slew Rudolph, overran Italy, captured Rome, acknowledged the 
 Archbishop of Ravenna as pope, and was crowned by him in 
 triumph in the basilica of St. Peter. Hildebrand escaped with 
 difficulty from the castle of St. Angelo, for even the Romans 
 now rejected him ; and next year (1085) he lay on his death- 
 bed in Salerno, and with his expiring breath absolved the 
 multitude who might have been carelessly included in the sweep 
 of his old anathema. Yet his last words were, " I have loved 
 righteousness and hated iniquity ; and therefore I die in 
 exile." 
 
 A.D. 1075. The Investiture controversy is one of the most 
 instructive in the history of Church and State. The word belongs 
 to the feudal system, in which the superior formally gave to his 
 vassal lands or office, to be held under himself. When he so 
 handed them over, he was said to invest the vassal in them. But 
 as neither lands nor office can be literally handed by one man to 
 another, the investiture was done by handing some appropriate 
 symbol. And these symbols were not always the same. A 
 sod might represent a piece of land, and a key might stand 
 either for the house to which it gave admission, or for the office 
 of chamberlain conferred with and by it. Now, among the most 
 powerful vassals of the emperor, holding broad lands under him 
 as over-lord (though for the use of the Church), were the bishops. 
 When a count of the empire died, his son came to the emperor 
 asking to be " confirmed " in the lands as successor. And when 
 a bishop died, the new bishop had to do the same. But when in 
 this age the emperor invested a bishop as his vassal, he did it by 
 handing him a "ring and staff." Now these were the ancient 
 and well-known symbols of the bishop's office, and it might well
 
 74 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 seem as if the sacred office itself were being conferred by the 
 secular prince. The avowed object indeed was otherwise. The 
 emperor, as judge in matters temporal, had a right to decide 
 whether the new applicant had a title to the lands ; and as over- 
 lord, or feudal possessor of the land under God, had a right 
 formally to hand them over to the true and lawful vassal. And 
 these rights had pecuniary results. They secured to the prince 
 from the Church-vassal payments and services corresponding to 
 those of other vassals the servitium in time of peace, and a 
 certain number of fighting men in case of war. More important 
 still, as soon as the Church office became vacant, the emperor or 
 patron drew its revenues (under the name of the regale) till it was 
 filled up. But the power to give or refuse investiture (like that of 
 giving or refusing confirmation to a secular vassal) was of course 
 the source of immense political influence and pecuniary profit. 
 In many cases it practically gave the emperor that nomination of 
 the bishops which had been exercised by his predecessor Charle- 
 magne without any disguise. To this enormous and illegitimate 
 influence of secular investiture Hildebrand had already provided 
 an illegitimate counterpoise. A decree issued under his influence 
 by his predecessor, Alexander, forbade all bishops to accept office 
 without confirmation or investiture by the pope. Equal claims 
 were thus made upon both sides, and so long as a large part of 
 the property of the empire was tied to Church functions, the 
 question was sure to recur whether the emperor was to control 
 the Church functions through the property, or the pope to control 
 the State property through the functions. Suddenly, on this 
 equipoise of papal confirmation and imperial investiture, fell the 
 new pope's prohibition of all lay investiture whatever. It was in 
 1075 that Gregory in council proclaimed, that no ecclesiastic 
 must take either bishopric or any inferior dignity "from the 
 hands of any lay person," and that neither emperor, king, nor 
 other secular power should presume to grant it. It was the 
 beginning of a fifty years' war, of which Canossa and Salerno 
 were but the earlier landmarks. Gregory died in exile, but his
 
 CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII. 75 
 
 successor, Urban, was supported by crusading enthusiasm ; and 
 Paschal II. continued the contest till Henry also at last died in 
 1106. His son, Henry V., had been encouraged to rebel against 
 his father ; but on succeeding to the throne he was found by the 
 Church equally impracticable. At last the pope in despair offered 
 to cut the knot that bound the two parties together. Let the 
 Church (Paschal proposed in A.D. mi) give up all lands to the 
 emperor, and let the emperor resign all claims to homage from 
 the Church. The unworldly solution, however, was protested 
 against alike by German prince-bishops and Italian cardinals, 
 and so the strife went on. Popes and anti-popes were driven into 
 exile alternately ; till at last a settlement was made by Calixtus II. 
 at the Concordat of Worms in 1112, which was ratified after- 
 wards by the Lateran Council in 1123. By this, the first of the 
 greater Concordats, an arrangement was made which is full of 
 instruction. The pope on his side withdrew the absolute pro- 
 hibition of investiture, and promised that elections should be 
 made "in presence" of the emperor, and without simony or 
 violence, so that if a question should arise between candidates, 
 the emperor might support " the better party." Investiture in 
 the temporalities or regalia, the bishop was now to be allowed 
 to receive at the hand of his feudal superior, even before con- 
 secration. But it was to be by receiving the secular symbol 
 of the sceptre, not those of " ring and staff." Investiture by 
 ecclesiastical symbols, Henry on his side resigned for ever, 1 and 
 he further pledged himself that both election and consecration 
 should remain in the hands of the Church, and that the homage 
 to him "by sceptre," to be interposed between the two, should inter- 
 fere with the freedom neither of the previous election nor of the 
 subsequent consecration. It was in some sense a drawn battle ; 
 
 1 In curious feudal form : "I, Henry ... do resign to God, to his Holy 
 Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, and to the Holy Catholic Church, all 
 investiture by ring and staff." So, on the other side : " I, Calixtus, do grant 
 to thee, Henry . . . that the person elected may be admitted by thee to the 
 royalties of his office by the delivery of a sceptre, and may perform to tl ee 
 whatever on account of these is due."
 
 76 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 and in the result an obvious attempt is made to conform to the 
 traditional principle, and give to Caesar that which was Caesar's, 
 and to God that which was God's. The Church had not got all 
 that Gregoiy had demanded half-a-century before. But it had 
 got much more than at the beginning of that stormy half-century 
 it had possessed. 
 
 And time was on its side. With the twelfth century had fairly 
 commenced that great movement of the human mind in Europe, 
 which has not yet ceased, and in which events like the Reforma- 
 tion in the sixteenth century and the Revolution at the close of 
 the eighteenth have been but the mightier waves. Before the 
 mass of the people could take an intelligent share in that move- 
 ment, some centuries were yet to pass. But those centuries 
 embraced the later and more splendid period of the Middle Age, 
 and in them the conflict of Church and State came to its height. 
 Some things in the new awakening, like the outburst of vernacular 
 literatures in the new languages of Europe, were from the first 
 unfavourable to the papacy. Others, like the founding of the 
 universities, the spread of scholasticism, and the revived study of 
 law, had an influence sometimes in its favour and sometimes 
 against it. But on the whole, the strongest intellectual influences 
 poured themselves along the channel which the Church alone, or 
 the Church chiefly, seemed in that age to open to intellect. No 
 more impressive memorial of this time can be found than in 
 the architecture which it bequeathed to Europe ; the cathedrals 
 especially, whose climbing and soaring magnificence still suggests 
 " a sursum corda uttering itself in stone." l But equally memor- 
 able, though they now only meet us in history, are the Crusades, 
 which from A.D. 1095 to A.D. 1291 burst out successively as the 
 wasteful and blood-red blossoms of an age of chivalry. Both 
 extended during the same period, and both were evoked by 
 the call, or carried on by the sanction, of the Church. And the 
 Church, which on the whole gained more from the awakening 
 1 Dean Church.
 
 CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII. 77 
 
 genius of Europe than did the empire, had now acquiesced in 
 the ever-rising claim of Rome to be not only its judge, but its 
 ruler. 
 
 For the pope had long since exchanged his voluntary jurisdiction 
 that which the Bishop of Rome had exercised as arbiter in 
 the Church, between those only who chose to submit Church 
 questions to his decision for the claim to be by divine right the 
 one appellate judge of the ecclesiastical body. Yet even the 
 claim to be universal judge, startling as it would have been in the 
 time of the early episcopate, fell far short of the pretension to be 
 universal legislator, and even direct governor. It is easy, how- 
 ever, for one who professes to be supreme judge to assume the 
 legislator. It is indeed almost impossible to do otherwise ; and 
 accordingly the "judge-made law" of Rome was already colossal 
 in its proportions. So, too, at the time of which we speak, the 
 ceaseless effort to sweep everything in the daily life of the Church 
 under the appellate jurisdiction, was gradually translating that 
 jurisdiction into one not appellate. It was rapidly becoming a 
 real government and superintendence of the whole Church, worthy 
 of that great name of " universal bishop," which St. Gregory in 
 the sixth century had rejected with horror, on the ground that if a 
 universal bishop erred, the whole Church might collapse. In the 
 middle of the ninth century had appeared the forged " Decretals 
 of Isidore," which formed the legal basis of the papal monarchy 
 during the greatest age of its existence. This was a collection of 
 pretended decrees of early councils and letters of early popes, all 
 exalting the bishops, but at the same time submitting them to the 
 supervision of the pope. The document did not originate in 
 Rome, but among the Western Franks. But Rome at once 
 recognised it, and formally built upon the newly invented testimony 
 its claim to supremacy. So when, two centuries later, another 
 Gregory gave that claim magnificent embodiment, he included all 
 these documents in the Decretum of Gratian, the recognised code 
 throughout the Middle Ages of the canon law. With such 
 powers and pretensions increasingly acknowledged in the Church,
 
 78 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 it was no wonder that the papacy gained more and more on the 
 empire. 
 
 A.D. 1125. The great Franconian dynasty of emperors termi- 
 nated, to be succeeded by the equally celebrated Hohenstaufens. 
 Between the two, however, the Saxon Lothair III. gave up much 
 to the popes. Since the days of Hildebrand these had ceased to 
 ask, like their predecessors, confirmation of their election by the 
 Roman emperor. They had escaped even from what was much 
 more clearly their duty to do homage to the emperor for the 
 lands conferred upon them by Charlemagne. And now the 
 question raised was rather, whether the emperors themselves did 
 not hold of the pope. With regard, at least, to certain ecclesi- 
 astical lands in Italy which had belonged to the Countess Matilda, 
 Lothair consented to invert their position, by the emperor becom- 
 ing the pope's vassal. (He received investiture of them from 
 Innocent II. by the symbol of the ring, to return at the death of 
 each emperor to "the blessed Peter and his successors.") In 
 Italy itself, on the other hand, the evils resulting from such 
 temporal power was already manifest, and Arnold of Brescia, 
 described as a "tearing and biting reformer" from the philo- 
 sophical school of Abelard, urged that the clergy should possess 
 no secular property whatever. The populace of Rome accepted 
 the doctrine with its old republican fervour. But over Europe 
 generally the papal influence was maintained by the enthusiasm 
 of the Second Crusade, fed by the fiery eloquence of the great 
 Bernard. All this gave great interest to the accession in 1152 of 
 Frederic I., named Barbarossa or Redbeard, the most brilliant of 
 the emperors, "a sort of imperialist Hildebrand," 1 who at his 
 coronation refused at first to follow the example of Lothair, in 
 holding the stirrup of Pope Adrian. On the point of ceremony 
 the emperor yielded for the moment, but his independence pro- 
 duced soon after a letter from the pope, reminding him that he 
 had given him the crown, and was willing to give him still greater 
 1 Bryce's Holy Roman Empire.
 
 CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII. 79 
 
 beneficia. The ambiguous phrase provoked shouts of indignation 
 from the feudal princes who elected the emperor, and who were 
 now met in diet at Besangon. " From whom, then," replied the 
 papal legate, " does the emperor hold his power, if not from our 
 lord the pope ? " Count Otto Palatine at once drew his sabre, to 
 cut down the priestly traitor, but Frederic interfered, and Adrian 
 afterwards explained that a " benefit " did not necessarily mean a 
 " benefice." Yet, when the question was soon after raised, whether 
 the city of Rome was to be governed by the Roman emperor or 
 by the pope, the same arguments were on both sides employed. 
 " I am Emperor of the Romans, by the appointment of God," 
 said Frederic, and he refused to be so merely in name, or to hold 
 of another. Adrian replied by attacking the title of the successor 
 of Charlemagne and Cassar. " What is the German king till he has 
 been consecrated at Rome ? The Chair of Peter can withdraw the 
 gifts which it has given." Frederic held a Parliament in Italy, 
 and had his rights as Roman emperor and " lord of the world :J 
 defined by the civilians of Bologna from the civil law. "That 
 which pleases the emperor," said the Archbishop of Milan, " must 
 have the force of law, for the people have transferred to him all 
 their own sovereignty and authority." Adrian resented the 
 unmeasured claim, if not for the people, at least for the Church 
 and its officers, and was about to pronounce the ban, when he 
 died. But after the death of this (the only English) pope, the 
 struggle was continued by Alexander III. This powerful ecclesi- 
 astic, threatened by the great emperor with a general council of 
 Christendom, and with a rival claimant, whom Barbarossa had 
 already set up, appealed successfully to churchmen throughout 
 the world ; maintained Thomas a Becket against his sovereign 
 in Britain, and canonized him when dead ; crushed Arnold and his 
 Roman republic with the help of the German power, and then 
 leagued against the emperor himself the Lombard and other 
 cities, until he broke his Italian predominance on the field of 
 Legnano. The great Hohenstaufen never sank to such humilia- 
 tion as the Franconian Henry had done at Canossa ; but his
 
 So CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 sudden submission at Venice in 1177 was equally complete and 
 more conclusive. There, " where the crimson slab still stains the 
 marble floor of St. Mark," the most chivalrous monarch of 
 Christendom threw himself on his knees before the anti-pope he 
 had rejected, and, receiving the kiss of peace withheld during 
 twenty years of conflict, published his repentance to the world. 
 Thirteen years later, when the conquest of Jerusalem had evoked 
 the Third Crusade, Barbarossa died in Asia Minor, on his way to 
 fight with Saladin. He left behind him a great name and a 
 magnificent empire ; but he left the papacy proportionally greater, 
 and its seat was about to be filled by the mightiest of the popes. 
 
 Innocent HI., young, noble, eloquent, and learned, a man of 
 marvellous administrative and legislative energy, began his 
 career in A.D. 1198, with a far higher keynote than Hildebrand. 
 In his inaugural discourse he claimed to be " the Vicar of Jesus 
 Christ, appointed to stand between God and man, below God but 
 above man, the judge of all men and judged by none." All 
 through his life nothing was omitted to fulfil this wide-reaching 
 claim. He began by consolidating the basis of the temporal power. 
 Hitherto the city of Rome had enjoyed a certain freedom, and its 
 prefect had ruled under the emperor of the Romans. Innocent 
 at once made him take the oath of allegiance to himself, and 
 appointed his own judges instead of those of the senate. In 
 Northern Italy he consolidated against the empire a league not 
 only of the Lombard but of the Tuscan cities. In the South he 
 took possession of the Norman kingdom of Sicily, as a fief to be 
 held by the infant Frederic under the papacy. Against such an 
 opponent the empire was in no case to contend. On Innocent's 
 accession he found its seat vacant, and the two candidates 
 appealed to his arbitration. He at once declared the absolute 
 right of the pope to determine any such question, whether referred 
 to him or not, seeing that the right to choose an emperor at all 
 had originally come to the Diet from the Apostolic See, which 
 had " transferred " from the Greeks to the Germans the imperial 
 power of Rome. And before deciding in favour of Otho, he
 
 CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII. 8l 
 
 received from him a submission, which was carried out even to 
 the extent of renouncing the regaled Having thus humbled the 
 only possible rival of his throne, Innocent lost no time in pro- 
 claiming himself as, by virtue of his office, the general arbiter of 
 differences and conservator of the peace throughout Christendom. 
 " It is my province," he reasoned, " to judge where sin is com- 
 mitted, and it is my duty to prevent all public scandals." On 
 such a principle there was no part of the world where he could 
 not, and did not, 2 interfere ; and, while discouraging frivolous 
 appeals against bishops, who were now no longer the objects of 
 papal jealousy, he claimed the world for his province. 3 He 
 excommunicated Sweno for usurping the crown of Norway. He 
 interdicted Church services throughout Spain, till the King of 
 Leon divorced his cousin, a princess of Castile. He summoned 
 Philip of France to take back his divorced wife. This monarch, 
 brave and wise, and strong in the solid support of the French 
 people and Church, refused, and retaliated. Innocent laid the 
 interdict of the judge-ruler upon the life of the whole Church 
 of France. The dead were unburied, the living were unblessed ; 
 the clergy soon submitted to their foreign head, the people 
 followed, and compelled their king to obey, after a struggle more 
 obstinate than any other which the history can show. But this 
 occasional interference in the affairs of distant countries was 
 less striking than the determination to subject them to the pope 
 as overlord. Innocent received from King Peter II. homage as 
 
 1 See p. 74. 
 
 2 This was the only age of the world to which the remark of Hallarn does 
 not apply that the claim of Rome to depose sovereigns is " like the retractile 
 claws of some animals, which would be liable to injury were they not 
 usually sheathed." What the sheath is, however, may be seen by looking 
 accurately at the claim itself. It never was, even in Innocent's time, a right 
 to depose a sovereign, but merely to pronounce that he ought to be deposed. 
 It becomes thus an incident of the divine right to be universal arbiter. The 
 qualifications for such an office, ascribed to the pope by the Council of the 
 Lateran, were great. But those recently conceded to him by that of the 
 Vatican are greater. 
 
 * Non universam ecclesiam solum, sed totum seculum gubernandum. 
 
 F
 
 82 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 from a feudal inferior for his kingdom of Aragon. He declared 
 King John deposed from the throne of England, and invited the 
 French king to carry out the sentence. John, in terror, offered 
 homage as a vassal to the papal legate for the crowns of England 
 and Ireland, and Innocent accepted it, and assumed the position 
 of feudal lord of both. When he annulled the Magna Charta 
 (by which John was forced to declare the independence of his 
 Church and kingdom), he declared explicitly, that as the power 
 and property (dominium) of the realm belonged to the Roman 
 Church, its vassal-king could make no change in its condition 
 to the Church's prejudice. Partially successful, however, in the 
 kingdoms of the West, the ecclesiastical monarch made a great 
 conquest towards the East. The crusaders restored Constanti- 
 nople to the Latin Church, and an Eastern patriarchate was held 
 for half- a -century under the Bishop of Rome. The Kings of 
 Bohemia and Hungary in the north, and of Bulgaria and Wallachia 
 in the south, became at once the temporal vassals of the pope, 
 and did him homage for their lands. A secular prince in Italy, 
 and a spiritual ruler over all princes, Innocent held in 1215, the 
 year before his death, the Fourth Lateran Council, in many 
 respects the greatest which has ever been assembled. The East 
 was once more represented, as in the early centuries ; and the 
 North had not yet cast off allegiance to Rome. Its legislation 
 (besides advancing tenets, like transubstantiation, to the rank of 
 binding dogma) did much to consolidate the minute care of the 
 Church against private judgment and individual inquiry. All 
 through previous ages the regular or monastic clergy, by their 
 dependence on the central power rather than on their own dio- 
 cesans, had mightily advanced the supremacy of Rome, first over 
 the episcopate, and then over the world. In the reign of Innocent 
 III. the same result was further promoted by the establishment of 
 the two great mendicant fraternities, the Franciscan and Domini- 
 can. Both were at first enthusiastically devoted to the pope ; 
 and the sleuth-hound zeal of the latter body had already, in many 
 countries, established the Inquisition, as a domestic guardian of
 
 CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII. 83 
 
 the purity both of faith and morals. This pope had, without 
 delay, made use of these fervent religious influences by turning 
 them with exterminating energy against whole communities 
 the Waldenses in Switzerland, and the Albigenses in southern 
 France. For, supreme as the external system of Rome was now, 
 there were, of course, innumerable revolts of the individual con- 
 science and will. And against these the last council of Innocent 
 strengthened in detail by another held in 1229 at Toulouse 
 took the most careful precautions. Bishops were yearly to inquire 
 for heresy in all their parishes, on pain of deprivation ; to put 
 individuals on oath ; to excommunicate all the suspected who 
 should be unable to purge themselves ; and after a year of excom- 
 munication, to condemn them as heretics. And what results 
 ought such excommunication to draw after it on the side of the 
 State ? The answer of the Church, by its council and its head, 
 is too plain. The views of Theodosius, rather than of Con- 
 stantine, were sanctioned by pope and council ; and not only 
 sanctioned, but carried to an extreme. All kings and princes are 
 called upon by the Church to swear to purge out of their lands all 
 whom the Church shall condemn. The prince who fails to do so 
 shall be excommunicated ; and after he has been unrelaxed for a 
 year, his vassals shall be absolved from their allegiance, and 
 better Catholics, designated by the pope, shall extirpate the 
 heretics and enjoy the forfeited territory. Such was the 
 machinery gigantic in its world-wide sweep and microscopic in 
 its inquisitorial discrimination which bound the fetter first of 
 the Church and then of the State upon the conscience of the 
 Middle Age. 
 
 A.D. 1212. In the person of the Second Frederic the empire 
 tried a second struggle with the papacy, and again it failed. 
 This was that extraordinary prince spoken of in his own age as 
 " The world's wonder," J and not without reason. " A sensualist, 
 yet also a warrior and a politician, a profound lawgiver, and an 
 impassioned poet ; in his youth fired by crusading fervour, in 
 1 "Stupor mundi Fridericus."
 
 84 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 later life persecuting heretics, while himself accused of blasphemy 
 and unbelief, succeeding ages looked back with awe, not un- 
 mingled with pity, upon the inscrutable figure of the last emperor 
 who had braved all the terrors of the Church, and died beneath 
 her ban " (Bryce). Even at his coronation he put the cross on 
 his shoulder, and he set out for the East as King of Jerusalem, 
 though not till the aged Pope Gregory IX. had excommunicated 
 him for delay. Then followed reconciliation and peace ; but the 
 Italian interests of Rome were inconsistent with the Hohen- 
 staufen and imperial rights, and another quarrel in 1239 set the 
 one side of the Alps against the other, and the empire against the 
 Church. In most of these contests the popes maintained them- 
 selves against the feudal lord of Europe by the help of the rising 
 Italian municipalities. This new and popular power gained 
 strength from every year of contest ; and in Italy it was generally, 
 of course, on the side of the Church. Soon Gregory again 
 put Frederic under the ban : Frederic appealed to Christendom : 
 Gregory called a council : Frederic captured the prelates. On 
 Gregory's death, however, Innocent IV. held the council, and 
 called on prince after prince to set himself up as rival emperor in 
 Germany. The attempts failed, and in 1250 Frederic died in 
 his ancient kingdom, summing up his reign of nearly forty years 
 by a direction in his will that all the rights of the Holy Roman 
 Church should be restored to it, provided the Church restored the 
 rights of the empire. But the Church pursued the contest with 
 his successors, pope after pope taking it up, until at last, in A.D. 
 1268, the great Swabian dynasty fell as the Franconian dynasty 
 had fallen before. Charles of Anjou, invited by Clement IV., 
 overthrew and captured the grandson of Frederic in battle ; and 
 the young Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens, perished on 
 the scaffold. Amid the internecine struggles of Western Chris- 
 tendom, its Eastern conquests were lost. Jerusalem was recap- 
 tured by the Saracens in 1247, and Constantinople by the Greeks 
 in 1261. On the other hand, each new German emperor, before 
 being crowned, now acknowledged the supremacy of the pope ;
 
 CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII. 85 
 
 and this was done emphatically in 1273 by Rudolph of Hapsburg, 
 the new founder of the imperial house of Austria. With the 
 Swabian dynasty, indeed, all real predominance separated from 
 the Holy Roman Empire ; and the time was come for a pope to 
 arise, if not more powerful, at least more audacious than even that 
 long succession had revealed. 
 
 Boniface VIII. (A.D. 1294) crowns the papal edifice of the 
 Middle Age. "As Gregory VII. appears the most usurping of 
 mankind till we read the history of Innocent III., so Innocent 
 is thrown into the shade by the superior audacity of Boniface " 
 (Hallam). A man of high powers, trained in the now all-ruling 
 Roman Curia, but of morale much inferior to the great rulers 
 with whom he has been compared, he came to the papal chair at 
 a time when a less arrogant nature than his might well have been 
 intoxicated by their past success. He thus failed to see that the 
 bow had been overstrung, and that all through the world a dull 
 resistance to the ecclesiastical tyranny was beginning to be felt 
 Two great sovereigns, Philip the Fair of France and Edward 
 the First of England, were heavily taxing their clergy. Boniface 
 authorized the priests to withhold the contribution ; but in both 
 cases the monarchs threatened held on their way. Such signs did 
 not prevent the pope, when the pilgrims crowded to his great 
 jubilee of A.D. 1300, from appearing on the throne of the ancient 
 mistress of the world, crowned, indeed, with the Church's tiara, 
 but also girded with the secular sword, and shouting in sonorous 
 tones, " I am Caesar ; I am emperor." Ere long another quarrel 
 with France gave him the opportunity of uttering his new theory 
 or his variation of the old theory of Hildebrand more deliber- 
 ately. His legate, a French bishop, spoke so haughtily to Philip, 
 that the French king arrested him for treason. Boniface hurled 
 bulls at the king, but the latter convoked his States - General ; 
 and nobles, clergy, and third-estate declared that in temporal 
 matters the king had no superior on earth. 1 In a consistory at 
 
 1 Around and within the University of Paris, the literary and philosophical 
 contest against the papal power, carried on in the next generation by Occam
 
 86 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Rome the pope instructed the Galilean clergy in the nature of the 
 secular as well as sacred power of the pope ; and the bull Unani 
 Sanctam preserves the terms in which he addressed on the same 
 subject the Church universal : " The Church has one head ; not 
 two, like a monster. . . . The spiritual and the material sword 
 are both in the power of the Church, but the former is to be used 
 by the Church, the latter only for it. The former is in the hand of 
 the priest ; the latter is no doubt in the hand of the monarch and 
 the soldier, but it is to be used at the pontiff's beck and will (ad 
 nutum et patient iam sacerdotis) : the one sword must be subject to 
 the other, the temporal to the spiritual. . . . We declare, define, 
 and pronounce to every human creature that to be subject to the 
 Roman pontiff is absolutely necessary to salvation." Philip, ex- 
 communicated by the pope, called his States together again, and 
 appealed from the pope to a council. Nogaret, the Keeper of 
 his Seal, went with the demand to Rome ; but Boniface retired 
 to Anagni, from whence bull after bull was issued against France. 
 Last of all there was prepared one for the dethronement of Philip ; 
 but before this was launched, Nogaret and Colonna captured the 
 pope in his native place, and made him prisoner. He was 
 rescued, indeed, by his Anagni townsmen, but a violent sickness, 
 the consequence of the outrage, immediately carried him off. 
 Philip remained victorious as the assertor of the independence of 
 the secular power in his own sphere ; and Boniface, who had 
 attempted more than any of his predecessors, achieved less, and 
 broke by this first check the spell of the uninterrupted advance of 
 centuries. And even before that historical result had declared 
 itself, a great voice, inspired by the " terrible sagacity " of the 
 poet's heart, had expressed the judgment of the conscience of his 
 own time upon his claims, and the theory on which they were 
 based. 
 
 and Marsiglio, was begun for the French monarchy by men like Egidius (a 
 Colonna) Archbishop of Bourges, and John of Paris (a Dominican). Their 
 works, with some of the most important of those of their successors, may be 
 found in the collection of Goldastus.
 
 CHARLEMAGNE TO BONIFACE VIII. 87 
 
 Dante, the solemn master of mediaeval song, in whose writings 
 the system of Church and State in the form of papacy and 
 empire survives for ever, lived at this the culminating point of 
 the history. The year when Boniface held his jubilee was that 
 very year, midway in the mortal life of the poet, when he dates 
 his descent into hell. 1 There, within its eighth circle, in a cleft 
 of the lurid rock of the third gulf of Malebolge, one pope, already 
 damned, mistakes the footsteps of Dante for those of his own 
 successor still living and robed in the " mighty mantle," and 
 clamours for the more accursed Boniface to replace himself in the 
 fiery doom. 2 And yet Dante looked upon both Boniface and his 
 predecessor as the undoubted heads of the Church ; indeed, in his 
 Purgatory he brands Philip of France as the new Pilate who, 
 at Anagni, had done violence to Christ " in His Vicar." 3 This 
 twofold justice reflects the feeling of his own and previous ages, 
 and we look with increased interest to discover the poet's theory 
 of the cause of a world-wide evil. It was not the personal sin of 
 simony in prelate or in pope. It was not alone the famous 
 donation "Ah ! Constantine, of how much ill the cause !" 4 It 
 was that the Church, tempted by this and other secular advan- 
 tages, had now come to confound the two governments by assum- 
 ing the temporal power to confound them in its own favour, but 
 to the injury of both, so that by this time "the sword is grafted 
 on the crook ! " 5 Dante, meshed himself in the complicated 
 
 1 Hell, i. i, and xxi. 3. 2 Hell, xix. 55. 
 
 8 Purgatory, xx. 86. 4 Hell, xix. 118. 
 
 5 ' ' The cause 
 
 Is not corrupted nature in yourselves, 
 But ill-conducting, that hath turned the world 
 To evil. Rome, that turned it into good, 
 Was wont to boast two suns, whose several beams 
 Cast light on either way, the world's and God's. 
 One since hath quenched the other ; and the sword 
 Is grafted on the crook. 
 
 The Church of Rome, 
 Mixing two governments that ill assort, 
 Hath missed her footing, fallen into the mire." 
 
 Cary's Purgatory, xvi. 108.
 
 88 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 miseries of his time, was unable to disentangle his imagination 
 from the memories of the past, and turned them instead into 
 passionate hopes. A firm believer in imperialism both in Church 
 and State (as his treatise De Monarchia shows), he could not 
 conceive how either should exist as a self-governing common- 
 wealth under an invisible King, and his only remedy against 
 absolutism in the universal Church was a counterpoise of absolu- 
 tism in the universal State. So he sighed for the empire. But 
 the empire as the counterpoise to the papacy had already lost its 
 power. A wholly different system was beginning to appear.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. 
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUSLY with the culmination of the papal power 
 about A.D. 1300, we are called to observe a new thing in modern 
 history the existence of national Churches. The rise of nation- 
 alities and the formation of the European kingdoms have already 
 to a large extent taken place. But with the commencement of 
 the fourteenth century these States commence as such to exert a 
 distinct influence in Church matters. They do more ; they assert 
 a certain independence, ecclesiastical and civil. And as the 
 protest against foreign Church authority helped the national feel- 
 ing to come into existence, so that feeling in its turn consolidated 
 the independence of the local Church. The conflict between 
 France and Boniface brought this first to the surface on a great 
 scale ; but it had been going on in other nations also, and we 
 must now pause to notice it. Everywhere there are unmistake- 
 able signs of what the eailier ages of Christian history would 
 have counted a paradox. The time was coming, and it came two 
 centuries before the Reformation, when Churches were to be 
 national in the sense of each being not merely, as of old, locally 
 separate, and in that sense independent, but in the sense of its 
 being coincident with and dependent upon a European State. 
 
 The earliest of the Western powers to assert its national in- 
 dependence of Rome was England. To this the insular position 
 of a people, " utterly divided from the world," no doubt chiefly 
 contributed. The Celtic Churches had been independent of 
 
 89
 
 90 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Rome ; and even the Anglo-Saxon Church of England, though 
 dating back to the missionary zeal of Gregory the Great, was 
 strongly national, territorial, and local. The County Court ruled 
 all things in the county, and both bishop and alderman were 
 ordered to sit in it, "each of them there putting in use both 
 God's law and the world's law." William the Conqueror brought 
 the kingdom into much closer connection with the Roman See. 
 The pope, appealed to as arbiter by William, though not by 
 Harold, had blessed the invasion of A.D. 1066, and William at 
 once introduced the Roman liturgy, the Roman celibacy, and the 
 Roman separation of civil and ecclesiastical Courts, laymen being 
 henceforth excluded from the latter. Now, too, if not earlier, 
 tithes, originally a voluntary offering to the Church, were made 
 payable by all Englishmen whether they would or no. But 
 William would go no farther. He insisted on the royal sanction 
 to all Church decisions and papal bulls before they were published 
 in England, and forbade ecclesiastical appeals to Rome. He 
 wrote to the famous Hildebrand refusing to do homage (fidelt- 
 tatem facere) for the land which the preceding pope had made 
 over to his sword ; he made the bishops hold under himself by 
 tenure of " knight-service ; " and like his successors down to 
 Victoria he nominated them to their Sees. (" People of holy 
 Church" generally, indeed, were nominated by "the lords, 
 founders and donors," to their benefices.) This local subjection 
 of the Church to a feudal monarch, at the very period when its 
 highest greatness was commencing, inevitably led to a conflict, 
 and in particular to a branch of the great Patronage or Investiture 
 controversy. 1 Rome on the whole was successful, and the English 
 Church, guided by some men of European celebrity, admitted her 
 supremacy. But a hundred years after the Conquest, Henry II., a 
 powerful and passionate monarch, the organizer of the whole 
 
 1 See p. 73. "My master," said the English ambassador on behalf of 
 Henry I., " would rather lose his crown than the right of investiture of the 
 bishops." "And I," said Pope Paschal, prompted by the great English 
 Archbishop Anselm, "would rather lose my head than let him retain it."
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. QI 
 
 administration of justice in England, was determined that in that 
 country now only part of a sovereignty extending from the 
 North Sea to the Pyrenees the crown should be free. When on 
 one occasion it was argued to him that a priest could not be 
 deposed by the royal power, " No ; " he answered, " you cannot 
 be deposed ; but you may be shoved out like this," and putting 
 his heavy hand on his counsellor's shoulder, he shot him out of 
 the presence. In A.D. 1164 he called together the Estates of the 
 Realm at Clarendon, and re-enacted into " constitutions " the laws 
 or " customs " l as to the power of the king and his courts over 
 the clergy in criminal matters, and over the Church in all secular 
 and some spiritual matters. His Chancellor, Thomas a Becket, 
 the first native Englishman who had been appointed to the 
 primacy of Canterbury since the Conquest, resisted him in vain 
 while living. But when slain before the altar by the king's four 
 knights (A.D. 1170), he was promptly canonized by Pope Alex- 
 ander III., and Henry's penance before the martyr's tomb, like 
 that of his namesake at Canossa, was accompanied by large 
 concessions. The investiture question in England was settled by 
 a compromise extremely like that which we have seen made in 
 the case of the empire by the Concordat of Worms. The English 
 king kept the revenue of vacant Sees ; but gave up the nomina- 
 tion of the new bishop to the chapter (to be exercised, however, 
 with the royal consent and advice). The spiritual peer thus 
 elected was to do homage to the king for his temporalities 
 before his consecration by the Church ; and practically the crown 
 retained the appointment. Appeals to Rome were now conceded, 
 though not encouraged, and it was an appeal (as to a contested 
 election to Canterbury) which early in the next century brought 
 a weak English king into memorable collision with a great and 
 
 1 ' ' Like his kingly sires 
 Fhe Normans, striving still to break or bind 
 The spiritual giant with our island laws 
 And customs." 
 
 Tennyson's Becket, Act iv. Sc. il
 
 92 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 strong pope. 1 John was first excommunicated and then deposed 
 by Innocent III., whose decree invited the French king and his 
 successors "to possess for ever the realm of England." John in 
 terror not only yielded the points in dispute, but offered that 
 homage for his realm to Innocent which the Conqueror had 
 refused to Hildebrand. In presence of the legate he promised 
 allegiance as vassal (feodatarius) on the part of himself and all 
 future kings of England to the present and succeeding popes. 
 But the disgraceful bargain (though concluded and carried into 
 effect by England paying tribute to the pope as its feudal 
 sovereign for more than a hundred years) was concluded without 
 the consent of the barons. And this among other outrages led to 
 the king being compelled by them (including even Churchmen, 
 like Langton the primate, a personal friend and nominee of 
 Innocent) to sign (A.D. 1215) the Magna Charta. This deed, 
 " still the key-stone of English liberty, so that all that has since 
 been obtained is little more than confirmation or commentary " 
 (Hallam), commences with a provision for the freedom of what 
 now appears as the " Ecclesia Anglicana," which may be trans- 
 lated the Church of England rather than the Church in England. 2 
 The freedom of election of bishops and abbots by their chapters 
 was specially provided for, against the pope no doubt as well as 
 against the king ; and the whole transaction was based upon an 
 idea of liberty which deeply offended Innocent. His bull at once 
 declared the charter to be not only " a disgraceful and shameful 
 compromise," but for ever null and void. Yet England stood 
 firm, and soon began to make advances. In Henry the Third's 
 
 1 Shakespeare, writing in the later days of Elizabeth, puts into the mouth 
 of King John a declaration : 
 
 " That no Italian priest 
 Shall tithe or toll in our dominions ; " 
 adding, less historically : 
 
 " But as we under Heaven are supreme head. 
 So, under Him, that great supremacy, 
 Where we do reign, we will alone uphold." John, iii. I. 
 
 2 " Quod ecclesia Anglicana libera sit, et habeat omnia jura sua integra et 
 libertates suas illaesas."
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. 93 
 
 time common lawyers began to sit in the king's courts instead of 
 ecclesiastics ; and these asserted their right of judging in all 
 temporal matters, and of restraining the actings of the Church 
 within the bounds of law by issuing prohibitions. Contracts 
 and advowsons were among the subjects already made subject to 
 the courts of the king, and while questions of legitimacy and 
 marriage were still defended by the Church as ecclesiastical, it 
 found that even here it could make no advance. In 1266 the 
 bishops sought to introduce into England the rule (which Scot- 
 land and the rest of Europe have taken from the Canon law) 
 of legitimation by subsequent marriage of the parents. The 
 Parliament of Merton replied, in words of surly wisdom, " We 
 will have no change on the laws of England " (" Nolumus leges 
 Angliae mutari"). And now even Edward I., himself a crusading 
 prince, prohibited by his statutes of Mortmain the transfer of 
 land to Churchmen or Church bodies ; and his statute, Circum- 
 specte agatis, confirmed the former limitations. As we have 
 already seen, he insisted on his right to tax the clergy, and he 
 also refused to allow them to send their funds to Rome, although 
 he allowed the spirituality their place as an estate of the realm 
 in the now constituted English Parliament. And the same inde- 
 pendence was shown in international affairs. It had perhaps 
 been natural that when Adrian, hitherto the only English-born 
 pope, made a gift of Ireland to Henry II. (on the ground that all 
 Christian islands belong to Peter and the Church of Rome), the 
 king quietly accepted the boon. But when Boniface VIII. made 
 the same claim with regard to Scotland, and, on the ground that 
 that remote realm belonged in full right to the Church of Rome, 
 demanded that Edward I. should submit his claims to it to the 
 judgment of the pope, the result was different. The English 
 Parliament replied in this year (A.D. 1301) in characteristic words : 
 " The kings of England have never made answer for their rights 
 as to temporalities to any judge, ecclesiastical or secular, and in 
 such a cause they can never abide your judgment." 
 
 Still more important in its results was the independence now
 
 94 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 claimed by the kingdom of France. That monarchy had been 
 consolidating itself amid the feudal turbulence, and even the most 
 pious of its later kings were disposed to restrain the excesses of 
 Rome. Thirty years before Boniface's time, Saint Louis, when 
 departing on his crusade, issued the famous Pragmatic Sanction 
 of A.D. 1269, an edict which laid the earliest foundation for the 
 " liberties of the Gallican Church." In particular, it provided 
 that elections in the French Church should be free from papal 
 control, and that no money should be levied in France by the 
 pope except with consent of its Church and king. A generation 
 had now passed away, and we have already seen the first result 
 of the conflict between Philip Le Bel and Boniface. The excom- 
 municated king, backed by the united Churchmen, barons, and 
 burgesses of his realm, insulted and imprisoned the most 
 arrogant of all successors of St. Peter. Nor did his success end 
 with the death of Boniface. That pope's short-lived successor 
 admitted Philip again to communion ; and on Benedict's demise, 
 a French prelate, elected under the name of Clement V., went 
 farther still. The dead Boniface was actually put upon his trial 
 at the instance of France before his living successor, 1 and the 
 Bull Unatti Sanctam was, not indeed repealed, but disavowed in 
 its applications to the " king, kingdom and inhabitants " of that 
 country. But Clement V. took, in A.D. 1305, a more important 
 step. It was he who removed the papal court to the French 
 town of Avignon, where for seventy years it remained in what 
 Italians like Petrarch counted a "Babylonish captivity." During 
 
 1 Mr. Browning, in The Ring and The Book, describes a similar horror 
 from still earlier days, 
 
 " When Stephen, pope and seventh of the name, 
 Cried out, in synod as he sat in state, 
 While choler quivered on his brow and beard, 
 ' Come into Court, Formosus, thou lost wretch, 
 That claimedst to be late the pope as I ! ' 
 And at the word the great door of the church 
 Flew wide, and in they brought Formosus self, 
 The body of him, dead " x. 32-39. 
 
 The English poet, like Dante, is no friend of the temporal power ; and it is
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. 95 
 
 this long period the popes and leading cardinals were generally 
 French by birth, and always under French influence. Accord- 
 ingly no further conflict arose between the papacy and France, 
 and seven popes in succession ruled in splendid security far from 
 the seat of Peter. Their wealth increased, for the rights asserted 
 during recent centuries to interfere (at first occasionally and after- 
 wards on system) in the election of ecclesiastics throughout 
 Europe, became a source of enormous gain. At every election a 
 portion of the vacant benefice was openly claimed by the head of 
 the Church, while secret simony fed with bribes a power whose 
 worldliness had now become absolute licence. 
 
 The claims of the papacy to spiritual supremacy against the 
 empire remained as high as ever, while it dwelt in what an 
 English Parliament described as "the sinful city of Avignon." 
 But this contrast between high claims and low aims now began 
 to rouse throughout Europe a spirit of inquiry and protest. And 
 a fresh conflict brought this to a head. In A.D. 1314 the last 
 act of Clement V. was to issue a bull solemnly declaring that the 
 oath of the emperor to the pope was really an oath of fealty. He 
 had already declared that to the pope, as superior, the "imperium" 
 returned with every vacancy in the empire. John XXII. soon 
 after had an opportunity of applying this doctrine at a contested 
 imperial election. He (1317) declared the supreme dignity to be 
 in abeyance, and appointed the king of Naples as his own vicar 
 to govern Italy in the meantime. Lewis of Bavaria, however, not 
 only maintained his own election by force of arms, but in a 
 
 therefore worth pointing out that this ghastly reminiscence occurs in a poem 
 which contains what is probably the noblest description of a just judge to be 
 found in all literature. The soliloquy of an aged pope, condemning a man 
 to death for a civil crime, begins with these words : 
 
 " In God's name ! once more on this earth of God's 
 
 While twilight lasts and time wherein to work, 
 
 I take His staff with my uncertain hand, 
 
 And stay my six and fourscore years, my due 
 
 Labour and sorrow, on His judgment-seat, 
 
 And forthwith think, speak, act, in place of Him." 
 
 King and Book, x. 162-167.
 
 96 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 solemn protest at Nuremberg (A..D. 1323) asserted that the 
 imperial right flowed not from the pope but from the electoral 
 princes, and appealed from John's impending excommunication 
 to the Holy See itself and to a General Council. 
 
 Once more the controversy was raised between the papacy and 
 the empire, and it was prolonged during the thirty years of the 
 Emperor Lewis. But on this occasion the war raged not on the 
 battle-field and in the region of diplomacy only. For the first 
 time on a great scale, it became a question of theory, and was 
 fought out in literature. The preparation for such a speculative 
 conflict was great, though inadequate. During the latter part of 
 the Middle Ages the human mind, confined by ignorance on the 
 one hand and despotism on the other within purely imaginary 
 bounds, developed within those bounds an extraordinary activity. 
 The centres of this activity became the Universities, which by 
 this time had sprung up in every part of Europe. Fostered by 
 the Church, and patronized by the empire and the kingdoms 
 under it, each of these institutions still enjoyed a certain indepen- 
 dence. But all formed a common republic of letters, for then 
 students and graduates passed freely from one to the other, 
 wherever a famous teacher appeared ; and the light, which at 
 one time burned more brightly in Paris, at another in Bologna, 
 at another in Oxford, and at another in Prague, was at no time 
 altogether extinguished. In these universities or great " schools " 
 flourished what has come to be known as the scholastic philosophy, 
 in which a prodigious energy of thought (shut off from the yet 
 untrodden fields to be gained to modern science by observation 
 and induction) was concentrated upon the ideas already con- 
 tained within the doctrines of the Church. Within those con- 
 taining limits a vast freedom of speculation was generally 
 permitted, and, by the Nominalist section of theorists especially, 
 was used. Scholasticism as a whole was, of course, an influence 
 on the side of the Church ; its philosophy was the " handmaid 
 of theology." Yet it contained elements which wrought power-
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. 97 
 
 fully in the opposite direction ; and one of the earliest of its 
 sources was the enthusiastic study in the twelfth century of the 
 great legal compilations made in the sixth by the Emperor Jus- 
 tinian. The Roman or civil law was at first received hospitably 
 by the clergy, and largely used in building up the ecclesiastical 
 or canon law. But the civilians were the natural allies of the 
 emperor, as the canonists were of the pope. And as some 
 defenders of the pope were now found to go farther in his favour 
 than the canonists, so some partisans of the emperor in this last 
 conflict took stronger ground in theory than mere civilians could 
 do. On both sides men were now found willing to depart from 
 that doctrine of equal or co-ordinate jurisdiction which had 
 hitherto been the accepted theory of Christianity. 
 
 Now, as at all times, the strongest partisans of the supremacy 
 both of the papacy and of the Church were found among the 
 monks or " regulars " (churchmen who lived under a " rule "). 
 In A.D. 1328 the monk Augustinus Triumphus, in his book Summa 
 de Potestate Ecclesiastica, " Of Church Power," maintained, with 
 regard to the pope's position in the Church, that he is universal 
 bishop ; that he can bind and loose in every part of the 
 Church ; that while other bishops have a place, it is under 
 his authority, and he can, when occasion calls for it, pass them 
 by ; that from the sentence of the pope there is no appeal, not 
 even to God ; and that the honour due to saints and angels, and 
 in a certain sense the honour due to God, is thus rightly given to 
 the Vicar of Christ on earth. Five centuries were yet to run 
 before the proclamation by the pope of his official infallibility. 
 But most of the other powers to be attributed to him by the 
 Vatican Council in the nineteenth century are already conceded 
 by these partisans in the fourteenth ; and Triumphus goes on to 
 use those attributions in the conflict with the emperor. He 
 argued that the only power held immediately of God is that of 
 the pope ; that the power of sovereigns is a sub-delegated power ; 
 that the pope, being the Vicar of Christ, is, of course, to be obeyed 
 rather than the emperor ; and that he can, in virtue of the same 
 powers, choose an emperor or a dynasty and depose them, and 
 can choose and depose kings of any realm in Christendom. In 
 A.D. 1330 Alvarus Pelagius followed with his book De Planctu 
 Ecclesia, " Of the Church's Complaint," and from the same 
 premises drew like conclusions. He held " that the pope is 
 the sole authority of Christ upon earth ; that from him general 
 councils derive their power ; that he is not bound even by his 
 
 G
 
 98 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 own laws, for he may dispense with them as and when he pleases , 
 and that he has a universal jurisdiction in spiritual and in 
 temporal things." 
 
 On the imperial side, on the other hand, arose thinkers who, 
 for the first time, were prepared not only to refuse the powers 
 claimed for the Bishop of Rome in later centuries over the uni- 
 versal Church, but, also in defence of the civil power, to limit or 
 deny that original independence which the Church itself now so 
 grievously misused. The most remarkable book of this nature 
 was the Defensor Pads, the composition of Marsilius of Padua, 
 now the emperor's physician, but formerly Rector of the great 
 University of Paris, aided by John of Jandun, one of the imperial 
 secretaries. In this work, published about A.D. 1325, it was 
 argued in detail on the internal Church question that all pres- 
 byters or bishops were equal in the primitive Church, greater 
 authority being gradually given to one of them in each district 
 only as a matter of convenience ; that as Peter had no authority 
 over the other apostles, so no one succeeding bishop had autho- 
 rity over others ruling elsewhere ; and that the habit which other 
 bishops and Churches had got into, of consulting the pastor of 
 the central church of the world, had gradually come to be con- 
 sidered a duty on their part, and had now led to an unfounded 
 claim of authority by Rome over the Churches and bishops, and 
 even the princes of Christendom. The universal powers of the 
 Church, thus denied to any local bishop, were by this book 
 assigned to a general council ; and Scripture, interpreted when 
 need is by the definitions of such a council, is held by it to be the 
 sole guide to blessedness. These principles, anticipating many 
 results of historical criticism in modern times, had already been 
 prepared for by the investigations of the universities, and were 
 now spread through Europe by the incessant labours of William 
 of Occam and others. But the Reformation was still two cen- 
 turies distant, and they took little hold of the hearts of men. 
 
 Accordingly the imperialist advocate, distrustful of the will of 
 the universal Church to free itself from the papacy, provides for 
 the first time a theory by which that Church itself shall be subject 
 to the universal State. To do this he had, no doubt, to go back 
 to pre-Christian speculation, yet not so far as to pass the great 
 philosopher whom the mediaeval Church itself had accepted as 
 the first of those who know. Aristotle, following the tradition of 
 Pagan antiquity, had defined the State as the supreme and per- 
 fect society, 1 and Marsilius, adopting the definition, points out 
 
 1 Even Thomas Aquinas, who was about this time canonized, and who had 
 attained the highest celebrity as "Angelic Doctor" before his death in 
 A.D. 1274, held in his Summa (Prima Secunda, 91. 3) that the State being, 
 as Aristotle declared, the perfect community, the good of the State must take 
 precedence of that of the individual as an aim.
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. 99 
 
 that the priesthood and the Church must be parts embraced 
 within and under that greater whole. But the function of legis- 
 lation belongs (as Aristotle and Aquinas had already declared) 
 to the totality or (in the event of their disagreeing) to the majority 
 of all citizens ; and the great act of this legislative whole is to 
 appoint one sovereign or executive power. And this sovereign, 
 representing the whole State, has alone the power of co-action 
 and of punishment. His authority, therefore, extends over all 
 men, clerical and lay ; and his power over Church temporalities 
 is such that after making provision for the altar and the poor, he 
 may use the rest for purposes of public utility. But it follows 
 also that Church elections and Church sentences can only be 
 carried into effect through him. Without him neither bishop nor 
 pope can effectually excommunicate ; with him the Church may 
 excommunicate even the pope. To him, therefore, appeals lie 
 against the enforcement of Church sentences ; by him Church 
 officials can be ordered to perform their duties ; and by him 
 external arrangements of the Church as, for example, the number 
 of the clergy can be regulated, though only according to the 
 divine law. The novel powers as to Church matters here ascribed 
 to the magistrate are occasionally disguised by his being called 
 the "fidelis," or Christian magistrate an ambiguity often use- 
 fully employed in earlier and later times. (What few would 
 permit in the Church to Trajan or Nero, many would concede to 
 Constantine or St. Louis.) But fundamentally this theory sub- 
 ordinates, and therefore subjects, the Church as such to the State 
 as such. 
 
 Like most imperialist theories, that of the Defensor Pads lies 
 under a twofold error, even on the political side. It assumes 
 that the individual citizen transfers all his rights to the State, and 
 that the State again lodges all its rights in the hands of the 
 firinceps, or executive. In both respects it reflects the mistake of 
 the apologists of the other or papal imperialism, which subjects 
 the individual Christian absolutely to the Church, and then sub- 
 jects the Church absolutely to one episcopal head. But it was 
 built up with great boldness and power, and the fact that the 
 highest civil authority was by it appealed to as " broad-based 
 upon the people's will," made it a step in history. Yet Marsilius 
 was only one of a group of men, some of them more celebrated 
 than himself, who maintained the same principles under the 
 shelter of the emperor at Munich. Of these the greatest was
 
 100 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 William of Occam, the " Invincible Doctor," whose bargain with 
 Lewis, " Defend me with the sword, and I will defend you with 
 the pen," was carried out on his part with extraordinary power. 
 For two centuries before the Reformation the principles thus 
 promulgated had immense influence, especially in the universities 
 of Europe ; and in modern times they have been widely accepted 
 as the true theory of Church and State. They have been often 
 so accepted even under the disadvantage that the State which is 
 to include the Church has been a mere nation a fragment of 
 Christendom, even when it has professed Christianity at all. But 
 in order to make the supremacy of a State over the Christian 
 Church tolerable, it ought at least to be the universal State. And 
 it is almost with regret that we look back and see the theory 
 originally brought forward just too late at a time when the 
 Defender of the Peace of the World, retaining his Christian pro- 
 fession, was beginning to lose his world-wide sway. 
 
 Even at the time, the theoretical usurpation by the Christian 
 emperor of powers over the Church, which no one would ascribe 
 to his heathen predecessors, caused a certain revulsion of feeling 
 in Germany. Like the doctrine held at the same time by the 
 Franciscans, that ecclesiastics, unlike other men, have no right to 
 possess private property, these views were too obviously taken up 
 as defence or retaliation against the equally baseless despotism 
 of Rome. Lewis, too, was weakened by the gradual rise and 
 consolidation of the opposing power of France. The result was 
 that when he died in 1347, the middle of the century saw the last 
 of the three great conflicts of the Church with the empire result 
 in another victory to Rome. 
 
 Yet it was a victory in a losing campaign. Public opinion and 
 the new learning were now a force in Europe, and these did not 
 now go with the papacy, even when it seemed to conquer. We 
 may take two illustrations. In the very year of the death of the 
 excommunicated emperor, the temporal power in the centre of 
 the Latin Church was swept away though for a moment only 
 by the Roman Republic, under Rienzi. Looking outward to the
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. IO1 
 
 circumference, we find in England Edward the Third, heartily 
 supported by his Parliament, resisting the pretensions and ex- 
 actions of Clement. In a " fruitful letter," he reminded the pope 
 that the successor of Peter "should feed and not shear the 
 sheep." But now the question at issue in England was settled 
 by two well-known Acts of Parliament. By the statute of Pro- 
 visors, in A.D. 1350, those who claimed benefices under papal 
 provisions were subjected to penalties until they had vacated 
 them in favour of the king's nominee. And by the statute of 
 Premunire, in A.D. 1353, those who transferred or appealed any 
 cause under the English king's jurisdiction to a foreign tribunal 
 that of Rome being specially intended were made subject to 
 forfeiture and outlawry. Before Edward III.'s forty years closed, 
 another question was raised. His predecessors had paid the 
 yearly tribute of a thousand marks, promised by King John, as 
 vassal of Rome for England and Ireland; but when Urban in 
 1365 demanded thirty years' arrears, the king laid the matter 
 before Parliament. It answered "that neither King John nor any 
 other could put his kingdom and people in subjection without 
 their assent." Among those who defended this refusal was 
 Wycliff, now the champion of a wide-spread revolt in England 
 against Rome and the friars who, here as everywhere, were 
 Rome's soldiers. Protected by the House of Lancaster, Wycliff 
 met the papal delegates at Bruges, sent out from Oxford the 
 "poor priests," who came to be nicknamed Lollards, translated 
 the Bible, and demanded a reformation of the Church. The 
 Peasants' Rising, led by John Ball and Wat Tyler, in 1381, 
 suggested a connection between religious and civil freedom, 
 which alarmed the court of Richard II. It, accordingly, gave 
 partial effect to a condemnation of Wycliff in the following year 
 by a council at London. But his followers were on the whole 
 unmolested till, upon the murder of this king in 1399, the 
 usurper Bolingbroke allied himself with the clergy to secure a 
 precarious throne. His Parliament in the following year passed 
 a statute for burning heretics, which, in the reign of his son,
 
 IO2 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Henry V., crushed out the Lollards. Twenty years earlier, how- 
 ever, a central schism had split Europe, and given an immense 
 impulse to Church reform in the first place, and, when that hope 
 failed, to the remedial powers of nationalism. 
 
 The Great Schism, which lasted for fifty-five years after A.D. 
 1378, occurred in a very natural way. In that year the College 
 of Cardinals, the large majority of whom were now Frenchmen, 
 were obliged, according to custom, to meet in Rome to elect a 
 pope; and, under pressure from the populace, elected an Italian, 
 Urban VI. Very soon after, however, they returned to Anagni, 
 annulled Urban's election on the pretence that it was extorted 
 by violence, and chose instead Clement VII. (In addition to the 
 existence of popular pressure for an Italian, if not a Roman, 
 Urban had been elected by a bare majority, according to a con- 
 stitution of the recently deceased pope ; and the pope's right to 
 change the previous rule, by which a vote of two-thirds had been 
 required, has always been questioned.) The immediate effect 
 was to split Christendom nearly equally. Each nation was 
 entitled to its private judgment on the question who was pope, 
 and had, of course, no papal authority to guide it until it had 
 settled where that authority lay. Northern Europe and Northern 
 Italy thus went with Urban, who was acknowledged by Germany, 
 England, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and Prussia. Southern 
 Europe and Naples went with Clement, whose adherents in- 
 cluded France (with its ancient ally, Scotland), Savoy, Lorraine, 
 Castile, Aragon, and Navarre. The episcopate was as divided 
 as the family of nations, and each pope excommunicated the 
 other and the other's cardinals. The external unity of the 
 Church, the great object for which each successive age had 
 sacrificed so much truth and freedom which its predecessor had 
 possessed, was utterly lost. Christendom was paralysed ; and 
 private Christians, taught for centuries to lean on one visible 
 head of the Church, were filled with confusion and dismay. 
 
 For half-a-century the difficulty remained, and the danger
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. 103 
 
 grew. In Italy the adherents of each pope kept up a war with 
 each other. Europe generally was oppressed by the exactions 
 and the simony of two papal courts instead of one. 1 On every 
 hearth and in every confessional men were haunted by a doubt 
 on what they had been taught to treat as fundamental. The 
 effect was to raise everywhere the same spirit of inquiry which 
 we have seen produced for a time by the conflict between the 
 Church and the empire. But now the inquiry was as to the 
 ancient constitution and rights of the Church, and it was pro- 
 secuted especially by the universities, the great repositories 
 of European learning and light. The result was everywhere 
 the same. It was found that the Roman pontiff in early days 
 had occupied no such position over the Church as each anti-pope 
 now claimed to do. It followed that the road out of the present 
 difficulty must be, not in choosing between them, but in falling 
 back upon the Church itself. During recent centuries only 
 adversaries of the popes at open war with them had appealed to 
 a general council. But the schism led to a general acknowledg- 
 ment of the Council's superiority. 
 
 The eyes of men now turned to such a council with immense 
 expectation, and the sovereigns of Europe favoured the course 
 urged upon them by theologians and scholars like Gerson, 
 the famous Chancellor of the Paris University. The rival 
 popes still resisted ; but in 1409 their cardinals, abandoning 
 them both, united to call the Council of Pisa. Little was done 
 by it, however, and the great experiment was only really tried 
 at the Council of Constance, which met in A.D. 1414. Called by 
 
 1 England acknowledged Boniface IX., who made merchandise of the 
 Church in this systematic manner. " It was useless for a poor man to make 
 a request to the papal court. The next presentation of a benefice was sold 
 two or three times over ; then a new class of grant was constituted, marked 
 'Preference;' in time, yet another class was created, marked ' Pre-prefer- 
 ence,' which gave the happy possessor a higher claim than his rivals, though 
 even then, when the vacancy actually occurred, the pope would often sell it 
 again, despite all previous grants of reservation." Creighton's Papacy, 
 \. no.
 
 104 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 the infamous pontiff, John XXIII., under pressure from the 
 Emperor Sigismund, to whom he had fled for protection, it com- 
 menced with the highest expectations from all Christendom. 
 Its first act was to provide that its votes were to be given not 
 by counting heads, but by nations. Its second was a declaration 
 that, as representing the Catholic Church (though, in truth, it 
 rather represented the Church aristocracy), it "held its power 
 from Christ immediately," and that all, even the pope, were 
 bound to obey it in matters of reformation and of faith. There- 
 upon the existing popes by this time there were three were 
 all removed or deposed. But, unfortunately, the Council before 
 going on with the rest of its programme elected another, the 
 Cardinal Colonna, who, as Martin V., paralysed their further 
 proceedings. There were several reasons why this obstruction 
 was possible. The pressing matter of papal schism was now 
 settled. In matters of faith the bishops of this Council had no 
 real desire for inquiry or reform, and they insisted on condemn- 
 ing innovators, such as Huss, whom they handed over to the 
 flames as a heretic, notwithstanding Sigismund's safe-conduct. 
 It was not strange that they in turn soon found themselves 
 helpless in matters of administration, and that the pope, after 
 granting a tithe of the Church revenue to the same Sigismund, 
 and pronouncing their doctrine of the superiority of a council 
 to the pope "false, rebellious, and damnable," dissolved the 
 assembly. A similar history is recorded of the later Council of 
 Basle, which was called in A.D. 1431. It commenced with strong 
 decrees affirming its own rights, and that the pope as mere 
 "ministerial head" of the Church was not its superior. The 
 pope in vain protested that this changed the Church into an 
 aristocracy, and might make it a democracy. He was forced to 
 send legates ; and many reforms, all tending to limit papal inter- 
 ference with Church revenues and administration, were provided 
 for by its decrees. But before these could be ratified, the quarrel 
 between the sacerdotal chiefs of the Church and its monarch 
 again broke out, and the people had by this time ceased to take
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. 105 
 
 the side of the former so heartily as before. The universities, 
 too, had resisted the pope, but did not desire the aggrandizement 
 of the bishops. Accordingly, Eugenius IV. called a rival council 
 at Ferrara, and a minority split off from that of Basle. The 
 majority at Basle persisted, and elected another pope, whom 
 Christendom, however, refused to recognise. The Basle Council 
 lingered on a few years, and then died out. Papal bulls at 
 once pronounced a condemnation on its doctrine of a council's 
 superiority to or independence of the head of the Church ; 
 and subsequent councils themselves, like the Fifth Lateran in 
 the following century, and that of the Vatican in our own, 
 have fully accepted the monarchical view. 
 
 The result of this Period of Councils was twofold. The position 
 of the popes was not really maintained : learning and inquiry 
 into Church history had begun to destroy the prestige which had 
 fascinated the ages of ignorance. The forged Decretals and the 
 pretended Donation of Constantine were no longer, as in a 
 previous age, believed by all. But councils also had lost the 
 attraction which they had so long exercised on the minds of 
 men. Something was wanting, none knew exactly what, per- 
 haps to be unfolded from within the Church, perhaps to be 
 revealed from without. But, in the meantime, the one Church 
 found no adequate means of representing itself, and the one 
 secular power had become a mere name of emperor. All this 
 tended to strengthen the separate sovereign States or nation- 
 alities into which Christendom had broken, and to create and 
 foster national Churches. Unfortunately, in that century this 
 generally meant to strengthen the sovereign princes. For this 
 was the age of the rise of absolute power all over Europe. And 
 soon the popes, who now became rapidly more corrupt in cha- 
 racter than they had ever been before, found it expedient to make 
 compromises with one after another of the great States or sove- 
 reigns of Europe, sharing with them many of the privileges 
 claimed by the councils for the Church itself. These compromises,
 
 106 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 or "capitulations," which were characteristic of the century 
 before the Reformation (called at different times Pax, Concordia, 
 Tractatus, Capitula Concordata), are known now as Concordats. 
 
 The first National Concordat was with Germany. By what 
 is called a " Pragmatic Sanction," in 1439, the empire had 
 accepted for Germany the chief principles laid down by the 
 Council of Basle ; and by providing for free canonical election to 
 German benefices, with a reform of the ecclesiastical judiciary 
 and a limitation of the papal power of excommunication, it sought 
 to secure the independence of the national Church. Two popes 
 had already promised to confirm the Sanction. But, by the 
 Concordat of Vienna in 1448, procured by the skill of the legate 
 ALneas Sylvius, the new emperor, Frederick III., gave up to 
 Nicolas V. the annates and most of the benefices, receiving for 
 himself, in exchange, the patronage of six bishoprics and a 
 hundred benefices, with the tithes of the monasteries. The 
 popes having thus succeeded with the emperor, proceeded to 
 make similar bargains with the other German princes, and the 
 result of the concordat was, that in a few years Germany was 
 filled with Italian ecclesiastics. 
 
 France, as might be expected from its previous championship of 
 the rights of the Church against the Papacy, was able to maintain 
 its own " Gallican Liberties " without a concordat for a much 
 longer time. Their foundation for nearly a century was the 
 Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1438. On the foundation of 
 the superiority of the Church and its ecumenical councils to the 
 pope, it went on to provide that he should have no power of 
 nomination or patronage in France, the high ecclesiastical offices 
 being filled by canonical election, and other benefices by the local 
 patrons. The exaction by Rome of annates, i.e. the first year's stipend 
 from vacant benefices, was declared to be simony ; restrictions were 
 laid on appeals and interdicts, and the publication of papal bulls 
 and briefs without royal sanction was forbidden. And to guard all 
 these regulations, a right of correcting the abuse of ecclesiastical 
 power appelcomme d'abus was acknowledged in the Parliaments
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. 107 
 
 or higher courts of law. The Sanction remained in force during the 
 rest of the century ; but in 1516 Francis I. made the same sort of 
 bargain with the Pope which the emperor had long ago done, and 
 exchanged it for a concordat. The concordat of course ignored 
 the principles of the Church councils of the previous age (which 
 in this year, indeed, were reversed by the Council of the Lateran), 
 and it settled the question of patronage, by giving the annates 
 throughout France to the pope and the whole nominations to the 
 king. 
 
 Spain was now rising to at least equal greatness, and the 
 universality of the national movement in Europe appears from a 
 power so strongly Catholic also adopting it, and that with great 
 success. The corruption of the Church there, and the foreign 
 interference of Rome, had been matter of deep complaint in 
 Spain ; but by the concordat of 1482, Ferdinand and Isabella, 
 enthroned over a united people, received from the pope the right 
 of nomination to all the higher ecclesiastical offices, and a general 
 control over the Church of Spain. Even papal bulls were not to 
 be published until permission had been given by the Crown ; and 
 at the great councils already mentioned Spain used its influence 
 against the excess of papal authority. The result to the Church 
 of Spain was a vigorous reform from within, in which the Crown, 
 the universities, the Inquisition, and the priesthood all combined, 
 so that it passed unbroken through that shock of the Reformation, 
 which elsewhere in Europe displaced so much. 
 
 The "constitutional" episcopacy, which had for so many 
 earlier centuries opposed the power of the popes, must not be 
 confounded with the new nationalism, on which the concordats 
 were based. The former may, in some cases, have led on to and 
 merged in the latter ; but they were quite distinct in principle. 
 The former was based upon an ecclesiastical division of Europe ; 
 the latter upon a political. The former was deeply rooted in the 
 theory of the Church for many centuries ; the latter was wholly 
 foreign to it. But though abnormal and irregular, and appar-
 
 108 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 ently adopted very much as a weapon against the otherwise 
 intolerable despotism of the papacy, the new system of cutting up 
 the Church universal into national Churches was found not only 
 to have great advantages for the time, but to have foundations in 
 justice. The nations were by this time really independent. 
 They were separate peoples, divided by language and sympathies, 
 and no longer mere geographical expressions. National litera- 
 tures had begun to be formed, illustrated by genius like that of 
 Dante (d. 1321) and Petrarch (d. 1374) in Italy, and Chaucer 
 (d. 1400) in England. The kingly power which defined the 
 nation was itself supreme, and yet was popular with the masses, 
 whom it defended from feudal oppression without burdening them 
 with legislative or other responsibility. The Church was, no 
 doubt, divided into Churches because the empire was divided into 
 States ; but the borrowed arrangement was a good one, and a 
 time was soon to arrive when it would be necessary to defend it 
 on grounds other than those of convenience. 
 
 In the meantime, however, the frustration of the expectation of 
 a reform of the Church from within, began to tell on the minds 
 of men. The hopes and energies of the race turned from the 
 Church altogether, with a sort of unconscious despair turned, 
 with a new spring of unreasoning hope, in quite other directions. 
 Many things helped this result. Ever since the time of the 
 crusades (A.D. uoo to 1300) there had been a certain literary 
 intercourse between Europe and the East, and now the final 
 capture of Constantinople by the Turks (A.D. 1453) caused an 
 emigration into Italy of many, learned Greeks and Orientals. 
 The result was a renaissance of classic poetry, philosophy, and 
 art, the passion for which carried away the learned world alike 
 from the religious mysteries of the Church and the definitions 
 and abstractions of the schools. But other worlds were now to be 
 opened besides that of the pre-Christian past. By this time 
 Europe had attained the use of both gunpowder and mariner's 
 compass, and the discovery of America in 1492 by Columbus was 
 followed by the successes of other daring voyagers. The old
 
 BONIFACE TO THE REFORMATION. 109 
 
 barriers of the universe seemed suddenly thrown down, and the 
 minds of men expanded with their horizon. Yet all this went to 
 feed the rising strength of the great kingdoms and nationalities, 
 each with its fresh literature in its own vernacular, and with its 
 new career distinct from the hitherto common life of Europe. 
 No part of it strengthened the Church, or opened a door for 
 Church reform. Individuals who caught the flame of religious 
 life were still obliged to hide it in privacy. Those who, like 
 Savonarola in Florence (d. 1498), worked for a time alongside 
 of the Renaissance in hopeful practical earnestness, soon found 
 themselves isolated and crushed. Everywhere, indeed, the New 
 Learning was in a state of unconscious opposition to the mediaeval 
 system. Some studied Plato, for Aristotle had been accepted as 
 their master by the schools. Some, like the Humanists of Oxford 
 (Colet, Grocyn, Linacre, More, and their guest Erasmus), cultivated 
 the New Testament. And all attacked the lives of the clergy and 
 the mediaeval method of study through endless definition and 
 distinction. But Humanism, even in such hands, had no plan or 
 hope for the future ; and in the hands of most of its cultivators, it 
 was in relation to religion a secular and corrosive force. 
 
 Nowhere was this more manifest than among the wealthy and 
 corrupt princes of the Church. Many of them received the new 
 learning eagerly and hospitably, but only in its ornamental aspect 
 as culture. And when so received, it" was found to be fatal to 
 faith and morals. During this period, indeed, the hundred years 
 before the Reformation, the moral condition of the central 
 Church had sunk very low. 1 More and more the great powers of 
 Europe, while protecting themselves against the rights claimed 
 by earlier pontiffs over their subjects, came to consider the pope 
 merely as one among the other powers to be dealt with by skilful 
 diplomacy. More and more, too, the new popes came to 
 acquiesce in this view, and to be satisfied with those spoils of the 
 
 1 A poem of our day gives, in Mr. Browning's description of how " The 
 Bishop orders his tomb in St. Praxed's Church," a vivid idea of what things 
 occasionally came to.
 
 110 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 world which year by year were piled around the legendary seat 
 of the fisherman. It was not without important results that this 
 came to be the state of matters within a hundred years after the 
 great but abortive Council of Constance that one of the Borgias 
 sat on the papal throne when Savonarola fell to be judged, and 
 one of the half- Humanist half-Pagan Medici when Martin Luther 
 spoke to the conscience of the German people.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE REFORMATION : LUTHER AND GERMANY. 
 
 THE Reformation in its origin was an impulse in the hearts and 
 consciences of individual men. It had no relation in the first 
 instance to public associations such as the Church or the State. 
 On the contrary, it originated in a new and widespread convic- 
 tion, that in Christianity the private man is entitled and bound to 
 go direct to God Himself, and that if he does so in faith he 
 receives pardon and acceptance immediately from Him. But 
 of course this new view of Christianity led to a new view of the 
 Church. Men came again to regard it as merely the " congrega- 
 tion of believing men," and no longer as what it had for centuries 
 claimed to be, the hierarchical dispenser of grace and mediator 
 of pardon. With this authoritative claim of a hierarchical 
 church, Protestantism came into collision at once, and almost 
 immediately after with those civil powers the foremost being 
 the empire which had pledged themselves to maintain it by 
 intolerance. What relation the new ideas, in so far as they 
 might be victorious in the struggle, would themselves have to 
 the problem of toleration, was the great question of the political 
 future. 
 
 Martin Lather, the son of a German peasant, was born in 1483. 
 In his twenty-second year he left the study of law and entered the 
 Augustinian convent at Erfurt. His legal studies had prepared 
 him to sympathize with the German Church and the German 
 
 Empire against the aggressions of Rome ; but now for some 
 
 in
 
 112 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 years these external questions were forgotten, in a profound and 
 passionate desire to solve, chiefly in the study of the Holy 
 Scriptures, the question how the individual man may be just 
 with God. He visited Rome in 1511, and on his return to the 
 University of Wittenberg, in which he had for some years been 
 professor of philosophy, he became doctor of biblical theology, 
 and his preaching of justification of a sinner by faith became a 
 most powerful influence through the whole of Saxony. The 
 inevitable collision between this and the Church system came, 
 when Tetzel, a Dominican monk, was authorized by Pope Leo X. 
 to go through Germany selling pardons or indulgences in the 
 form of stamped tickets, at the rate of a few ducats for the graver 
 sins. All Germany sympathized in the protest which Luther, 
 on 3 ist October 1517, nailed on the church door at Wittenberg. 
 But keener observers saw that the reasons which he gave struck 
 deeper than against any mere abuse of the Church's admitted 
 powers. Cardinal Cajetan summoned the honest monk before 
 him, but soon gave him up as " a beast with deep-set eyes and 
 strange speculations in his head." Cardinal Miltitz more skil- 
 fully made a compromise, by which there was to be a cessation 
 of controversy, and Luther in the meantime should acknowledge, 
 in a general way, the authority of the Church. The truce was 
 broken by Dr. Eck, who challenged a public disputation on 
 indulgences at Leipsic, and Luther was now enabled, by the 
 learning of Melanchthon, to take a wider and firmer position in 
 support of his theses. Eck insisted on the authority of Rome in 
 favour of indulgences ; Luther denied that the Church of Rome 
 had authority over the other Churches of Christendom. Eck 
 rejoined that these were the opinions of Huss, condemned at 
 Constance. Luther replied that Huss was sometimes right, and 
 the Council of Constance, like other Councils, was sometimes 
 wrong. Eck, in horror, appealed to Rome ; Luther, in two famous 
 pamphlets, to the German people. In the first, addressed to the 
 nobility of the nation, he urged in detail the liberation of the 
 Church in Germany from the exactions and privileges of the
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 113 
 
 Roman Court. But he based it upon a denial of the traditional 
 distinction between the spiritual and the temporal estate ; for all 
 Christians are spiritual, and are priests to God, and popes and 
 bishops are, like other Christians, subject to the secular power 
 ordained of God. The second, On the Babylonish Captivity of 
 the Church, went farther still. In it he maintains that the 
 Catholic Church and its sacraments were originally free, but that 
 they had been enslaved by passing under the " tyranny " of the 
 Roman Curia. " By what right, I demand, has the pope given 
 us laws ? Who gave him the power to bring into bondage the 
 freedom we received in baptism ? . . . I assert that neither 
 pope, nor bishop, nor any human being, has the right to bind a 
 single syllable upon any Christian man, except with his own- 
 consent ; and whatever is done otherwise is tyrannically done ! " 
 
 These appeals, scattered in A.D. 1520 by the printing press, 
 among ten thousand enthusiastic readers in Latin and German, 
 anticipated by a short time the Papal Bull of excommunication. 
 For Rome had recognised now that the time for argument was 
 past, and the question was whether the secular power also could 
 be roused to crush the innovator. The position on the side of 
 the State was remarkable and critical. For several centuries the 
 influence of the Holy Roman Empire had been going down, not 
 only with great States, which, like England, France, and Spain, 
 held themselves to be independent, but even with the German 
 princes, who, as Electors, conferred the Imperial Crown. Still, 
 when a vacancy occurred, as had happened now on the death 
 of Maximilian in 1519, the greatest monarchs continued to 
 strive for the chief honour which the world could bestow. On 
 this occasion, Henry VIII. of England, and his brilliant rival, 
 Francis I. of France, were both candidates ; but so also was 
 Charles, the young heir of a mighty twofold realm, which in- 
 cluded Spain and Portugal on the one side, and on the other 
 Austria, Burgundy, and the Netherlands. The Electors, how- 
 ever, were jealous of great foreign powers ; and Erasmus tells 
 us how they all offered the Imperial Crown, in the first instance,
 
 114 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 to one of their own number, Frederic of Saxony, and how, with 
 characteristic magnanimity, he refused it, and recommended 
 that, in the interests of Germany, so great a burden should be 
 laid only on the most powerful shoulders. (Frederic, as it 
 happened, was the prince and protector of Luther.) So Charles 
 V., who had already the mightiest dominion in Europe and 
 the Indies which the world had for ages seen, became also the 
 nominal lord of the world and the real Emperor of Germany, 
 with all those titles of Defender, Protector, and Advocate of 
 the Christian Church, with which previous ages had armed his 
 high office. And he succeeded to it just as the new breach with 
 Rome was becoming irreconcilable. Luther's address to the 
 German nobility was dedicated, in the first place, "To His 
 Imperial Majesty" newly elected; and before the year 1520 
 closed, the emperor, not yet arrived in Germany, had laid before 
 him also the Papal Bull. By it the doctrines of Luther were 
 condemned, and he and his adherents were summoned to recant. 
 In many parts of Europe, in particular in the emperor's heredi- 
 tary territory of the Netherlands, the terrible instrument was at 
 once published. But in Germany the princes and people 
 hesitated as to what they were to do with it. One man had 
 no hesitation. Luther had already appealed against it to a 
 General Council of the Church ; and now, on loth December 
 1520, at the head of a procession of doctors and students 
 of the University of Wittenberg, he solemnly burned not only 
 the Bull, but those books of Canon Law and of the Roman Curia 
 against whose tyranny and usurpation he had already protested, 
 and which he now described as even Antichristian. The eyes of 
 the world were fixed on the daring defiance ; and to deal with this 
 and other matters of pressing concern, the Diet, or Great Council 
 of the Empire, was appointed to meet at Worms in the very 
 next month of January 1521. Charles himself took his seat in 
 it as German Emperor. A few weeks had passed, when he one 
 day suddenly called the princes together. It was to read them 
 a letter from Rome, presented by the Papal Nuncio, which
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 115 
 
 announced a fresh Papal Bull, actually excommunicating Luther 
 and his friends, and demanded that an Edict and Ban of the 
 Empire should be at once issued to give secular effect to the 
 condemnation. In response, Duke George of Saxony, notoriously 
 unfriendly to Luther, reminded the Diet that, whatever might be 
 the Wittenberg doctor's faults, Germany had innumerable griev- 
 ances against Italy. Luther's friends, too, urged that the Diet 
 should condemn no man unheard, even when sentenced by Rome. 
 After a short struggle, the emperor yielded so far as to grant 
 Luther a safe-conduct, and summoned him to appear at Worms. 
 
 On the 2nd April, in custody of the imperial herald, Luther set 
 off from Wittenberg for Worms. Around him, day by day, as he 
 travelled, there was an outburst of lamentation and sympathy, 
 for his friends and himself believed he was going on to death. 
 But the personal heroism of his appearance at the Diet must not 
 make us forget that Luther viewed it also as a great constitutional 
 crisis. Like all the Reformers, but more strongly perhaps than 
 any of them, Luther protested that he was not founding a new 
 Church. He remained of the Church ancient and catholic ; it 
 was Rome that had brought in additions, incrustations, usurpa- 
 tions, and sought to bind them on the Church. To evidence this, 
 the Saxon doctor was not content with appealing to Scripture 
 and the records of the Apostles. He took his stand also upon 
 the ancient creeds, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the 
 Athanasian Creed, and uttered and published them continually, 
 as a proof that " I adhere to the true Church of Christ," which 
 others sought to enslave to novelties. In the simplicity of his first 
 fervour, he fancied that even the Bishop of Rome might be in- 
 duced to acknowledge this, and so might separate himself from 
 the tyrannical power of the " Curia," which later centuries had 
 built around his ancient see. That hope had speedily become 
 vain ; and he who retained in bondage the once free flock of 
 Christ, was soon denounced by Luther as, on that account alone, 
 Antichrist. But there was another power besides that of the 
 bishops, which was bound to protect the rights of Christendom.
 
 Il6 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 The Emperor of Germany sat in the seat of Charlemagne, of 
 Theodosius, and of Constantine ; he was all along the secular head 
 of the Christian commonwealth ; and it had been and was his 
 duty to defend it in the freedom which it possessed when empire 
 and Church originally came together. The constitutional measure 
 of that freedom, the legal charter of the Church, Luther found 
 in that fundamental law of Theodosius, which not only estab- 
 lished Catholicism, but defined it, defined it by a creed (see 
 pp. 35, 47), which all admitted that Luther and his friends openly 
 held. With convictions and claims like these, but with no corre- 
 sponding hopes, Luther at last stood before the Hapsburg who 
 now held in his hand the orb of empire. Two hundred princes 
 and nobles shone in the circle around the monarch. Luther, 
 asked if he would retract the contents of his books, pointed out 
 that he could not answer definitely so general a question. " The 
 emperor wants a plain answer," said Dr. Eck. " Do you retract 
 what you have said against the Church and the Council?" "If 
 you want a plain answer," said Luther, " you shall have one 
 without horns or teeth. I cannot trust the pope alone, or 
 Councils alone, for it is clear that they have repeatedly gone 
 wrong and contradicted themselves. Until, therefore, I am 
 otherwise convinced by Scripture or plain reason, I am bound 
 by God's word and conscience, and I cannot and will not retract 
 what I have said. Here I stand !" 
 
 The appeal to the ruler of the empire against the ruler of the 
 Church was in vain. Next day, without even consulting the 
 Diet, Charles announced that, to stay this heretical plague, he, 
 descended from so many protectors of the Church, would peril 
 " kingdom, treasures, and friends, body and blood, and life and 
 soul." It was the natural temper of the young Spanish-Austrian 
 potentate ; but in addition, as Ranke reminds us, for the last 
 hundred years the pope and emperor, once mighty rivals, had in 
 their comparative weakness made common cause against the 
 European powers generally. On the very day when the imperial 
 edict against Luther bears to be signed, the 8th of May 1521, a
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 117 
 
 private treaty was concluded between Charles and Leo, in which 
 the latter agreed to help the emperor to drive his rival Francis out 
 of Milan and Genoa. Not only Annas and Caiaphas, but Herod 
 and Pilate, had agreed, was the remark of Frederic of Saxony, 
 who now retired in despair from Worms. In his absence the 
 Diet unanimously gave its approval to the dreaded edict. It 
 commenced as follows : 
 
 " The Almighty having confided to us, Charles the Fifth, more 
 kingdoms and greater authority than He has ever given to any of 
 our predecessors, we purpose employing every means in our 
 power to prevent our holy empire from being polluted by any 
 heresy." It calls upon all men, therefore, to give Martin Luther 
 neither food, drink, nor shelter ; to apprehend him and his ad- 
 herents, to burn his books, and to give himself up to the imperial 
 power ; " and if any person shall dare to act against this decree 
 of our imperial majesty, we place him under the ban of the 
 empire." 
 
 Such was the doom already hovering over Luther, and to 
 descend upon him when, on the close of his journey from Worms 
 to Wittenberg, his safe-conduct should expire. His safe-conduct 
 expired, but he did not arrive at Wittenberg. In the solitude of 
 the Thuringian forest, a masked and armed party dragged the 
 monk from among his terrified friends, and when, a few days 
 later, the imperial edict was published in Germany, no man 
 knew whether he whom it assailed was among the living or 
 the dead. But the empire had chosen its part. 
 
 For the empire itself it was a fatal choice. Quixotic as the 
 expectation might be, nothing perhaps could have saved that 
 oldest of all political institutions, except some attitude of religious 
 neutrality, and of protection of individual Germans in their 
 varying convictions, such as the Reformer had suggested or was 
 at least willing to accept. The later traditions of the Middle Age 
 for centuries made such a bold wisdom almost impossible. 
 Frederick the Wise, Luther's master, might perhaps have
 
 Il8 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 attempted it. Charles never would. And so the highest of 
 secular powers was now confronted by a new and strange thing, 
 the widespread resolve of men to be true to their religious 
 convictions against all assertion of authority, and to obey God 
 and His accepted Word and will rather than man. This obstacle, 
 added to those already existing in the divided constitution of 
 Germany and of Europe, wrecked the long lifework of Charles 
 V. His edict against Luther in 1521 was not even published 
 in some parts of Germany, and where published, it was not 
 obeyed. The Diet which met in his absence at Niirnberg in 
 1522 and 1524 formally suspended it, and left over the whole 
 question of religion to the Diet of Speier in A.D. 1526. 
 Before that sat, the insurrection of the nobles and of the 
 peasants had greatly weakened the Protestant cause, and the 
 emperor, having captured his great rival Francis at Pavia, had 
 taken him bound to help him to put down the German heresy. 
 But the intrigues of the Medicean Pope Clement again sowed 
 jealousies between the two monarchs, and prevented Charles 
 going to Speier. The Diet met, and issued a memorable decree. 
 It was to the effect that, as regards the matters dealt with by the 
 Edict of Worms, every State should live and rule and hold for 
 truth, as it should answer for itself before God and the emperor. 
 It was no doubt a compromise, and it probably introduced into 
 the Protestant world that cruel supremacy of the State or nation 
 over the conscience of the individual, from which we are only 
 now escaping. But when we look at the relation of the particular 
 State or nation to Europe as a whole, the Edict of Speier was a 
 real edict of toleration, and it broke the ban of the empire. 
 Charles, bitterly disappointed with the result in Germany, found 
 also that the pope had by this time gone the length of a secret 
 agreement against him with France. He turned first on his faith- 
 less ally, poured an army of Germans and Spaniards into Italy, 
 and stormed Rome in an assault, in which his captain the Duke of 
 Bourbon was slain, but which was followed by a sack so remorse- 
 less and prolonged, that it has been said, not untruly, that to the
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 119 
 
 Eternal City "Alaric was a gentle foeman matched with Bourbon." 
 Once more supreme in Europe, he sent his commissioner to the 
 second Diet of Speier in 1529, to insist on the original Edict of 
 Worms. The majority resolved, that it should continue to be 
 enforced where it had been so already, that mass should be 
 nowhere forbidden, and that in the meantime there should be no 
 new changes, i.e. no evangelical proselytism. Compromise though 
 this still was, as compared with the past it was reaction ; and 
 it would have so far crushed individual freedom of conscience, 
 even in reforming States, that the evangelical members of the 
 Diet at once signed a Protest, from which has come the historical 
 name of Protestant. Its preamble recalled that "in matters 
 which relate to the glory of God and the salvation of the soul," 
 each man must answer to God, and must not submit to human 
 authority or to majorities of votes. But what it formally de- 
 manded was a return to the former Speier vote. Five evan- 
 gelical States and many imperial cities gave their adhesion to 
 this. In A.D. 1530 the emperor himself presided in person at 
 the Diet of Augsburg, where the Protestants presented to him 
 the Augsburg Confession, that which all Lutherans acknowledge 
 to this day, and the first of the great family of creeds which in 
 this generation sprang from the soil of Europe. But Charles 
 now formed a league with Catholics outside Germany to help 
 him to crush the Protestants. They on their part refused sub- 
 sidies, and entered into the " League of Schmalkald." As the 
 result, the empire was for many years reduced to a deadlock. 
 In 1532, the peace of Niirnberg allowed the adherents of each 
 confession to hold their own ; and in 1541, the Diet went further, 
 and proclaimed that any one was to be free to adopt the Pro- 
 testant religion. The emperor, now no longer young, could not 
 bear all this with equanimity. The signal for his final effort was 
 given by the death of Luther in 1546. Great armaments were 
 poured upon the Protestant States ; their brilliant young general, 
 Maurice of Saxony, was persuaded into treachery ; the Pro- 
 testant League was overthrown at Miihlberg, and its two leaders
 
 120 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 were laid in a dungeon. For some years it seemed that his 
 work was done. But neither the religious nor the national life 
 of Germany could remain at peace under Spanish soldiery. 
 Before the year 1552 a new North German Confederation had 
 been formed ; Maurice promised them his sword* against Charles, 
 and the formidable alliance of France was secured. The 
 emperor lay at Innspruck, suspecting nothing, and proposing to 
 go on to the Council sitting at Trent. Suddenly the army of 
 the Protestant League hurried south to the Bavarian Alps ; 
 Maurice, in advance, seized Donauwerth, seized Ehrenberg, and, 
 hurling himself through the Tyrol passes, almost seized, as he 
 said, "the old fox" in his den. But Charles fled and escaped ; 
 the Council of Trent broke up in consternation ; and Europe saw 
 that in the long struggle the empire had at last failed. In the 
 same year were settled the preliminaries of that religious peace 
 which, at the Diet of Augsburg in A.D. 1555, was formally enacted 
 as " permanent, absolute, unconditional, and unending," and 
 which, in point of fact, has been the settlement of the question 
 in Germany down to our day. It was founded on the principle 
 of compromise already acted on, that the supreme civil power 
 in each State should choose whether the religion of that State 
 was to be Roman or Lutheran. Scarcely had this long-resisted 
 consummation been reached, when Charles resigned the too 
 oppressive load of his kingdoms and empire, and in the cloistered 
 paradise of Yuste spent the two last years of his wonderful 
 career. An unfounded tradition of later centuries ascribed to 
 himself the reflection which naturally occurred to others, when 
 the imperial virtuoso failed to make two of the convent clocks 
 keep time. " And this was the man who in earlier days had 
 wasted much blood and treasure to compel all the minds of 
 Europe to agree in their thoughts upon religion ! " Unfortunately, 
 what he really gave continual expression to, in his weakened 
 age, was a regret that he had not, nearly forty years before, dis- 
 regarded the safe-conduct which brought Luther to Worms, and 
 saved the Church universal by taking the German's life.
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 121 
 
 Rut it was not the great emperor only, it was the empire, that 
 had collapsed. Among the other disadvantages of the territorial 
 principle, by which the religion of Germany was henceforth to 
 be regulated, one was that it permanently split the Diet or Con- 
 federation. Germany remained divided into at least two princely 
 factions, with both of whom no supreme power could work, and 
 it became impossible for the Emperor of Germany, with his 
 authority disowned everywhere outside, to build upon it as ac- 
 knowledged even within. In point of fact, Germany gradually 
 sank not without suffering endless miseries from her divisions, as 
 in the Thirty Years' War into the state of neutrality and weak- 
 ness which lasted till our second half of the nineteenth century. 
 And the empire sank more rapidly still. Charles's successor, as 
 King of Spain, broke the power of that kingdom by sending the 
 Armada against the cliffs of Protestant England. His successors 
 in the empire, mostly Hapsburgs, did not even attempt much, 
 and had always to remember that half the members of the 
 Diet were Protestant. So, towards the end of the eighteenth 
 century, it came to pass that few in Europe remembered the 
 existence of the Holy Roman Empire "so called," said Voltaire, 
 " because it is neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." It had 
 become the shadow of a mighty name. Then came the Revolu- 
 tion, and in its intolerable brightness that dim shadow of past 
 greatness could no longer remain. It simply flitted away. 
 For when Francis II. of Austria, in August 1806, without any 
 immediate compulsion, announced to the Diet his resignation of 
 the Imperial Crown, he found no successor. 
 
 But the empire, though at the date of the Reformation it 
 retained its majestic form and traditions, was even then decayed 
 and ready to vanish away. It remains to consider how the new 
 movement affected in Germany the larger question of the civil 
 power generally, and of men's rights under it. It has often 
 been alleged, and not without truth, that the strongest germ of 
 political freedom, in an age when many such germs were floating
 
 122 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 in the air, was the religious principle of the Reformation. That 
 principle that the common man has immediate relation and 
 access to God, and in going to Him is free from all other authority 
 over his conscience had a great though indirect effect on politi- 
 cal rights. More perhaps than any other single principle, it has 
 tended gradually to displace the old doctrine of an unlimited 
 divine right of one individual over another, and to substitute for 
 it the modern doctrine, that the common man has a constitutional 
 place, by representation or otherwise, in the body politic, a body 
 to which he does not, even so, hand over all his original duties or 
 powers. The sympathy between the religious and political ideas 
 is most intelligible, though their connection is indirect. We 
 have seen already that all the powers of the human mind had 
 during the previous century been greatly expanded, and that, 
 without a formal attack upon authority, a deep sense of dissatis- 
 faction with it had come to be cherished, and a vast amount of 
 practical liberty was everywhere exercised. These were precisely 
 the circumstances in which an earnest and devout defiance of the 
 central power which for a thousand years had fettered mankind, 
 was sure to produce an immense effect. All the vague forces and 
 impulses for freedom, which had hitherto pressed outward in so 
 many directions, now gathered together and poured through the 
 breach which one German had made. Unfortunately the stage 
 at which civil society had arrived was not such as to permit the 
 political realization of the new ideas of freedom and responsibility 
 for some time to come. There was perhaps only one class of men 
 the burghers of the free cities throughout Europe who were 
 by this time trained to the exercise and the appreciation of free- 
 dom. Other classes, indeed, were appealed to by the political idea, 
 and at this critical moment they eagerly and rashly responded to 
 it. But this haste was followed by a reaction, which did much to 
 arrest, first the political, and then the religious future of the 
 country. 
 
 In Germany, as elsewhere, the feudal or territorial rule of the 
 small knights and barons was now giving place to that of the
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 123 
 
 greater princes, electors, and kings. It was, on the whole, as we 
 can now see, a good exchange for the mass of the peasants and 
 commonalty who were under both. But the knights of the empire 
 naturally saw in it the mere increase of centralization and absolut- 
 ism, with the withdrawal of their own ancient German freedom, 
 and, not without much sympathy from others, they prepared for 
 resistance and revolt. Their two leaders Franz von Sickingen, 
 a robber-hero, whose castle was near Worms, and Ulrich von 
 Hutten, a man of brilliant and bitter genius, who will always have 
 a place in German literature both sympathized with Luther, and 
 swelled the appeal in his favour to the Emperor. Consequently, 
 when these and their allied knights broke out, two years after the 
 Diet of Worms, into open rebellion in name of the emperor, and 
 were crushed by the princes and electors, they perished *not 
 without the sympathy of men who looked to the coming of a 
 new order. But a deeper convulsion was at hand the Peasants' 
 War. It was by no means the earliest in the same territory the 
 south of Germany. In Germany generally the peasant was still 
 a serf, and the feudal yoke which weighed upon him had been 
 rather increased by the introduction of the Roman law, whose 
 absolutist principles gave no appeal against the arbitrary com- 
 mands of the superior. In other countries matters were better. 
 In England serfdom had almost ceased, and the peasant could 
 appeal to one common law against any attempt of his lord to 
 increase either his services or the money which he was now 
 entitled to tender instead of them. In France the same reforms 
 were begun, though imperfectly. Within the German Empire 
 itself the Swiss Forest Cantons had, in the fourteenth century, 
 asserted their independence in order to be free from feudal 
 oppression ; and in the fifteenth century the Graubund, or con- 
 federated peasants of the Rhaetian Alps, did the same. But the 
 German peasant of the plains still groaned under the feudal and 
 Imperial yoke. In 1476 there was an insurrection in Franconia ; 
 in 1492, in Kempten, by Lake Constance ; in 1493, ' n Elsass ; in 
 1502, beside the Neckar and the Rhine; in 1512, in the Black
 
 124 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Forest ; and in 1514, in Wiirtemberg and Swabia. In the later of 
 these risings, most of which were promptly stamped out, the 
 symbol or standard of revolt had come to be the Bundschuh or 
 peasant's clog, and their recurrence had led to the Swabian 
 League, by which " the noble and knightly orders have agreed, 
 whatever shall happen, to support each other against every such 
 attempt on the part of the common man." It was on the New 
 Year's Day of A.D. 1525 that the common man again rose in insur- 
 rection in Swabia, and on this occasion the peasants formulated 
 their demands in twelve articles. They wanted i. To choose their 
 own pastor to preach the Gospel ; 2. To pay a tithe of corn, partly 
 for his support, and the rest to the poor ; 3. To be free from serf- 
 dom, for Christ has made men free ; 4. from game laws ; 5. To 
 be entitled to take firewood from the forest ; 6. To have no new 
 services imposed ; or, 7. to receive fair pay for them ; 8. To have 
 rents valued and fixed ; 9. To have fixed and written law admini- 
 stered, and not to be left to caprice ; 10. To have common lands 
 restored to the parish ; n. To be free from the heriot or death- 
 tax ; 12. These articles only to be insisted on if they are just, 
 according to Scripture. Luther issued an appeal to both parties, 
 in which, in the first place, he pointed out to the nobles that the 
 peasants' demands were generally just. "You must not refuse 
 their demand as to choosing pastors who may preach to them 
 the Gospel, the Government has only to see that insurrection and 
 rebellion be not preached ; but there must be perfect liberty to 
 preach the true Gospel as well as the false." Even the remaining 
 articles, which deal with the social state of the peasants, he 
 thought also in themselves just. But then, turning to the 
 peasants, he urged upon them, that while they might petition 
 their lords for a change, they must not use force even for what 
 seemed most right, but were bound to leave the sword and the 
 whole right of administration in the hand of the higher powers. 
 The delicate question, whether the people, or a section of the 
 people, has a right to extort what is just and equitable, has been 
 largely solved in later times by the device of representative
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 125 
 
 government, in the working of which constitutional pressure takes 
 the place of violence. Two centuries were yet to pass before 
 such a solution could be proposed to Germany, or, indeed, to 
 Continental Europe. To avoid the practical consequences, Luther 
 earnestly recommended arbitration, but the proposal failed. The 
 insurrection began to spread everywhere, and the Reformer, true 
 to the conservative principle he had expressed, joined in urging 
 its immediate suppression by the princes. It was suppressed, 
 with great slaughter and cruelty, and the wrongs of the peasants 
 were left unredressed in Germany even down to the present 
 century. Their demands had been generally simple and honest, 
 and not much mixed up with theories. But the world was now 
 entering upon a period of thought and theory, such as had not 
 been known for a thousand years ; and it was impossible to pre- 
 vent an explosion of individualism. Among those known and 
 suppressed at this time as Anabaptists, there were, no doubt, some 
 who were simply in advance of their time, and who maintained 
 the views as to toleration and the rights of conscience which have 
 in our day become accepted truths, though then rejected by all. 
 But others, and those the prominent and representative men, 
 proclaimed anarchy in Church and State. Their principle of an 
 inner divine light in the individual, was used to supersede not 
 only the guidance of revelation from without, but all the institu- 
 tions and organizations of men. That no Christian should be a 
 ruler, or should use the sword, or should wage war even at the 
 ruler's command, were among their precepts ; and views which 
 seemed to threaten the dissolution of society were at once put 
 under the ban both of Catholics and Reformers. Many held, 
 like Erasmus, that Luther had sown the seed of it all ; and the 
 imputation, not without a deep truth under it, haunted the 
 Reformer and his friends. The Peasants' War, in 1525, was 
 exactly intermediate between Luther's personal confession at 
 Worms in 1521, and the first Confession or Creed of Luther's 
 church in 1530. There can be no doubt that by the latter date 
 he and his friends were already beginning to be influenced by a
 
 126 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 general reaction against individualism, and, in particular, by a 
 hesitation to apply the principles of toleration to the relation of 
 Church and State. Yet the forces liberated flowed into their 
 natural channel in spite of the hesitations of the leaders ; and 
 the first and greatest of the Protestant Confessions, embodying 
 the authoritative views of the Evangelical (i.e. Lutheran) Church, 
 forms also a landmark in the question of this volume. It marks 
 a point which the advance of thought then for a moment reached, 
 from which it soon receded, and to which it has only gradually 
 returned. 
 
 The Creeds of the Church down to the Reformation contained 
 nothing on the relations of Church and State. They confined 
 themselves to confessing "the holy Catholic Church, and the 
 communion of saints ; " and for the principles of interaction 
 which regulated the two bodies, we have had to go to civil legis- 
 lation on the one hand, and to the edicts of popes and councils on 
 the other. In the Reformation age it is to be otherwise. The 
 same enthusiasm which carried men back to studying the records 
 of primitive Christianity, led to their everywhere confessing their 
 own religious faith ; and the enormous pressure with which 
 Church and State had, during recent ages, combined to pre- 
 vent such confession, made it impossible longer to pass over their 
 powers. Indeed, most of the confessions of the sixteenth century 
 (and in particular this of Augsburg in 1530, drafted by Melanchthon 
 under Luther's guidance) were uttered and presented to the 
 empire or other civil power, to satisfy it that the Protestants were 
 catholic Christians of the ancient type, or at least were peaceful 
 and religious citizens entitled to the protection of the law. 
 
 What, then, were the principles of the first Protestant Con- 
 fession ? 
 
 In the seventh article we find what it has to say 
 
 Of the Church. 
 "There is one holy Church which shall abide perpetually.
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 127 
 
 But that Church is the congregation of saints (or, assembly 
 of all believers *) in which the gospel is purely taught, and the 
 sacraments rightly administered. And for the true unity of the 
 Church it is enough to be agreed on the teaching of the gospel 
 and the administration of the sacraments. For it is not at all 
 necessary that its human traditions, as for example rites and 
 ceremonies, which are instituted by men, should be alike in every 
 place." 
 
 It is pointed out in the next article, and more fully in Melanch- 
 thon's Apology for the Confession, that while the Church 
 properly consists of those who truly believe, and are as such 
 known only to God, it necessarily becomes a visible body when 
 these profess their faithj and " congregate " round the word and 
 sacraments, with others who do the same. And that some 
 existing, and even ministering, in the body are false professors 
 and evil men, is no reason for leaving the Church. This con- 
 fession differs from most of the "Reformed," i.e. Calvinistic, 
 which followed it, in not adding " discipline," as a third note of 
 the Church, to the "word" and "sacraments." Yet a subsequent 
 article goes on to define the power of ministers of the word, or 
 bishops, in a way which seems to provide for the same kind of 
 internal regulation. It is entitled 
 
 Of Ecclesiastical Power. 
 
 " The power of the keys, or the power of bishops, is, according 
 to the gospel, a power or commission from God, of preaching the 
 gospel, of remitting and retaining sins, and of administering the 
 sacraments. It is exercised only by teaching or preaching the 
 word, and administering the sacraments, to individuals or to a 
 number, as the case may call for." And after pointing out that 
 existing bishops sometimes had an imperium or power of the 
 sword conceded to them by kings or emperors, but that this, 
 where it existed, was a delegated civil function, different from the 
 ministry of the gospel, it goes. on: "This imperium must be 
 distinguished from ecclesiastical jurisdiction. According to the 
 gospel (or, as the phrase is, of divine right), no jurisdiction is 
 competent to bishops as bishops that is, as those to whom is 
 committed the ministry of word and sacraments except (i) to 
 remit sins, (2) to examine into doctrine, and to reject that teach- 
 ing which is inconsistent with the gospel, and (3) to exclude 
 
 1 The latter is the form used in the German version, which was read to the 
 emperor before the Latin version was put into his hand. The nineteenth 
 article of the Church of England (adopted 1562) says, that "The visible 
 Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men (coetus fidelium) in the 
 which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly 
 ministered. "
 
 128 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 men whose impiety is notorious from the communion of the 
 Church To exclude them not by human violence, but by the 
 word." i 
 
 But the main contest in that age was against the aggressions 
 of the Church upon the individual and the State. And in 
 article sixteen the confession treats 
 
 Of Civil Affairs. 
 
 " Concerning civil affairs, our Churches teach that civil ordin- 
 ances, when they are lawful, are good works of God, and that it 
 is right for Christians to take the magistrate's office, etc. They 
 condemn the Anabaptists, who forbid these civil offices to Chris- 
 tian men. . . . Christians, therefore, must of necessity obey their 
 governors and laws, save only when they command to sin, for 
 then they must obey God rather than men." 
 
 This, however, is a meagre treatment of the matter of the civil 
 power, and in a long subsequent article, Part ii. art. 7 (some 
 quotations from which we have anticipated above), the confession 
 recalls how in time past there has been a mischievous comming- 
 ling by bishops, and especially by popes, of the ecclesiastical 
 power and the power of the sword, and goes on to state 
 
 The Difference between Church Power and Civil Power. 
 
 "We are compelled, therefore, for the satisfaction of men's 
 consciences, to set forth the distinction between ecclesiastical 
 power and the power of the sword. We have taught, no doubt, 
 that both of them, because of God's commandment, are dutifully 
 to be reverenced and honoured, as God's greatest blessings on 
 this earth. But our view as to the distinction is this : The power 
 of the keys, or the power of bishops, is, according to the gospel, a 
 power or commission from God of preaching the gospel, of remit- 
 ting and retaining sins, and of administering the sacraments. . . . 
 It is exercised only by teaching or preaching the word, and 
 administering the sacraments, to individuals or to a number, as 
 the case may call for. For thereby are given to us, not corporeal 
 things, but things eternal an eternal righteousness, the Holy 
 Spirit, and eternal life. These things come not to men, but by 
 the ministry of the word and the sacraments. Seeing, then, that 
 the ecclesiastical power deals with things eternal, and is exercised 
 only by the ministry of the word, it does not interfere with (non 
 impedif) the administration of civil affairs, any more than does 
 
 1 In the Apology for the Confession, Art. xiv., Melanchthon explains that this 
 includes a double power, ordinis and jurisdictionis ; but not a tyrannical 
 power, i.e. with no fixed law, nor a royal power, i.e. above law. The "fixed 
 law " of Church jurisdiction is the word of God.
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 129 
 
 the art of singing. For the administration of civil affairs has to 
 deal with other matters than the gospel deals with. The magis- 
 trate does not defend men's minds, but their bodies, and other 
 corporeal things, against manifest injuries ; and he coerces men 
 by the sword and by corporal pains, in order to uphold civil 
 justice and peace. Wherefore the ecclesiastical and civil powers 
 are not to be confounded. The ecclesiastical has its own com- 
 mand to preach the gospel and to administer the sacraments. 
 Let it not intrude into the office of another than itself ; let it not 
 transfer the kingdoms of this world ; let it not abrogate the 
 magistrates' laws ; let it not withdraw from them lawful obedi- 
 ence ; let it not hinder judicial decisions touching any civil 
 ordinances or contracts ; let it not prescribe laws to the magis- 
 trates as to the form of the commonwealth. In this way do our 
 teachers distinguish the functions of either power, while they 
 exhort men to hold both in honour, and to acknowledge both as 
 the gift and blessing of God." 
 
 There are many reasons why prominence should be given to 
 the utterances on this great question of the first-born of the 
 Protestant Confessions. Its views on the functions and powers 
 of the Church (with the exception of a certain significant weak- 
 ness on the subject of its organization) are substantially the same 
 with those of the rest of Protestantism. Its doctrines of the 
 independent existence of the Church and the State, and of their 
 separate and co-ordinate functions, are those of the early Church 
 before and after Constantine, and, indeed, do not differ very 
 much from those of early mediaevalism before the days of Hilde- 
 brand. 1 But while it thus stands fundamentally on the general 
 ground common to the Church in all ages, on one point and 
 
 1 Between Gregory I. and Gregory VII. there was no more powerful pope 
 than Nicolas I. ; but even his aggressive letter, addressed in A.D. 865 to the 
 eastern Emperor Michael, balances and " co-ordinates " things in the follow- 
 ing way : 
 
 " The administration of earthly things ought to be as absolutely separate 
 from things sacred, as a clergyman or soldier of God should be from things 
 secular. . . . The emperor never assumed to himself the rights of the 
 pontificate, nor did the pontiff ever usurp the name of emperor, ... in 
 order that Christian emperors might stand in need of the pontiffs for the 
 life eternal, and that the pontiffs in regard to things merely temporal might 
 use the laws of the empire." 
 
 I
 
 130 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 that the most important practically it has made an immense 
 advance. There is no hint here of the tenet which the whole 
 Church had rushed into even before the Middle Age began, that 
 the magistrate should back with his sword the sentences of the 
 Church, and visit heretics with civil pains. No such idea is 
 suggested, and the whole drift of the discussion of Church and 
 State in the creed is opposed to it. Nor is this all. Not only is 
 the old ground of intolerance discarded, but the new is not taken 
 up. Consciously or unconsciously, a political foundation is laid 
 for that doctrine of toleration^ which the world as a whole was 
 only to accept some centuries later. For the definition here of 
 the function of the magistrate, as simply defending men's persons 
 and property against aggression, and that with civil justice and 
 peace as his proper aim and object, such a definition, whatever 
 its defects, has at least the merit of cutting up all persecution by 
 the roots, and making it impossible in the future on any great 
 scale, whether at the instance of the Church or of the State itself. 
 Had the world been ripe to take up the views which were laid 
 down in the first Protestant Confession, it might have leaped 
 over the difficulties on Church and State which have beset the 
 three intermediate centuries, and have entered at once into a 
 long postponed inheritance. 
 
 Nor does it seem doubtful that the Augsburg Confession in this 
 respect reflects the early ideas or hopes of Luther himself. We 
 have already quoted utterances of his which show that here, too, 
 as in the primitive ages, Christianity when under persecution saw 
 instinctively the necessity for the neutrality of the civil power in 
 order to the liberty of conscience. And seven years before this 
 confession was presented to the emperor, in the first year, 
 indeed, after Luther returned from his mysterious absence in the 
 Wartburg, he published a treatise expressly " On the secular 
 power, and how far obedience is due to it." Here, of course, 
 he urged that the secular power was of God, and independent 
 of the Church, and that in its own province its actions, whether 
 right or wrong, must be implicitly obeyed. And as to what its
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 131 
 
 province was, he was equally clear. " Its duty is to secure 
 external peace and order, and to protect men their persons and 
 property against ill-doers. . . . But God cannot and will not 
 allow any one but Himself to rule the soul. Whenever, there- 
 fore, the temporal power presumes to legislate for the soul, it 
 encroaches. No one can or shall force another to believe." And 
 as to guarding men against heresy, that belongs to bishops, or 
 to the ministry of the word, and not to princes. " God's word 
 must here fight. Heresy is something spiritual, that cannot be 
 hewn with steel or burned with fire." l And again, " Body, gold, 
 and goods God has given over to the emperor ; the heart He has 
 reserved to Himself. The Church is to be governed with the 
 spoken sword, the rod of the mouth, which alone touches the 
 conscience. The civil authority has nothing else than the sword 
 of the fist and a rod of wood." And as their means are different, 
 so are their ends. " The end and aim of the Church is the peace 
 of eternity ; that of the State is peace on earth." 
 
 But from the first it was found hard to practise what in theory 
 was so clearly seen. Even in 1522, having it put to him what 
 should be done in a district where both evangelical and Romish 
 teachers spoke, he answered that the magistrate "should hear 
 both sides ; and, since it is not good that in one parish the people 
 should be exposed tc contradictory preaching, he should order to 
 be silent whatever side does not consist with the Scriptures ! " 
 Such a concession was of course fatal ; and unfortunately, while 
 all the German Catholic princes already maintained their right 
 to hang and burn for heresy, the Protestant princes (with the 
 single exception of Luther's own master, the wise and good 
 Frederic of Saxony) were equally willing to be persuaded to put 
 down, each in his own territory, any religion of which he did not 
 approve. When pressed themselves by persecution, indeed, they 
 were obliged to fall back on deeper principles. The phrase of their 
 
 1 ' ' These are the most powerful and comprehensive utterances which we 
 possess from the mouth of the reformer about the demarcation of these 
 provinces." Kostlin's Life of Luther, p. 285.
 
 132 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Protest at Speier in 1529, that in matters of religion a majority 
 cannot bind the minority, is quite in accordance with the early 
 views of Luther on liberty of conscience, and with their own later 
 Augsburg Confession. Yet, when it came to practice, the enact- 
 ing of such a general liberty was not even proposed, partly, no 
 doubt, because it was hopeless to expect its concession. At 
 Speier in 1526, and at NUrnberg in 1532, as at the final Religious 
 Peace in Augsburg in 1555, the Protestant side merely proposed 
 to base that peace on the compromise, Cujus rcgio, ejus religio, 
 whoso rules the territory, let him regulate the religion ! And 
 so much, and no more, was conceded to the Protestant nobles 
 (and only, among them, to those who held the Lutheran or 
 Augsburg form of faith). So strictly was the territorial principle 
 adhered to, that the only alleviation of the local despotism was 
 a "right of emigration," now conceded to every German, on 
 grounds of difference in religion from his prince. But within 
 Catholic and Protestant States alike, the civil power had thus 
 assumed intolerant functions of a kind manifestly inconsistent 
 with the views of the confession. Luther to the last seems to 
 have desired to keep a certain accord with what it says of the 
 magistrate, that he deals merely with men's bodies and goods, 
 and with a view only to maintain justice and peace. But even 
 before the utterance of that confession, Melanchthon, in a letter 
 written when organizing the Saxon electorate in 1528, had sub- 
 stituted the very different theory, that the civil magistrate's 
 ultimate aim is to establish the true knowledge of God, and that, 
 as the guardian of both tables of the law, he must deal with and 
 punish heresy. So swiftly had the wheel of persecuting theory 
 run its first circle. 
 
 The other wheel of the subjection of the Church to the State 
 moved on the same axle, and on that side also the original 
 theory was now crushed quite out of shape. It has always been 
 felt a difficult question why Luther, whose fundamental principle 
 was that believers are equally priests to God, and that they 
 together form that " whole community of the Church," which
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 133 
 
 entrusts office to individuals, " did not give himself any concern 
 to develop a Church government or organisation, while he 
 nevertheless perceived that the very idea of the thing required 
 it." * His early legal and absolutist training, and his subsequent 
 attraction to the mystic and quietist writers, no doubt reinforced 
 that healthful horror which he always had of mixing up the 
 martyr and confessor spirit with political movements. But the 
 result was that no self-government was tried even in the Church, 
 far less in the State. The first difficulty he felt was, Who were to 
 be held members of the Church? He was scarcely prepared to 
 admit all who were subjects of a Protestant prince, as being 
 therefore true or even professing believers. As early as 1 523 he 
 threw out an idea, which in 1 526 he expanded in his " German 
 Mass," that before long men in each place " who were Christians 
 in earnest, and were willing to confess the gospel, should enrol 
 themselves by name," and form a congregation for Christian 
 worship and charity. But while doing homage to the idea, he 
 added, " I cannot at present institute such assemblies ; I have not 
 the right persons to place in them : if the thing becomes possible, 
 I shall not be wanting in this duty." Yet, before the same year 
 ended, he used his influence to prevent the experiment being tried 
 in Hesse, where a synod under the landgrave had approved of a 
 constitution by which congregations, thus voluntarily enrolled, 
 should appoint their pastors and bishops, who with other deputies 
 should in turn form a general assembly for the whole Church. 
 Luther, perhaps with practical sagacity, objected to it as pre- 
 mature. He "had not the boldness" for it, he said. "Laws 
 seldom succeed which are put too early into use and practice ; 
 they must first fashion themselves." No doubt, too, he was much 
 influenced by Melanchthon, who had at this time a fixed idea 
 that there should be a doctrinal reconciliation with the old 
 bishops, and that they should do the necessary organizing. But 
 by the time when the confession was presented in 1530, the 
 opportunity for instituting self-government was practically gone, 
 1 Dr. Darner's Hist, of Protestant Theology.
 
 134 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 and it was equally manifest that the bishops were not likely to 
 supply its place. Yet the need for organization was of course 
 pressing, and during the ten years that followed, till 1540, the 
 work throughout Germany was gradually transferred to those 
 secular and all-powerful hands which in theory had least to do 
 with it. In Saxony, indeed, Luther, or rather Melanchthon, had 
 made a beginning as early as 1528. The former's preface to the 
 latter's scheme explains (in the Englished words of Luther's 
 biographer), " that since the bishops and archbishops had proved 
 faithless to their duty, no one else had been found whose special 
 business it was," and the temporal sovereign had been requested 
 "to render this service to the gospel, out of Christian charity, 
 since, in his capacity as civil ruler, he was under no obligation to 
 do so." Luther himself is stated to have always adhered to this 
 awkward explanation of the civil power's entering upon Church 
 rule ; and, while admitting in later years that the Protestant 
 princes had really become bishops, he labelled them "bishops 
 for want of better" (Nothbischofe ; Makeshift - bishops). Yet 
 during those ten years the makeshift had developed into a 
 regular Jus Reformandi, or right of organizing and regulating the 
 Church, claimed by the Protestant sovereign ; and the theo- 
 logians were obliged to support it by the idea of a "double 
 character" (duplex persona) sustained by the one man. In 
 Dante's phrase reversed, the " crook was grafted on the sword." 
 Practically this came to be " simply the royal supremacy even in 
 ecclesiastical affairs" (Dorner) ; and in 1540 a further step was 
 taken, by putting the Church under those consistories, which have 
 down to our own day governed the Lutheran communion. A 
 consistory is a board of jurists and theologians, appointed by the 
 Crown, which elects and governs even the superintendents (the 
 highest ecclesiastical functionaries), and which very soon claimed 
 for itself, along with secular powers, the duty of preserving 
 doctrine, regulating worship, and pronouncing excommunications ; 
 in short, almost all that the Reformers had reserved to the " con- 
 gregation" and the "ministry of the word." Luther had his
 
 THE REFORMATION: LUTHER AND GERMANY. 135 
 
 misgivings, and expressed them as usual in sharp-edged words : 
 "Satan remains Satan. Under the pope he pushed the Church 
 into the State ; now he wishes to push the State into the Church." l 
 But when his great heart was laid to rest in 1546, the Protestant 
 princes had so far successfully defended the Church in Germany 
 with the sword, and the dangers of their episcopate were in the 
 future. And meantime the problem of civil and religious freedom, 
 never so well solved in theory as in the creed of the Lutheran 
 Fatherland, had passed in practice to the other " Reformed " 
 communions chiefly in lands outside. 
 
 1 The translation is taken from Dr. Geffcken's Chunk and State, the two 
 volumes of which in English are valuable on all parts of the history, and 
 especially as to that of Germany.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE REFORMATION : CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND. 
 
 THE "Reformed Churches" have been generally taken in 
 England as equivalent to the whole of Protestantism. But on 
 the Continent, and in Germany especially, the "Reformed" is 
 distinguished from the " Evangelical " Church, and Protestantism 
 has been divided not unequally between the two. The Evangelical 
 branch includes Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, as well as 
 most of Germany, and is derived historically from Luther. The 
 Reformed, originating in Switzerland, and spreading through 
 France, Holland, England, Scotland, and America, has trans- 
 mitted in its flow the controlling influence of Calvin. Both were 
 protests against the interposition of the Church between God and 
 man. But while the Lutheran Reformation builds rather on 
 immediate access to God through His promise, the Calvinistic 
 founds rather on the immediate authority of God through His 
 truth. It might be supposed that the former of these would do 
 more for the freedom of the Church. And so in the first instance 
 it did. But, as centuries have passed, the second has in this 
 respect almost excelled it. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the Reformed or Calvinistic branch of 
 Protestantism, which has prospered in democracies like Holland, 
 Switzerland, and the United States, 1 originated in a peasant 
 republic. Switzerland had been free for two hundred years, when 
 
 1 In Scotland, also, the Reformation was largely influenced by what were 
 then known as the republican, but what in modern times may be accepted as 
 the constitutional, doctrines of George Buchanan, who taught in his famous 
 
 136
 
 THE REFORMATION: CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND. 137 
 
 Zwingli commenced the Reformation at Zurich ; and while the 
 form of government varied in the different cantons of the Con- 
 federation, all were more or less democratic. This earlier 
 liberation from feudal and imperial rule made it easy now to 
 assert a like freedom from Rome on the part of each small Swiss 
 republic. But it made it easy, too, to take a farther and more 
 doubtful step. In Switzerland and Germany alike, the Reforma- 
 tion meant for the individual man not only freedom from human 
 authority in religion, but subjection to divine authority. Why 
 should not the same rule be applied to the corporate self-govern- 
 ing body, and the magistrate chosen to represent it ? Why 
 should not the State, now free from the authority of man, be 
 subject to that of God? In other words, why should a self- 
 governing State not have an opinion and a conscience in matters 
 of religion ? Zwingli held the priesthood of individual Christians, 
 and their freedom from the hierarchy, as strongly as Luther. 
 Further, he and all the Reformed agreed with Luther in one 
 great principle as to "the magistrate," which finds expression 
 in all the rising confessions of Europe. He must, they all 
 held, be independent in religious matters of the authority of the 
 Church. But they added that if he is to act in religious matters 
 at all (which was as yet assumed), he is bound to have respect to 
 divine truth and divine authority. As a private individual, the 
 magistrate had now, on the new principles, what he never had 
 before, his private judgment in matters of religion. But to this, 
 on the side of the " Reformed," was now very generally added a 
 public judgment in religion, as part of the magistrate's duty. 
 
 Indeed, the revolt against the despotic power of the spirituality 
 was at first stronger still. In the Theses which Zwingli published 
 in 1 523 (seven years before the Augsburg Confession), he went 
 very far towards transferring that whole power to the Civil State. 
 There is no such thing, he says, as " ghostly power ; " it all 
 
 De Jure Regni that the prince's power is a trust from the people ; that its 
 extent is limited by the terms of the trust ; and that if he wilfully transgresses 
 it, he may be resisted and deprived.
 
 138 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 belongs to the magistrate, and the magistrate should rule accord- 
 ing to the law of Christ, and may be deposed when he does not. 
 This doctrine of a theocracy or " Civitas Christiana," which 
 might seem to work well where the State was tolerably unanimous 
 (as afterwards in Geneva), led to immediate confusion in a Con- 
 federation many of whose magistrates, like those of the Forest 
 Cantons, were conscientiously zealous for Rome ; and Zwingli's 
 extreme theory died with him in 1531 on the fatal field of Cappel. 
 The exaltation of the functions of the magistrate, however, was 
 in that age favoured by many influences. The First Helvetic 
 Confession, published at Basle in 1536, gives the accepted view 
 on this point of the Reformed cantons of Switzerland, and it 
 formulates a dangerous doctrine, which for generations was to 
 retard the advent of toleration after its hour had struck. " The 
 chief office of the magistrate," it says, "is to defend religion, and 
 to take care that the word of God be purely preached, and that 
 education of the young, public worship, and the poor, be all 
 maintained. In addition to these, he is to judge justly, maintain 
 the public peace," etc. This inversion of the magistrate's duty is, 
 as we have seen, contradicted throughout by the more famous 
 Augsburg Confession, published six years before ; and it was to a 
 slight extent receded from in the Second Helvetic Confession, a 
 document of great authority, published in 1566. "The magis- 
 trate," the later document holds, " is instituted for the peace and 
 tranquillity of mankind, and to procure that is his chief office." 
 But as he can do that most successfully by being himself a 
 religious man and encouraging the truth, " we hold also that the 
 care of religion is a first duty of the religious magistrate," who 
 should follow God's word in his legislation, and punish incor- 
 rigible heretics. The proper office of the magistrate is here 
 declared in nearly the same terms as those used by Luther, and 
 the addition of a duty to religion is made matter of reasoning, 
 and even so is apparently left conditional on the official being 
 himself a believer. Both these Swiss Confessions also go back to 
 the earlier and universal Christian doctrine, by lodging a " power
 
 THE REFORMATION: CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND. 139 
 
 of the keys " in the Church and in its pastors. In so doing they 
 no doubt make room for a possible collision between the Church 
 and the functions for the first time ascribed to the magistrate. 
 The same view of the magistrate's functions spread to the 
 other Reformed lands. Yet even in Switzerland, and within the 
 limits of the Confederation as a whole, it was the doctrine of 
 toleration that gained the first-fruits of triumph. The bloody 
 and bitter conflicts between the Protestant and Catholic cantons 
 ended in two treaties, embodying a compromise singularly like 
 that of Germany. It was provided in both documents, that the 
 two parties should be left " in possession of their faith," and this 
 mutual toleration by independent States was founded in 1529 on 
 the general principle, that " God's word and the faith are not 
 things as to which it is lawful to use force." A step farther than 
 in Germany was taken in the same direction, by the provision 
 that in the independent territories of Switzerland " the majority in 
 each congregation " shall decide for or against the Mass. So 
 early did the true practice outrun the false theory. 
 
 Instructive as this Zwinglian episode was, the history of Calvin 
 and Geneva was more so. Six years after Zwingli died, Calvin 
 wrote his Institutes, the most influential of all Protestant treatises, 
 in the form of an exposition of the Apostles' Creed. In it he 
 expounded the Christian faith in the " Holy Catholic Church," 
 as an independent institution enjoying self-government under 
 the laws of Christ, and deprecated confusion between this 
 function and the function, equally divinely derived, of the civil 
 magistrate. In the same year, 1536, he was invited to settle at 
 Geneva by the magistrates, and at once commenced to organize 
 a Church there, with pastors, elders, and deacons, on the 
 supposed primitive model. Before two years had passed, how- 
 ever, this claim to self-government led to a memorable collision. 
 The " power of the keys," or ecclesiastical jurisdiction, implied, 
 in the view of the " Reformed " Church, the right of refusing to 
 admit to the sacraments men openly vicious ; and, after careful 
 inquiry, Calvin and the other pastors announced to the magis-
 
 14 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 trates of Geneva that they, for the Church, must act upon this 
 principle. The magistrates rejoined that this was setting up 
 a new papacy, and that it belonged to the civil power to repress 
 the vice of the city by its own laws. Calvin, unlike Luther, held 
 that independent Church rule and discipline were fundamental 
 to church life ; and he and his friends, refusing to submit, were 
 actually banished from Geneva. Years passed, and in every 
 adjacent place where the new religious life took root, it grew up 
 in the form of a free Presbyterian organization, till, in 1540, even 
 the learned and luxurious Geneva yielded, and recalled the 
 Reformers on their own terms. Calvin and his Church consistory 
 at once drew up the Ecclesiastical Ordinances, which they 
 described as " the spiritual regimen, which God hath ordained in 
 His Church, reduced to a form proper to be observed in the city 
 of Geneva ; " and for the twenty-four years of his life that great 
 community moulded itself, even externally, upon the form which 
 the Church imposed from within. The Church had secured in 
 most points its own independence, and in theory it acknowledged 
 the equal independence, in religious matters, of the magistracy. 
 The civil power had a right to judge as to the truth for itself ; 
 indeed, it had no right to refrain from judging. For Calvin 
 held, with the other Swiss Reformers, that (as the French Con- 
 fession drawn up by him in 1559 puts it) "God has put the sword 
 into the hands of magistrates to suppress crimes against the first 
 as well as against the second table of the law of God." The 
 result was that the Ecclesiastical Consistory of Geneva, after 
 working out the Ordinances each week in the properly Church 
 sphere (where in dealing with offences it confined itself to purely 
 spiritual penalties, the highest being separation from the Church 
 and its sacraments), reported these offences regularly to the 
 council or magistracy. And the council regularly added civil 
 penalties, some of them taken from more ancient, and others 
 from more recent laws of the city. The result occasionally was 
 a cruel sentence on heresy, as when Servetus was burned for 
 violent denial of the doctrine of the Trinity. But dark scenes
 
 THE REFORMATION: CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND. 141 
 
 like this were rare, as compared with those constantly recur- 
 ring on the scaffold of every Catholic city around. What 
 was more characteristic, was the minute and severe regulation of 
 morals, enforced by the Church with spiritual censures and by 
 the council with material punishments. In the glow of that 
 wonderful morning of the Reformation, this severe repression was 
 little felt. But the moment that began to pass away, the double 
 chain fretted soul and flesh. Yet it was not caused by any 
 confusion between civil and spiritual government. They were 
 kept theoretically distinct, but the office of the magistrate, though 
 distinct, was held to have nearly the same scope and detail as 
 that of the other. And the result was a virtual enforcement by 
 him of regulations which (in the spirit of that time) were far too 
 minute and oppressive to the individual man, even had they been 
 retained merely in the hand of the Church. 
 
 Intolerant as the doctrine of the Reformed Church on the 
 civil magistrate's duty was, 1 it can hardly be branded as selfish. 
 In many cases, no doubt, it wrought for the protection of a State 
 against Catholicism and the Holy League. But in others it 
 seemed to sanction the bitterest persecution of those who held it. 
 Nowhere was this more striking than in France. It was in 1559 
 that Beza presented to Charles IX. that (French) Confession of 
 La Rochelle, which, as we have seen, gives to the magistrate a 
 sword to avenge offences against "both tables of God's law." 
 But for thirty years before there had been almost continuous use 
 of that sword against the party now known as Huguenots. The 
 absolute power of the French king, and the transfer to Francis I., 
 by the Pope, of the patronage of the Gallican Church, had made 
 it his apparent interest, as well as duty, to persecute dissent. 
 Yet the theory of his duty to do so was adhered to by the 
 
 1 Luther and Zwingli objected to the magistrate punishing heresy capitally, 
 and in the controversy after the death of Servetus, a few writers took the 
 same view. But Beza and the authoritative theologians followed their creeds 
 in giving the magistrate the same power as to heresy which had for centuries 
 been exercised, though, as pointed out in the text, they based it on another 
 foundation. See Hallam's Literature of Europe.
 
 142 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Protestants all through the fierce wars that followed, their sole 
 forlorn hope being that the king might come to see and confess 
 the Scripture truth as they saw it. But in that case it would on 
 the same theory at once become his duty to use the same sword 
 against the Catholic portion of his subjects, not as rebels but as 
 idolaters. No one can estimate how much a prospect so hope- 
 less and a doctrine so unreasonable, held substantially on both 
 sides, must have embittered the contest. Nor can any one 
 wonder that the close came in a way to disappoint all such 
 expectations. The Huguenot leader, Henry of Navarre, became 
 a nominal Catholic, and by this fall mounted to a throne. But 
 in doing so he gave, in the Edict of Nantes (1598), a great 
 charter of toleration. It allowed Protestants everywhere to 
 believe, and, in the great majority of places, to worship according 
 to their conscience ; but the Roman faith remained established, 
 and while Protestants were admitted to civil privileges, they were 
 obliged to pay tithe to Catholicism. Here, again, the step in 
 advance, however much it may have been really due to the 
 fundamental Protestant principle of private judgment, was 
 hindered rather than aided by the new theory of the magistrate's 
 religious duty. 
 
 The same remark applies to the still more terrible, and, at last, 
 victorious fight of Protestantism in the Netherlands. The new 
 theoretical function of the magistrate, " to judge for himself as 
 to religion, and then use the sword against its opponents," 
 might seem as much opposed to toleration as his old duty, " to 
 use the sword against all whom the Church should condemn." 
 Yet, practically, Protestant intolerance was from the first hesitat- 
 ing and occasional, compared with the remorseless consistency 
 of persecution which stamped out private judgment in Spain, 
 and then burst in blood on the Low Countries. And it was in 
 the very midst of this long agony that the Belgic Confession of 
 1561 declared that the office of the magistrate is not only for the 
 welfare of the State, but for the maintenance of the sacred 
 ministry, and "to remove and destroy all idolatry and false
 
 THE REFORMATION: CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND. 143 
 
 service of God." The terror of that spiritual despotism which 
 had made the State its sword for ages, was still pressing, too 
 pressing to leave room for nice questions as to a new one which 
 might be set up on the side of the independent State. 
 
 But in the meantime, in England, there had been a new 
 experience. In the " Reformed " lands which we have just 
 reviewed, or at least in those where it at last made good its 
 footing, the new Church found itself surrounded by republicanism 
 or constitutionalism ; and it consequently organized itself at 
 once on principles of popular self-government. In Germany it 
 was otherwise ; and Luther, encompassed by feudalism, had 
 shrunk from the self- organization of the Church which its 
 doctrines seemed to demand. But even there the Reformation 
 was originally the work of the people, while the princes interfered 
 sometimes to protect it from violence, sometimes to arrest its 
 growth. In England, however, as indeed unfortunately in most 
 kingdoms of Europe, arbitrary regal government had at this 
 critical time reached its height. The Tudor Henry VIII. was 
 perhaps more absolute than any sovereign on the English throne 
 before or after him. He had no sympathy with the Reformation, 
 and until his death it cannot be said to have even commenced 
 in England. But he was led by circumstances practically to 
 substitute himself for the pope as governor of the Church ; and 
 he thus instituted in England a singular form of the world-wide 
 problem, a form which no one can think likely to be final. 
 
 Henry VIII. was the contemporary of Charles V. and Francis 
 I., and he had eagerly entered upon the great game which was 
 rendered inevitable by the new system of national monarchies. 
 In that game of politics the pope had once been arbiter, but he, 
 like the emperor, was now reduced to play off one party against 
 the other. England, as a separate " gem set in the silver sea," 
 had naturally a more compact nationalism than other countries, 
 and, as we have seen, it was one of the first to repress the inter- 
 ferences and to refuse the exactions of Rome, and, above all, to
 
 F44 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 forbid appeals to that foreign jurisdiction. With the growth of 
 England, indeed, there had thus come to be what was in some 
 sense a separate Church of England (Ecclesia Anglicand). Yet not 
 only was the English faith still that derived from the later Western 
 Church, but even the papal supremacy was admitted, while the 
 more irritating and rapacious exercises of it were latterly refused. 
 Henry was fated in his own person to give on this subject a start- 
 ling illustration of change. As a young man he had some literary 
 and theological ambition, but his instinct as an autocrat led him to 
 use it in a direction opposed to that generally taken by the " new 
 learning." In addition to the general desire to have the pope on 
 his side in the European conflicts, Henry had a special domestic 
 tie to Rome. He had married, when only eighteen, Catharine of 
 Aragon, an aunt of the young Emperor Charles. She was then 
 six years older than himself, and had already been the wife of his 
 full brother Arthur. The second marriage was thus a doubtful 
 connection, which acquired an appearance of lawfulness by the 
 previous papal dispensation, on which also depended the legiti- 
 macy of Mary, at this time Henry's only child. All these things 
 were in the young monarch's mind when he answered Luther's 
 book on " The Babylonish Captivity," in a treatise which not only 
 defends the seven sacraments, but counsels submission to Rome 
 as the sacred mother of the Church, and not its " captor." He 
 accepted from Leo as reward the title of " Defender of the Faith ; " 
 and even when, years after, he desired to replace his Spanish wife 
 by the younger Anne Boleyn, it never occurred to him or to his 
 adviser Wolsey that there was any other way but to petition the 
 Roman Curia to annul the old dispensation. It was only when 
 the royal suitor realized that there was no hope of getting the 
 pope's judgment reversed, that he grasped at the idea, suggested, 
 it is said, by Cranmer, and quite in the line of the rugged inde- 
 pendence of the English people, to deny the original power of 
 the pope to grant it. The moment the suggestion was made, 
 the imperious tyrant carried out the scheme with admirable 
 energy, enlarging it at the same time in a most unexpected way,
 
 THE REFORMATION: CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND. 145 
 
 and with a support from Parliament which showed that the Eng- 
 lish had come to have little respect even for their native clergy. 
 On the marriage question the universities of Christendom were 
 appealed to instead of a council, and that largely by bribery ; and 
 by a narrow majority they found that the pope had no right to 
 grant the dispensation in the case of Arthur's widow. The Eng- 
 lish clergy would not have seriously objected to this or any step 
 relieving them from the authority of the pope. But graver changes 
 were prepared for them by their king. A Parliament was called 
 together in 1529, which sat for seven years. At the instance of 
 Henry, it gave voice to the long dissatisfaction of the English 
 people, by petitioning to strip the spiritual courts of their too 
 lucrative powers. The clergy ventured a protest for " our autho- 
 rity of making of laws" for the Church, suggesting that, while they 
 were always desirous to follow His Grace's suggestions, he also 
 might " temper his laws accordingly, whereby shall ensue a most 
 sure and hearty conjunction and agreement, God being corner- 
 stone." The king prepared to beat down this theory in his most 
 brutal fashion. Intimation was made to the bishops and whole 
 clergy of England, that they had incurred the penalties of for- 
 feiture and imprisonment under the statutes of Edward III. The 
 pretext was their having received Wolsey as papal legate, which 
 they had done very unwillingly, and at the desire of the Parlia- 
 ment and king, who had himself procured for Wolsey the office 
 they were now to be condemned for recognising. Convocation, 
 terrified, asked to be let off for a fine of a hundred thousand 
 pounds. They were then informed that, in addition to paying 
 this to the king, they must acknowledge and designate him as 
 " Protector, Lord, and also Supreme Head of the Church and 
 Clergy of England ! " For five days they hesitated, but then 
 agreed, adding to the words "Supreme Head" the saving clause, 
 "in so far as the law of Christ permits." In 1532 this was fol- 
 lowed and explained by resolutions of Convocation, known as the 
 " Submission of the Clergy," by which they bound themselves not 
 to enact any new " canons, constitutions, or ordinances" without the 
 
 K
 
 146 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 king's licence and approval ; and, further, to submit all existing 
 ones to be maintained or abrogated according to the judgment of 
 the king, and of a commission, half clerical and half lay, but all to 
 be chosen by him. This was at once translated into a still existing 
 statute, and was followed by others asserting the king's ecclesi- 
 astical supremacy. It may be noted that the Acts of Parliament 
 of the time, even when they narrate these exacted concessions, 
 avoid founding upon them, and assert the royal supremacy over 
 the Church as ancient and undoubted. They also, of course, 
 omit the attempted qualification as to " the law of Christ ; " and 
 indeed, Henry, to avoid ambiguity, exacted an acknowledgment 
 of the Headship without the saving clause from each bishop 
 individually. Before quoting from the Acts now in force, it may 
 be well to recall that those of Henry VIII. have little or no con- 
 nection with the Reformation in the sense of change of faith. 
 Henry to the end of his life burned those who rejected the Romish 
 doctrine, while he beheaded those who adhered to the Romish 
 supremacy or scrupled at his own. 1 But his chief enactments as 
 to the royal supremacy (maintained by Edward along with the new 
 Articles of Faith, but repealed by Mary) were, with some modi- 
 fications, revived by Elizabeth, whose leading statute is in full 
 accord with their provisions. 
 
 1 Sir Thomas More, a persecutor of heresy, was yet one of those who had 
 been willing to abolish or limit the papal authority over the English Church. 
 But rather than take part in substituting for it the royal power, he had resigned 
 his chancellorship. Yet, even in prison, his silent consistency was a reproach 
 to the tyrant outside, and he was ordered to take the oath, which acknow- 
 ledged both the change in the royal succession and the king's church-head- 
 ship. The former he willingly offered, the latter he refused. Rich, the 
 solicitor-general, reported More's answers. When he urged upon More the 
 authority of Parliament and the law of the land, " If it were enacted that I, 
 Richard Rich, should be king, would you not acknowledge it? " "I would," 
 said More ; " but if it were enacted that God should no longer be God, would 
 you acknowledge it ?" "No," admitted Rich, "because that is impossible. 
 But if you would acknowledge me as king on the authority of Parliament, 
 why do you not acknowledge the Headship of the Church on the same autho- 
 rity?" "Because," said More, "a king can be made by Parliament and 
 deprived by Parliament, and the subject is obliged to own it, for to so much 
 his consent in Parliament is implied. But the other the subject is not obliged
 
 THE REFORMATION: CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND. 147 
 
 The pre- Reformation theory which Henry VIII. had desired 
 to transmit, is given in very striking terms in the preamble to his 
 statute " For the Restraint of Appeals." 1 It declares (omitting 
 words to us surplusage) that 
 
 " By divers old histories it is declared that this realm of Eng- 
 land is an empire, governed by one supreme head and king, unto 
 whom a body politic, compact of all sorts and degrees of people, 
 divided in terms and by names of spirituality and temporality, be 
 bound to bear, next to God, a natural obedience, he being also 
 furnished by God to render justice in all causes within the limits 
 thereof; for when any cause of the law divine or of spiritual 
 learning happened to come in question, it was declared and 
 interpreted by that part of the body politick called the Spirituality, 
 now being usually called the English Church, which always was 
 and is sufficient of itself, without exterior persons, to determine 
 all such doubts, and to administer all such offices and duties as 
 to their rooms spiritual doth appertain ; for the due administra- 
 tion whereof the predecessors of the king and his nobility have 
 sufficiently endowed it ; and the laws temporal, as to lands and 
 goods, and unity and peace, are administered by judges and 
 ministers of the other part of the said body politic, called the 
 Temporality ; and both conjoin in the due administration of 
 justice." 
 
 The statute is still in force, but what is here presented as the 
 ancient theory, by which the Church and the Spirituality, held to 
 be nearly the same, were contrasted with the laity, must have suf- 
 fered much modification when, next year, Convocation statutorily 
 surrendered so much to the lay king. Still more clearly must 
 it have done so, when an Act in force to our own day 2 pro- 
 vided, that the " Head in earth " of the Church being a layman, 
 and bishops and clergy having no ecclesiastical jurisdiction but 
 " by, under, and from " him, all lay and married persons whom he 
 
 to own, for to it his consent cannot be given in Parliament." More denied 
 that he had entrusted these constitutional maxims to the man " of light tongue 
 and not commendable fame" who turned witness against him. But the 
 supremacy which the Churchmen had accepted, this layman steadfastly refused, 
 and he went to the scaffold with a serene gaiety which fixed the gaze of 
 Europe, 
 i 24 Henry VIII. c. 12. 2 37 Henry VIII. c. 17.
 
 148 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 may appoint, provided only they are doctors of the civil law, may 
 also exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction. But the change in theory 
 was more striking still, when, after Henry's death, the Church of 
 England came to adopt Articles of Faith of a Protestant and rather 
 Calvinistic type, and put into its creed a definition of the Church in 
 accordance with the Reformed Confessions generally. By the igth 
 Article the Church was now described no longer as the Spirituality 
 in contrast with the Laity, but as the whole mass (in the Latin 
 version coetus), or " congregation, of faithful people." Yet, while 
 the laity are thus recognised as the Church, no function of self- 
 government or of proper church organization is in England con- 
 ceded to them. The local and provincial administration remains 
 in the hands of the clergy and bishops ; while the general govern- 
 ing power, apparently including legislative, administrative, and 
 judicial alike, is swept by the statutes into the hands of the king. 
 The first Act of the first Parliament of Elizabeth, after abolishing 
 the papal jurisdiction, obliges every ecclesiastical person to swear 
 that the monarch is (not the supreme Head of the Church, but) 
 " the only supreme governor of this realm as well in all spiritual 0* 
 ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal ; " and the rather weak 
 explanation obtruded in the Article of Religion, that " we give not 
 to our princes the ministering of the word or sacraments," only 
 brings out more strongly their claim to rule the ecclesiastical as 
 well as the temporal state. The Act abolishing appeals to Rome 
 had already substituted ecclesiastical appeals to the king in 
 Chancery, to what was called the Court of Delegates, " for lack 
 of justice in the courts of the Archbishops or in any the king's 
 dominions." And for the more active exercise of the supremacy, 
 the statute of Elizabeth goes on to provide as follows : " That 
 such jurisdictions, privileges, superiorities, and pre-eminences, 
 spiritual and ecclesiastical, as by any spiritual or ecclesiastical 
 power or authority hath heretofore been or may lawfully be 
 exercised or used, for the visitation of the ecclesiastical state 
 and persons, and for reformation, order, and correction of the 
 same, and of all manner of errors, heresies, schisms, abuses,
 
 THE REFORMATION: CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND. 149 
 
 offences, contempts, and enormities, shall for ever be united and 
 annexed to the imperial crown of this realm." And not the 
 sovereign only, but, as the Act further provides, any subject whom 
 he may appoint, " may exercise under him all manner of juris- 
 dictions, ... to visit, reform, redress, order, correct, and amend 
 all such errors, heresies, schisms, etc., which by any manner 
 spiritual or ecclesiastical power, authority, or jurisdiction, can or 
 may lawfully be reformed," etc. A subsequent clause provides 
 that such a royal commission shall not declare anything to be 
 heresy unless made so by Scripture, or by a General Council, or 
 by Parliament with assent of Convocation. But no determination 
 of the Parliament then sitting should ever be held heresy, no 
 matter who refused to assent. A later statute l ordered the 
 Articles of Religion, agreed to in Convocation and put forward by 
 the queen's authority, to be subscribed by each incumbent. It 
 was provided that the Crown should appoint the dignitaries of the 
 Church, while private patrons should present to livings. Gross 
 corruption having been reported by a commission as existing 
 in the monasteries, those wealthy institutions were suppressed 
 throughout England, their funds were appropriated by the Crown 
 or its favourites, and the great abbots ceased to sit in the House 
 of Lords. A statute provided that bishops are still to be formally 
 elected by the chapter ; but with the congt (Tttire a royal 
 missive is sent down, nominating the man to be chosen, and if the 
 members of the chapter fail to elect that individual within twenty 
 days, not only are they subject to heavy penalties, but the Crown 
 may at once appoint directly by letters-patent. 8 Lastly, Eliza- 
 beth's Act of Uniformity 8 provided that every layman in England 
 should attend the parish church, under spiritual penalties to be 
 imposed by the clergy, and fines by the justices of peace. 4 
 
 1 13 Elizabeth, c. 12. a 25 Henry VIII. c. 20. 3 i Elizabeth, c. 2. 
 
 4 On the subject of the Reformation, the Parliamentary Report (1883) to 
 the Crown on the Ecclesiastical Courts is valuable ; but it has a clerical bias, 
 so as even to omit from its reprint of the Reformation statutes the above 
 Act which gives seats in those courts to laymen, and assigns reasons for 
 doing so.
 
 150 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 The statutory Reformation in England was a rough and hasty 
 business ; but it hurried through in the tyrannical Tudor way a 
 process which was already going on, and the product at Elizabeth's 
 accession was not much in advance of what might have been 
 more legitimately attained. A more serious result of taking this 
 royal road was, that the new constitution naturally came to be 
 founded on inconsistent and arbitrary principles. So many, indeed, 
 were the anomalies, that to some extent they balanced each other, 
 and made room within the pale for a strong and rich type of 
 Christian civilisation. Yet this inevitably left questions to be 
 solved in the future. Thus the spirituality or clergy, who should 
 have been the natural opponents of the administrative supremacy 
 of the Crown, avoided such collision, in the earlier Stuart days, 
 by becoming themselves its active agents ; and the result was a 
 shock to the Crown in the seventeenth century, and the loss of 
 most of its powers civil and ecclesiastical, except as exercised 
 with consent of Parliament. But the parliamentary or legislative 
 question, which thus remains, is graver than the old administrative 
 one, or than the judicial which now troubles the consciences of 
 churchmen. Parliament is now recognised as the Church legis- 
 lature. The Christian people are recognised as the Church, 
 but they do not exercise self-government or elect their own 
 officers. And, in absence of internal organization, they seem 
 not disposed to acquiesce in any claim of the Convocation of the 
 clergy either to legislate or to rule. The people of England are 
 really represented by their civil legislature, which has histori- 
 cally succeeded to the powers over the Church given at the 
 Reformation to the Crown ; a and anomalous as such external 
 powers may be, a Church without self-government can only 
 develop under guidance from without. The difficulty is, that 
 
 1 Some excellent representatives of the Church of England, however, retain 
 its ancient preference for an irresponsible ruler, Tudor or Stuart. ' ' The 
 supremacy of the Crown we loyally accept, as in accordance with the will of 
 God ; but the supremacy of Parliament is another matter. We may need to 
 be delivered from a Parliament as we were from the pope." Bishop of Lich- 
 field (Maclagan) at Church Congress, October 1887.
 
 THE REFORMATION: CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND. 151 
 
 Parliament is now external to the Church, in another sense 
 than that in which it always was. The law does not now demand 
 that either the members of the legislature, or those whom they 
 represent, should belong to the Church at all. And as masses of 
 the people, and even of the Christian people, are now outside the 
 Establishment, they naturally expect that legislation by their 
 representatives shall be conceived in the interest of all. 
 
 Scotland, in this matter of the spontaneous organization and 
 self-government of its Reformed Church, was from the first a 
 contrast to England. The great crisis here was the meeting of 
 the Parliament in 1560. But even before that date there were, as 
 the Scots Confession declares, "in our cities, towns, and places 
 reformed" local churches, sometimes fully organized with pastors, 
 elders, and deacons ; and in December 1 560 " the ministers and 
 commissioners of the particular kirks of Scotland convened, to 
 consult upon those things which are to set forth God's glory and 
 the weal of His Kirk in this realm," in a meeting which, two years 
 after, took the name of General Assembly. But already in 
 August the Parliament had met (upon the death of the Queen 
 Regent and without royal authority), and requested the " Pro- 
 testants of Scotland " to exhibit to it the Confession of their faith, 
 a document which, on being publicly read, the Estates authorized 
 and ratified as the true doctrine. Care was taken in the whole 
 creed transaction to keep the Church and the State independent 
 of each other, with God and His word as the sole authority over 
 both. Before this time, Knox says, on the part of the Church, we 
 " required nothing but liberty of conscience, and our religion and 
 fact to be tried by the word of God ; " but that religion was now 
 tried and established by Parliament, though the advent next 
 year of Queen Mary, whom Catholic Europe looked to as a 
 champion, prevented farther progress till her abdication in 1567. 
 Here, as elsewhere, a difficulty was in the meantime caused by 
 the functions ascribed to the civil power. "To kings, princes, 
 rulers, and magistrates we affirm that chiefly and most principally
 
 152 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 the conservation and purgation of the religion appertains," the 
 Scots Confession asserts. The danger of this doctrine was in the 
 meantime somewhat tempered by the anti-absolutist or constitu- 
 tionalist views as to royal authority which Scotland had begun to 
 entertain, as George Buchanan's contemporary book, De Jure 
 Regni) bears witness. Yet loyalty had been a passion in that 
 country, and their brilliant young queen was acknowledged to be, 
 at least, the chief magistrate. Accordingly the conversations of 
 Knox with Queen Mary, recorded in his great History, show 
 him labouring to reconcile with this assertion of her preroga- 
 tives as to religion, other positions which he earnestly maintained, 
 viz. the independence of the Church, and the duty of obeying 
 God rather than man. The result during those seven years was 
 a compromise, or rather an equal struggle. Knox naturally failed 
 in getting a Catholic queen to conserve the Evangel and purge it 
 from the Mass ; but neither did she venture to purge her king- 
 dom from Protestantism, which, according to her convictions, 
 was the function and duty assigned to her. The Kirk during 
 that long time was not established ; its creed, though ratified by 
 Parliament, was not confirmed by the sovereign ; and its Book of 
 Discipline was rejected by both. On the other hand, the attempt, 
 made immediately after the queen's arrival, to suspend the meet- 
 ing of General Assembly upon the royal permission, was promptly 
 resisted. " Take from us the liberty of assemblies," said Knox, 
 " and take from us the gospel." Accordingly, without waiting for 
 State sanction, and rejecting all royal supremacy, the representa- 
 tives of the Church, clerical and lay, met year by year, and built 
 up the organization, and carried out the discipline, of the future 
 Church of Scotland. So things remained till 1 567, when Mary, 
 having married the murderer of her husband, was compelled to 
 abdicate in favour of her infant son. In his name statutes were 
 now passed confirming those of 1 560, which confessed the Pro- 
 testant doctrine, abolished the papal jurisdiction, and forbade the 
 mass and appeals to Rome under heavy penalties. To these 
 were added one which declared " the ministers of the Evangel
 
 THE REFORMATION: CALVIN, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND. 153 
 
 and the people who, with them, profess Christ," to be the only 
 true and holy Kirk of Jesus Christ within this realm, and another 
 by which a coronation oath bound the sovereign to maintain the 
 true religion and to withstand the false, to rule according to the 
 word of God, and, in words more appropriate to the Catholic 
 theory than to the Protestant, to root out of the kingdom " all 
 heretics and enemies to the true worship of God that shall be 
 convict by the true Kirk of God of the foresaid crimes." Pro- 
 testantism in Scotland, thus self -organized, asserted an auto- 
 nomous power of government and discipline, like the Churches in 
 France, Netherlands, and Switzerland. It did not accept its 
 authority, as in England, or its form, as in Germany, from the 
 hand of the prince. Yet the State had by no means so explicitly 
 acknowledged that independence as the Church claimed it. And 
 the close connection between the two powers brought dangers. 
 It was henceforth nearly impossible for the Church, without State 
 consent, to exercise its freedom in graver matters, e.g. in respect 
 of creed or organization. And it was quite possible that the 
 power ascribed by it to the magistrate with respect to things of 
 faith, might come to be used by him for other purposes than that 
 intolerance and rooting out of dissent for which it was in the 
 meantime invoked.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 EUROPE, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1789. 
 
 THE Reformation thus left the relations of Church and State 
 throughout Protestantism very imperfect, and inconsistent with 
 any theory, old or new. But an immense shock and movement 
 of opinion had taken place. If we take the period from Luther's 
 appearance at Worms in 1520, to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, 
 and compare the results of only thirty-five years with those of 
 any 350 years since Charlemagne or even Theodosius, we shall 
 recognise that a new world has now burst upon us. For three 
 or perhaps four centuries before, a preparation had been going 
 on. During all that time the awakened intellect of man had 
 been beating in vain against invisible but seemingly immoveable 
 barriers. Now the barriers on the religious side had been 
 suddenly thrown down. And the first rush of the liberated 
 forces of our modern time was so strong as ere long to cause a 
 reaction, to be followed by a more leisurely and expanded flow 
 of the original influences. 
 
 The Peace of Augsburg took place during the sitting of the 
 Council of Trent. That Assembly is important on two grounds. 
 In it Catholicism defined its position. But it also commenced 
 what has been called the counter- Reformation. The doctrinal 
 definitions of Trent were fatal to the hopes of union cherished 
 by men like Cardinal Pole on the one side, and Melanchthon on 
 the other. But the ecclesiastical definitions were equally fatal to 
 the independence of churches and the rights of general councils, 
 
 154
 
 EUROPE, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1789. 155 
 
 as these had been affirmed no later than at Constance in the 
 century before. Bishops and priests throughout the world were 
 now taken bound to swear that they recognised the city of 
 Rome as not only the mother but the " mistress " of all churches, 
 and that they would render no longer honour but " obedience " 
 to its bishop, as "the vicar of Jesus Christ." The Council sat 
 originally in A.D. 1545, and it rose in A.D. 1563. But its energetic 
 period dated from the year 1555, in which, the emperor being 
 obliged finally to make peace with the Protestants, the fiery old 
 Cardinal Caraflfa was able to commence, as Paul IV., an uncom- 
 promising policy on behalf of the Church itself. The greatest of 
 its proper powers by far was the new spirit of religious zeal and 
 devotion awakened in Europe. In the north this had burst the 
 old bonds and become Reformation. But in the south it was 
 generally, though by no means universally, content to flow in 
 the channel of the Roman obedience. The chief exemplifica- 
 tion of this trained enthusiasm was the soldiery or " company " 
 of Jesus, originated by a small number of ardent young men in 
 Spain and Paris. With a view to influence the age, this society 
 proposed to enrol members free from all encumbering re- 
 straints, and trained at the same time in the use of all means 
 and accomplishments, the sole restriction being absolute obedi- 
 ence to the direction of the superior. 1 The pope at once met 
 this idea by liberating the new society from all ecclesiastical 
 superiors except himself and its own officials, and from all 
 regulations except its own. Even at the Council of Trent the 
 theologians of this order did much to determine the members 
 against conciliatory proposals. And after and outside it they 
 threw themselves into every effort throughout Europe for in- 
 vigorating and extending the Church. But persuasive effort was 
 not all. In 1542 the Inquisition was reinstituted, in response to 
 
 1 A work Of genius of our time, John Inglesant, sketches the process 
 through which in the seventeenth century even a raw English boy could be 
 moulded into a mood of heroic self-surrender, which made motives such as 
 the love of life and the obligations of veracity alike matters of indifference.
 
 156 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 a memorial pressed by Caraffa, and supported by Loyola. Every 
 Catholic country was now submitted to a minute and sifting per- 
 secution, from which there was no appeal. In Protestant lands 
 the right and duty of private judgment in religious matters, often 
 in practice crippled by the Church and crushed by the State, 
 could yet be appealed to as a fundamental principle. In Catholic 
 countries authority was absolute. Accordingly, while in the 
 south of Europe and of Germany heresy was effectually stamped 
 out, the persecution of individuals which also existed on the 
 Protestant side was comparatively feeble and intermittent. In 
 Germany, especially, other causes combined with these to stop 
 the advance of the Reformation long before the close of the cen- 
 tury. One of the most important was the attitude of princes, 
 foreign as well as native. Continental Protestants naturally 
 looked to the English monarch to be their leader. But Elizabeth 
 was, as John Knox described her, "neither good Protestant nor 
 yet resolute Papist," and her endless feminine vacillation tor- 
 mented all who trusted her at home and abroad. James I., with 
 a more cultivated intelligence, lacked the strong instinct and 
 will which made his predecessor a great ruler ; and while his 
 egotistical projects of comprehensive union among Protestants, 
 and even between Protestants and Catholics, came to nothing, 
 he was too time-serving and procrastinating to do anything for 
 Germany, or even for his daughter's husband in the Palatinate. 
 But the relation of the German Protestants to their own princes 
 was more serious still. The maxim, " The ruler of the region is 
 the ruler of the religion," was worked so as to exterminate the 
 profession of the Reformation by subjects of Catholic princes in 
 Austria and Bavaria, .and in the south generally. On the other 
 hand, the Protestant princes, divided by feudal sympathies from 
 the people, and by religious sympathies from the empire, were 
 divided among themselves into Lutheran and Calvinist, each 
 generally refusing to protect or even to tolerate the other per- 
 suasion in his dominions. The result was that in the Thirty 
 Years War, commencing in 1618, Bohemia and Moravia were
 
 EUROPE, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1789. 157 
 
 restored to the Catholic league by force of arms, and the north 
 of Germany was only saved from conquest by the friendship of 
 France and the interposition of Gustavus Adolphus. Still, the 
 Peace of Westphalia, which in A.D. 1648 gave rest to the centre 
 of Europe, was an advance upon that of Augsburg in 1555 as 
 well as a confirmation of its principles. Each secular state in 
 Germany was henceforth free to profess its existing religion, 
 whether Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed ; but no other religion 
 was to be "received or tolerated in the Holy Roman Empire," 
 and the power of the reigning princes to "reform" their states 
 by driving out dissenters was restrained rather than abolished. 
 
 While these external causes contributed to the arrest of Pro- 
 testantism, there were corresponding internal ones. Founded 
 itself on private judgment, its representatives in the first age 
 forgot to make provision for the new generation exercising the 
 right of free inquiry with the same freedom which they had 
 themselves done. The dangers of such free inquiry had indeed 
 become more prominent, and the advantages as well as the duty 
 of it were now forgotten or denied. How far the lapse from a 
 principle so vital to the Reformation, even in matters internal 
 to the Church, was due to its external relations to the State, is 
 difficult now to determine. The tendency of majorities to insist 
 that minorities shall conform to them in opinion, belongs to 
 human nature, and works in the Church as it works outside. 
 But the first conception of Protestanism, that of an " invisible 
 Church " of men in all lands, gave no foothold to the tyranny of 
 majorities. And the institution of particular congregations, while 
 it suggested such a possible result locally, suggested also an easy 
 means of escape from it. It was the falling of the Church into 
 the new mould of nationalism, a mould not prepared by Pro- 
 testantism, but prepared for it during the three hundred years 
 preceding its advent, that at once raised for it the question of 
 toleration, and ensured practically that the question should be 
 wrongly decided. For the national Church was now often an
 
 158 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 artificial or geographical unity. It was not necessarily defined 
 by limits of language or race or manners, but always by the 
 limits of territory of some civil ruler. And the gathering of his 
 Protestant subjects into one church was in those days often 
 founded upon, and was always connected with, its relation to 
 him. It instantly raised the question of his duty to recognise 
 or to tolerate the Church, and those outside it. The question 
 of the magistrate's toleration thus lay at the threshold of actual 
 Protestantism. And the answer to it, as we have seen, was uni- 
 versally the false answer. Now, as before, it was held that it 
 was his duty not to tolerate any Church except the one which 
 he selected for recognition, and not to tolerate any opinion in 
 religion except the true opinion, or any worship in the Church 
 except the right worship. There can be no doubt that the exe- 
 cution of Servetus at Geneva was largely due to the natural 
 dread lest Protestantism should be held to be based upon 
 absolute civil freedom of inquiry ; and it was followed by a 
 controversy in which Beza maintained (against Italian exiles, 
 such as Castalio and Aconcio), that the punishment of death was 
 due from the magistrate to false doctrines on the Trinity. The 
 opinions to which these Italian thinkers leaned (Socinus and his 
 nephew being the most important among them) had always been 
 held to be contrary to the Church's creed. Yet had full freedom 
 of opinion been now granted by the Protestant civil powers, there 
 was a chance that in the healthful process of inquiry these eccen- 
 tricities might all have been gradually absorbed into the new 
 thought and life of the Church. As it was, the speculators who 
 remained outside (and who, gathering together, especially in 
 Poland, formed a Church as early as 1565, with an influential 
 academy), had the honour as a persecuted minority to be among 
 the earliest though, as Beza admits, they were not even then 
 the only advocates of toleration. 
 
 Nor did Protestantism, which thus neglected the opportunity 
 of reclaiming dissenters from the older creeds, make sufficient 
 provision for the various opinions even of its own members in
 
 EUROPE, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1789. 159 
 
 building up its new confessions of faith. The sudden access of 
 the human mind to the Scriptures (no longer forbidden and now 
 translated into the common tongues), had produced in every 
 land simultaneously a passionate study of the highest truth, not 
 only in its details, but as a whole, and as capable of being built 
 into system. These systems, as put forward by private inquiries, 
 preachers, or theologians, were soon succeeded in almost every 
 Protestant country, by confessions of the faith held in common, 
 or Creeds. They arose in each land independently, but of 
 course they bear the mark of the one world-wide impulse from 
 which they sprung. Used partly as catechisms or text-books, 
 partly as standards for regulating church teaching, they were 
 most frequently called into existence to meet misrepresentations 
 by accusers or persecutors as to what Protestant doctrine really 
 was. Even when thus prepared hurriedly and for a purpose, 
 each of them was originally an achievement in theology, and a 
 gain of real consolidation and unity for the Church which it 
 represented. But upon the original gain there followed, less 
 observably, a certain loss. These Protestant Confessions had 
 admittedly no authority over faith, that being reserved for Scrip- 
 ture ; some of them, like the Scottish Confession of John Knox, 
 prayed men of their charity to point out to the authors anything 
 in it that seemed opposed to the Word, that it might be re- 
 considered ; and others, like the French Confession, were read 
 yearly at the church assemblies, that proposed changes might be 
 carefully discussed. But another question, more important for the 
 Protestant Church than even the truth of the confession in all its 
 details, was by that Church neglected. It was the question whether, 
 assuming its details to be true and scriptural, the majority who 
 thought so had a right to bind them upon the minority or upon 
 individuals who thought otherwise. 1 The failure to raise this 
 
 1 The late Dr. William Cunningham of Edinburgh, when writing of the 
 Reformers, and pointing out the difference between the duty of individuals 
 and of Churches, the duty of individuals being to confess all truth which 
 they can attain, but that of the Church, in settling her confessions and
 
 l6o CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 question at first was perhaps natural in men who had presented 
 their confession to the magistrate as the truth, and had declared 
 it to be his duty to support the truth and extirpate error. But 
 it was all the less excusable and the more unfortunate. For within 
 their own Church there were individuals who had not attained 
 to all parts of that truth, or who objected to the human order and 
 system into which the parts were built ; while the new generation 
 could only start from the same ground of free inquiry which their 
 parents had vindicated against Rome. For this state of matters 
 no provision was made ; if, indeed, under the accepted theory of 
 the Church and State relation, much provision was possible. 
 
 The result was seen in the States of Holland, which, with 
 their great and famous universities, were in the close of 
 the sixteenth century rapidly becoming the centre of Pro- 
 testantism. And it was Protestantism of the Reformed and 
 Presbyterian type, but with the State behind it. Accordingly, 
 after the death of Arminius in 1609, when his followers presented 
 their Remonstrance to the States, their earliest contention was 
 that they should have liberty to teach their doctrine within the 
 Church. Only when they found that the Church itself was sure 
 not to concede them a place within, and that the magistrates 
 would not enforce their claim to it, did they apply themselves to 
 demand, from the same magistrates, a toleration outside. In all 
 ages, the first instinct of the magistrate has been to promote 
 peace, and on this occasion the chief men of Holland not only 
 urged mutual forbearance, but published an edict forbidding the 
 continuance of controversy. This was undoubtedly going too 
 far the other way ; and the whole question of the autonomy of 
 the Church, and the counter theory of the right of the magis- 
 trate to restrain it, was, as we shall see, brought into discussion. 
 The contention was rising to the pitch of revolution, when the 
 
 terms of communion, being to consider "what amount of unity in matters 
 of opinion ought to be required," and to confess only what is necessary, 
 leaving in non necessariis libertas, points out also that " the principles 
 applicable to this branch of the Church's duty have never been subjected to 
 a thorough discussion by competent parties."
 
 EUROPE, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1789. l6l 
 
 sudden secession of Maurice the Stadtholder to the popular or 
 Calvinistic side, crushed the hopes of the Remonstrants and of 
 their famous leader Grotius. He escaped from his imprisonment, 
 but one of the chief and best men of the republic, his friend 
 Oldenbarnevelt, died upon the scaffold. In the midst of these 
 unfavourable heats it was that the Church met in the Synod of 
 Dort in 1618 to decide the doctrinal question. The Arminian 
 divines, not being permitted to discuss the question in the order 
 they proposed, refused to continue the debate, and in their 
 absence not only was their doctrine condemned as false, but they 
 were deprived of their ministerial functions. In that age such 
 an exclusion from the Church was invariably accompanied by 
 civil injury ; and the magistrates, finding that some of the 
 Arminians still attempted to minister to their sympathizers, 
 forbade them all to preach in their native country, under pain of 
 banishment from it. 
 
 This controversy, the circumference of which extended far 
 beyond Holland, was one of several events which tended to 
 raise the question of the true theory of Church and State. That 
 question had not been discussed on broad and general grounds 
 since the last great conflict between the papacy and the empire 
 in the fourteenth century. The Reformers, under the pressure 
 of persecution from both those powers, had settled it rather 
 hastily from supposed scriptural precedents. The same method 
 of reasoning was taken in that theological age even by the few 
 who dissented from them, notably by Erastus, who was court 
 physician at Heidelberg till 1580. His view was, that there is no 
 warrant in Scripture for excommunication by the Church from its 
 own society, and that sins by members of it should instead be 
 punished by the magistrate, "for that- is his duty and office." 
 This view, of course, suggested (though it did not quite imply) 
 that denial of the whole self-government of the Church which 
 has often in later times borrowed Erastus' name. But now, with 
 the opening of the seventeenth century, there was to begin 
 a more or less continuous inquiry, not yet terminated, into the
 
 1 62 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 nature and extent of the office of the civil magistrate, an 
 inquiry conducted not so much on theological as on philosophical 
 grounds. 
 
 Hugo Grotius published in 1625 his inquiry into the Law of 
 War and Peace, that is, into the universal law which regulates 
 all men in their mutual relations, and the book made an epoch 
 in European thought and legislation. It did so by drawing 
 men back to the principles which lie under universal human 
 institutions, as distinguished from those which rule only in a 
 particular territory ; and among these are the Church and the 
 State. Unfortunately he had already, as we have seen, come 
 into collision with the intolerant majority of a popular Church, 
 and during his subsequent residence in France and England was 
 in the mid-stream of a reaction which led him at last almost, if not, 
 as Hallam says, altogether, to submit for the sake of peace to the 
 demands of Rome. Grotius' treatise On the Authority of the 
 Supreme Power about Things Sacred^ was published after his 
 death in 1645 > ^ ut i s sa id to have been written thirty years 
 before, soon after he had drafted the edict by which the Dutch 
 magistrates imposed silence on their pulpits as to the contro- 
 verted doctrines. His theory is, that it is not the business of the 
 State itself to exercise sacred functions (to act in sacris), but as 
 being supreme, even circa sacra, to command and to ensure their 
 exercise of such functions by those whose duty it is to deal with 
 them. Thus the State may abolish false religions and punish 
 their professors (though it should not do so capitally) ; may 
 establish a State Church, and legislate for its whole organization ; 
 may call or not call synods, and determine who shall compose 
 them, and accept or not accept their doctrinal decisions ; may 
 grant to the Church powers of legislation and jurisdiction, in 
 so far as shall seem right (for of itself the Church has only a 
 persuasive, and not a coercive or even authoritative power) ; may 
 regulate and annul the election of pastors, and, if need be, take 
 
 1 De Imperio Summarum potestatum Circa Sacra. First Edition published 
 at Paris, 1646.
 
 EUROPE, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1789. 163 
 
 it into its own hands ; and in every case must retain an appellate 
 jurisdiction over the " power of the keys." 
 
 The views of Grotius have an easily traceable resemblance to 
 those of the lawyers who defended the empire by attacking the 
 Church in the days of Lewis of Bavaria (see p. 98) ; and they are 
 perhaps all dependent on Aristotle's pre-Christian theory, that the 
 State is the " supreme society." But they had great and deserved 
 influence in that age with the reading public, and especially with 
 the lawyers, of every country of Europe. Extreme as the power 
 which they give to the State may seem to us, other men of genius 
 in that age went farther. The illustrious countryman of Grotius, 
 Benedict de Spinoza, published in 1670 his anonymous Theo- 
 logico- Political Tractates, the main argument of which is to 
 urge toleration of opinion and "liberty of philosophizing." Yet 
 even here he has a chapter devoted to showing that " authority 
 about sacred things should be wholly in the supreme power of 
 the State, and that if we wish rightly to obey God we should 
 conform our outward worship with a view to the peace of the 
 republic." In it he goes so far as to hold, chap. xix. sect. 49, 
 that Church law (jus divinuni) absolutely depends on the decree 
 of the State, which is its interpreter as well as champion, and 
 that those are therefore the true ministers of God's word who 
 teach the people "a piety accommodated by the decree of the 
 State to public utility." Nor can this have been uttered chiefly 
 with the view of conciliating the authorities to his own extreme 
 rationalism. For, on his death in 1677, a MS. Political Tractate 
 was found, which deals with the extent of the " authority of the 
 supreme power" over the individual. In it he arrives at nearly 
 the same theory as Hobbes had published in English. He urges 
 that men are naturally fearful of and hostile to each other, but 
 that they gather into society for the supreme reason of safety. 
 And when they do so they transfer their individual rights to the 
 State to such an extent, that the individual " now belongs not to 
 himself, but to the State, 1 and is bound to obey its orders, having 
 1 " Non sui, sed civitatis, juris est."
 
 1 64 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 no longer the right to decide for himself what is just or unjust, 
 pious or impious." But does not this theory destroy Religion? 
 Spinoza answers (chap. iii. sect. 10), No; and his reasons are 
 intensely characteristic of the most speculative of European 
 thinkers. " The mind of the individual belongs to himself, not 
 to the State," and within he is free, and can cherish the know- 
 ledge and love of God privately. The question of outward 
 worship is different. Whether I worship with others or not is 
 not so important to me as peace and public tranquillity. I am 
 not religion's champion. " Wherever I am, I can worship God 
 and cultivate religion in my heart, and can look after my own 
 conduct ; and that is the business of the private citizen. The 
 care of spreading that religion is to be handed over to God and 
 to the supreme powers, for to them alone it belongs to care for 
 the community!" Hobbes' Leviathan, published in 1651, is 
 explained on the title - page as meaning the " Commonwealth 
 Ecclesiastical and Civil," and his rude and constraining common 
 sense leads him to the same conclusions with the subtle thinker 
 of Amsterdam. Not only does he hold on the subject of tolera- 
 tion, that a Church or other "body without warrant from the 
 sovereign is unlawful," but there is absolutely no limit to the 
 obedience due by the individual subject. The sovereign, there- 
 fore, if Christian, is "supreme pastor" and head of the Church, 
 so that he can baptize or teach by himself or others. If heathen, 
 he has an equal power, and his subjects the same duty. " Faith 
 is internal and invisible," and what even " if we be commanded 
 by our lawful prince to say with our tongue that we believe not ? " 
 " Profession with the tongue," he answers, " is an external thing, 
 and no more than any other whereby we signify our obedience." 
 Consequently " that action is not his, but his sovereign's." These 
 positions were destined to excite deep distaste in England, as 
 Spinoza's did in foreign lands drenched with recent martyrdoms. 
 But Hobbes turns upon his opponents with the question, whether, 
 in the case of a Mahometan ordered by his lawful prince to take 
 part in Christian service, they would not hold him bound to do
 
 EUROPE, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1789. 165 
 
 so? "And the law of nature, which is the indubitable, everlast- 
 ing law of God, is, Do not to another what thou wouldest not that 
 he should do unto thee ! " 
 
 By the close of the seventeenth century the religious tempera- 
 ture of Europe was greatly lowered, and in Germany in particular 
 the desire for toleration of all opinions became the chief passion, 
 especially with the great school of lawyers which was led by 
 Thomasius. He had brought out with much power (following 
 Leibnitz) the distinction between what is in its own nature 
 matter of law, and therefore enforceable, and what is moral or 
 religious merely, and, as belonging to the conscience, should not 
 be meddled with by law. But the Church was still connected with 
 the State, and had by this time hardened into confessional 
 orthodoxy ; and the course of safety for outsiders who wished 
 freedom, still seemed to be to depress its power. Accordingly, 
 the system of Territorialism, of which Boehmer's Ecclesiastical 
 Law (A.D. 1720) is the great repository, for the first time set up on 
 the Continent the formal principle of the supremacy of the civil 
 ruler, not in sacred things, but circa sacra a supremacy there- 
 fore rather in matters ecclesiastical. This was applied in detail, 
 so as to paralyze independent action in the departments of the 
 Church, and of course all attempt at self-government. Not only 
 the Lutheran but the Reformed Churches were organized in 
 Prussia under crown - appointed consistories and commissions, 
 and the contests which had divided and wrecked the cause of 
 Protestantism were succeeded by a general apathy on all matters 
 of faith. Pietism existed, but (with some exceptions, as in the 
 case of Spener, who wished to organize the religious work of 
 the laity) its inorganic individualism fell in well enough with 
 the government system of administrative depression of the 
 Church. All private views were tolerated until they became 
 powerful or proselytist, and they were repressed when the State 
 judged it expedient in the public interest. 
 
 Farther east, the Church of Russia had always been absolutely 
 a State Church. In the year 1700 its patriarch Adrian died, and
 
 1 66 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Peter the Great declined to appoint another, transferring at the 
 same time from the patriarchal to the civil courts such matters as 
 inheritances and wills. He now took possession, for the empire, 
 of the estates which had formerly sustained the ecclesiastics and 
 the cloisters, granting out of them limited salaries to bishops, 
 monks, and nuns, and applying the remainder to pension soldiers 
 and hospitals. On 25th January 1721, the Czar took a still more 
 important step. He issued an edict abolishing the patriarchate, 
 that being " too weighty a charge for any single person to whom 
 the supreme power is not hereditary." And, " after the example 
 of former religious kings, recited in the Old and New Testament, 
 We, Peter the First, having taken upon us the care of the 
 regulation of the clergy and spiritual order, and not seeing any 
 better way for it than a regulation by a synod," appointed the 
 synod accordingly. It still governs or administers Church 
 matters ; but it was instituted to do so according to a detailed 
 regulation embodied in the Czar's edict, a regulation which its 
 author declares to be founded on Scripture, the Fathers, and "the 
 civil laws conformable to the word of God." The synod may 
 add to or vary the regulation, but " not without our consent ; " 
 and each of its members swears that the emperor, who appoints 
 him, is " the supreme judge of this spiritual college." 
 
 During the period that the territorial Church of Germany was 
 falling under the subjection of the State, the territorial Church of 
 France was making terms with the State, on the footing of both 
 asserting a certain independence of the pope. This phenomenon 
 in history is known as Gallicanism, and it was an inheritance from 
 the position maintained by it and other countries before the 
 Reformation. France had maintained this attitude, especially in 
 the time of Philip the Fair and at the Councils of Constance 
 and Basle (pp. 85, 104). It was naturally more pronounced when 
 Henry IV. became a Catholic, but with the view of unifying 
 the nation and giving a certain toleration to Protestants. In 
 A.D. 1594, a treatise by Pithou, a celebrated jurist, entitled " The 
 Liberties of the Gallican Church," was presented to Henry, and
 
 EUROPE, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1789. 167 
 
 hailed as the " palladium of France." It starts from the funda- 
 mental maxim that the State and its king are in temporal matters 
 sovereign and independent of the Church and of its chief in 
 Rome. This had been admitted by the Church in all ages before 
 Hildebrand, and not subsequently in express terms denied. The 
 counter proposition, that the Church is independent in spiritual 
 matters, was theoretically held by the French Church. The " co- 
 ordinate jurisdiction " of the two bodies thence resulting, each in 
 its own sphere, was now maintained by its theologians, as, for 
 example, by Richer in 1611 in his book On the Ecclesiastical and 
 tJie Political Powers?- Among the lawyers, however, there was a 
 leaning to the view of their imperialist predecessors, that the 
 civil power had a certain supremacy even in or about matters 
 spiritual. And the Churchmen, pressed by the double bribe from 
 the Crown, of privilege within France over other religionists, and 
 of protection outside it against Rome, allowed the king and his 
 courts rights in detail by no means consistent with their general 
 principle. 2 In Henry Quatre's time, however (notwithstanding 
 the successes throughout Europe of the Jesuits and the Curia, 
 
 1 An important book of a later age, De Marca's De Concordia Sacerdotii el 
 Imperil, was written at the request of Richelieu. 
 
 9 One of the chief means of defence against excesses of the Church in 
 France has always been, the appeal to the courts against the decisions or acts 
 of its officials, comme d'abus, as it is called. The mere fact that these 
 decisions are wrong, does not warrant an appeal except to the highest 
 ecclesiastical authority. The appeal to the Crown arises only when there is 
 abuse; by which is meant, when the ecclesiastical judge lias exceeded his 
 power, or attacked the secular jurisdiction, or decided something against 
 Church or civil liberties. In such a case, the man wronged by abuse of the 
 legitimate ecclesiastical jurisdiction, can appeal to the Crown courts, now 
 to the Conseil tf Etat, Such cases should, of course, be rare ; and in the 
 eightieth head of the "Liberties," it is expressly provided that the right of 
 appeal is reciprocal to the Church, that is, a man aggrieved by the magis- 
 trate on his side exceeding his power, can appeal, not to the Church, but on 
 its belialf to the higher Crown court. This so-called reciprocity, however, was 
 not exercised ; while the Appeal, which had been intended to be an extra- 
 ordinary remedy for great offences, came to be used very frequently and 
 vexatiously by men dissatisfied with the ordinary detail of priestly tribunals, 
 then powerful, but now largely abolished.
 
 1 68 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 and the St. Bartholomew massacre by their partisans in 1572), 
 the union of the French Crown and clergy was victorious. In one 
 point the Gallican Church and Rome were agreed : both opposed 
 the toleration of Protestantism given in 1589 by Henry's Edict 
 of Nantes. Yet for a hundred years the great statesmen who 
 were raising France to pre-eminence in Europe, declined wholly 
 to abolish it ; till in the reign of the magnificent Louis XIV. the 
 Crown seemed strong enough to venture on a double stroke. In 
 1682, the Declaration of the Clergy, prepared and afterwards 
 defended 1 by the celebrated Bossuet, declared in four articles, 
 approved by the Crown, that the Holy Seat cannot meddle with 
 temporal matters or depose sovereigns, that its power was still 
 limited throughout the Church by the decisions of Constance, 
 and in France by the Gallican traditions, and that its decrees 
 even in matters of faith are not " irreformable " until they are con- 
 firmed by the Church. Three years after, in 1685, the Edict of 
 Nantes was revoked, and every Protestant who did not conform 
 to the national Church subjected to cruel penalties. The declara- 
 tion by the Gallican clergy was keenly resented by the pope, who 
 was already in conflict with the king about the regale (which in 
 France included the right of the Crown not only to enjoy the 
 temporalities, but to exercise the patronage of vacant sees). By 
 the year 1693, however, the dispute was settled in the unfortunate 
 way for which the concordat of 1516 had given a precedent, the 
 pope and king agreeing together, and the rights of the Church 
 and people being subordinated to both. The pope now instituted 
 the bishops appointed by the king, but he insisted on their send- 
 ing letters of apology, amounting almost to retractation, for the 
 declaration of 1682. The principles of Gallicanism, however, 
 including a certain practical subordination of the Church to the 
 State, spread in the eighteenth century into adjacent Catholic 
 countries. Van Espen, the canonist of Louvain, taught them at 
 that university. His pupil, Von Hontheim, Bishop of Treves, 
 under the name of Febronius, published against the papal power 
 1 Bossuet's Defence of the Declaration of the Gallican Church.
 
 EUROPE, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1789. 1 69 
 
 in 1763. And even in Austria, all through the reign of Maria 
 Theresa, Catholic canonists taught a territorial supremacy of the 
 State similar to that maintained by the Protestant lawyers of 
 Germany. Meantime the social system in France had begun to 
 glide smoothly towards revolution. Ecclesiastical causes con- 
 tributed. The beginning of the eighteenth century, the most 
 brilliant period of the Gallican Church, was troubled by the 
 Quietist and Jansenist controversies ; and the possibility of 
 wholesome results from these was frustrated by the incessant 
 intrigues on either side to secure the support of Rome or of the 
 king. Bossuet and Fe'nelon were among its prelates ; but the 
 magnanimous orator covered with his applause the royal author 
 of the terrible dragonnades, and the saintly archbishop, when 
 dismissed from court as a fanatic, appealed, not to the ancient 
 General Assembly of the Clergy of France, but to the Holy See 
 and its counsellors of the Society of Jesus. The result was 
 seen in the next generation, when (A.D. 1721) a man like 
 Dubois, in whom it was well known that " all the vices strove for 
 mastery," could yet sit in the archiepiscopal seat of Fenelon with 
 Massillon's acquiescence, and from that position rule the Church 
 and State of France in the interest of a pope who had purchased 
 from him his own election to the Holy See by the written 
 promise of a cardinal's hat. The ancient belief in an independent 
 French Church was by this time chiefly maintained by those of 
 the clergy favourable to Jansenism ; Jansenism and Gallicanism 
 had been condemned by Rome, and were now obnoxious to the 
 court; and the "Parlements" of Paris and the provinces, the 
 last refuges of Gallican liberty, were being crushed by royal 
 ordinances and lettres de cachet. The twofold despotism, civil 
 and ecclesiastical, caused a deep reaction in the now awakening 
 mind of the people. There was perhaps some truth in the com- 
 ment of the Bishop of Autun in 1755 on the advancing irreligion 
 of the time : " We cannot hide from ourselves that it is through 
 the conflict between two powers which were designed to act in 
 concert, and not to destroy each other, that unbelief triumphs."
 
 170 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 But the union in intolerance of the two powers, which was still 
 maintained by the law of France, caused far more popular in- 
 dignation against the Church than the occasional collisions 
 between them, collisions which that too close union necessitated 
 and excused. It was long after this (in 1762) that the judicial 
 murder of the Protestant merchant Galas roused the immortal 
 vindictiveness of Voltaire. But already, in the middle of the 
 century, the Church was aware that it had lost its hold on the 
 conscience and heart of the people. Unfortunately it clung all 
 the closer to its feudal and royal patrons. An assembly of the 
 clergy, held in this same year, 1755, complained to the king that 
 scepticism filled the sun and air like smoke, and spread over the 
 whole kingdom. The distinctions between virtue and vice, it 
 asserted, were confounded, and the mysteries of religion were 
 criticised with impunity. And in addition, "men speculate, with 
 an amount of hardihood unparalleled under the French monarchy, 
 upon the origin of sovereign power, and the mode in which it 
 should be exercised. That wholesome doctrine which sees in 
 royalty the ineffaceable impress of the divine majesty, is altogether 
 ignored." It was all true. And every year, during the genera- 
 tion that followed, it became more true, till the slow revolt of 
 conscience against both Church and State ended in sudden 
 revolution.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 
 
 THE great landmark after the Reformation in continental Europe, 
 in Church and State matters as in others, is the Revolution, 
 which may be dated from its outbreak in France in 1789. But 
 Britain had its earlier Revolution in 1689, following upon William's 
 invasion of 1688 ; and as it happens, it also is a landmark in the 
 history of our question. No doubt the discussion of the theory of 
 Church and State has been continuous in this country from the 
 Reformation to the present day, and so has its evolution in 
 our history. But the Revolution made a certain break in both. 
 Before 1689, what were chiefly in question were the relations of 
 the Church to the king. Since 1689 it has been rather the 
 relations of the Church to Parliament. We deal first with the 
 former period, extending to the fall of the Stuarts. 
 
 Elizabeth's domestic administration was intolerant, but her 
 power when resisted by her people was supported by the pressure 
 upon them of a more dangerous intolerance from abroad. The 
 right, even of a nation, to choose its own religion was not yet 
 conceded, and the title of the daughter of Anne Boleyn was 
 naturally refused recognition by the pope. Her first statutes 
 were no doubt also such as to evoke Catholic animosity. By the 
 Act of Supremacy, all officials, civil and ecclesiastical, were to 
 renounce the spiritual as well as temporal jurisdiction of every 
 foreign prince or prelate. By the Act of Uniformity, the use by 
 any minister of any but the established liturgy was forbidden
 
 172 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 under penalties, and all laymen who absented themselves from 
 the parish church were to be fined one shilling. Yet this 
 statutory intolerance, positive and negative, was not severely 
 carried out till the latter part of this queen's reign, when many 
 priests were executed on charges of treason or denying the 
 supremacy. Elizabeth cared much for her own power, and little 
 for the Protestant or any faith ; and if by a marriage alliance or 
 otherwise she could have securely established her dynasty, she 
 would willingly have compromised with Rome. As it happened, 
 her coquettish but persistent celibacy, and her knowledge of the 
 strong title of the Catholic Queen of Scots to succeed if not to 
 supersede her in the English throne, kept her in line with the 
 feelings of most of her subjects. Her life was at no time safe 
 from conspiracy, and Papal Bulls of excommunication and deposi- 
 tion were followed by an assault from the whole power of Spain 
 in the Armada (A.D. 1588). In this crisis, however, the English 
 Catholics remained loyal to their country ; the national danger 
 led to a universal outburst of patriotism ; and the queen, almost 
 against her wish, was henceforward recognised as the greatest 
 representative of Protestantism. 
 
 Elizabeth had a more delicate if not more difficult task on the 
 internal side of her Church relations. The Protestant faith in 
 England was mainly Calvinistic ; and, here as on the Continent, it 
 was accompanied by a passionate tendency to revert to what 
 were now proclaimed as the simple and primitive forms of 
 Church organization and worship. With this tendency her 
 Parliament strongly sympathised ; but the Queen herself was 
 absolutely hostile, while, even outside the persistently Catholic 
 portion of her subjects, a great part of England was but nomi- 
 nally Protestant. What occurs to us in modern times as the 
 fnth of safety in such circumstances is, of course, the withdrawal 
 of the Act of Uniformity and of all interference with religion by 
 the Crown. Even in that age the permission to Papist, Puritan, 
 and Anglican to exercise each his own worship, and to persuade 
 his neighbour into the better form of practice and belief, would
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 173 
 
 apparently have diminished instead of increasing the discontents 
 of the kingdom, and would have surrounded the already absolute 
 queen with a barricade of enthusiastic loyalty. But no party, 
 least of all the queen, was prepared to leave all views free to 
 express themselves. On the other hand, to enforce extreme 
 views on either side would, she felt, be dangerous for the State. 
 She adhered to the middle worship of a half-Protestantized 
 people, and to this she demanded a universal external conformity, 
 a course which, she characteristically urged, " left opinion free." 
 Her subjects, in so far as they had beliefs about such matters at 
 all, believed that worship was worthless which was contrary to 
 the opinion of the worshipper. Most of them, however, would 
 have been content with indulgence to individual or congrega- 
 tional scruples. But Thomas Cartwright, as professor of divinity 
 at Cambridge, began about A.D. 1570 to urge reverting to the 
 Presbyterian or Hebrew simplicity of church government, as 
 both the right and the duty of the Church. And he, like his 
 successors of the same school, urged also that it was the duty of 
 the State to enforce this, by forbidding all additions to the 
 primitive form. The only controversialists who held the modern 
 doctrines of toleration, were the Brownists and Barrowists, so 
 called from their founders, whose position was like that after- 
 wards known as " Independent." Barrow and some others were 
 executed as seditious or treasonable, the chief pretext for the 
 charge being that they attacked the whole ecclesiastical system 
 with its supremacy of the Crown ; and many of their followers 
 were driven into banishment to Holland. Yet even among those 
 who clung to a national religion, the discontent with the present 
 form grew and spread. But all they could hope for now was 
 freedom from an enforced uniformity on particular points of con- 
 science. The clergy and bishops, like the Parliament, were 
 originally rather disposed to be Puritan. But by this time the 
 constitution which made the bishops dependent on the Crown 
 had begun to take effect. Elizabeth, who for five years had 
 suspended one tenant of the See of Canterbury for declining to
 
 174 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 be the instrument of her despotism, replaced him in A.D. 1583 
 by Whitgift, Cartwright's original opponent in controversy. To 
 this archbishop and others were now committed the tyrannical 
 ecclesiastical powers of the royal commission (p. 149) ; and they 
 were exercised to the end of the reign in a way which Bacon 
 deprecated, and which even Burleigh complained of as in- 
 quisitorial and oppressive. A new statute exposed the more 
 persistent nonconformists to banishment or death. Day by day 
 the great queen sowed the seeds which her Stuart successors 
 were to reap. No open or organized protest was possible, but 
 under the name of " Martin Marprelate " anonymous pamphlets 
 were circulated through the kingdom, anticipating, in racy bitter- 
 ness, the writings of Swift or Defoe. During all this reign, in- 
 deed, there was a general feeling among serious men that reason 
 as well as religion were on the Puritan side, and that authority 
 stood alone on the other. Only towards its close was a man 
 found whose nobility of intellect and character enabled him to 
 attempt a foundation in reason for an institution whose origin in 
 recent history appeared so arbitrary and violent. 
 
 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, published partially in 1594, and 
 in full after his death in 1600, is substantially a defence of the 
 Church of England against the Puritan and Calvinistic view, that 
 nothing is lawful in the Church unless it has scriptural authority. 
 Hooker rejects this view, and does so not merely on the ground 
 that it represents Scripture as a code of rules, rather than a maga- 
 zine of principles. He sets himself to seek for the source and 
 origin of law, and occupies his first book with a magnificent 
 demonstration of its universality as founded in the nature of God 
 and the reason of man, and thus permeating and regulating all 
 societies and institutions, antecedently to the revelation which 
 Scripture superadds. In the Church, therefore, as in other 
 societies, he points out, a multitude of things have to be settled 
 simply by the law of right reason, and church traditions and 
 order may, as the 34th Article declares, be changed from time to 
 time by competent authority. Accordingly, while he holds that
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 175 
 
 Episcopacy and other ordinances are in point of fact apostolic, 
 and recorded in Scripture, he holds, in point of principle, that no 
 church form is unchangeable. Assuming this to be true, it is 
 plain that Hooker's position was a full defence of the existing 
 church institutions only in the event of their being wisely intro- 
 duced by the proper authority, thus left unfettered by Scripture. 
 But what, according to Hooker, is the proper authority for insti- 
 tutions in the State or the Church ? As to the theory of the State, 
 Mr. Hallam points out that Hooker, following Aristotle and 
 Aquinas, derives the origin of government, both in fact and in 
 law, from " the assent of them who are to be governed." " Laws 
 they are not which public approbation hath not made so." 
 " Against all equity it were, that a man should suffer detriment 
 at the hands of men for not observing that which he never did, 
 either by himself or others, mediately or immediately, agree 
 unto." And thus the English monarchy is one limited by law ; 
 for " the whole body politic maketh laws, which laws give power 
 unto the king," that he may execute them. But it has not been 
 so often observed that his views of the original source of church 
 authority also are parallel, and are in accordance with those of 
 his Presbyterian and Puritan opponents. " A church and a com- 
 monwealth, we grant, are things in nature the one distinguished 
 from the other. A church is one way, and a commonwealth 
 another way, defined " (Book viii. sect. 2). Thus in the days of 
 the apostles there were two "corporations," the mass of men 
 professing Christ, on the one hand, and the Roman common- 
 wealth, on the other. "We grant that the commonwealth of 
 Rome was one society, and the Church of Rome another, in such 
 sort that there was between them no mutual dependency." And 
 the Church, when independent, was of course self-governing. 
 But at this historical point comes in Hooker's peculiar theory of 
 establishment. " When whole Rome became Christian, when they 
 all embraced the gospel, and made laws in the defence thereof," 
 a unanimity which of course never historically existed, then, 
 he holds, the two corporations not only coincided in their member-
 
 176 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 ship, but became one, so as apparently to lose the power of either 
 reclaiming its original rights. And on the same rather narrow 
 grounds he bases the supremacy of the Crown over his own Church, 
 " seeing that there is not a man of the Church of England but 
 the same man is also a member of the commonwealth ; nor any 
 man a member of the commonwealth which is not also of the 
 Church of England." This state of fact, again, if it ever existed 
 in England, has long since ceased ; and Hooker's theory of iden- 
 tification of Church and State has not been generally held. The 
 strength of his position on this subject was not in his own theory, 
 so much as in the concession to him by his opponents, that the 
 State as well as the Church is a political society for the purpose 
 of maintaining religion, and in the mild and tolerant use he 
 individually was disposed to make of so perilous a view. Hooker's 
 real contribution to his country's progress was that rich atmo- 
 sphere of conservative reason which, throughout his work, anti- 
 cipates, in defence of English anomalies, the great argument of 
 Edmund Burke that in order to attain equity it is not necessary, 
 or even permissible, to break with the past, and that law, if it is 
 to be just, must recognise the complexity of existing fact, rather 
 than build upon any symmetry of ideal. The great mass of 
 Englishmen acquiesced in the Church and State system into 
 which they had drifted ; and it was now possible to represent this 
 as an acquiescence in the common reason of the universe, in- 
 forming and guiding in detail all its structures, agencies, and 
 societies, a view of law in general which, through Hooker chiefly, 
 has become the inheritance of English statesmanship and thought. 
 With Hooker, too, there enters within the pale of the early Eng- 
 lish Church that untheological passion for learning and science, 
 into which the world outside had been growing for a hundred 
 years at least before the Reformation came and concentrated all 
 thoughts upon religion. " The spacious times of great Elizabeth" 
 had room for this also, and indeed for everything. The greatness 
 of its chief representative, Shakespeare, is immeasurable, very 
 much because it is so impersonal and impartial. A name almost
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 177 
 
 equally great, that of Lord Bacon, reminds us of the central part 
 which England now took in the outrush of man's investigating 
 mind upon the external universe. The scientific passion, like 
 that for exploration and commerce, had already begun to work 
 indirectly in favour of toleration. Bacon's own temperament was 
 cool, and his intellect many-sided, and when that great thinker 
 became a statesman, he did what he could to reconcile extreme 
 views, and to suggest the comprehension of various church prac- 
 tices under the supremacy which he too obsequiously served. 
 Unfortunately the new king, to whom his cautious representations 1 
 were made, was scarcely more disposed than Elizabeth to use 
 that supremacy for the liberation of consciences. 
 
 James I., when he succeeded to the throne of England in 1603, 
 brought from his kingdom of Scotland forty years' experience ot 
 the problem of Church and State. For, as Mr. Hallam remarks, 
 " from the Reformation the history of Scotland assumes a cha- 
 racter to which there is no parallel in modern ages." It mirrored 
 indeed, rather, in small national dimensions, what had been the 
 problem of mediaeval Europe, but in Scotland it " became a con- 
 test between the temporal and spiritual authorities, the Crown 
 and the Church, that in general supported by the Legislature, this 
 sustained by the voice of the people." It was largely so because 
 in Scotland there was also a Church Legislature, composed of 
 representative presbyters, lay and clerical, gathered annually 
 together into a General Assembly, through which the voice of the 
 people, or of a large majority of it, was heard. The Assembly had 
 adopted, in 1560, the " First Book of Discipline," as regulating the 
 proposed order of the national Church ; but the Privy Council 
 declined to sanction it, and even after there was a Parliamentary 
 recognition of the Reformed Church in 1567, the bishops retained 
 their seats in Parliament, and drew their revenues, most part of 
 which, however, went by private compact to members of the 
 nobility. The Convention of the Church in Leith, in 1572, sanc- 
 
 1 " Certain Considerations on the Church of England, dedicated to his 
 Majesty," and other pieces. 
 
 M
 
 178 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 tioned the interim continuance of these bishops, but made them 
 (like the superintendents appointed soon after the Reformation) 
 subject to the Assembly. The whole episcopate, however, was an 
 unmeaning excrescence, except for the purposes of the Crown and 
 nobility. Accordingly, about the same time that the Assembly, 
 in 1581, procured the signature of the king and his court to the 
 First Covenant, or " King's Confession," and drew up and ap- 
 proved its own " Second Book of Discipline," it resolved that the 
 office of bishop should not continue, and required those holding 
 it to resign. One of them, Montgomery, refused, and the result 
 was a collision, in which the Assembly, as representing the 
 Church, insisted upon its right to regulate church matters, on the 
 grounds of mutual independence or " co-ordinate jurisdiction " of 
 Church and State which that book clearly lays down. This bold 
 claim was emphasized by the free criticism with which men like 
 Andrew Melville, in the pulpit and out of it, discussed the policy 
 and actions of the Crown whenever they seemed to affect the 
 interests of religion. The advisers of James (who was now nearly 
 twenty years old, and had already revolted from the constitutional 
 maxims of his early tutor) met this by the Acts of 1584, one of 
 which (afterwards partially repealed) " confirmed the royal autho- 
 rity over all estates, as well spiritual as temporal," while another 
 forbade " all judgments and jurisdictions, spiritual or temporal, 
 which are not approved by his Highness," and a third constituted 
 " the ordinary bishop of the diocese, or others, the king's commis- 
 sioners," judges in ecclesiastical causes. By the year 1 592, how- 
 ever, public events, especially the attack of the Armada, had 
 moved men in the other direction, and the first Act of the Parliament 
 of that year annulled generally all Acts against the liberty of the 
 Kirk, and particularly the commission to bishops of 1584, and 
 sanctioned Church rule by its own assemblies and presbyteries, 
 " with the whole jurisdiction and discipline of the Kirk agreed 
 upon by his Majesty in conference with certain of the ministers." 
 Whether by this Act the State granted a certain jurisdiction which 
 it had power afterwards to extend or limit, or whether it merely
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 179 
 
 acknowledged what had been granted to the Church already by 
 its members or by a higher power, became in modern times a 
 famous question. In the meantime, the special immunities which 
 it gave to Presbytery were not long preserved ; for in 1 597 an Act 
 of the Scots Parliament provided that such ministers as the king 
 should make prelates, should sit in Parliament ; and in 1600 
 the Assembly was persuaded to meet this by authorizing the 
 Church to be represented in Parliament by certain ministers to 
 be selected by the king. But it was not till 1606, after James 
 had gone to London, that the bishops thus chosen were made 
 "constant moderators," and not till 1610 were they admitted to 
 powers of episcopal ordination and visitation, the latter always 
 very timidly exercised. 
 
 The effect of this struggle upon James was to make him hail 
 with delight his accession to what he held to be the absolute 
 monarchy of England, with its surroundings of episcopacy. 
 He was a man of considerable culture and enlightenment, 
 and disposed to principles of toleration, or at least to plans 
 of comprehension, which he was willing to extend to Rome. 
 Nothing came of this, however, the Gunpowder Plot, soon after 
 his accession, having terrified him and irritated his people, and 
 his prolonged and weak negotiations with Spain and France 
 generally resulting in English failure. Consequently, while there 
 was frequent persecution by his council of English priests, the 
 king's constant bargaining with the Catholic powers was imputed 
 by the Parliament, probably correctly, to a waning faith in 
 Protestantism. Towards Puritanism his attitude was more 
 unmistakeable. At the Hampton Conference in 1604, upon a 
 suggestion from Dr. Reynolds, that disputed points as to the 
 " prophesyings" or religious conferences which they desired should 
 be referred to " the bishop with his presbyters," James exploded. 
 He told them they wanted a Scottish presbytery, which " agreeth 
 as well with monarchy as God and the devil." And as they left 
 the room he confided to the bishops, " I shall make them conform 
 themselves, or I will harry them out of the land." New canons
 
 180 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 were this year passed by Convocation, under the guidance of 
 Archbishop Bancroft ; and next year subscription to the Articles, 
 the Prayer-book, and the royal supremacy, was demanded from all 
 curates and lecturers. Three hundred of the clergy were thus at 
 once ejected ; and in 1606 Convocation passed other canons in 
 favour of passive obedience, and of an absolute power of the 
 king, underived from the consent of his people. This uniformity 
 and conformity, it will be remembered, was demanded from all 
 laymen in England ; there was no liberty of dissenting or 
 unauthorized worship. Those who declined to conform were 
 consequently known as separatists or sectaries, and of these 
 many thousands are said to have gone as emigrants to Holland 
 alone during the early part of this reign. It was natural that 
 among such recusants, and in that section of them whose prin- 
 ciples lay most stress on individual faith as contrasted with 
 State or even Church multitudinism, there should be found the 
 earliest formal proclamation to England of the theory of tolera- 
 tion. The Declaration of Faith of the English Baptists, in 
 Amsterdam in 1611, confesses, " The magistrate is not to meddle 
 with religion or matters of conscience, nor compel men to this or 
 that form of religion ; because Christ is the King and Lawgiver 
 of the Church and conscience." This was as yet too advanced 
 a position for their fellow-exiles, who had merely attained to the 
 position of congregational independency. But these were sure to 
 go farther in the future, and in the meantime they had resolved 
 to maintain their actual freedom in a new and free world. In 
 1620 the Speedwell bore from Leyden to Southampton, and the 
 Mayflower from Plymouth in Britain to Plymouth in New 
 England, a company of men who were to be the pioneers of the 
 Western Republic. In England, their king, whose boasted king- 
 craft suggested to a neighbouring monarch the description of 
 him as "the wisest fool in Christendom," remained all his life 
 supreme over the Church, through his favourites, noble and 
 clerical. His Parliament was deeply discontented ; but when, in 
 1621, the Commons put on record that "affairs concerning the
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. l8l 
 
 king, State, and the defence of the realm and of the Church of 
 England are proper subjects and matter of counsel and debate 
 in Parliament," he erased the resolution from the journals with 
 his own hand, and threw the leaders into prison. Had he lived 
 longer, he would certainly have come into conflict on this subject 
 with his people. Indeed, it was an anti-Puritanical and, as the 
 Commons thought, an anti-Protestant book, approved by James 
 just before his death, and with the significant title of " An Appeal 
 to Caesar," which occasioned the first collision between them and 
 his successor. 
 
 Charles took for his advisers Laud in the Church and Strafford 
 in the State, two men who are said to have been originally 
 brought together by the intemperate " Plea against Prelacy " of 
 Leighton, the scourged and pilloried father of the Scottish arch- 
 bishop. To Laud and Strafford " Presbyterianism in the Church 
 and Parliamentarism in the State would seem two forms of one 
 disease," J and the cure for both was the absolute rule of the 
 Crown, in the one case through its ministers, in the other through 
 its bishops. By the year 1637 the battle with Parliamentarism 
 seemed already gained. Its champion Eliot had died in the 
 Tower ; for eight years Charles had governed without a Parlia- 
 ment ; the judges now declared, in the question of his demanding 
 ship-money directly from the subject, that "Acts of Parliament 
 to bind the king" are void ; and Hampden and Cromwell had 
 almost joined the stream of Englishmen who fled across the 
 Atlantic at the rate of two thousand every year. The check came 
 from Scotland. There, as we have seen, James had with diffi- 
 culty procured the appointment of nominal bishops ; but he tells 
 himself how, when Laud twice came back to him with a " frivo- 
 lous draft " intended to make " that stubborn Kirk stoop more to 
 the English platform," the cautious king sent him away, "He 
 knows not the stomach of that people ! " Charles knew it as 
 little as Laud. He had already, by authority of the Scots 
 Parliament, ordered the ministers to wear the surplice ; and he 
 1 Gardiner s History, vii. 152.
 
 1 82 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 now, without even that authority, issued by royal proclama- 
 tion new canons and a liturgy, intended to conform their 
 Church to a Catholicised England. But the riot in St. Giles, 
 when the dean opened the new prayer-book there, became a 
 revolution throughout the north. The Covenant of A.D. 1581, 
 binding king and people to the primitive faith against the excres- 
 cences of Rome, was signed everywhere, with additions of protest 
 against the minor excrescences of England. The king, taken 
 aback, allowed the calling of an Assembly. It met in Glasgow in 
 A.D. 1638, refused to separate when dissolved by the royal com- 
 missioner, by the Church's own authority set aside the canons 
 and liturgy and the previous Articles of Perth, and, deposing the 
 bench of bishops, restored Presbyterianism. Next year the 
 Scottish army, under Leslie and other soldiers of Gustavus 
 Adolphus, crossed the border, and Charles was obliged to meet 
 his Parliament. 
 
 The calling of the Long Parliament in A.D. 1640, and the 
 sudden relief from the pressure exercised by royalty upon the 
 consciences of Englishmen ever since the Reformation, produced 
 a resurrection of first principles in the region of Church and 
 State. The pamphlets alone, which were published during 
 those years, were numbered by thousands ; and it was in the 
 very midst of this eager search for truth, and in defence of its 
 right to remain unfettered, that John Milton wrote, in 1644, in 
 his Areopagitica : 
 
 " Behold now this vast city ! The shop of war hath not there 
 more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and 
 instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than 
 there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, 
 musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to 
 present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching 
 Reformation ; others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting 
 to the force of reason and convincement. . . . Methinks I see in 
 my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like a 
 strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks ; me-
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 183 
 
 thinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, and 
 kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam." 
 
 The modern doctrine of toleration sprang at once into promi- 
 nence, and became the centre of discussion. Already some went 
 the whole length of holding that the State has no right to exert 
 pressure upon the private conscience, whether pressure against 
 particular religious beliefs or in their favour, whether in the way 
 of urging their profession or of urging their denial. Of course 
 such a principle, unheard of even as a theory since the days of 
 Theodosius, had no chance in the meantime of being embodied 
 in English legislative practice. Its influence upon that age is 
 chiefly seen in the mass of anti-toleration brochures, most of 
 which endeavour to prove that the Parliament must more or 
 less use the sword on behalf of some favoured doctrine, unless it 
 will take the extreme and scandalous position of tolerating all. 
 
 The Parliament of Charles was not, in the first instance, dis- 
 posed even to abolish Episcopacy. All it demanded was that the 
 bishops should no longer sit in the House of Lords, that each of 
 them should be chairman of a council of presbyters in his own 
 diocese, and that all " superstitions " and sacerdotal ritual should 
 be removed from the churches. But, as the contest went on, the 
 views of Scotland and London took hold of the English mind, and 
 even in 1641 the House by a majority voted that English bishops 
 should cease, while the consent of Charles to the Presbyterian 
 Bill for their removal from the peers, was given, too late for him, in 
 1642. The war now broke out, and went at first heavily against 
 the Commons. In extremity they resolved once more to appeal 
 to Scotland, and Sir Harry Vane, to whose speculative intellect 
 the Church and State of that age owed, in Milton's view, " the 
 bounds of either sword," 1 came on their behalf to Edinburgh. 
 
 1 ' ' To know 
 
 Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, 
 What severs each, thou hast learned, which few have done. 
 The bounds of either sword to thee we owe ; 
 Therefore on thy firm hand religion leans 
 In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son."
 
 1 84 " CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 In this negotiation, Baillie relates, " The English were for a civil 
 league, the Scots for a religious covenant ; " and the name of the 
 Solemn League and Covenant shows how both were combined in 
 the result. This great instrument bound those who signed it to 
 " the preservation of the reformed religion in the Church of 
 Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, against 
 our common enemies ; " and to " the reformation of religion in 
 the kingdoms of England and Ireland," in the same particulars. 
 The Scots, who were highly flattered by the whole transaction, 
 would willingly have added that the reformation should be 
 according to the model they had themselves already adopted. 
 But by the skill of Vane 1 in Edinburgh, and the prudence of the 
 Westminster Assembly of Divines in London, it was provided that 
 the reformation should be more generally " according to the Word 
 of God and the example of the best reformed churches." A sub- 
 sequent clause, however, covenanted, in particular, that they should 
 " endeavour the extirpation," not only of popery, but of prelacy, 
 and all depending on the " hierarchy," and should aim at as much 
 "conjunction and uniformity" as possible in matters religious. 
 It was what the House of Commons and most of the people of 
 Scotland desired ; and it was a great political gain that men like 
 Milton and Cromwell now voluntarily bound themselves along 
 with the mass of their countrymen in the enthusiastic way with 
 which Scotland had long been familiar. But, at such a crisis, and 
 in that age, such a bond could not remain voluntary. In Septem- 
 ber 1643, the Houses ordered that it should be subscribed and 
 
 1 Another famous contemporary of Vane, Richard Baxter, says that, while 
 obscure in most things, he was plain and prevailing in an " earnest plea for 
 universal liberty of conscience, and against the magistrate's intermeddling 
 with religion." Vane's words before dying on the scaffold were : " The 
 people of England have been long asleep ; I doubt they will be hungry when 
 they awake." " They have slept," adds T. H. Green (the Gray of Robert 
 Elsmere), "they have slept, we may say, another two hundred years. If 
 they should yet wake and be hungry, they will find their food in the ideas 
 which, with much blindness and weakness, Vane offered them, cleared and 
 ripened by a philosophy of which he did not dream." Green's Works, 
 iii. 364.
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 185 
 
 sworn throughout the whole English nation ; and next month the 
 Privy Council for Scotland ordered that the same should be done 
 there also. This new test drove out of the Church of England 
 hundreds, if not thousands, of its clergy ; for the army of Scotland 
 once more entered England, and the Parliament and the future 
 Lord Protector now began their career of success. Success 
 brought its usual responsibility ; and the Commons were soon 
 face to face with the question of the Church. They already had, 
 in June 1642, adopted the prudent course of calling "an assembly 
 of divines to be consulted with by the Parliament," but only on 
 such matters as Parliament should propose to it, and for the 
 purpose of having a right government " settled " in the Church. 
 That such a " settlement " was the business of the State, was the 
 unhesitating belief oi nearly the whole Assembly, and of nearly 
 the whole Parliament ; and how to reconcile this with ideas of 
 freedom like those of Milton, soon came to be the speculative 
 problem. The Church of Scotland and its commissioners to 
 England, filled with their national passion for unity, openly 
 denounced all " toleration for sectaries ; " and it was this dominant 
 and Presbyterian part of the Assembly whom the poet addressed 
 in the words, 
 
 " Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword 
 To force our consciences that Christ set free, 
 And ride us with a classic hierarchy ? 
 
 New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large ! " 
 
 The hierarchy of "classes," which then as now existed in 
 Scotland, would in that age have ridden too sharply over even 
 those who voluntarily submitted to it. But it came to be a differ- 
 ent matter if every Englishman was to be bound by law and 
 under penalties to join a congregation, and if every congrega- 
 tion had now to submit to its " class" or presbytery. 
 
 But how far in point of fact did the Westminster Assembly 
 "adjure the civil sword" thus to act? What was its theory on 
 Church and State?
 
 1 86 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Its Confession of Faith, for the next two hundred years the 
 doctrinal standard of Scottish and American Presbyterians, 
 hesitates between two inconsistent views. It lays down the 
 Reformation principle of private judgment, that " God alone is 
 Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free " from all restric- 
 tion in religion but His word ; but adds that this Christian liberty 
 is not opposed to the " powers which God hath ordained." One 
 of these powers is the Church, and its freedom is provided for 
 much more explicitly than in the later Reformation creeds, by the 
 statement that " The Lord Jesus, as King and Head of His Church, 
 hath therein appointed a government in the hand of Church 
 officers, distinct from the civil magistrate," the Church having 
 power of discipline and excommunication, and power to hold 
 synods and councils, but on ecclesiastical matters only. God 
 has, however, appointed under Himself the civil magistrate also, 
 whose authority is not made void by infidelity or difference in 
 religion from his subjects, nor are persons ecclesiastical freed 
 from it ; "and he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order 
 that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth 
 of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies 
 be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and dis- 
 cipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God 
 duly settled, administered, and observed." The peculiar phrase, 
 "to take order" (in Latin, providere), was intended to prevent 
 the State assuming, with reference to these great religious 
 matters, that direct government of the Church which the English 
 articles and statutes had conceded to the Crown, but which the 
 Puritans now refused. Yet the moral and religious duty thus 
 laid upon the magistrate (even without direct government) is 
 immense in its range. And as it is to be discharged by him, not 
 by moral suasion, but through his proper powers, exerted out- 
 side of the Church, and not inside (circa sacra, not in sacris), it 
 is impossible to contemplate without alarm the pressure upon the 
 conscience of the Church as a whole, which a power (lawful, as 
 we are reminded, even when it is heretic or infidel) is thus called 
 upon authoritatively to exercise. It is significant, however, that 
 the only specified means of the State performing this duty is by 
 calling synods, and (using again a word of extreme ambiguity) 
 "providing that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to 
 the mind of God." For though the Westminster Assembly thus 
 formally retains the view of previous creeds, that the magistrate 
 is to judge for himself what is the mind of God, its suggestion 
 rather is that he may best learn from the synods of the Church 
 what the truth is which he is to see "kept pure," what the 
 heresies are which he is to see "suppressed, and what the 
 " ordinances of God " are which he is to see " observed." But 
 while the chapter as to the civil magistrate is thus objectionable
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 187 
 
 as being ambiguous, a few words at the end of the very fine 
 chapter on Christian liberty are alike pernicious and plain. They 
 proclaim that not merely the Church by its " censures," but the 
 magistrate by his " power," may proceed against men who merely 
 publish opinions, provided they are contrary to the " known 
 principles of Christianity," or to "the power of godliness," or even 
 to "the external peace and order" of the Church. Many men 
 in that great Parliament, especially among the Independents, 
 did not sympathize with this. And they were determined, not 
 only to refuse the addition of civil penalties to whatever sentence 
 the Church might choose to pass, but to "take order" that it 
 should not pass them too easily. 
 
 The legislative result reflected the inconsistent and transition 
 character of these theories, and was instructive, though not 
 destined to be permanent. Parliament retained the settle- 
 ment of religion in the hands of the State, on one occasion 
 sharply reminding the Assembly of Divines that their opinion 
 was only to be given when asked for. It declined to formulate 
 the jus diviiiUm of Presbytery, but in January 1642 it "re- 
 solved, That the Church be governed by congregational, classical, 
 and synodical (i.e. provincial and national) Assemblies, in such 
 manner as shall be established by Parliament." The national 
 Assembly never met, but the rest of this Presbyterian constitution 
 began to be organized, and the local government of the Church 
 was understood to be handed over to it, with one important 
 restriction on its powers of discipline. Certain offences were 
 enumerated by Parliament in an Act of 1646 as scandalous, and to 
 be dealt with by the congregational elderships ; but with regard 
 to all non-specified offences, a commission of nearly two hundred 
 members of the Lords and Commons was named, who were to 
 judge of them, on appeal from the Church Courts, and "with 
 the reserve of a final appeal from excommunicated persons to 
 Parliament itself." Imperfect as a settlement with this Erastian 
 element was in the eyes of the Presbyterians, it was too near 
 their views to be accepted by the England of that age, and the 
 great representative of the age perceived it. One of the grounds 
 of quarrel between Cromwell and the successive Parliaments
 
 1 88 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 which he dissolved was, that members of the constitutional 
 (which was also the Presbyterian) party there insisted on occupy- 
 ing time with proposals to abolish lay patronage in the Church, 
 and to exchange the tithes of the land for the contributions of 
 the congregations now gathered into classes. Cromwell and the 
 army made shorter work They suppressed alike the ancient 
 civil Parliament of England and its newly-proposed ecclesiastical 
 Assembly ; and during his arbitrary but prosperous reign, the 
 Church of England, nominally Presbyterian, was practically rather 
 Independent or Congregational. The original proposal for a 
 republican constitution was that Parliament should have supreme 
 judgment " concerning all national or civil things, but not con- 
 cerning things spiritual or evangelical." The Lord Protector, 
 however, and his Council of State retained the compulsory pay- 
 ment of tithes, 1 and also lay patronage ; but this last was quali- 
 fied by instituting a Board of Triers, three-fourths of whom were 
 ministers, to examine the candidates presented as to their fit- 
 ness ; while in every county a church board, also consisting of 
 ministers and laymen, looked over ecclesiastical affairs, and 
 weeded out worthless incumbents. The Protector's scheme of 
 toleration, though almost equally arbitrary with his constitution 
 for the Church, worked equally well in practice. Episcopalians, 
 nominally excluded from toleration on political grounds along 
 with Roman Catholics, were generally indulged in the exercise 
 of their worship ; and liberty of conscience to creeds generally 
 was for the first time practically allowed. 
 
 The Restoration of Charles II., A.D. 1660, was followed by the 
 restoration of bishops, by the new Act of Uniformity, which 
 
 1 Against the advice of his illustrious secretary, who, in the first year of 
 the protectorate, promises him success, "if you leave the Church to the 
 Church, and wisely relieve yourself and the magistracy of that burden, which 
 is as heavy as your proper work, and at the same time is most incom- 
 patible with it ; ... if you also take away all persecuting power from the 
 Church, for persecuting power will never be absent as long as money 
 . . . shall be extorted by force from the unwilling, as a pay for preaching 
 the gospel" Milton's Defensio Secunda.
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 189 
 
 demanded the assent and consent of every minister, before 
 Bartholomew's day 1662, to all contained in the Book of Common 
 Prayer ; by the Conventicle Acts, for imprisonment or transporta- 
 tion of those attending religious meetings outside the Church of 
 England ; and by a Test Act in 1665, with an oath even for 
 nonconformist ministers, that they would endeavour no alteration 
 of government whether in Church or State. These severe 
 measures, and the repression of dissent, which was to last for the 
 next thirty years, were due much more to the relation of Church 
 and State than to any new passion for the doctrine or practice 
 of the Church. In faith and conduct alike there was a general 
 relaxation of tone. One of the great influences in Charles the 
 Second's time was Hobbes, who, from the days when as a young 
 man he was Bacon's secretary, had maintained steadily that 
 there were no rights of faith or conscience against the absolute 
 power of the king, to whom the " leviathan " people has made over 
 all individual rights as well as all common powers. And many 
 other influences contributed to the reaction. Now, as before, 
 the Church of England was more tolerant than Presbyterianism 
 to those within it. But it was more intolerant to all who did not 
 conform. Nothing, at first sight, can be a greater contrast to the 
 Church statutes of the Restoration than the famous treatise of 
 one of its bishops, Dr. Jeremy Taylor. In his Liberty of Pro- 
 phesytng, published so early as 1647, he eloquently urges that 
 beyond the articles of the Apostles' Creed, nothing is funda- 
 mental and few things are certain in Christianity ; that churches 
 should frame no larger standards of faith, and are guilty of 
 schism if they enforce them ; and that there should be no per- 
 secution or civil punishment for errors of opinion. A demonstra- 
 tion of "the unreasonableness of prescribing to other men's 
 faith, and the iniquity of persecuting different opinions," should 
 have made a foundation for the fullest toleration. But the taint 
 which pervades this important and charming book the sugges- 
 tion, implied everywhere rather than put that toleration may be 
 based upon indifference, and that if men could have full belief
 
 190 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 in dogma, they might be excused in persecuting for its sake 
 has even in its pages results apparently remote, but really 
 characteristic. In the seventeenth chapter, the " eclectic theo- 
 logian," as he calls himself, seems to reserve a right in the 
 Church to demand, and in the State to enforce, external con- 
 formity, with penalties against those who conscientiously refuse. 
 And accordingly, immediately after the Restoration, thirteen 
 years later, his Ductor Dubitantium, dedicated to Charles II. as 
 the appropriate custodier "of both tables of the law," fills in 
 the steps by which the great bishop had slid down the descent. 
 In it he instructs doubtful consciences that the supreme civil 
 power is unlimited, and that the king is above the laws ; that he 
 has a legislative power in the affairs of religion and the Church, 
 and a jurisdiction in causes " not only ecclesiastical, but internal 
 and spiritual ; " while outside the Church it belongs to princes 
 " to tell what religions are to be permitted and what not," and 
 when one is established by law, " no man is to be permitted to 
 bring in new religions, except only him who can change the 
 law, and secure the peace." This union of latitudinarianism of 
 opinion with servility to the ruling power, was now, as we have 
 seen, the prevailing tendency also on the Continent. And it was 
 illustrated near home. In Scotland, the restoration of Episcopacy 
 in 1662 proceeded not from any Church convictions, but upon 
 the grounds stated in the statutory preamble, " Forasmuch as 
 the ordering and disposal of the external government and policy 
 of the Church doth properly belong unto his Majesty, as an in- 
 herent right of the Crown, by virtue of his royal prerogative and 
 supremacy in causes ecclesiastical ; " and the cruel severities 
 with which the change was enforced were accompanied by pro- 
 fessions, in most cases sincere, of complete indifference to re- 
 ligious scruple. Sir George Mackenzie, the king's advocate of 
 this reign, was its ornament and apologist ; and in 1663 he pub- 
 lished his Religio Stoici (in style an imitation of the sublimely 
 speculative Religio Medici of Sir Thomas Browne of the earlier 
 part of the same century). The stoical young lawyer urges that
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. IQI 
 
 in religion what is important is the practice of piety and not the 
 confession of our faith ; and that there should be no persecu- 
 tion of opinion, for "opinion, kept within its proper bounds, is 
 a pure act of the mind." Yet in utterance of it the individual 
 should " bow the flag of his private opinion to the commands of 
 the Church ; " and " in this, as in all articles not absolutely neces- 
 sary for being saved, I make the laws of my country to be my 
 creed? In short, " as every private Christian should be tolerated 
 by his fellow-subjects to worship God inwardly according to his 
 conscience, so should all conspire in that exterior uniformity of 
 worship which the laws of his country enjoin." Long after, in 
 1681, the "Act anent Religion and the Test," no doubt drafted 
 by Mackenzie, pointed out that the only thing that could give 
 confidence to " schismatical dissenters from the Established 
 Church," was supine neglect of putting in execution the good 
 laws provided against them. It was true ; and accordingly this 
 enlightened latitudinarian now earned for all time coming the 
 name of the " Bloody Mackenzie," by steadily enforcing the 
 Crown's supremacy against Scotsmen who held the individual 
 conscience to be free from the commands in religion even of 
 the Church, and much more of the State, and most of all of the 
 king. For the absolute power of royalty was fast coming to its 
 end in England and Scotland both. It was fated to perish not 
 by acts of intolerance alone. James the Second, like his pre- 
 decessor, repeatedly proclaimed measures of toleration or in- 
 dulgence ; but these, including Roman Catholics and Protestant 
 dissenters, were rightly suspected by the country as being mere 
 moves towards the supremacy of the old faith. That faith did 
 not profess any toleration, and at the present moment, in the 
 adjacent country of France, it had become, even in its anti- 
 ultramontane form under Louis XIV., cruelly aggressive and 
 triumphant. Besides, England doubted whether a mere royal 
 proclamation could unmake the laws, even "the good laws 
 provided" against dissent. Thus on two opposite sides the 
 Stuarts again raised for themselves the great constitutional
 
 192 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 question of the power of royalty to dispense with the law. And 
 this second controversy with absolutism (made more serious by 
 the doctrine of " non-resistance," proclaimed by the University 
 of Oxford for the Church) only needed the royal hand to be laid 
 aggressively on that Church and university, in the former case, 
 by sending the bishops an indulgence of Catholics to be read 
 from the pulpits ; in the latter, by using the Elizabethan Eccle- 
 siastical Commission to appoint Catholic college fellows, to 
 become a revolution. 
 
 The English Parliament resolved, in 1689, that James had 
 abdicated the government, having endeavoured to subvert the 
 constitution by breaking the original contract between king and 
 people ; the Scottish Estates, that he had forfaidted (forfeited) 
 their crown, having altered the kingdom from a legal limited 
 monarchy to an arbitrary despotic power. Both, in addition to 
 retaining the Protestant limitation of the crown, restricted it for 
 the future to a special line, thus breaking for ever with the theory 
 of hereditary divine right. This being settled, an advance was 
 made as to the Church and State question, an advance which 
 was, as usual in this country, imperfect if tested by any theory, 
 and still more if tested by the theories of the short-lived English 
 Commonwealth. But it was now to be a permanent advance. 
 In Scotland, the Parliament having abolished prelacy, rescinded 
 Charles II.'s Act asserting the royal "supremacy over all persons 
 and in all causes ecclesiastical," ratified the new Confession of 
 Faith which the Church had accepted of its own authority 1 as 
 far back as 1647, and restored the administrative self-government 
 of the Presbyterian Church. No Act of toleration was yet 
 passed, but a statute quietly provided for the repeal of " all Acts 
 enjoining civil pains upon sentences of excommunication." In 
 England also a privileged Church was retained ; and while the 
 
 1 And with qualifications expressed in the Act of Assembly, 1647, qualifica- 
 tions which those who believe in the historical independence of the Church of 
 Scotland suppose to have modified its obligation to the Confession even 
 after the Revolution, at least down to 1843.
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 193 
 
 nonjurors on the one side refused the new oaths tendered to its 
 clergy, the king's attempt to pass a measure of " comprehension " 
 of other nonconformists was found in vain. This made of more 
 importance the great English Act of Toleration of I689. 1 To 
 us in our day it appears hampered with heavy conditions. It 
 exempts from penalties those who do not attend the Church 
 established, or who attend worship elsewhere, only upon their 
 taking, if laymen, the oath of allegiance and the declaration 
 against popery ; and if ministers, subscribing in addition the 
 Thirty-nine Articles (except Articles 34, 35, and 36, and the part 
 of the 2oth which acknowledges power in the Church " to decree 
 rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith"). 
 To the nineteenth century this seems a narrow and grudging 
 piece of legislation. But it was a great step from Tudor and 
 Stuart despotism, and from all that went before. For the 
 first time since England was a nation, the worship of God was 
 permitted outside the law, and a Church was tolerated outside 
 the Church which the State selected for support. 
 
 And one illustrious man was found even then to disinter the 
 religious principles which underlay the English Revolution, and 
 which were destined in days to come to receive the homage of all. 
 " Locke's first letter on Toleration," says Sir James Mackintosh, 
 "the most original of his works, was published in England in 
 the year of the Revolution, to vindicate the Toleration Act, of 
 which he lamented the imperfection." Accordingly, in his 
 preface to the reader, Locke, while admitting that there is no 
 nation under heaven " in which so much has already been said 
 upon the subject" of his treatise as England, holds also that 
 " there is no people that stand in more need of having something 
 further both said and done among them on this point than we 
 do." Even those who have demanded toleration in England, 
 have done it upon "narrow principles suited only to the 
 interests of their own sects." Declarations of indulgence will 
 but palliate, acts of comprehension will but increase, our evil. 
 
 i i W. and M. c. 18. 
 
 N
 
 194 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 "Absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial 
 liberty, is the thing that we stand in need of." Accordingly 
 he does not inquire, like his predecessors, whether this article 
 of religion is so trivial that the magistrate should not think it 
 worth his while to persecute for it, or whether that other is so 
 precious that he cannot reasonably expect his persecution to be 
 successful. Locke raises the question whether the magistrate 
 is in any case entitled to be religiously intolerant, and, in order 
 to an answer, he inquires what is the business of Government as 
 distinguished from that of religion. It has to do exclusively, he 
 answers, with civil goods, such as life, liberty, money, and 
 possessions ; and the magistrate exists, and is entitled to use 
 force, only for maintaining these. " The care of souls is not 
 committed to the civil magistrate any more than to other men." 
 Religion is inward persuasion of the truth, and all men may 
 persuade ; but force has no tendency to do so, and the magis- 
 trate's power, which is that of force, does not extend, therefore, 
 to the establishing of any articles of faith or forms of worship. 
 And even if laws and force had a tendency to convince men, 
 conviction so obtained would be not a good but a miserable 
 result, the consciences of private men in every country being 
 obliged to follow their prince. A Church, on the other hand, is a 
 voluntary society of men agreeing to worship God. It has 
 nothing to do with force, and even excommunication (which is 
 the right of every such society against its members who refuse to 
 obey its laws) should deprive no man of his civil goods. Neither 
 should any Church be allowed to prejudice another in civil 
 things, or any man to prejudice another outside his own Church, 
 because they differ in religion. It is the magistrate's business to 
 prevent that. It is not his business to interfere either with 
 worship or with doctrine, not with worship, for he has no 
 business to intrude there, either to enjoin ceremonies and things 
 in themselves indifferent, or to forbid things which he may 
 rightly or wrongly think absurd or even idolatrous ; and not with 
 faith, for our belief does not depend upon our will or his force,
 
 BRITAIN, FROM THE REFORMATION TO 1689. 195 
 
 and the false profession of it which he may no doubt extort would 
 be a gain to no one. Locke's argument is somewhat weakened 
 by his always dealing, as was the manner of his age, with " the 
 magistrate," instead of going a step farther to those who give the 
 magistrate his powers, and inquiring what right a majority has to 
 prescribe religion to a minority. His tone is calm, reasonable, 
 and latitudinarian, and his theory of the Church takes it on its 
 earthward side. 1 But he never loses moral dignity, and, in 
 particular, notwithstanding the temptations of an inadequate 
 philosophy, he does not fall into the thin-blooded fallacy of those 
 who found toleration on indifference. Accordingly, his work 
 made a great impression at home as well as abroad, and Bishop 
 Warburton, a hundred years later, remarks that all those who 
 since Locke had written on " the divine principle of toleration," 
 might be said only to do what had been done thoroughly before. 
 But in Warburton's time, and long after, the system of test and 
 privilege against which Locke reasoned, remained unbroken in 
 Britain. The priority in giving legislative embodiment to his 
 principles passed to other lands ; and to these we now turn. 
 
 1 The orthodox Protestant divines in Locke's time held that there were two 
 sides, and that the Church is a voluntary society, though not a mere 
 voluntary society. Thus a very representative scholar, Gisbert Voetius, says 
 that each national or particular Church is founded 
 
 1. Ultimately, on the institution of the Church as a whole by God. 
 
 2. Intermediately, on the application of that general institution to the 
 particular circumstances and time. 
 
 3. Proximately and properly, on the voluntary consent of its members 
 (multiui consensui). 
 
 Voetius' Politica Ecclefiastica.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 
 
 SOON after the middle of the eighteenth century, Europe, as we 
 have seen (p. 170), had come to regard with deep disgust the long- 
 subsisting and intertwined tyranny of the Church and State. In 
 only one great nation had there been an approach to complete 
 freedom, and the step taken by Britain in 1690 was exaggerated by 
 the admiration of her neighbours across the Channel. Men like 
 Montesquieu and Voltaire took back from our shores a belief 
 that England had accepted, and would at once put in practice, 
 the full principles of toleration sketched by Locke. The expecta- 
 tion was premature. But in a few years the embodiment of these 
 principles, in the fundamental constitution of a new great nation 
 in America, attracted all eyes in Western Europe, and gave an 
 impulse to the change which impended in France, and was des- 
 tined, more slowly, to follow in other European lands. 
 
 The American colonies had only recently been saved from 
 annexation to France by the policy of Chatham, culminating in 
 the defeat of Montcalm at Quebec in 1759. But no sooner had 
 this great wing of our empire been unfolded, than it was lost by 
 the refusal to grant it a very moderate amount of self-government. 
 The States accordingly declared for separation ; and on 4th July 
 1776, their representatives met in congress, and prefixed to their 
 Declaration of Independence a statement of principles such as had 
 hitherto been found only in the works of thinkers, theorists, and 
 men under persecution : " We hold these truths to be self- 
 evident, that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed 
 
 196
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 197 
 
 by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these 
 are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; and that, to 
 secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, 
 deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." 
 England's struggle was complicated by the claims of Ireland, 
 and 1782, when the supremacy of the Irish Parliament was 
 formally granted by statute, saw also the acknowledgment of the 
 independence of America. But it was already plain that the 
 union of the Transatlantic States, thus founded on the original 
 rights of the individual man, would involve a great advance in the 
 Church problem. The religious origin of the several States had 
 differed greatly. " New England was settled by Congregation- 
 alists ; Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, by Episcopalians ; 
 New York, by Dutch Reformed, followed by Episcopalians ; 
 Rhode Island, by Baptists ; Pennsylvania, by Quakers ; Maryland, 
 by Roman Catholics ; while Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, 
 German Reformed, French Huguenots, Moravians, Mennonites, 
 etc., were scattered through several colonies" (Dr. Philip Schaff). 
 So, too, their original charters and constitutions had not been the 
 same. Rhode Island, as early as 1663, declared that "no person 
 within the colony should be called in question for any differences 
 of opinion in matters of religion ;" and Pennsylvania, in 1701, de- 
 clared that no one acknowledging a Deity should be compelled 
 by the State to frequent or maintain any religious ministry or 
 worship. On the other hand, several States had religious estab- 
 lishments ; and New Haven and Massachusetts had started in 
 the days of the Stuarts with provisions (in the case of the former), 
 that every State official must be a church member (in the case 
 of the latter,) that every freeman must be the member of some 
 orthodox church, general provisions which were carried out in 
 detail by minute regulations, like those of Calvin in Geneva. Ac- 
 cordingly each State, now free from English control, and con- 
 tinuing to retain its home rule in America, took its separate 
 course in working out a more equitable religious regime. It was 
 not till 1833 that the parishes of Massachusetts ceased to tax
 
 198 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 themselves for the support of congregational worship. 1 But in 
 the general case the growth of opinion for the previous hundred 
 years, with the sudden final shock which produced the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, and the necessity at that crisis of recog- 
 nising the rights of conscience of fellow- citizens, had an immediate 
 effect. Accordingly, most of the States (led by Virginia, which 
 disendowed its privileged Episcopacy in 1776) followed up their 
 separation from Great Britain, in a year or two, by a separation of 
 the Church, in all its forms and branches, from the civil govern- 
 ment. And the principle thus gradually making its way in detail, 
 was now to be sanctioned, in the Constitution of the United States 
 as a national whole. That document, which a great statesman 
 and student of politics has called " the most wonderful work ever 
 struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man," 2 was 
 drafted in 1787 ; and it contained the provision (far in advance of 
 what had then been reached by Great Britain), that " no religious 
 test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public 
 trust under the United States." It was at first thought that no 
 further limitation on the powers of the new central body, the Con- 
 gress of the States, should be expressed, especially as it was held 
 that that assembly could only have such powers as had been con- 
 ferred upon it, either by the people as individuals, or by sovereign 
 States. But religious liberty seemed too important to be left 
 to implication ; and the Constitution was completed in 1791 by 
 ten amendments, the first of which commences 
 
 " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 
 religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." 
 
 The equal importance of the two sides of this statement has 
 been illustrated during the century since it was founded, alike by 
 the contemporary mistakes of other countries, and by the remark- 
 
 1 The final collapse was appropriately brought about by a parish so taxed 
 insisting on choosing a Unitarian minister, contrary to the votes of the church 
 members, and being upheld by the courts in doing so (in the Dedham case). 
 See Buck's Mass. Ecclesiastical Law. 
 
 2 Mr. Gladstone.
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 199 
 
 able peace which in this republic has prevailed between the 
 Church and the State. There is, indeed, scarcely anything to 
 record further upon the subject, though for a hundred years both 
 the State and the Church have there worked, each in its own sphere, 
 with extraordinary energy and success. One association was 
 formed in the States a few years ago, for the purpose of securing 
 " certain religious amendments to the Constitution," and, in par- 
 ticular, for formally recognising in it the Divine name ; and 
 another exists for the opposite purpose, of abolishing all recogni- 
 tion of oaths, Sunday, holidays, or the Bible, whether by Congress 
 or the States. It does not appear, however, that either associa- 
 tion complains that the State on the one hand, or the Church on 
 the other, is seriously interfered with in its proper work by the 
 present Constitution. Difficulties as to administration occur only 
 where all other countries find them, in matters which lie rather 
 on the border-line of religion, as in the use of the Bible in public 
 schools, and in other educational matters. But these also occur 
 on the border-line on the side of morality, as in the question 
 whether polygamy among the Mormons should be tolerated by 
 the other States and the Union. 
 
 The other region of Law has been remarkably free from the 
 difficulties which occasionally emerge even in American politics. 
 During the last hundred years, the State courts (each final in its 
 own State), and the Supreme Court of the United States, have 
 built up a coherent system on the points on which every Church, 
 whether established or not, must necessarily ( 3me in contact with 
 the civil law. These the author has had occasion to summarize as 
 follows, with approval from some authorities in the law of America. 
 
 1. American law acknowledges a voluntary jurisdiction in the 
 Church ; leaves all church questions (of worship, doctrine, disci- 
 pline, and membership) to the decision of the Church itself ; and 
 refuses to review these decisions. But 
 
 2. It claims for itself complete and exclusive control, not only 
 over the life, liberty, and goods of all men and churchmen, but 
 over all church property and church funds.
 
 200 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 3. In order to decide these purely civil questions of person, 
 goods, and estate, the law necessarily deals with innumerable 
 religious questions and church relations. 1 
 
 4. Where such civil question (of property or money) turns upon 
 an express trust, American law inquires for itself into the fulfil- 
 ment of the conditions of that trust (whether these be religious or 
 ecclesiastical) to the uttermost, and it enforces the trust to the 
 effect of settling the question of property, but to that effect only. 
 It never replaces a church member or official, or interferes with 
 internal church organization or administration. 
 
 5. When property is held by a church generally, or for church 
 purposes, unspecified (and not on an express trust, as for the 
 maintenance of certain doctrines or government), American law 
 presumes, in questions as to that property, that the administra- 
 tion of church matters by the Church, and the decisions of church 
 questions by its tribunals, are right ; and in one such case the 
 Supreme Court of the United States has also announced that it 
 will hold the decision of the Church (by its majorities or judica- 
 tories) to be not only right, but conclusive, upon the Church 
 question, and will regulate the civil question of property which 
 may depend upon it accordingly. 
 
 The principle on which the Supreme Court in such cases 
 decides, is that the Church is not only the best judge (so that an 
 appeal from the Episcopal or Presbyterian organization to the 
 court would be " an appeal from the more learned tribunal in 
 the law which should decide the case, to one which is less so "), 
 but also and especially because the Church is the appointed and 
 proper judge of Church matters. " It is of the essence of re- 
 ligious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the 
 decision of questions arising among themselves, that those de- 
 
 1 More seldom, however, in America, because the "religious society" or 
 body of managers in whom congregational property is usually vested, and 
 who are incorporated by the State law, is different from the body of deacons, 
 elders, churchwardens, or other properly ecclesiastical officials, with whom 
 the court declines directly to deal
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 2OI 
 
 cisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognisance, 
 subject only to such appeals as the organism itself provides 
 for." 1 This leaves room for some cases in which the alleged 
 ecclesiastical decision which is pleaded fails (for lack of juris- 
 diction or some defect graver than mere irregularity) to decide 
 the matter in which it is pleaded ; and in such a case the 
 organism may provide for, or not provide against, an appeal to 
 the civil courts on the civil or pecuniary question. But the 
 court will only take it up in such cases to civil or pecuniary 
 effects ; and it declines to meddle with the Church itself by way 
 of mandamus or interdict. The result is that the Church in its 
 various forms, in a country which refuses to make any law re- 
 specting the " establishment of religion," holds a secure and 
 honoured place ; and its main branches, separated from each 
 other in faith or practice, find room and scope now among the 
 fifty millions of a population as they did among the four millions 
 of 1790. 
 
 Equally instructive is the way in which the Episcopal and 
 Presbyterian Church of the United States, each set free from 
 sinister influences in its past by the shock of revolution, have 
 dealt with the articles of their respective creeds on toleration and 
 the civil magistrate. Each of these bodies met about the time 
 
 1 Watson v. Jones, 1872, Wallace's Supreme Court Reports, vol. xiii. p. 
 679. This seems to be nearly the same position as that of the English 
 Privy Council in the case of Long v. Capetown: "The Church of England, in 
 places where there is no Church established by law, is in the same situation 
 with any other religious body, in no better, but in no worse position ; and 
 the members may adopt, as the members of any other communion may 
 adopt, rules for enforcing discipline within their body, which will be binding 
 on those who expressly or by implication have assented to them. It may 
 be further laid down, that where any religious or other lawful association 
 has not only agreed on the terms of its union, but has also constituted a 
 tribunal to determine whether the rules of the association have been violated 
 by any of its members or not, and what shall be the consequence of such 
 violation, then the decision of such tribunal will be binding when it has 
 acted within the scope of its authority, has observed such forms as the rules 
 require, if any forms be prescribed, and if not, has proceeded in a manner 
 consonant with the principles of justice."
 
 202 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 the American Constitution was passed ; but the large changes 
 proposed in both Articles and Liturgy by the American Epis- 
 copalians were objected to by the English bishops. It was not, 
 therefore, till 1801 that they exchanged the first sentence of 
 the 37th Article for that printed in a note below. 1 It will be 
 observed that this new and short statement agrees admirably 
 with the view given in the Westminster Confession as revised 
 by the American Presbyterians in 1787. Their convention met 
 in Philadelphia along with that which framed the Federal Con- 
 stitution, and the much-needed change in this, also given below, 
 has been heartily accepted by the Presbyterians of what were 
 called the New and Old Schools, and by the South as well as 
 the North. 
 
 1 CHANGE IN THE THIRTY-SEVENTH ARTICLE OF RELIGION. 
 ENGLAND, 1571. AMERICA, 1801. 
 
 The Queen's Majesty hath the chief The power of the civil magistrate 
 
 power in this realm of England, and extendeth to all men, as well clergy 
 
 other her dominions, unto whom the as laity, in all things temporal ; but 
 
 chief government of all estates of hath no authority in things purely 
 
 this realm, whether they be ecclesi- spiritual, 
 astical or civil, in all causes doth 
 appertain. 
 
 CHANGES IN THE CONFESSION OF FAITH. 
 WESTMINSTER, 1647. AMERICA, 1787. 
 
 Chap. xx. 4 Declares, that those Chap. xx. 4 Omits the clause, 
 who publish heretical opinions, or " and by the power of the civil magis- 
 maintain schisrnatical practices, "may trate." 
 lawfully be called to account, and 
 proceeded against by the censures of 
 the Church, and by the power of the 
 civil magistrate." 
 
 Chap, xxiii. 3. The civil magis- Chap, xxiii. 3. Civil magistrates 
 trate may not assume to himself the may not assume to themselves the 
 administration of the word and sacra- administration of the word and sacra- 
 ments, or the power of the keys of ments, or the power of the keys of 
 the kingdom of heaven ; yet he hath the kingdom of heaven, or in the 
 authority, and it is his duty, to take least interfere in matters of faith, 
 order that unity and peace be pre- Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 203 
 
 France, in looking forward to its revolution, had before it more 
 or less consciously the recent example of America. The French 
 also had to contend with an oppressive Crown and with a State 
 Church much more tyrannical than any across the Atlantic. 
 But in two respects, one religious and one political, they were 
 not so prepared for dealing successfully with the problem of 
 Church and State as the heroic colonists. The spirit of irreligion 
 and scepticism, fanned by a restless and powerful literature, had 
 by this time penetrated through the higher ranks of France into 
 all classes of the people. And the resulting temper of indiffer- 
 ence, favourable enough to toleration while it lasted, was not 
 likely to be so permanent a foundation even for that virtue as 
 was the other mood of personal conviction, accompanied with 
 
 served in the Church, that the truth of civil magistrates to protect the 
 of God be kept pure and entire, that Church of our common Lord without 
 all blasphemies and heresies be sup- giving the preference to any denomi- 
 pressed, all corruptions and abuses nation of Christians above the rest, 
 in worship and discipline prevented in such a manner that all ecclesiastical 
 or reformed, and all the ordinances persons whatever may enjoy the full, 
 of God duly settled, administered, free, and unquestioned liberty of dis- 
 and observed. For the better effect- charging every part of their sacred 
 ing whereof he hath power to call functions without violence or danger, 
 synods, to be present at them, and to And as Jesus Christ hath appointed 
 provide that whatsoever is transacted a regular government and discipline 
 in them be according to the mind of in His Church, no law of any corn- 
 God, monwealth should interfere with, let, 
 
 or hinder the due exercise thereof, 
 among the voluntary members of any 
 denomination of Christians, according 
 to their own profession and belief. 
 It is the duty of civil magistrates to 
 protect the person and good name of 
 all their people, in such an effectual 
 manner as that no person be suffered, 
 either upon pretence of religion or 
 infidelity, to offer any indignity, 
 violence, abuse, or injury to any other 
 person whatsoever ; and to take order 
 that all religious and ecclesiastical 
 assemblies be held without molesta- 
 tion or disturbance.
 
 204 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 respect for the convictions of others. Indifference was, at all 
 events, the last quality to promise to the Church that authentic 
 courage and energy which she needed when external resources 
 were now likely to be withdrawn. On the political side, also, the 
 French nation, animated by a new enthusiasm for freedom, had 
 not been trained or ripened for self-government. Without the 
 sturdy individualism of the Anglo-American, the new French 
 democracy desired instinctively to be ruled as before from one 
 centre. Even its prophet and teacher, Rousseau, while going 
 back with a passionate belief to liberty and the state of nature, 
 showed little of the American jealousy of handing over to the 
 new democracy the rights of the individual. On the contrary, in 
 his Contrat Social, he rather held up for admiration the theory 
 of Hobbes, and, while rejecting all Christian faith as intolerant, 
 suggested that the State should have an undogmatic religion, 
 which all citizens should receive on pain of punishment, and 
 should adhere to on pain of death. Both these incapacities 
 must be kept in view as we watch the closing century in Paris, 
 with its short-lived but instructive experiment in Church and 
 State. 
 
 The same year, 1787, which produced the Constitution of the 
 United States in America, produced the first edict of Toleration 
 in France. It allowed non- Catholics to live in France, and to 
 trade, to marry and register children, and to be buried there. 
 But it went no farther. Its first article ran, "The Catholic 
 Apostolic and Roman religion shall continue alone to enjoy in 
 our kingdom the right of public worship." Yet the Assembly 
 of the French Clergy energetically protested next year against 
 even this limited toleration. In the same meeting they pro- 
 tested no less strongly against a proposal by the Assembly of 
 Notables, to tax all lands, including ecclesiastical property. But 
 these reactionary utterances were inspired far more by the pre- 
 lates than by the country priests. These last shared in the now 
 awakening enthusiasm of their country ; and accordingly, when, 
 in the great year 1787, the States-General met, and a question
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 205 
 
 arose whether they should sit as one order or as three, it was 
 the parish clergy who by a majority joined the Third Estate, and, 
 with the reluctant accession of the nobles, and the final consent 
 of the king, formed the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent, 
 thus united, had not existed three weeks when the Bastille was 
 stormed and fell, and, on 4th August 1789, there fell with it, by 
 the enthusiastic vote of the representatives of France, the whole 
 innumerable privileges and inequalities of feudalism. Even 
 before this date, Lafayette, fresh from America, had proposed 
 that here also the nation should precede its reforms by a general 
 " Declaration of the Rights of Man." It was uttered, and, am- 
 biguous and misleading as some of its definitions were soon 
 found to be, this document made an era by expressing the 
 thoughts which underlay the European revolution. That all 
 men are free and equal before the law ; that the nation exists 
 to preserve the liberty, property, and security of the individual ; 
 that only the nation and the law are sovereign ; that even the 
 law can only restrict the individual's liberty on the ground that 
 others are injured by its exercise ; that all arbitrary power is 
 therefore to be resisted, but the law, as the expression of the 
 general will and consent, is to be implicitly obeyed, these were 
 convictions that burned in the minds of the nation as of its 
 representatives. But the former soon came to find the difficulty 
 of obeying them in practice, and the latter of reducing them to 
 legislative form. Even in completing the Declaration itself, 
 questions arose, and not least on the article as to religion. It was 
 proposed, on the one side, to announce that " for the good order 
 even of society," morality, religion, and public worship should 
 be established and maintained. On the other, it was moved, 
 that " no man ought to be molested for his religious opinions, 
 nor disturbed in the exercise of his worship." The last clause 
 was objected to by the Catholics, as giving a right even of public 
 worship to those who were not of the dominant Church, a 
 right which Mirabeau and Talleyrand now frankly defended at 
 the tribune. But the Assembly came to the guarded conclusion
 
 2C6 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 of the tenth article : " No one ought to be molested for his 
 opinions, even upon religion, provided that their manifestation 
 does not disturb the public order established by the law." 
 
 The ambiguity of these last words made room for the Church 
 being declared national in a sense which its Catholic supporters 
 had not intended. For the question of the relation of the 
 Church of France to the State was opened rather than settled 
 in the Declaration of Rights. It was to be much more fully 
 discussed in the debates on ecclesiastical property. This point 
 had been raised by part of the enthusiastic vote of the 4th 
 August, which decreed the " amortization," the extinction or 
 redemption, of tithes. What was this practically to mean ? On 
 that and a following evening, high dignitaries, in the name of the 
 clergy, offered to give up a great part of the tithes to avert the 
 threatened bankruptcy of the country. Nor did they protest 
 against the vote of the Assembly which had proposed to deal 
 with them as a whole. But a more serious question was raised 
 by the subsequent motion of the Deputy Arnault on loth August, 
 that "all tithes shall be suppressed, and the Assembly shall 
 provide without delay salaries for the ecclesiastics." The Bishop 
 of Langres at once urged that the tithes are the property of 
 the clergy, though they may offer to give them up. Mirabeau 
 rejoined, " The tithes are not a property ; the clergy cannot 
 alienate them ; the tithes are the subsidy with which the nation 
 pays the salaries of the officers of morality and instruction." 
 The words contained a forecast of the dangerous course by 
 which France was to diverge from the line already taken in 
 America, and to make the Church rather a department of the 
 State. Perhaps the anticipation had influence with the Arch- 
 bishop of Paris, who ere long rose, and, in the name of his 
 brethren, remitted " all these ecclesiastical tithes into the hands 
 of a just and generous nation." But the nation in most of its 
 parishes had already begun to refuse the tithe, while the Church 
 had other vast benefices and endowments, and the public need 
 for eighty million livres was pressing, and had been remitted to
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 207 
 
 a committee. Talleyrand, as its reporter, and Mirabeau, as the 
 leader of the Assembly, now asked for a formal decree, " That 
 the ownership of the property of the clergy is in the nation, on 
 condition of its providing for the support of the members of this 
 order." In vain did Sieyes argue that property might be gifted 
 to the clergy as well as to any other body, and warn them that 
 Europe would say, " These people wish to be free, but they do 
 not know how to be just." It was known that every State in 
 Europe had asserted its right to relax the grasp of the Dead 
 Hand in the interest of later and living generations ; and even 
 among the speakers who recognised the Church as independent, 
 and capable of being trustee of property, some admitted that the 
 State might most justly revise the pecuniary trust. But the 
 majority went farther. True to the traditional tone of French 
 lawyers and parlements^ and to the theory of State sovereignty 
 anew popularized by Rousseau, they insisted that the clergy, 
 and even the Church, were corporations within the State which 
 the State had power to regulate and modify or even abolish, and 
 much more to deal with as to property. Mirabeau, indeed, only 
 carried the vote after a fortnight's debate, by making the re- 
 solution run that the clerical property is, not "owned by the 
 nation," but "at the disposal of the nation ;" and by including 
 public worship and the relief of the poor among the objects to 
 which it should be applied. But at the close of the year, when 
 discussing the religious orders, the Assembly refused to content 
 itself with dealing with their property ; it suppressed them, 
 and forbade the introduction of others into France. An'd this 
 interference with Church functions or organs was next year 
 followed by the gravest revision of the whole Church organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 "The Civil Constitution of the Clergy" of 1790 was preceded by 
 a significant explosion. It occurred in the course of making 
 arrangements that the departments and districts should now pay 
 to the clergy the modest salaries to which they were henceforth 
 entitled. Becoming the direct stipendiaries of the State, vividly
 
 208 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 suggested that, as a deputy put it, " instead of the priest living 
 by the altar, it was the public functionary who was now to live 
 by his functions." The clergy were extremely uneasy at this 
 change of position ; and suddenly Dom Gerle, a revolutionary 
 priest, proposed to satisfy all parties by declaring that "the 
 Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion is, and shall remain, the 
 national religion, and that its worship shall alone be authorized." 
 The right rose with enthusiasm, and determined, if this decree 
 were refused, to secede and appeal to the throne. Paris, on the 
 other hand, seethed with indignation at the renewed union of 
 religion and injustice ; for while the resolution seemed to give 
 one Church independence, it undoubtedly privileged it at the 
 expense of all outside. After some days of extreme agitation, 
 during which Mirabeau pointed out to the shouting crowd around 
 the tribune, that window of the Tuileries from which had been 
 fired the signal of St. Bartholomew, the Assembly passed to the 
 order of the day. But on 27th May the Bill for the civil consti- 
 tution of the clergy of France was brought in by the Jansenist 
 deputy, Martineau. By this measure nearly all Church offices 
 were abolished, except the parish cure and the bishop : both of 
 these were to be chosen by the people of the district, no religious 
 test being imposed on the electors ; and the bishop, no longer to 
 be absolute, was to govern through a responsible council of 
 clerical assessors. If a Church ought to be national, this con- 
 stitution, as judged by the ancient Gallican and Christian 
 tradition, was in many respects admirable. But its first charac- 
 teristic was, that it was provided for the Church, not by itself, 
 but by the nation. The Archbishop of Aix demanded rather 
 to consult the Gallican Church by a national council. Camus 
 answered : " We are already a national convention : we have the 
 power to change religion," and much more to organize the 
 National Church. Robespierre, among others, spoke, urging the 
 religious supremacy of the State; and by the i7th June the whole 
 Constitution was adopted by the Assembly and sanctioned by the 
 king. But now commenced an immense agitation in the pro-
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 209 
 
 vmces, which Paris, as usual, had left behind it. The pope, 
 hostile to all national Churches, could not receive one where his 
 bishops were to become constitutional officials ; and his indignant 
 protests were sharpened by the loss of Avignon, whose popula- 
 tion was throwing off his temporal rule. On all sides, and 
 especially in the south, disturbances ensued. Whether, after all, 
 the Church, while protesting against the injustice of the State, 
 would not have submitted to the new position of matters had it 
 been now left alone, may be a doubtful question. It was not left 
 alone. In November the Assembly resolved that all the higher 
 ecclesiastics should take an oath to maintain the new Church 
 constitution, thus substituting direct consent of individuals for the 
 acquiescence, under protest, of the mass. Only four of the whole 
 bishops of France consented. A hundred of them, in the first 
 days of 1791, stood up in their places in the Constituent Assembly 
 to refuse ; and, the pope having now addressed to the king a 
 condemnation of the whole civil constitution, the schism of the 
 nonjuring Church was at once constituted. To maintain the 
 principles of liberty in such circumstances along with a national 
 Church, would have been an arduous undertaking, even with a 
 people which had learned to obey its own laws. But among the 
 last duties of the Constituent, before presenting its finished con- 
 stitution to the king, was a protest against the violence offered 
 by the municipal mob of Paris to nonjurors meeting in the 
 Church of the Theatines, protected though it was by the modest 
 placard " Building consecrated to religious worship by a private 
 society." The regular Legislative Assembly, about to sit, had a 
 hopeless problem before it. 
 
 Even before 1791 closed, another crisis had arrived. Foreign 
 intrigue and even invasion now threatened France. The 
 Assembly decreed that the priests who had declined the oath to 
 the Church constitution should take the ordinary civic oath, 
 under penalty of losing the small pensions which they had been 
 allowed to take with them on resigning ; and that the refusers 
 
 everywhere should be held responsible for local disturbances. 
 
 o
 
 210 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 The king for the first time interposed his veto, and for months 
 the masses raged against the slender constitutional obstacle. 
 But on 2oth April 1792, war was declared with Austria, and on 
 25th May the Assembly exchanged the proposed penalty on those 
 who declined the oath for the simpler one of transportation. 
 Louis again vetoed the measure, along with that which deprived 
 him of his guard. In August the Tuileries was stormed by the 
 mob ; in September the accused were massacred in the prisons of 
 Paris ; and France, now a republic, called a Convention, to rule 
 it at home, and " to hurl at the combined kings, in gage of battle, 
 the head of a king." Its first act, as usual, was to revise the 
 constitution, and in this second revision (1793) we find unequi- 
 vocally stated as among the things not competent even to the law, 
 hindering " the free exercise of worship." (Le libre exercice des 
 ctiltes.) Some of the authors of the civil constitution of the 
 clergy, satisfied now that it had been a mistake, proposed to 
 annul it and leave the free cultes equal before the law. But 
 Robespierre, since Mirabeau's death the intellectual leader of 
 the Revolution, resisted in the tribune and in the " Seventh 
 Letter" to his constituents all separation of Church and State as 
 dangerous to the supremacy of the State, and only favourable to 
 superstition. And under the Reign of Terror, after September 
 1793, while nonjuring priests were deported by the law, and 
 sometimes massacred by the mob, superstition was to be 
 attacked far more directly than by privilege to State teachers. 
 The Commune of Paris undertook the propaganda of atheism, 
 and pressed the Convention to move with it. Gobel, the con- 
 stitutional bishop of the capital, appeared at the bar, and the 
 shout of applause which hailed his renunciation alike of his 
 episcopacy and priesthood, was followed by a rush of similar 
 apostates. In the midst of it, Gregoire, the revolutionary bishop 
 of Blois, took his seat, but was hurried into the tribune, that he 
 too might resign his faith and office. " What do you want me to 
 do ? " he cried. " Is it a question of the revenue attached to the 
 title of bishop ? I abandon it to you at once. Is it a question
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 211 
 
 of religion ? That subject is beyond your domain. I am 
 Catholic by conviction. I am priest by choice. I appeal to 
 religious liberty." He was howled down by the galleries ; and 
 day after day the recantations of all faith went on, till on the 
 tenth day, in Notre Dame itself, the worship of the new goddess 
 Reason was celebrated with flowers and songs. Nor was 
 persecution wanting to this municipal revolution. The Council 
 of the Commune had already resolved that all priests should be 
 suspects, and all churches of all religions in Paris should be 
 closed, when Robespierre, in the Jacobin Club, pronounced an 
 eloquent protest against associating the country in its hour of 
 danger with atheism. The Commune recoiled, and in the con- 
 vention Danton and Robespierre now vied with each other in 
 repressing the anti- Christian deputations. In March 1794, the 
 Hebertists, Robespierre's atheistic opponents in the Commune, 
 rose, and were crushed ; in April, his rival Danton was guillo- 
 tined ; and in May, the Convention, at his instance, decreed for 
 France that the " festival of the Supreme Being " should be held 
 in repentant and alarmed Paris. So, on Qth May, the terrible 
 president of the terrible Convention stood in the square of the 
 Tuileries, his hands filled with offerings of fruits and flowers, and 
 solemnly set fire to the statue of Atheism, over whose ashes 
 presently appeared the sculptured form of divine Wisdom. 
 Before August he too was guillotined by the tribunal whose 
 irresponsible omnipotence he had himself lately decreed, and The 
 Terror was over. 
 
 One of the first results was that the Assembly declared in 
 September that the republic " no longer pays the expenses of any 
 worship." It was not merely that since Robespierre the atmo- 
 sphere had become more tolerant. The expenses of the worship 
 budget had got confused. Priests of the Supreme Being and of 
 Reason demanded pay, on the ground that they, as well as the 
 constitutional Catholics, had been approved by the State ; and 
 priests who had thrown off the soutane claimed pensions, on the 
 ground that they had never renounced the civic oath. Gregoire,
 
 212 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 before the end of 1794, strongly urged the toleration of his 
 opponents the nonjurors. And early next year, Boissy D'Anglas 
 carried a motion, afterwards embodied in the third Constitution 
 (of 1795), the last before France again fell back under a single 
 master and a foreign concordat. It provided that " no one can 
 be hindered, while he conforms to the laws, from exercising the 
 worship of his choice ; but no one can be forced to contribute to 
 the expense of any worship, and the republic salaries none." 
 Imperfectly as this freedom and equality were maintained in 
 detail under the Directory, they were yet now, at last, roughly 
 recognised ; and the result was, that in the last few years of the 
 century religion again began to spread in France. The consti- 
 tutional Church, no longer an endowed Church, reported that, 
 after three years, worship was re-established in forty thousand 
 communes, while its bishops held two national synods, one in 
 1797 and another in 1801. But through the provinces of France 
 generally the nonjuring Church retained the affections of the 
 people, as it retained its hold upon Rome ; and the moment legal 
 restrictions were removed, its worship rose all around. Religion 
 was again becoming a power, and the young general who was 
 now First Consul, and whom so many victorious campaigns had 
 made the idol of the army and the people, was quick to mark it. 
 Hence Napoleon's concordat of 1802, and the Organic Laws 
 which, if they did not re-establish or re-endow one religion in the 
 old sense, at least recognised and salaried religion in more forms 
 than one. The men who remembered 1789 resented the step, 
 and Lafayette made a journey to Paris to persuade Napoleon 
 that the transatlantic "principle of perfect equality among all 
 worships " was the only one permanently just. The new chief, 
 then and afterwards, was perfectly frank in his comments on the 
 situation. He said to Bourrienne : " Lafayette may be right in 
 theory ; but what is a theory ? A folly, when it is wished to apply 
 it to a mass of men. And then he imagines himself always in 
 America, as if the French people were Americans. Lafayette will 
 not perhaps teach me what is necessary for France. The Catholic
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 213 
 
 religion prevails here ; and besides, I have need of the pope ; he 
 will do what I wish." The essential part of the new concordat 
 between France and Rome was a provision such as had existed 
 under the old one, "The First Consul shall nominate to the 
 archbishoprics and bishoprics; His Holiness will confer the 
 canonical institution." So by appointments from both sides the 
 schism of the higher bishops was healed, while the parish priests 
 were to be appointed by them, subject to civil approval. But the 
 papacy failed in getting the Catholic religion again acknowledged 
 as that of France ; it was only declared to be that of "the great 
 majority of the French," and its worship was to be "public," 
 while it " conformed to police regulations necessary for the peace.' 
 It was not to be, as the celebrated Minister of Worship, M. Portalis, 
 explained to the Senate, exclusive or even dominant. Protestant- 
 ism was also to be entitled to public worship, State protection, and 
 State pay ; and neither communion could celebrate marriage 
 until the civil ceremony had first taken place. On the other 
 hand, liberty of conscience, though proclaimed, was unduly 
 limited. All public existence was refused to religious communi- 
 ties not sanctioned by the State ; and even those sanctioned, while 
 unduly favoured, were subjected to minute and careful regu- 
 lation. Neither to Protestants nor Catholics was it conceded, 
 says M. de Pressense, " freely to extend or organize themselves, to 
 adopt doctrinal decisions, or to modify their discipline, without 
 the permission of the Government ; " so that now " the administra- 
 tive network which encloses France on every side permits neither 
 liberty of speech nor of association." But this strict regulation 
 of all things by the State was very much what Napoleon had 
 desired ; and it was when he returned from the first Mass at 
 Notre Dame, after the acceptance of the concordat, that he 
 uttered the words, " The French Revolution has now come to an 
 end." 
 
 But the hundred years of the Revolution were only begun, and 
 it was to be European as well as French. Indeed, the prepara-
 
 214 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 tion for it, so far as the question of Church and State is concerned, 
 was more advanced in the great States of Central Europe than in 
 that of the West. Frederick the Great had commenced his reign 
 with penning a memorandum that " all religions must be tolerated, 
 ... for in this country every man is to be saved after his own 
 fashion." All his life the enemy of religion and idealism, Frederick 
 was great only in war and administration ; and such a man natur- 
 ally promoted in Prussia the absorption of the Church by the 
 State. His influence and that of the " collegio-territorial " school 
 of lawyers is seen in the Landrecht or code, completed in 1 794. 
 Liberty of worship is by it nominally allowed to individuals, but 
 only in connection with societies tolerated or recognised. In 
 either case, however, these come under the supervision of the 
 State, which decides in case of dispute, and confines church 
 members and functionaries to their duties. This was carried 
 farther in 1808, by abolishing the consistories and central autho- 
 rities of the Church, and handing over its administration to the 
 Minister of the Interior as part of his department. But the Land- 
 recht regulated also the rights and duties of the Catholic clergy. 
 And this was not resented ; for German canon lawyers, following 
 Van Espen of Louvain, and Von Hontheim of Treves, had recently 
 rivalled the Protestants in giving the State a controlling power 
 over the Church. Equally striking was the movement which pre- 
 ceded the Revolution in Austria. Maria Theresa, the opponent 
 of Frederick, was a zealous Catholic, but though intolerant to her 
 Protestant subjects, she maintained and enlarged the rights of 
 the Crown against the Church, and limited the jurisdiction of her 
 clergy. Joseph II., in 1781, went farther still. He was a philo- 
 sophe upon the throne ; and, wanting the cynical common sense 
 of Frederick, he hastened to impose upon the peoples under him 
 reforms often excellent, but sometimes premature. He proclaimed 
 to all of the Greek and Protestant faiths the freedom of private 
 worship and the abolition of religious tests ; refused Papal Bulls 
 and briefs ; suppressed half the monasteries and monastic orders ; 
 took marriage into the protection of the civil law ; and made
 
 THE REVOLUTION, IN AMERICA AND EUROPE. 215 
 
 provision to enforce training the German clergy in German 
 seminaries. It was going too far or too fast ; l and the attempt to 
 extend the same policy into the Catholic Netherlands was met by 
 resistance, and then, when centralizing measures were threatened, 
 by revolt. Austria lost her provinces next to France in 1790. 
 Joseph died in 1791, and the Revolution was now at hand. But 
 the German empire had gone far to meet it in the church region. 
 
 Consequently, when the empire staggered under the expansion 
 of revolutionary principles and the sword of Napoleon, the first 
 thing which it sacrificed, in imitation of France, was the ecclesias- 
 tical property and the prince-bishoprics. Prussia, Austria, and 
 Russia, by successive agreements with France and her great 
 ruler, agreed to the secularization of all the ecclesiastical prince- 
 doms (except the archbishopric of Mayence) in what became the 
 Confederation of the Rhine ; and while each of the parties gained 
 part of the spoil, the people were so far emancipated. Toleration, 
 indeed, followed the steps of the Revolution, even when those steps 
 followed the path of war. Thus Switzerland, which in 1 529 had 
 merely permitted each canton to choose between "the Mass or 
 the Word of God" for the whole of its people, which in 1656 had 
 commenced to tolerate the dissenting minorities in each canton, 
 and in 1712 had liberated these minorities from contributing to 
 the faith of the majority, now, as the Helvetic Republic, pro- 
 claimed freedom to all faiths and worships, provided the public 
 authorities had notice of their existence. Rome in all such cases 
 protested ; but Rome was already feeling the combined pressure 
 of the rights of the Italian people on the one hand, and of the 
 French invader on the other. The concordat of 1802 was wrung 
 from the unwilling hands of the pope ; it had been preceded by 
 the giving up of the old ecclesiastical territory of Avignon, and was 
 followed by Napoleon's "resuming" the Italian soil granted by 
 Charlemagne, and bringing the pope a prisoner into France. Pius 
 VII. consented to crown the new Caesar, and, after long resistance, 
 he signed another concordat at Fontainebleau in January 1813, 
 
 1 " My brother," said Frederick, " takes the second step before the first."
 
 2l6 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 which bound him henceforth to live as pontiff at Avignon, and to 
 transfer to France that part of the patrimony of the Church. But 
 already the empire of the usurping " heir of the Revolution " was 
 passing away. In 1815 the Bourbons and the pope were both 
 restored, with the apparent acquiescence of their peoples ; the 
 external face of Europe was changed, and a new age seemed to 
 begin. But in truth the Revolution had in many Church matters 
 merely precipitated domestic changes which were already in pro- 
 gress ; and its termination by armed Europe allowed these 
 changes again slowly to proceed. A progressive spirit soon 
 began to move again alongside that of reaction, and the present 
 century of Europe is so far a new age, that it may be reserved 
 for a separate chapter, while we return to trace from its earlier 
 Revolution to the present day the history of Britain.
 
 CH AFTER XI. 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 
 
 THE English Revolution, by its Toleration Act of 1688, merely 
 relieved worship outside the Church from penalties, and that only 
 in certain cases and under certain conditions. The right of the 
 State to maintain an established Church was still held to imply a 
 corresponding duty on the citizen to be a member of it. The only 
 change was in the extent to which that duty was now to be 
 enforced by disabilities and penalties. 1 Accordingly the Non- 
 conformist congregations were still forbidden to have a minister, 
 unless he subscribed the "doctrinal" part of the Thirty-Nine 
 Articles. And all Nonconformist laymen, besides being liable 
 in tithes, were excluded from civil, military, and municipal offices 
 by the Test and Corporation Acts. In Scotland, King William's 
 attempt to pass an Act tolerating worship outside the Presby- 
 terian Church, wholly failed. The Scottish law recognised only 
 one Church ; and in Queen Anne's time the unpopularity there 
 of the proposed Union with England was largely due to dread 
 by the Presbyterians of English pressure in favour of Episco- 
 pacy. Accordingly the Act of Security in 1705 not only provided 
 that "the true Protestant religion and the worship, discipline, 
 and government" of the Church of Scotland should continue 
 
 1 Not till 1767 did Lord Mansfield declare on the bench that "there is no 
 usage or custom independent of positive law, which makes nonconformity a 
 crime. Conscience is not controllable by human laws, nor amenable to 
 human tribunals. . . . Bare nonconformity is no sin by the common law." 
 But this was in rejecting an attempt by the City of London to pass a bye-law 
 fining Nonconformists for refusing to qualify (by taking the communion) to 
 act as sherifis. 
 
 217
 
 2l8 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 "without any alteration to the people of this land in all suc- 
 ceeding generations," but that the Presbyterian government 
 should be " the only government of the Church within the 
 kingdom of Scotland," and even that no professors or masters in 
 any college or school in Scotland should ever be admitted to teach 
 without joining that Church, and subscribing its Confession of 
 Faith. The Union took place while Marlborough and the Whigs 
 were in power ; but their unwise prosecution of Dr. Sacheverell 
 for a sermon in favour of " non-resistance" so increased the existing 
 Tory reaction as to bring in the ministry of Bolingbroke. Before 
 Anne's death that ministry had time to pass two Church Acts for 
 Scotland and two for England. Of the former, one provided for 
 the toleration in Scotland of the Episcopal communion, and of it 
 alone ; the other, for the restoration to patrons of Scottish 
 churches of " their ancient rights of presenting ministers," rights 
 which since the Revolution had been resumed by the heritors, 
 elders, and people. The interference with the Church by a civil 
 legislature (now not even a Scottish legislature), in this last 
 statute, confirmed the existing protest of the Cameronians, prepared 
 the way for the secessions from the Church which were to follow 
 in 1733 and 1761, and laid the foundation for a singularly 
 instructive chapter, a century and a half later, in the legal theory 
 of Church and State. In England, many Nonconformists had 
 adopted the practice of leaving their own congregations for one 
 Sunday in the year to take the communion in the parish church ; 
 but Parliament, recognising that this "occasional conformity" 
 was a mere evasion of the legal duty of membership in the 
 Church of the State, now passed an Act providing that it should 
 no longer qualify for office. At the same time another was passed, 
 that in England, as in Scotland, Nonconformists should hence- 
 forth be incapacitated from conducting schools of youth. Queen 
 Anne died in 1714, and was succeeded, not by a Stuart, as her 
 ministers had hoped, but by the Georges ; and it was not till the 
 close of their four reigns that the fabric of legal privilege and exclu- 
 sion thus maintained by the Revolution began to be broken down.
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 219 
 
 The Act, indeed, which forbade Nonconformists in England to 
 teach in schools, was repealed (with that against occasional con- 
 formity) in 1719; but the statutes enforcing the doctrinal Articles 
 on all ministers, whether within or without the Church, remained. 
 They had no effect in promoting religion or hindering free 
 inquiry. On the contrary, at no time was there a greater dis- 
 integration of dogma, Arian and Unitarian views making their 
 way rapidly alike among the Presbyterian Dissenters and in the 
 Church. But the legal orthodoxy was not enforced on Dissenters ; 
 the conflict between High Church and Low Church, in what was 
 called the Bangorian controversy, distracted the Establishment, 
 without promoting religion ; and within and without alike, a moral 
 languor reigned, which contrasted unfavourably with the brief 
 but aggressive life of the Commonwealth. King William's Parlia- 
 ment, like that of Elizabeth, had simply deprived the nonjuring 
 bishops ; and all appearance of the independence of the Church 
 as a clerical body was terminated by the royal prorogation of all 
 its meetings of Convocation every year after that of 1717, with- 
 out its being allowed to enter upon business. The clergy resented 
 it, and were as a body opposed to the Hanoverian succession and 
 to the Hanoverian bishops. But neither the Church nor the 
 people were prepared to call back the Stuarts so long as they 
 remained Catholics. Consequently, while the Church was strong 
 enough to prevent any legislative grant of freedom to Dissenters, 
 it was not able to increase their disabilities, or even to enforce 
 those which nominally existed. Sir Robert Walpole's cynical 
 common sense reduced the inconsistency at last almost to a 
 system. The Test Acts were maintained, but from 1727 onwards 
 an Act of Indemnity was brought in almost every year, to exempt 
 those who had broken them from the penalty of exclusion from 
 civil office. And even by the bishops and in the House of Lords 
 these were for a whole century acquiesced in, while relief by more 
 general legislation was refused. The principles of this refusal, 
 and of Establishment as founded on tests, found expression 
 in the vigorous book of Warburton on " The Alliance between
 
 220 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Church and State," published in I736. 1 The first attempt at 
 general legislation, indeed, came rather from within the Church 
 than without. Ever since Whiston's Primitive Christianity, in 
 1710, and Dr Samuel Clarke's book on the Trinity, in 1715, the 
 right (of the Church, and still more of the State) to establish 
 doctrinal tests by authority had been widely questioned, and this 
 was brought to a point by Archdeacon Blackburne in 1766, in his 
 book entitled The Confessional. In 1772, a petition was presented 
 to Parliament by a mass of professional men, including 250 
 clergymen of the Church, demanding relief from the obligation of 
 subscription to the Articles and Liturgy on all entering the uni- 
 versity or taking holy orders. It was rejected, but was followed 
 by the more moderate proposal, that Dissenters at least should be 
 no longer legally bound to subscribe the thirty-five and a half 
 Articles. Twice this Bill passed the House of Commons, and 
 twice it was rejected by the House of Lords. The debate of 1773 
 
 1 Bishop Warburton's object, as stated by himself, is "to show the neces- 
 sity and equity of an established religion and a test law, from the essence and 
 end of civil society, upon the fundamental principles of the law of nature and 
 nations." In order to make room for a free " alliance," he throws over the 
 theories of Hooker and Hobbes, and falls back upon the more generally 
 accepted view of Christendom, holding that the two societies have quite 
 different objects, and are originally separate and independent. Their union, 
 therefore, is by " free convention and mutual compact,'' each entering into it 
 because of the advantages to its own side. (Thus the magistrate does not 
 establish religion because it is true, for " the magistrate as such hath no right 
 to determine which is the true religion," but because it is useful civilly.) And 
 in entering into this free alliance each gives up something, the Church gives 
 up its independence, receiving in exchange endowment and coercive power, 
 and "applying its utmost influence in the service of the State." When there 
 are more religions than one, the State, in policy, "allies itself with the 
 largest," making a test law against the others, " to keep them from hurting 
 that which is established." The alliance is therefore not irrevocable, e.g., 
 "when the Church loses to any considerable degree its superiority of extent, 
 the alliance becomes void." The element of paradox, which Warburton 
 seldom wants, is supplied by his argument, that rewarding men for morality 
 not being one of the objects of civil government (which exists merely to give 
 them security) can only come through future li.e and religion, and that civil 
 government should therefore ally itself with religion, which docs what itself 
 cannot do.
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 221 
 
 was remarkable for the collision between Archbishop Drummond 
 of York, who charged the Dissenters with " close ambition," and 
 the great Chatham. The Earl replied that " their ambition is to 
 keep close to the college of fishermen, not of cardinals. They 
 contend for a spiritual creed and a spiritual worship. We have a 
 Calvinistic creed, a popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy. The 
 Reformation has laid open the Scriptures to all ; let not the 
 bishops shut them again." But in 1779, tne proposal, again 
 brought forward, was passed, and Dissenters were from that time 
 only called upon to accept "the Scriptures as the rule of my 
 doctrine and practice." 
 
 By this time a greater age had commenced. The expansion 
 of England into a world-wide empire, under the genius of 
 the same Chatham, had been in vain resisted by France. America 
 was already asserting its independence. The labours of Wesley 
 and Whitefield had initiated a revival of religious feeling, which 
 was now growing within the Establishment and without. On the 
 Continent, religious toleration was steadily making way, and all 
 things were preparing for a coming Revolution. It came too 
 soon ; and England regarded with a mixture of jealousy and fear 
 the pretensions of France, her near neighbour and natural enemy, 
 to a premature perfection in the region of civil rights. The pro- 
 tests of Burke against remoulding civil society (which never falls 
 into a mould, because it is a growth), seemed justified by the speed 
 with which France lapsed from its new mould of liberty and 
 equality, under the military rule of Napoleon. The ambition of 
 that great man supplied a more plausible ground for our national 
 hostility ; and Britain was never more " divided from the whole 
 world " than during this period, when her vigour of arms abroad 
 and literary genius at home were accompanied by an insular re- 
 action in politics. In 1787 and in 1790 two attempts to repeal 
 the Test Act were unsuccessful. The only direction in which an 
 advance was made was in removing the disabilities of members 
 of the Roman Catholic Church, a body whose weakness abroad 
 at this crisis began to relieve English Protestants from their
 
 222 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 habitual apprehensions of it at home. Already, in 1778, the 
 violent Act of King William, which made the Mass felony, and 
 prevented Romanists from either inheriting or purchasing landed 
 estate, had been repealed ; and Lord George Gordon's riots, which 
 followed, did not prevent a farther advance. In 1771, a statute, 
 passed with the approval of Mr. Pitt, relieved Catholics from the 
 oaths of supremacy and against transubstantiation, and allowed 
 them to practise as lawyers, etc., as well as to open their chapels. 
 In Ireland the laws against Catholics had been more merciless 
 than in England, and they were more despotically enforced. In 
 1778; however, the Irish legislature followed that of England in 
 permitting Catholics to inherit land, and in 1782 they were allowed 
 to purchase it, and their clergy to teach schools. In the same 
 year there was a great meeting of the representatives of the Pro- 
 testant corps of Irish Volunteers, at Dungannon. Their delegates 
 resolved, with only two dissentients, that private judgment in 
 matters of religion is a natural right, and that the recent relaxa- 
 tions in favour of their Catholic brethren were called for. The 
 result was that in 1793 a farther Act of the Irish Parliament was 
 passed, not only relieving Catholics in Ireland from penalties, as 
 an Act of the British Parliament of the same year did for Catholics 
 in Scotland, but giving them that elective franchise there which 
 in Britain they were still refused. In 1800, the Union of the 
 English and Irish legislatures was brought about ; and for the 
 next thirty years the proposed repeal of the English Test Act was 
 closely connected in politics with the " emancipation " of Catholics, 
 who had been forbidden since 1678 to sit or vote in Parliament. 
 In 1801, William Pitt resigned, George III. having refused to 
 consider his measure for levelling up the Catholic and Protestant 
 communions in Ireland, so as to give them an equal relation to 
 the State. In 1807, the question was of mere emancipation, and 
 the Grenville ministry resigned rather than pledge themselves 
 for the future against it. Canning pressed the same object year 
 after year. In 1812 it had a majority in the Commons, and by 
 next year Unitarians had been relieved from some of their dis-
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 223 
 
 abilities, and Dissenting ministers generally from the Conventicle 
 Acts. The great war now came to an end, and the countiy had 
 leisure to devote itself again to the development of internal 
 politics. The epoch of Reform had begun ; and the continued 
 passing of Acts of Indemnity for those who had broken the Test 
 Acts, inevitably raised the question of their total abolition. The 
 arguments against formally admitting all private citizens to office 
 were twofold. It was said, on the one hand, that if you make 
 Dissenters equal with their neighbours before the law, you would 
 no longer be able to burden them with the support of a religious 
 Establishment. It was said, on the other, that if you enfranchise 
 Protestants, you must go farther, and extend the same rights to 
 those who, as members of the Catholic Church, are bound to a 
 foreign potentate and a doctrine of intolerance. Both arguments 
 were in vain. The twofold question was destined to be settled 
 even before that of parliamentary reform, and the Catholic branch 
 of it preceded the other. In April 1829, the franchise was con- 
 ferred, by a measure at the instance of its late opponents, the 
 Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel, on all Catholics in Great Britain 
 and Ireland. But a greater change in theory had been made in 
 the Bill of the previous year carried by Lord John Russell. By it 
 the statutes were repealed which made receiving the sacrament 
 in the parish church "a qualification for offices and employ- 
 ments," and the claims of all citizens were thus in a sense equal- 
 ized before the law. Whatever future legislation may take place 
 in Britain, the removal of religious restrictions on civil rights 
 early in the present century may probably remain the most 
 important step, in principle, which this history can show. 
 
 In passing these great legislative Acts, England had resumed 
 her place in the development, arrested since her Revolution, of 
 the question of Church and State. It was not a day too soon. 
 In general recognition of the principles of religious liberty, the 
 great States of the Continent were in advance of us, even during 
 their present reaction after 1815. And now our emancipating
 
 224 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Acts were immediately followed abroad by the French Revolution 
 of 1830, and at home by the Reform struggle of 1832. In every 
 land there was a second wave of Liberalism, only less powerful 
 than that which swept, in 1789, over the topmost towers of medi- 
 aeval Europe. And in Britain it stirred for the first time in the 
 popular mind the question of the duty of absolute religious 
 equality. Many streams of influence, derived from the long politi- 
 cal past, but dammed up during the previous generation, now con- 
 verged upon this question, and their force was both increased and 
 diffused by the unexampled passion for general knowledge and 
 education which took possession of the minds of men. Fortunately 
 the political impulse in Britain was also accompanied and pre- 
 ceded by a very general revival of religious feeling. The present 
 century has witnessed a similar phenomenon even on the Con- 
 tinent. But in Britain it had commenced earlier, and in form it was 
 strongly Puritan, pietist, and individual, everywhere nourishing a 
 deep life of personal religion within varieties of church organization. 
 Under this influence the political opposition to a State Church in 
 Britain was nowhere, as it often has been abroad, simply anti-reli- 
 gious ; and in the Dissenting Churches it now based itself, more 
 even than in the days of the Commonwealth, upon conscien- 
 tious scruples, and even upon doctrinal principle. But the same 
 religious impulse strengthened and invigorated the State Churches 
 themselves ; for the members of them who were most ardently 
 devoted to the Church's work were naturally impelled to defend 
 the remaining bulwarks of that Church's privilege. But this also 
 they were disposed to attempt on grounds of principle and con- 
 science, and in result the whole political process, while delayed, 
 was no doubt enriched and enlarged. Before going on, therefore, 
 to deal with legislation, we may refer to two episodes, singularly 
 parallel in time, one belonging to the State Church in England, 
 and another to that in Scotland. 
 
 The Oxford Movement, as a public and recognisable one, took 
 its rise in the question of Church and State. It is generally dated 
 from the Assize Sermon preached by Keble in July 1833, under the
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 225 
 
 title of " National Apostasy," and Cardinal Newman's " Apologia " 
 shows how the political influences presented themselves to his 
 even then dominant intellect : " Great events were happening at 
 home and abroad, which brought out into form and passionate 
 expression the various beliefs which had gradually been winning 
 their way into my mind. Shortly before, there had been a Re- 
 volution in France ; . . . the Whigs had come into power ; Lord 
 Grey had told the bishops to set their house in order ; . . . the 
 vital question was, How were we to keep the Church from being 
 liberalized ?" No doubt, in a deeper view, the movement was not 
 one of mere resistance or reaction. It was a fruit of Catholic 
 principles suddenly becoming living and earnest ; principles 
 which, even while they had slumbered in the English Church, 
 had been in themselves inconsistent with its relation of bondage 
 to the State. But now, on both sides of the Tweed, men were 
 to see an unexpected result, varying in either Church accord- 
 ing to its constitution and environment, of the great positive 
 impulse which during the last eighty years had been raising to a 
 higher level our politics and religion. In England that impulse 
 has had a general effect down to our own time, in invigorating the 
 Church as a composite but organic whole, the sacerdotal and 
 clerical influence, however, gaining rapidly in strength, and the 
 anomalies of the State connection becoming more apparent. But 
 the ten years of Oxford had no immediate issue, other than the 
 secession to Rome of some distinguished Churchmen. The less 
 obvious effects have passed on to become part of a complex 
 history not yet closed. In the north of the island, on the other 
 hand, a popular and self-governing Church could fall back upon 
 the people. And the same decade of movement resulted there in 
 a crisis for Church and State which, while in some respects a mere 
 parallel with famous epochs of the European past, was in others 
 a new experiment, and an advance to the solution of the problem. 
 In Scotland the religious impulse which for exactly a hundred 
 years had influenced congregations everywhere to "secede" from 
 
 a too cold National Church, had now in 1833 so far affected that 
 
 p
 
 226 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Church itself as to produce an "evangelical majority" in its 
 General Assembly. It at once set about the work of church 
 reform, and especially of church extension ; calling upon Parlia- 
 ment to aid, by granting new endowments for new congregations. 
 Such a call was hopeless at such a date. In Scotland the passion 
 for freedom from State interference with religion had grown 
 powerful, under the more positive and more attractive name of 
 Voluntaryism. In Edinburgh alone, in that very year 1833, no 
 fewer than 846 citizens were prosecuted for refusing to pay the 
 ecclesiastical tax already laid upon them, their sole defence being 
 the religious and conscientious scruple. And now the question 
 was as to new taxes for similar purposes purposes in themselves 
 very laudable, and even necessary. The most eloquent of 
 all Scotsmen had devoted himself to urging the claim of the 
 Church to national endowment for its new and admittedly much- 
 needed charges. The Whig Government mentioned the claim 
 in a Queen's Speech, and appointed a Commission of Inquiry. 
 But the result of the investigation was an absolute refusal, 
 even while maintaining the existing Establishment, to lay any 
 new tax upon the people in order to give new grants to the new 
 charges of the Church. The Assembly represented to Lord Mel- 
 bourne that this was "abandoning so far the principle of an 
 Establishment ;" but the line drawn was well within the political 
 conclusions already reached in our century by Britain, and it 
 has not been receded from since on either side of politics. Dr. 
 Chalmers and his coadjutors now turned to what in his lectures 
 he had favourably distinguished from ordinary or congregational 
 Voluntaryism, as Voluntaryism ab extra (i.e. Voluntaryism on a 
 national scale), to do what the nation, as such, had refused ; when 
 a more startling blow fell upon them. The whole three measures 
 of church expansion which the Church had by her own authority 
 adopted, were declared by the law courts 1 to be incompetent, and 
 
 l The conflict between the Scottish Church courts and law courts was 
 carried out with great ability on both sides, but with too much forgetfulness 
 that the ground had been trodden in past ages and other lands. Thus it
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 227 
 
 that in every case, on the ground, alarming to northern Churchmen, 
 
 originated partly in the Church admitting to its presbyteries the pastors of 
 the two hundred new congregations which it had raised ; partly in its also wel- 
 coming to them the Original Secession ministers and others who had returned 
 to the reviving Establishment. Church extension and church union were sup- 
 posed to be the great aggressive duties of the new time, and the refusal of the 
 Church's right to admit these classes by its own authority, was in the long run 
 the immediate cause of the Protest and Disruption of 1843. But the third 
 and earliest ground of quarrel was the old question of Patronage, which had 
 broken out in so many ages, and now soon ran again into that form of 
 Investiture which (p. 73) had caused the greatest conflict of Church and State 
 the world has seen. On this question the Assembly from the first affected 
 an attitude of defence rather than aggression ; declaring in 1834 that it was a 
 " fundamental law of the Church" that a minister should not be intruded 
 against the will of the people. This gave occasion to the principle being laid 
 down, especially by the House of Lords, that it was immaterial how funda- 
 mental or sacred the law of the Church might be held to be, if civil statute 
 (in this case the statute of 1711) overruled it. What was decided in the other 
 questions was rather the converse doctrine, the incompetency of positive 
 church legislation, unless statute authorized it. But the decisions as to all of 
 them (in iheAuchterarder, Lethendy, Strathbogie, Culsalmond ', and Steivarton 
 cases) were uniformly founded on the one general law, laid down with 
 cumulative deliberation and emphasis, that the Kirk derives "all its powers" 
 and " its whole authority " from Parliament and the laws of the realm ; that it 
 must submit to statute when statute regulates, however unfortunately, what is 
 "strictly ecclesiastical ; " and that the jurisdiction of the Church courts is derived 
 from and denned by the State. It must be remembered that these Church 
 courts have always had in Scotland a jurisdiction separate from the civil 
 courts, and without any ordinary appeal to them, and that the Church 
 administration of matters ecclesiastical has been always held final. It 
 was this freedom of administration which gave countenance to the hope of 
 the leaders of the Church, that it might also be held free in the cognate sphere 
 of legislation. And when that hope was overthrown, there was still the 
 chance strongly founded upon, therefore, in the "Claim of Right" (to free- 
 dom) of 1842 that this separate jurisdiction of the Church courts might not 
 be interfered with, at least to the effect of forcing them meantime to obey the 
 civil statute against the unrepealed Church law. This interference, however, 
 was precisely what was necessary to vindicate the supremacy of the Legislature 
 over the Church ; and it was accordingly carried out in every case of conflict 
 of the two authorities, but no farther. The court had no intention, and no 
 need, to interfere with the ordinary Church jurisdiction or administration , 
 and that accordingly remains since 1843 as it had been before, a separate 
 province, now no doubt held to be granted and defined by the State, but still 
 maintained by it as before. What has really been settled is the general rela- 
 tion of the Church of Scotland to the British Parliament and to its legislation 
 in Church matters.
 
 228 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 that the Scottish Establishment was absolutely subject, even in 
 matters ecclesiastical, to the State and its enactments. The 
 Church petitioned the Crown and Legislature, protesting (in its 
 Claim of Right of 1842) that rather than submit to this, it must 
 give up its establishment. But it had very little hope that a 
 doctrine so familiar to English ears would be really reversed. 
 What it urged earnestly was that the Church should not be 
 forced in the meantime (while some concordat or other measure 
 of relief was being prepared) to acquiesce in these decisions by 
 itself carrying them out in sacris. The courts, however, had 
 condemned beforehand the idea of compact or concordat, as 
 implying that very independence which the Church claimed, and 
 Parliament (overriding the vote of a majority of the Scottish 
 members) decided, on 7th March 1843, that the Church must 
 first obey in its courts the existing law, and wait thereafter for 
 such statutory relief as the State might or might not find itself 
 disposed to give. The instantaneous result was the founding of 
 the Free Church, with the whole Presbyterian machinery of 
 assembly, synods, and presbyteries, home and foreign missions, 
 colleges, and schools, all on a national scale. But it was its new 
 and altruistic basis, the mutual support of all congregations from 
 a central fund, which attracted chief attention as an experiment 
 for the future. The experiment has been increasingly successful ; 
 for the contributions of this body, varying as represented by the 
 following figures for the opening year of each decade 1843, 
 363,871; 1853, 289,670; 1863, ^343,626; 1873, 511,084; 
 1883, 628,222 have during the forty years amounted to nearly 
 seventeen millions. During the same period its 700 churches of 
 1843 have grown to 1014. Not less valuable, however, for the 
 future have been the experiences during the same time of the 
 other two Presbyterian bodies in Scotland. The Established 
 Church, much the larger in numbers, retained the buildings 
 erected by voluntary contributions under Dr. Chalmers' scheme, 
 along with all the churches, manses, and schools ; and, after the 
 natural pause for adjustment, it recommenced systematic opera-
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 229 
 
 tions of church extension. Encouraged by a bequest from one 
 member of half a million, this voluntary endowment side of the 
 Church's operations has been carried on without intermission, 
 and at the end of forty years the new parish churches amounted 
 to 323. Meantime the third body, the United Presbyterian 
 Church, which had a more sporadic and congregational origin in 
 the previous century, and had ever since been gradually gathering 
 together the fragments of Scottish dissent, took its present form 
 and name upon a final union of 497 churches in 1847. And both 
 before and after that date it has led the way for the other large 
 bodies in Scotland in questions of constitution and creed, and 
 especially in the revision of those principles of Church and State 
 admitted now to be false as well as intolerant upon which the 
 whole Presbyterian edifice was so far based in 1647 and 1690. 
 
 These Church movements were accompanied by a contemporary 
 but independent agitation upon this subject in the world of theory 
 and speculation. Dr. Chalmers was not the only man of the time 
 whose history was destined to supplement or refute his early 
 theoretical views. His lectures had chiefly urged the necessity of 
 State endowment. Mr. Gladstone, then a rising statesman in London, 
 thought this treatment inadequate, and in his State in its relation 
 to the Church (1838), took up the other side, that of Establish- 
 ment, which he based on the homage due to truth by the State as 
 a corporate body with a conscience. But almost before Dr. Chal- 
 mers had conceived his " Sustentation Fund," Mr. Gladstone had 
 begun to doubt (as his Chapter of Autobiography declares) how 
 far, when the people have attained self-government, a majority is 
 entitled to enforce upon a minority its own conscience as to truth. 
 In addition, as appears from his Letter on the Position of Laymen 
 in the Church in 1845, he had already a fear, on the side of the 
 Church, that Establishment might in the future fetter Christianity 
 in England more than it could assist it. Such fears recur inevit- 
 ably to those who cling to the classical idea of the Church as 
 Christian and originally independent of the State. But about 
 this time a view of the Church of England became associated
 
 230 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 with the name of Dr. Arnold, and afterwards with that of his 
 biographer, Dean Stanley, which was originally suggested by 
 Coleridge in his Church and State in 1830. The Church of Eng- 
 land is, in Coleridge's view, a national and not a Christian insti- 
 tution ; its object is not Christianity, or even religion, so much as 
 civilisation : " It is unfortunately, at least improperly, called the 
 Church, a name which, in its best sense, is exclusively appro- 
 priate to the Church of Christ." 1 It is not ecclesia^ which is the 
 Church called out from the world or the State, but enclesia or 
 clerisy ; and the clerisy, or Church of England, " in its primary 
 acceptation and original intention, comprehended the learned of 
 all denominations, the sages and professors of all the liberal arts 
 and sciences, as well as the theological." This view, which makes 
 the Church of England merely the great educational institute of 
 the nation, has a stronger foundation in English law than in 
 European history ; and the use of the same word, in senses so 
 distinct, no doubt indicates a certain insular confusion of ideas 
 which it tends also to increase. 
 
 All these special impulses and incidents, mingling with the 
 general revival of religious feeling of the century on the one 
 hand, and with the rationalistic and scientific spirit which en- 
 compassed it on the other, left traceable results in the history of 
 legislation after the Reform of 1832. That legislation naturally 
 addressed itself to the removal of exclusion on the one hand, and 
 of privilege on the other. In 1833, the House of Commons, find- 
 ing that it was still necessary for every legislator to take an oath 
 
 1 See his chapter on the Idea of the National Church. In another on the 
 Idea of the Christian Church, he explains that the latter is not national, and 
 cannot be placed in the conjunction Church and State ' ' without forfeiting 
 the very name of Christian." It no doubt completes and strengthens the 
 edifice of the State, but it does so without "interference or commixture, in 
 the mere act of laying and securing its own foundations. And for these 
 services the Church of Christ asks of the State neither wages nor dignities. 
 She asks only protection, and to be let alone. . . . She asks nothing for her 
 members as Christians which they are not already entitled to demand as 
 citizens and subjects."
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 231 
 
 " on the true faith of a Christian," passed a Bill to relieve Jews 
 from the disability. But it was thrown out in the House of Lords ; 
 and, though often brought in again, did not become part of our 
 constitution till a quarter of a century later. Quakers, Moravians, 
 and Separatists, however, were at once relieved. Among the 
 privileges of Establishment in both England and Scotland, 
 was that of solemnizing marriages. That restriction was in 
 1836 abolished, and a system gradually instituted by which 
 registration before civil officials makes a valid marriage, while 
 religious solemnization, by any ministers of religion, may be added 
 if desired. A more onerous privilege of the Church, was the 
 obligation on occupiers of land, whether dissenters or not, to pay 
 tithes. By far the worst case of this, in 1833, was the Irish 
 Establishment, and in that year the Legislature cut off at one 
 stroke two Irish archbishoprics, and ten bishoprics, from what 
 was then the United Church of England and Ireland. The Act,, 
 of course, alarmed members of the Church of England ; and the 
 further motion proposed by Mr. Ward, on 27th May 1834, to 
 reduce the remaining Irish Church temporalities, on an express 
 preamble that it is " the right of the State to regulate the dis- 
 tribution of Church property in such manner as Parliament may 
 determine," resulted in the secession of Lord Stanley from the 
 Whig Cabinet, and the dismissal of Lord Melbourne by King 
 William. Mr. Peel succeeded ; but on 3oth March 1835, Lord 
 John Russell carried against him a resolution to reconsider the 
 question, " with the view of applying any surplus of the revenues 
 not required for the spiritual care of its members, to the education 
 of all classes of the people, without distinction of religious de- 
 nomination." Tithe Bills followed this, both for England and 
 Ireland, in which the clauses "appropriating" surplus revenues 
 to other than Church purposes were keenly resisted, while 
 diminutions and readjustment of the tithe by Parliament were 
 after some difficulty conceded. In 1836 an Ecclesiastical Com- 
 mission was incorporated, with large powers given it by Parlia- 
 ment for readjusting dioceses, and holding and dealing with
 
 232 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 Church property. Under these it cut away, about 1840, a large 
 number of the cathedral sinecures, and applied the revenues to 
 the augmentation of small livings. The administrative changes 
 in England and Ireland to some extent pacified the public con- 
 science. Attention was also partly diverted from proper Church 
 matters to the question of education, which, as we have seen, was 
 formally raised by Lord John Russell. It has been energetically 
 claimed, even in modern times, for the Catholic Church, that all 
 education should be supplied by it and under its control. On the 
 other hand, it has been held equally absolutely that all education 
 should be supplied and controlled by the State. It has not always 
 been remembered that the primary right and duty belongs to the 
 individual parent, and that the Church teacher or State teacher to 
 whom he sends his child is in some sense his delegate. Educa- 
 tion in Great Britain had, in point of fact, in old days been almost 
 everywhere undertaken by the Church or by the State through 
 the agency of the one Church which it maintained and tolerated. 
 But in Ireland, at least, elementary education had already been 
 to some extent recognised as a duty to be directly discharged by 
 the State. In 1830, when Lord Stanley was Secretary, and Dr. 
 Whately Archbishop of Dublin, a Board of National Education 
 was founded, the schools under which gave a literary and secular 
 education to all the children attending them, Protestant and 
 Catholic alike, with Bible-reading at separate hours for those 
 who chose to be present. And now, soon after Queen Victoria's 
 accession in 1837, Lord John Russell and his colleagues attempted 
 to make a beginning in England. He succeeded in getting 
 educational funds entrusted to a committee of the Privy Council 
 for Education, which has ever since administered them ; and, in 
 1839, proposed to have normal schools i.e. schools for the train- 
 ing of teachers of elementary education established by the State 
 on an unsectarian footing. The bishops protested, in conjunction 
 with the House of Lords, that elementary as well as higher teach- 
 ing had been entrusted to the Church of England, and should be 
 left in its care. The result was the gradual substitution, instead
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 233 
 
 of direct education by the English State, of a system of "grants 
 in aid" of the existing education, no matter by whom that might 
 be provided, the grants being given on reports by Government 
 inspectors that the teaching satisfied educational tests, or yielded 
 certain numerical results, and a " conscience clause " being intro- 
 duced, to enable children who objected to the religious teaching 
 to decline attendance. In the year 1840, Peel took up the higher 
 education in Ireland, and to balance Trinity College, Dublin (a 
 largely endowed and Protestant institution), instituted three open 
 and undenominational ones. By this time, however, the policy of 
 the Catholic Church on education had been declared, and the 
 Queen's Colleges were rejected as "godless." But Peel went 
 farther, and endowed the Theological Training College of the 
 Catholic Church at Maynooth. Just as this may have been, in 
 view of the large sums then spent in Ireland on Protestant 
 theology and the Church, it excited keen feeling and protest in 
 Britain. And these never quite ceased till, in the following 
 generation, the Protestant Establishment in Ireland, the Pres- 
 byterian Regium Donum, and the Catholic endowment were put 
 an end to by Parliament on the same day. 
 
 The middle of the century saw on the Continent a new upheaval 
 of Church and State relations, as of all others. It left Britain un- 
 disturbed. But an Act which passed quietly through Parliament 
 in the year 1850 laid a formal foundation for what has been called 
 Greater Britain, and raised the question what course the world- 
 wide empire, unfettered by the past, would take in the questions 
 of the Church. The great British dependencies in America, 
 Australia, and Africa commenced with being colonies simply 
 governed by the Crown. But during the present century these 
 Crown colonies attained a second step, that of having represen- 
 tative Assemblies. For some time, in most cases, they had this 
 representation without having self-government, their parliaments 
 being simply consultative, and without power to dismiss one 
 Ministry or call another. But about this time, and under powers
 
 234 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 like those given to Australia by the above Act, the Canadian and 
 African as well as Australasian colonies had begun to attain a 
 third stage in the powers of local self-government. In this latest 
 development, while they all still remain united under the British 
 Crown, each of those young empires has become independent in 
 the management of its own affairs. And their becoming so at 
 once raised a question as to the future of the English race in the 
 matter of Church and State. That they would adopt the principle 
 of religious equality before the law, and would reject any right on 
 the part of the State to select one religion rather than another 
 for support, was already certain. That principle had now been 
 adopted not only by the American Union, but by all the greater 
 States of Europe, with the exception of Russia, and perhaps of 
 Great Britain. But some of the States of Europe, unlike America, 
 were now attempting to carry out the principle of equality by 
 supporting all religions, on a principle of concurrent endowment. 
 It would have been unfortunate if this alternative had not been 
 deliberately presented to these great English communities also. 
 In point of fact, not a few of them had to deal with it at the 
 moment when they all began to girdle the globe as self-governing 
 commonwealths. In Australia, at an early date, the practice had 
 grown up of adding State contributions to the salaries and to the 
 building funds of the English, Catholic, Presbyterian, and Wes- 
 leyan bodies indiscriminately. It was soon objected to, as 
 inexpedient and unfair ; and now it may be said that through- 
 out that great range of colonization, there is no State Church, 
 and no State aid to religion. The change was effected in a gene- 
 rous spirit ; and in many cases, lands which had formerly been 
 set apart for Church revenues were handed over as a gift, while 
 life-interests were generally continued. Queensland attained 
 responsible government in 1859, and made this ecclesiastical 
 change in 1861. Victoria became self-governing in 1854, and 
 paid ,50,000 annually to different denominations down to 1875, 
 when it was discontinued. New South Wales took the same 
 position about the same time, and long after 1870 was still
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 235 
 
 paying ,10,000 annually to incumbents, whose successors will 
 be supported by the Church itself. Outside Australia, New 
 Zealand received power of independent government in 1852 ; 
 and although the Church of England was originally recognised 
 in Canterbury, and the Free Church of Scotland in Otago, there 
 is now no State Church, and no State aid given to any Church. 
 The Cape Colony was made independent by Acts of 1865 
 and 1872. There is no State Church ; and while a grant has 
 been made annually for "religious worship" of Presbyterians, 
 Episcopalians, and Catholics, an Act of 1875 provides for its 
 gradual withdrawal. In Canada, united and made independent 
 in 1840, and indeed in the whole of British North America, there 
 is no State Church ; though in Lower Canada there are provisions 
 in favour of Roman Catholic education, which were guaranteed 
 to the Province ever since the days of possession by the French. 
 Nor are the lessons of this very remarkable history confined to 
 these important States, all now self-governing. In India there is 
 indeed, since 1813, a slender establishment of five bishops, and 
 160 chaplains, for the use of the English and garrison population; 
 but it is not permitted to act as a missionary institute ; and that 
 enormous dependency, with its vast varieties of ancient and 
 modern religion, is left to a universally protected freedom. But 
 besides India, there are innumerable possessions and depend- 
 encies of the British Crown scattered over the world, and not yet 
 invested with self-governing powers. These also have their 
 future ; and in the matter of Church and State, what is that 
 future to be? "In most of the Crown colonies disestablishment 
 of the Church of England, or withdrawal of State aid in the case 
 of those in which concurrent endowment prevailed, has been 
 brought about since 1868. In no case has any step been taken 
 that leads the other way, while in all the colonies where State aid 
 has ceased, religion prospers." l It would appear, therefore, that 
 the people which more than any other obeys in modern times 
 the ancient precept, " Go ye into all the world," has also in doing 
 1 Dilke's Problems of Greater Britain, 1890.
 
 236 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 so substantially accepted the conditions under which the pro- 
 blem was presented to early Christianity. 
 
 The middle of our century, which saw this great career de- 
 finitely opened to the British empire, was marked at home by 
 some embarrassments to Protestantism as established in Eng- 
 land. The Liberation Society was founded, on principles which 
 had been thought out by Mr. Coventry Dick in Scotland, and Mr. 
 Miall in England. A clergyman, named Gorham, was rejected 
 by a High Church bishop as heretical on the doctrine of 
 baptismal regeneration. But by the Privy Council, in 1850, the 
 bishop's view as to doctrine was negatived, and his decision re- 
 versed, this action of the lay court, though in a matter peculiarly 
 ecclesiastical, being approved by popular feeling. That feeling 
 was in the same year roused to great excitement by a Papal 
 Bull " re-establishing in the kingdom of England a hierarchy of 
 bishops." Lord John Russell brought in a Bill to forbid the 
 new bishops assuming territorial titles. But the measure, doubt- 
 ful from the first in principle, was found useless in practice, 
 and was afterwards repealed. A more legitimate support to 
 the Church was the consent given in 1852, for the first time 
 for a century and a half, to the meetings of Convocation. Its 
 annual gatherings, however, being Convocations only "of the 
 clergy," have had little influence with the laity, more being 
 done in that direction by the unofficial and voluntary "con- 
 gresses " of the Church, begun a few years later. One of the 
 first utterances of Convocation, indeed its condemnation of 
 Essays and Reviews came into collision with a second judg- 
 ment of the Privy Council as to the doctrine of the Church. 
 Similar decisions of the lay tribunal as to the ritual of the Church, 
 followed in 1874 by an Act of Parliament for the Regulation of 
 Public Worship, have illustrated in that equally delicate depart- 
 ment, the results of lodging, outside the Church, the authority to 
 legislate for it and to govern it. 
 
 Meantime a certain legislative liberation even at home was
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 237 
 
 slowly proceeded with. In 1853, the tests which in the uni- 
 versities of Scotland bound non-theological professors, and in 
 the universities of England bound all matriculated students, to 
 the respective Established Churches, were done away with. An 
 important step, which had been anticipated in Greater Britain 
 all round the world, was taken in 1857 by the Act legalizing 
 divorce. Convocation objected to this measure, not in substance 
 only, but because by it the jurisdiction in matters of marriages 
 and wills, which had hitherto been entrusted to the Church by 
 the State, was now handed over to a civil tribunal. In this as in 
 similar Bills, however, clauses were introduced by the more 
 far-seeing friends of the Church, providing that its ministers shall 
 not be bound to take an active part themselves in solemnizations 
 as to which the Church and the nation may differ in opinion. 
 In 1858, the long-delayed Jewish Relief Measure was at last 
 passed, and though it was only in the form of an Act enabling 
 either House of Parliament to modify its oath by a resolution, it 
 has been found sufficient. And in 1861 the teachers under the 
 Scottish parochial system were liberated from the test, doctrinal 
 and ecclesiastical, which had been bound upon them by the 
 Revolution Settlement and the Treaty of Union. But with this 
 enactment a pause in such legislation ensued, which lasted until, 
 on the death of Lord Palmerston, and the resignation of Lord 
 Russell in 1866, political matters again took a leap in advance. 
 
 These pauses and advances in political movement by no means 
 coincided with the progress of any theoretical views on either 
 side. Theories, indeed, especially on the nature and functions of 
 the State, have never had much influence in England. Yet such 
 views, and even their extreme forms, were represented in this 
 later part of our century as before. That which gives the State 
 a minimum of right against the individual, had found consistent 
 expression in the later works of the evolutionist philosopher, 
 Herbert Spencer. The practical importance of leaning to this 
 side had been eloquently urged in the Liberty and other 
 works of John Stuart Mill. The opposite theory, in a country
 
 238 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 where the " omnipotence of Parliament " had been traditional, 
 was sure to be represented ; but it has only been influential 
 latterly in a democratic and socialist form, and where it has 
 claimed power rather over the property of the individual 
 than his opinions. The maintenance of an absolute right on 
 the part of the State to inculcate and suppress opinion, has 
 indeed in later years always produced the effect of paradox. 1 
 But English politics, with its long past of compromise, has 
 produced wavering reflections in our modern school of history, as 
 well as in popular sentiment. In both, men have often conceded 
 unlimited power to the State, but they have at the same time 
 held that it has no right to use it. They have argued that 
 dogma or religious conviction suggests intolerance, and indeed 
 authorizes it, but they reserve the highest admiration for the 
 man who respects both his own conscience and that of others. 
 On the whole, however, during the century in which the doctrine 
 of toleration has been formally accepted into the constitutions of 
 continental Europe, it has in the popular mind in Britain been 
 more than ever widely diffused, though weakly defined. 
 
 The election of 1866 broke the slumber, and Mr. Disraeli took 
 his stand on "our constitution in Church and State." A Conser- 
 vative majority was returned, but the unexpected result was the 
 proposal by the Government of a large extension of the franchise. 
 It was passed ; and the result of this again was that the new 
 electorate demanded, about the year 1870, important legislative 
 measures affecting Church and State. And as 1870 was an 
 epoch marked also by a memorable crisis on the Continent 
 of Europe, we may close with it our history of constitutional 
 change at home. 
 
 Some of the measures which group themselves about the 
 year 1870 referred to education, higher and lower, and had 
 the usual indirect relation to Church questions. During the 
 
 1 For the ablest argument of this kind in our language, see Mr. Justice 
 Stephen's book upon, or rather against, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity 
 London, 1874.
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 239 
 
 whole of that year, the Bill to abolish tests in Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, passed by the Commons, was rejected by the Lords. 
 But as ultimately accepted, it liberated all fellows and holders 
 not only of lay degrees, but of lay offices in the colleges, as well 
 as in the two Universities, from the obligations laid upon them in 
 the past to sign formularies of faith and to attend the services 
 of the Church. More complicated provisions were made in 
 Acts as to elementary education, in Scotland and in England. 
 In Scotland the existing parochial and future public schools were 
 wholly separated from the traditional care of the Church, and put 
 under that of an elected school board in each parish. The school 
 boards were to be " at liberty " to give instruction in religion to 
 " children whose parents do not object to the instruction so 
 given;" and while voluntary and denominational schools were still 
 aided (in respect of their secular teaching only, and subject to 
 a conscience clause), new public schools were to be set up wher- 
 ever education did not already sufficiently exist, and the education 
 of all children was made compulsory. The English Education 
 Act passed (1870) before the other (1872). It also demanded 
 the teaching of all children somewhere and somehow, and 
 provided public schools in places where no primary education 
 had hitherto been given. But it transferred none of the great 
 mass of schools which had been under the care of the Church 
 to that of the ratepayers. These remained denominational, 
 and with a large increase of grants. But the grants were 
 only for secular education, and always under a conscience 
 clause, and in the public or rate - supported schools it was 
 provided that no catechisms of religion or distinctive dogmatic 
 formularies were to be taught. A more direct approach to the 
 proper Church question was made in the Church Rates Bill, 
 a measure debated ever since 1833, which Mr. Gladstone at 
 last carried for England in a form accepted by Mr. Bright. 
 It retained the machinery of vestries, and allowed them to 
 raise voluntary rates. But power to enforce rates on objectors 
 and of course their power to administer the money so
 
 240 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 raised was henceforth to cease. This Bill, so significant in 
 principle, passed almost without opposition in 1868. 
 
 But a great crisis arose at the same time as to the Church in 
 Ireland. The occasion was the alternative apparently now pre- 
 sented to the Parliament at home, with regard to an old Estab- 
 lishment, which we have seen already dealt with by British 
 Legislatures abroad, when new ones were brought forward to be 
 endowed. On the loth March 1868, Mr. Disraeli's Irish Secretary, 
 referring to the admitted scandal of Church relations in Ireland, 
 deprecated hasty measures in that country, on the ground that, 
 even though policy and justice might demand an equalization 
 of Church establishments, it was not by confiscation, but by 
 elevation and restoration, that such a result should be attained. 
 This vague proposal of concurrent endowment was met by a 
 declaration by Mr. Gladstone, that the Liberal party was satis- 
 fied that the Irish Church should " cease to exist as an establish- 
 ment," and justice should be done all round. The country was 
 appealed to, Mr. Disraeli saying that "the purpose is now 
 avowed of destroying that sacred union between Church and 
 State which has hitherto been the chief means of our civilisation, 
 and is the only security for our religious liberty." 
 
 The Liberals had a majority, and Mr. Gladstone's result- 
 ing measure for the first time brought home to the imagina- 
 tion of the world that destroying a Church's union with 
 the State did not mean destroying its proper and legitimate 
 powers. In the original draft of the Bill, those personally 
 interested in the Episcopal Church, as well as in the now dis- 
 continued Regium Donum and grant to Maynooth, were lavishly 
 compensated, by round sums, too, to be handed to the respective 
 corporate bodies. But by the House of Lords' amendments, 
 partly acquiesced in by the Commons, a still farther amount of 
 national property was left in the hands of the new Church 
 body, which also received back its fabrics and private endow- 
 ments. It was assumed at first that the disestablished Church 
 must hereafter exist under some constitution to be fixed for it
 
 THE BRITISH EMPIRE TO 1870. 241 
 
 by Parliament. But this blunder also the Prime Minister 
 avoided, by inviting it to gather itself together for the purpose 
 of framing its own constitution and electing its representative 
 body. The precedent for this in his mind was probably the 
 transition to self-government which was effected at the Revolu- 
 tion by the Episcopal Church in America. But it was that of 
 Scotland in 1843 which was instead instanced to Parliament, 
 as proving that the disestablishment of a Church might be " like 
 the launch of some goodly ship, which, constructed upon the 
 shore," yet glides without loss of equilibrium into its proper 
 element. Like most important changes in British history, this 
 legislation was urged in Parliament, not upon general principles, 
 which may be applied in other or in all cases, but upon the 
 special circumstances dealt with. Yet the Act itself spoke with 
 a stronger voice than its great advocate. Before 1870 many 
 intelligent men had an honest apprehension that a Church 
 deprived of State support must cease either to prosper or to 
 exist. Since that date there has been a general conviction that a 
 Church, no matter in what form organised, has the power of 
 supporting itself. Its disestablishment, no doubt, puts to its 
 members the question whether they value it sufficiently to accept, 
 as their fellow-citizens under equal laws do, the burden of 
 mutual association perhaps upon a great scale.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1 870. 
 
 IT was by no means certain, when the nineteenth century 
 commenced, that it would before its close accept the principles 
 underlying the American and European Revolution. The time 
 was one of general and justifiable reaction. The right to liberty 
 and equality before the law, however sacred, was an abstraction 
 which had not been based upon its religious, nor until recently, 1 
 upon any adequate philosophical foundation. And practically 
 it had been pressed upon the acceptance of communities which 
 had not learned to use it, and had not even desired to do so. 
 Even before the restoration of the old order in 1815, the historical 
 school of thinkers, represented in politics by Burke, and in law 
 by Hugo and Savigny, had begun to teach men that the rights 
 of a people or at least the wise exercise of those rights 
 must depend on its actual past and present, and not on any 
 maxim common to all mankind. And the reaction in the first 
 instance went much further. The authority of the past was 
 
 1 The philosophy of Locke, not without powerful moral elements, had run 
 itself down, to the universal scepticism of Hume. Not till 1787 was published 
 the ethical treatise of Kant, which sets before mankind as aim the develop- 
 ment of the individual through moral freedom, and before the State the 
 one duty of maintaining that freedom in the person of every one of its 
 members, against aggression by others. The immediate influence of such 
 views is seen in books like William von Humboldt's On the Sphere and 
 Duties of Government, written in 1791, but published only in 1852. Of 
 course the limitation by such theories of the sphere and duties of the State 
 throws a correspondingly huge amount of duty upon society generally, to be 
 
 discharged otherwise than by coercion. 
 
 242
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 243 
 
 made absolute, under the name of legitimacy ; and, as Chateau- 
 briand said, there was a legitimacy to be dealt with in the 
 religious sphere also. Under the influence of thinkers like 
 Baader and Miiller in Germany, and Bonald and De Maistre 
 in -France, and of one great writer in the Scottish capital, a 
 romanticism was created which illumined the mediseval and 
 feudal past. Everywhere there was new religious feeling, but it 
 ran into the old forms. The union of the most powerful of the 
 continental sovereigns in restoring order, was popularly known 
 as the Holy Alliance. Among the first of the powers restored 
 was the pope, and among his first acts in 1814, was the re- 
 establishment " in all countries " of the Order of Jesuits, solemnly 
 abolished for ever by his predecessor, Clement XIV. With 
 them were set up at home the congregations of the Index and 
 the Inquisition, and negotiations were at once opened with 
 Catholic and other powers. 
 
 Yet these negotiations, the usual object of which was now, 
 as before, the passing of a concordat, encountered difficulties 
 which showed that a new world of civil and religious freedom 
 had opened upon men. In France, the existing concordat of 
 Napoleon only recognised Catholicism as the religion of "a 
 majority of Frenchmen," while other Churches received along 
 with it salaries from the State. The Bourbons did not venture 
 to propose that the Catholic Church should receive the old 
 endowments, or should be exclusively salaried. But Louis 
 XVIII. had taken a step to re-establishment, by declaring, in 
 the charter of 1814, that this religion was "the religion of the 
 State ;" and in 1817 he concluded an agreement with the pope for 
 a new concordat, to be in form not unlike that of Francis I., which 
 should carry out in detail the clerical views. But his ministers 
 refused to present it to the chambers, without a Bill to confirm at 
 the same time the provincial liberties of the Galilean Church ; 
 and as the result the whole project was abandoned. Spain and 
 Sardinia passed concordats, and restored the Jesuits ; and a 
 sudden explosion of Liberalism in the former country, followed
 
 244 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 by the abolition of the monastic orders and the application 
 of their endowments for the national debt, was put down by 
 the French army, in spite of Britain's protest through Canning. 
 Naples restored its privileges to the Catholic faith, but refused 
 the old homage to the pope as suzerain. Lombardy still main- 
 tained its civil tribunals against the clergy; and Tuscany not only 
 did so, but refused to give back most of the State property to the 
 religious corporations. In Germany, as in France, no one pro- 
 posed to restore to the Catholic Church its territorial indepen- 
 dence. Bavaria, indeed, in a concordat concluded in 1817 by its 
 ambassador at Rome, gave to that Church all her privileges 
 " according to the Canon Law ; " but this was neutralized 
 immediately by a constitutional Act, giving liberty of conscience 
 and of worship to all subjects, and equal rights to the three 
 recognised religions. Austria refused to go as far even as the 
 South German States. Metternich, then at the helm, objected 
 alike to the Jesuits and the concordat, and no change was 
 made in the meantime on the old legislation of Joseph. On 
 the other hand, some of the Protestant States, which had 
 acquired accessions of Catholic subjects, took the questionable 
 step of making, if not fonnal concordats, at least arrangements, 
 not with them, but with the pope. Thus in Prussia, a Papal 
 Bull, reconstructing the Catholic dioceses and redistributing 
 their endowments (from the State), received from the king 
 " royal approval and sanction," to make it a " binding statute." 
 The same took place in Hanover; while the king of the Nether- 
 lands, though a Protestant, even agreed to a concordat. These 
 negotiations, which stretched intermittently over the space be- 
 tween the Restoration of 1815 and the Revolution of 1830, indicate 
 a revival of Ultramontanism, in the sense of a more general 
 dependence of particular Catholic Churches upon the pope. 
 The Revolution had in fact unconsciously displaced nationalism 
 as a possible basis for an exclusive Church. In Germany, there 
 was a slow reaction against territorialism and the principles 
 of Grotius and Febronius; while Wessenberg and others failed
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 245 
 
 on the other side in their patriotic endeavour to set up a German 
 Catholic Church. In France, there was a steadfast attack kept 
 up by the clerical party against the old Gallicanism, at least in so 
 far as it implied a right in the State to control the Church, or to 
 isolate it from the centre of faith. Yet unfortunately this demand, 
 for freedom for their own faith, was accompanied all through the 
 reign of Louis XVIII. by a pressure against the concession of the 
 same rights to others, and against civil freedom generally. And 
 on the accession of Charles X. in 1824, the smouldering forces 
 throughout Europe prepared, as usual, to find vent in Paris. 
 One of the chief questions was education, which the Jesuits, who 
 by law were excluded from France, were more and more getting 
 into their own hands. The ministry which connived at them 
 was overthrown, and its successors, unwillingly called to office by 
 the king, but, strange to say, supported by a Papal Bull, gave 
 control over ecclesiastical schools to the university, and excluded 
 all illegal societies from the right of teaching. The king dis- 
 missed his Cabinet, dissolved the Chambers, and soon issued 
 those illegal ordinances which resulted in the " Revolution of the 
 Three Days" of July 1830. 
 
 And upon the new Revolution followed that revision of the 
 Constitutional Charter to which France, amid all its subsequent 
 changes, has hitherto substantially adhered. The clause making 
 the Catholic religion " the religion of the State " was struck out. 
 There remained only the two provisions : 
 
 " All Frenchmen have equal freedom in the profession of their 
 religion, and each receives for his worship (cnlte) the same 
 protection. 
 
 " The ministers of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion, 
 professed by the majority of Frenchmen, and those of other 
 Christian worships, receive payments from the public treasury." 1 
 
 1 The additional clause "And no others do" was struck out by the 
 Chambers, to make room for the equal rights of Jewish citizens, who (as well 
 as Mahometans in Algiers) are now salaried concurrently with the Catholic 
 and Protestant Churches.
 
 246 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 An immense impulse towards self-government and freedom 
 passed over Europe. Great Britain, as we have seen, took its 
 first deliberate step forward since 1689; and at the other extremity 
 the Italian Legations and Marches were filled with insurgent 
 patriots, who demanded that the new pope, Gregory XVI.. should 
 renounce his temporal sovereignty. The Spanish queen regent, 
 pressed by the Carlist Legitimists, and acting under the advice of 
 Louis Philippe, instituted a constitutional government, which in 
 1836 carried out what had been already attempted in 1812 and 
 1820, the secularisation for State purposes of the property of the 
 Church. In Belgium, then united with Holland, the Catholic 
 party were dissatisfied with that union and with the results of the 
 concordat, and they had recently agreed to work along with the 
 Liberal politicians on the modern principles of freedom. " The 
 Catholics accepted the liberty of the press, the independence of 
 the judicature, the responsibility of ministers. The Liberals 
 accepted the independence of the Church from the State, and 
 freedom of education." l The combined opposition thus formed 
 was pressing upon the Government, when the insurrection in Paris 
 roused national feeling here also, and, after some fighting and 
 negotiation, Belgium was declared a separate country from Hol- 
 land, under the reign of Leopold, and with the still-subsisting 
 Constitution of 1831. That Constitution is remarkable as one 
 of perfect freedom (with proportional endowment) to all com- 
 munions, and yet as being willingly accepted by the Catholics, in 
 a country where they outnumber the Protestants by more than a 
 hundred to one. It includes express liberty of religion, of public 
 worship and of abstaining from worship, of observing or not 
 observing the days of rest, liberty of nominating and installing 
 Church officials, and of communication between them and their 
 superiors, liberty of teaching and education, liberty of the press, 
 of public meeting, of petition, and of association ; and in all these 
 regions its freedom from bureaucratic interference is more the 
 atmosphere of England than that of either France or Germany. 
 1 Geffcken, ii. 113.
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 247 
 
 The question was thus at once raised, Is there any reason why 
 the Catholic Church should not everywhere and authoritatively 
 accept the same principles of equal liberty and toleration, and 
 claim for itself only the same position of successful independence ? 
 The question was about to be put and answered in the most 
 striking way. Among the champions in France of the new 
 Catholicism against the restraints both of old Gallican nation- 
 alism and of the recent concordat, none was more distinguished 
 than the Abbe" de Lamennais. He had been recently joined by 
 two younger men, both of them filled with the idea that all which 
 the Church ought to demand from the State was freedom. 
 M. de Montalembert had in his seventeenth year taken for his 
 motto, " God and liberty ; " and in later life, as champion of the 
 right freely to educate the young, he described himself as 
 " schoolmaster and peer of France." Lacordaire was a priest, or, 
 as he put it, "the minister of One who is a foreigner in no 
 country ; " and finding that French unbelievers now named the 
 bishops, and restricted the worship of the Church salaried by the 
 nation, he urged his brethren rather to " take up your outraged 
 God, and bear Him to some humble hut, vowing not to expose 
 Him henceforth to the insults of State temples." All three, in the 
 journal L'Avenir, and afterwards in the " Society for the Defence 
 of Religious Liberty," urged continually that the true Church, 
 refusing recognition and payment by the State as of one religion 
 among others, should appeal to an age of freemen, on the ground 
 of free thought, free conscience, and a free press. The Revolution 
 of July seemed to favour this basing of Church rights on demo- 
 cratic principles ; and the Belgian Constitution now carried it out 
 in victorious detail. Accordingly the three Frenchmen, finding a 
 certain opposition to their programme even among the clergy of 
 France, referred it to the newly-elected pope, and themselves 
 carried their appeal to Rome. " The pilgrims of liberty " were 
 kindly received by Gregory XVI., but ordered to return and 
 await an authoritative answer. On i8th September 1832 appeared 
 his encyclical, which, though couched in the rhetorical tone
 
 248 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 affected by the Roman Chancery, covered the whole ground 
 referred to it from Paris. It condemned that " error or rather 
 madness which claims for every man liberty of conscience." 
 This absurdity as to conscience is led up to by the prevalent 
 and disastrous "liberty of opinions, from which some have the 
 audacity to allege that religion itself may derive advantage." 
 " Nor do we hope better things, for religion or government, from 
 the aspirations of those who would sever the Church from the 
 throne, and break the union between the civil and the sacerdotal 
 power." "It is that very union which the lovers of a shameless 
 liberty dread." The shock was severe to those immediately con- 
 cerned : Lamennais broke with Catholicism altogether, and the 
 other two silently submitted. But the incident threw light upon 
 the progress of the general question. It suggested powerfully the 
 approaching divergence between the lay Catholic populations of 
 Europe, in whose constitution and laws toleration was to be a 
 fundamental principle, and the clerical doctrine that religion is to 
 be imposed by authority, not of the Church only, but of the 
 State. 
 
 That divergence and contrast have become more marked as 
 the century has since then unfolded itself. This does not mean 
 that Catholicism is irreconcilable with democracy. It has not 
 been so in our age, or in any age. The leading Catholic theo- 
 logians deal with government in the abstract as the ordinance 
 of God, irrespective of whether its form be republican or 
 autocratic. In the great revival and counter-reformation of the 
 Catholic Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many 
 of its most distinguished defenders, especially among the Jesuits, 
 appealed broadly and powerfully to the people against kingly and 
 aristocratic power. And one form of democracy imperialism, 
 in which the people makes over and entrusts all its own powers to 
 one head may be said to have for Catholicism a natural affinity 
 and attraction. In our own time, accordingly, the Church has 
 found no serious difficulty in adapting itself to populations filled 
 with democratic feeling, such as France, Ireland, or America
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 249 
 
 Its adherents are there permitted, and encouraged, to use the 
 principles of freedom to the uttermost, in advocating the common 
 principles of Christianity and the special claims of the Church. 
 And many among them do so from time to time with the same 
 ardour of expectation which led the " pilgrims of liberty " from 
 Paris. But the authoritative utterances of the Church since that 
 date have, as we shall see, confirmed the position which it 
 took in i832. 1 
 
 Yet the energies of the Catholic Church have during sub- 
 sequent years been addressed not so much to directly cultivating 
 the State, or to suppressing false beliefs, as to what have been 
 called mixed questions questions into which religion enters 
 inevitably, but indirectly, and in which the Church has been 
 sometimes rather on the defensive. One of these, as we have 
 already seen, is Education. The Church claims an interest in 
 elementary education, for the young must be trained, if trained at 
 all, in religion ; and in the higher education, for of that theology 
 is an eminent part. But the great Catholic powers have in this 
 century formally refused to entertain the exclusive claim to con- 
 trol education which their Church naturally makes, and which in 
 the Middle Age was conceded. They have not only refused this, 
 but they have been pressed on their own side by a sense of 
 obligation lying on the State to educate the child in secular 
 things, at least until he attains the full status of citizen. These 
 considerations, all of them legitimate, are difficult to reconcile 
 
 1 Cardinal Manning, on 2ist September 1876, when asked if English 
 Catholics approved of the suppression of Protestant worship in Spain, pro- 
 posed to solve the difficulty by laying down the following " principles : "- 
 
 " i. So long as the unity of a people in faith and worship exists unbroken, 
 it is the duty of such a people to preserve it from being broken, by public 
 law. 
 
 "2. When once that unity is broken up by the religious conflicts of a 
 people, no civil laws can restore unity, which can be restored only as it was 
 created, that is, by the obedience of faith." 
 
 "There is therefore," he concludes, "no parallel between Spain and 
 England, nor between a people united in one faith and a people unhappily 
 and hopelessly divided. "
 
 250 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 and adjust even under a regime of absolute civil justice and 
 equality ; while any solution is hopeless so long as there is a dis- 
 position to favour one Church above others because it is in the 
 majority, or to favour it less than others because it makes more 
 stringent spiritual claims. The claim of the State to control all 
 .education can never be allowed, so far as to let it either mould or 
 suppress the teaching by those who are not State officials, 
 certainly not their religious teaching as members of the Church, 
 or to withdraw from parents their right to give what they 
 think the best form of education to their children. Nor is it fair 
 in the State to use the money taken from the people as a whole, to 
 support a public education in which the children of all faiths may 
 not reasonably and fairly be expected to share. On the other 
 hand, the claim of the Church to control all education, quite 
 intelligible when that education is looked at as a whole with 
 moral and spiritual elements interfused, may be stated in a form 
 inconsistent with the liberty which the great majority even of its 
 members have desired. It has often been so in this century, 
 when the teaching of those to whom parents or the State have 
 merely delegated instruction in branches strictly secular, has been 
 forbidden by Catholic authority. On both sides a conflict full of 
 difficulty has existed on this subject in almost every country of 
 Europe, repeated, with instructive variations, in America and our 
 own land. The other great intermediate subject on which there 
 has been contest and conflict is that of Marriage. Here also 
 Europe had in former ages adopted and sanctioned the whole 
 law of the Church ; while in our own time even the chief Catholic 
 populations have declined to do so. But on this subject the law 
 of modern Europe has been able to devise a plan which meets 
 most of the difficulties, though not all. It has recognised " civil 
 marriage" as a universal human ordinance existing previous to 
 the Church and outside it, and as a relation which the State is 
 bound to recognise and maintain, with all its necessary results, 
 such as the legitimacy of children and their succession. For this 
 purpose almost every nation has instituted some form of regulai
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 251 
 
 registration, compliance with which makes or evidences the 
 marriage. But to this may be added any form of religious 
 celebration ; and this a Church, or those of its members who 
 accept marriage as a sacrament, may recognise as the real 
 transaction, and they may even, for their own purposes, refuse to 
 recognise any other. That so completely meets difficulties as to 
 form, that it is likely to be accepted as the universal solution, 
 though it is in truth a universal separation of the Church law 
 from that of the State. This comes out more sharply when sub- 
 stantive as well as formal differences exist, as where the State 
 allows in some cases marriage, and in others divorce or separa- 
 tion, while the Church forbids it. But here, too, the solution of 
 what would otherwise be a painful and inextricable knot, has 
 already been found. The State, for civil purposes, follows its 
 own rules and definitions. The Church, and every Church, is 
 free for its own purposes to follow its own, and those who have 
 become members of it may hold themselves bound in conscience 
 by its ruling. There will still remain friction and difficulty, as 
 in all human affairs under the most ideal rules. But early in 
 the century it already appeared that there was no difficulty which 
 any other plan would not immensely increase, even in the relation 
 to the great States of Europe of the Catholic or Latin Church. 
 
 In the continental Protestantism of this century the central 
 position is occupied by Germany. As we have seen, it had been 
 deeply influenced by the common principles of the Revolution, 
 but the reaction and rising of the Fatherland against Napoleon in 
 1814 added a specifically national impulse. The nation shared, 
 too, in the general religious revival of the century, but it took 
 effect chiefly in stimulating, and to some slight effect moulding, 
 the philosophical and theological enquiries of which the uni- 
 versities were the centre. Among the ruling houses (now, since 
 the secularization of 1801, predominantly Protestant) Prussia took 
 the lead; and in 1817, Frederick William III. called upon his 
 Lutheran and "Reformed" subjects to celebrate the jubilee of
 
 252 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 the Reformation by at length uniting in one German Church. 
 The project (which did not involve the abandoning of their old 
 confessions, but merely the uniting of those holding them in one 
 organisation and worship) was at first favourably received ; and 
 a commission of the clergy proposed combining it with the for- 
 mation of a presbytery of pastor and laymen in each parish, with 
 synods for the department. This proposal for local church 
 government was discouraged by the king's ministers, as a step 
 to democracy ; and the only place where it was carried out was in 
 Prussia on the Rhine, where, accordingly, the union was happily 
 effected. Elsewhere the king was reduced to pressing it by his 
 mere authority as sovereign and chief bishop, an exercise of his 
 rights which was doubted even by friendly theologians, like 
 Schleiermacher, 1 while it was keenly resisted by many of the 
 old Lutherans. The resulting suffering lasted till 1840, when 
 Frederick William IV. proclaimed a toleration to Lutherans 
 who chose to worship outside the United Church. In other 
 States of Germany the union was more smoothly carried 
 out, a presbyterian or congregationally representative system 
 being introduced in some of them, while in some the old 
 Augsburg and Heidelberg Confessions were modified or sus- 
 pended in favour of a more general bond of union. In Prussia, 
 the new king objected to the theory as well as practice of his 
 Church supremacy, State and Church in his view being "like 
 fish and bird, with dominions as different as water and air.' 1 But 
 he combined with this a distaste for representative government 
 in the Church as elsewhere, which frustrated his plans for restor- 
 ing an independent episcopacy, and exposed him throughout his 
 reign to the suspicion of Liberals. Liberalism had by this time 
 gradually attained to an influence much greater than it had even 
 
 1 Schleiermacher, the founder of the modern or " reconciliation " theology 
 of Germany, leaned in Church and State matters to the gradual extrication 
 of the Church from its dependent position on the civil power. By this time, 
 however, the philosophy of Hegel had become powerful, and under its lead 
 many thinkers had gone back from Kant to something like the old pagan idea 
 " that man exists for the State, and not the State for man."
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 353 
 
 in 1830; and the sudden Revolution of 1848, though followed 
 everywhere by strong reaction, left permanent records of the new 
 advance in the Church and State constitutions of Europe. 
 
 In France, indeed, the Revolution of 1848 made little change. 
 Louis Philippe's government had since 1830 maintained the rights 
 of conscience, and the new Constitution merely repeated the 
 guarantee of freedom to all religions, with payments to those 
 "recognised, or which may be recognised." But in the north of 
 Europe the change was much greater. Here the principle which 
 had governed since the Reformation, that the region must regu- 
 late the religion, was for the first time formally withdrawn. The 
 demand of Liberalism was that the State should abandon its old 
 duty of guardianship and supervision of religion, recognised even 
 by the Landrecht, should acknowledge the right of free association, 
 and, instead of continuing to apply to it a system of preventive 
 police, should be content with its ordinary power of remedying 
 any abuses of that right which might actually emerge. Even the 
 Roman Catholic bishops, in their meeting at Wurtzburg in 
 October 1848, resolved that "for the fulfilment of her divine 
 mission the Catholic Church claims nothing but the fullest liberty 
 and independence." Accordingly, most States of Germany, even 
 after the first rush of the Revolution was repressed by military 
 force, followed on this subject the leading of the National 
 Assembly at Frankfurt. We may take as the most important 
 example the Prussian Constitutional Charter of 1850. It provides 
 
 "Sec. 12. The freedom of religious creed, and the rights of 
 forming religious societies and of celebrating worship in public 
 or private edifices, are recognised. The enjoyment of civil and 
 political rights by the individual is independent of his religion," etc. 
 
 The next clauses, however, provide that " the Christian faith 
 lies at the foundation of the institutions of the State relating to 
 religion," and indicate that among the religious associations all 
 equally recognised, there are two with the status of public cor- 
 porations, named in the section following :
 
 254 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 "15. The Evangelical Church and the Roman Catholic 
 Church, like every other religious society, order and govern their 
 own affairs independently. They have the possession and the use 
 of the institutions, foundations, and money set apart for their 
 purposes of worship, instruction, and charity." 
 
 " 1 6. The relations of religious societies with their superiors 
 are unimpeded, the publication of pastoral letters being under the 
 same law as any other publication." 
 
 Sec. 1 8 announces that the right of the State to nominate to 
 Church offices (except in the army and other public departments) 
 is abandoned ; provision for the patronage to be afterwards 
 made. 
 
 The German States generally moved along with Prussia in 
 enacting these great principles, which remained there unchanged 
 in their form down to the epoch with which this book closes, the 
 year when the modern German empire took its birth, and when 
 the constitutional rules just quoted became the law of that empire. 
 One episode of change subsequent to that date is so instructive, 
 that, though it is outside our chronological limits, it must find 
 place here in a note. 1 Meantime we observe that the impulse of 
 
 1 Soon after the new German empire was founded in 1870, a contest arose 
 in Prussia between the Catholic party and Bismarck as minister. The Catho- 
 lic department of the Ministry of Worship was suppressed ; the Old Catholics 
 were recognised along with their opponents ; the Jesuits were expelled from 
 the kingdom ; and the civil form was declared necessary in every case of 
 marriage. The Church persisted, and in May 1873, farther enactments, known 
 as the "May laws," were carried through by Dr. Falk, which applied in 
 terms to both recognised Churches. The leading Falk law provided that 
 " ecclesiastical functions in either of the Christian Churches can only be con- 
 ferred upon a German who has carried on his scientific studies according to 
 the provisions of this enactment, and whose nomination has not been objected 
 to by the Government." The German gymnasia and universities were thus 
 made compulsory, and, in addition, all merely ecclesiastical seminaries were 
 put under the inspection and approval of the State. Another provided a 
 "royal court for ecclesiastical affairs," to review, among other things, all 
 Church decisions "either emanating from any authority not recognised by the 
 State laws, or transgressing the limits fixed by the civil power." These 
 encroachments on the Church region were clearly inconsistent with the
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 255 
 
 1848 spread the same principles of religious equality (complicated, 
 however, by the State endowment of religion or religions) every- 
 where to the north of the Alps. Belgium, like France, had adopted 
 them long before. Holland now revised its constitution of 1815. 
 It granted equal freedom of belief and worship to the members of 
 
 freedom provided by the Constitution. The Landtag accordingly attempted 
 to reconcile them (on 5th April 1873), by adding to the clause given above, in 
 Art. XV., which declares that "the Churches order and govern their own 
 affairs independently," the words, ''but remain subject to the State laws and 
 the State's legal supervision.'' 1 So to the i8th clause above, abolishing nomi- 
 nations of clergy by the State, it was added, "But the law regulates the 
 function of the State as to the education, appointment, and dismissal of the 
 clergy and Church officials, and it fixes the limits of the Church' s power of 
 discipline." These additions to either law made it unintelligible or incon- 
 sistent, and it was plain that the Government must either yield, or go farther 
 still. In 1875, it went farther on both the practical and the theoretical side. 
 One new law enacted that all salaries to Catholic clergy should be suspended 
 till they signed a declaration that they would obey the State regulations ; 
 while another transferred the administration of Catholic revenues from 
 ecclesiastics to a Catholic but elective and lay board. And on loth April 1875, 
 the Landtag in one day abolished the three articles of the Constitution (Nos. 
 xv., xvi., and xviii.) which two years before they had tried partially to amend. 
 All legal obstacles were thus removed, and there was nothing to defend the 
 Church (during a struggle which lasted till 1880) but the passive resistance of 
 its members standing on their Church ground. But this defence was found 
 sufficient. The Catholic laity recognised their own priests, even when sus- 
 pended by the Government, and declined to recognise others ; and both priests 
 and laity insisted on the Church regulating its own theological education. At 
 last, after eight bishoprics and four hundred parishes were left nominally 
 vacant, according to the new legislation, both parties, and Prussia especially, 
 became weary of the struggle. In 1880 and 1881, the May laws were sus- 
 pended, and, after negotiations with Pope Leo XIII. (who had succeeded the 
 aged Pius IX. in 1878), they were to a large extent repealed. By this change, 
 completed in the meantime on 2901 April 1887, the obligation of civil marriage 
 and the vesting of Catholic property in the laity was retained, but the legis- 
 lative advances into the territory of proper church administration, including 
 the education required for the priesthood, were departed from. The blank 
 in the Constitution of 1850, however, remained unfilled up, though the object 
 with which the deletion was made must be held to have failed. This, it will 
 be remembered, affects the freedom of the Evangelical or Protestant Church 
 also. That Church, on the other hand, about the same time received from 
 the State the long-promised synodal or presbyterian Constitution for its con- 
 gregations ; and any stirring of life in the limbs would sooner or later 
 influence the development of the whole organism.
 
 256 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 all religions ; and, while guaranteeing a continuance of the endow- 
 ments and salaries which some of them already possessed, it 
 offered similar emoluments to others who should apply. The new 
 regime of concurrent endowment was made more tolerable to the 
 Reformed Church here, as in Germany and France, by its having 
 relaxed or abolished the obligation to creed, not only of its 
 members, but of its pastors, in Holland, at the expense of a con- 
 siderable secession (Free Church, 1834-38). Later on (1857) all 
 religious instruction was there excluded from the national schools, 
 and still later (1876) the theological faculties have been removed 
 from the universities, retaining only chairs for the history and 
 philosophy of religion. (Theology proper is now taught by the 
 National Synod, as by the Roman Catholic Church, out of its 
 endowments, and by the Free Reformed Church, in less rational- 
 istic form, from its voluntary contributions.) In Switzerland, the 
 other ancient stronghold of Calvinism, the continental movement 
 of 1848 was preceded by civil war, arising out of the religious 
 question. The Helvetic Republic (which, as we saw, proclaimed 
 religious freedom) had been replaced in 1815 by the old con- 
 federation of independent and aristocratic cantons. 1 After 1830 
 these became more democratic in constitution, and the opposition 
 to the administration of the Jesuits as educators in the seven 
 Catholic cantons led to the latter combining in a defensive league. 
 The Diet declared this unconstitutional, and a short campaign 
 ended in the Constitution of 1848, by which Switzerland became 
 almost a federal State, not unlike that of America. It pro- 
 vided (sec. 44) free exercise of the worship of "the recog- 
 nised Christian confessions " i.e. Catholic and Protestant 
 throughout Switzerland, but excluded the Jesuits and affiliated 
 orders. 2 Under this freedom of worship (which has since been 
 
 1 Alexander Vinet (whose life-long devotion to the rights of individual con- 
 science, against authoritative officialism on the one hand, and democratic 
 majorities on the other, has made it impossible, in a volume like this, to omit 
 his name) wrote his first work on the subject at Basle in 1826. He died in 
 1847. 
 
 * A revision of the Constitution in 1874 makes all religious confessions free,
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 257 
 
 generalized), the Protestant cantons have salaried Reformed 
 Churches, for the membership of most of which no qualification 
 is required but to be citizens of the State, Churches with more 
 definite confessions being, of course, tolerated. That the two 
 ancient Protestant republics should now accept the modern doc- 
 trine of religious freedom was, however, not surprising the 
 accession of Germany was more so. Still more strange was it 
 that Austria, even while struggling with revolting nationalities on 
 the side both of Italy and Hungary, found it necessary for it also 
 to embody in the very first words of its Constitution of 1849 the 
 same general principles of liberty of conscience. It begins : 
 
 " I. The full enjoyment of political liberty and the right of 
 domestic exercise of the religious confession are guaranteed to 
 every one. The enjoyment of civil and political rights is indepen- 
 dent of the religious confession, but that religious confession shall 
 not be allowed to interfere with the political duties of the citizens. 
 
 " 2. Every Church and religious society, if recognised by law, 
 has the right of a common public exercise of its religion. 
 
 " 3. Science and scientific instruction are free. 
 
 " 4. The general education of the people is to be provided for 
 by public institutions. The instruction in religion in the national 
 schools is to be taken care of by the respective Churches or 
 religious associations. The State has the supreme control over 
 the affairs of instruction and education." 
 
 From the Atlantic to the Danube, the general principles which 
 in 1789 had reached Europe from England by way of America 
 seemed now to be accepted, and that without any violence of 
 opposition. Even Turkey, at a somewhat later date, advanced 
 upon the same course. Liberty of worship had long been con- 
 ceded to seven creeds, including Latins, Greeks, Protestants, and 
 Jews. But their proselytism of Moslems was confronted by the 
 
 while providing that disputes caused by new ones created, or by schisms, may 
 be brought before the federal authorities. The Jesuits are still interdicted ; 
 and public and gratuitous education is to be provided by the cantons. The 
 attempt, however, to enforce this, in the sense of non-religious education, 
 failed in 1882, when voted upon in a referendum (plebiscite). 
 
 R
 
 258 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 death-penalty of the Koran, till in 1856, after the Crimean war, 
 the Sultan abolished that barrier, and more recently the fullest 
 religious liberty has been proclaimed throughout his contracted 
 dominions. 1 Russia alone remained and remains immovable. 
 In 1842 she codified her Fundamental Laws, No. 40 of which 
 declares that the Eastern and Orthodox Church is " the first-in- 
 rank, and dominant faith " in the empire, and that " the emperor, 
 as a Christian sovereign, is the supreme defender and guardian 
 of the dogmas of the dominant faith." Under these provisions, 
 freedom of thought and proselytism have again and again been 
 exposed to severe persecution, within the Church as without, 
 for the emperor, the Fundamental Law adds, is " the preserver of 
 orthodoxy and of all good order within the Church. In this 
 sense he is called the head of the Church," which he governs 
 through the Synod. 2 Outside Russia proper, however, the general 
 policy of the empire, as in the case of the pagan powers of old, is 
 tolerance of the subject peoples and their faiths, reserving always 
 the right to act otherwise for public reasons. The supremacy of 
 the State over the Eastern Church has often been referred to 
 historically as Byzantinism. But even in the days of Theodosius 
 and Justinian that supremacy was never so acknowledged or 
 defined as it has been by Russia in the nineteenth century in the 
 very age when the independence of the two societies was receiv- 
 ing from the rest of Europe unexampled recognition. 
 
 Yet continental Europe, which in the general theory of the just 
 
 1 The Treaty of Berlin, i3th July 1878, embodies the Sultan's declaration, 
 guaranteeing to members of all creeds in the Ottoman empire not only freedom of 
 organization and of worship, but equal access to civil rights, offices, and honours. 
 
 2 He is also Church legislator. For while Law 45 says, " In the govern- 
 ment of the Church the autocratic power acts through the Most Holy 
 Governing or Directing Synod" instituted by it, I^aw 49 explains that the 
 origination of laws proceeds either " from the special intention and direct com- 
 mand of His Supreme Majesty, " or from the ordinary course of affairs in the 
 Synod suggesting some legislation. But in the latter case the Synod '' subjects 
 its projects, according to the established order, to the supreme judgment of His 
 Majesty." See Code of Russian Law, ed. 1859, by M. Theodore Malieutin.
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 259 
 
 relations of Church and State seemed to have outrun Britain, if 
 not America, has found itself most seriously hampered in the 
 practical working of that theory by its own traditions. In some 
 of the smaller States of Germany the reaction after 1848 went so 
 far as the express re-enactment of the provision of the Peace of 
 Westphalia, that " no other religion shall be tolerated " than the 
 one selected by the State. And even where this did not happen, 
 as in the greater countries of Europe, the habit of bureaucracy, of 
 over-government, of paternal and preventive police, has been too 
 strong to give fair play to the principles announced in their 
 Constitutions. In all of these lands, detailed regulations and 
 restrictions, and the necessity of applying at every step for 
 " authorization," impede religious associations and their worship 
 in a way which in this country would be held intolerable. Nor 
 are the religions selected to be "recognised" free from the like 
 fetters. On the contrary, the privileges granted them by the 
 State as "corporations" or otherwise, and the endowments 
 extended to them, however equally, by it, have tended to prolong 
 into the present century their former position of dependence. 
 The lawyers, too, have everywhere been slow to displace the 
 rules which they had accumulated under a system of national 
 authority over religion in favour of the simpler principles of 
 freedom. Thus in France they have generally adhered to the 
 old system of Gallicanism, and the superintendence over les 
 cultes with which it burdened the State, even after 1848, was more 
 in accordance with the arbitrary power of the Bourbons and the 
 Napoleons than with the principles of I789. 1 So in Germany. 
 The theory of a definite and encompassing relation of the State 
 
 1 E.g. Dupin's Manual of the Public Ecclesiastical Law of France, a well- 
 known Galilean treatise, ignores the modern Constitutions. It founds, indeed, 
 largely upon the old Roman law, by which associations, however harmless, 
 are illegal unless authorized by the State. And it was at the instance of this 
 learned jurist that the Cour de Cassation decided that the provision of the 
 Charter of 1830, giving equal freedom in the exercise of worship to all, does 
 not annul the law that more than twenty people cannot assemble for worship 
 at a fixed hour without authorization beforehand.
 
 260 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 to the Church a supremacy over it (Ktrchenhoheif) rather than 
 a direct government of it (Kirchemvaltung\ but including a right 
 of supervision if not guardianship {Aufsicht^ Abwehr) is the 
 ruling one among lawyers there. 1 It was held by high authorities 
 in the law of Prussia, even during the twenty years after the 
 Constitution of 1850 apparently made each Church independent 
 (selbstandig). The influence of Hegelianism was already declin- 
 ing ; but the alliance between throne and altar, which Stahl had 
 advocated at an earlier date, was now carried out with vigour by 
 the new Lutheran or Confessionalist Churchmen (Hengstenberg 
 and the Kreuz-Zeitung). In the case of the (united) Evangelical 
 Church, such views postponed or prevented the concession to it 
 of those organs and institutions which were necessary for its 
 proposed self-government if self-government were really desired. 
 Down to 1 870 the franchise was not conceded to congregations, 
 while the position of the king as practical legislator of the Pro- 
 estant Church seemed almost unchanged. The other Church 
 which Prussian law acknowledges as a public corporation, is the 
 Catholic Church, with its centre at Rome. In the case of this 
 body the " Church supremacy " over it of a particular State was 
 obviously a more inappropriate doctrine than even in that of the 
 other. Yet in this case there is more necessity than in the other 
 for the State jealously guarding its own rights. In English and 
 American law these rights are provided for by the supremacy of 
 the State over all individuals domiciled within it, no matter what 
 associations they may choose to form or join, a matter with 
 which the State does not concern itself. Such a principle would 
 have apparently enabled Prussia to conduct a defensive debate 
 with Rome without intruding into the Church region on the one 
 hand, and without attacking its own Constitution on the other. 
 To both these unfortunate results, as we saw (note, p. 254), it 
 was led by the opposite principle, and by an abortive attempt 
 to assert the State's " Church supremacy." 
 
 It is that of Richter's Kirchenreckt, a treasure-house of well-digested 
 knowledge on the subject.
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 261 
 
 On the other side of the Alps a still greater agitation prevailed 
 even before 1848, and for the first time for centuries Italy again 
 became the centre of the world-wide problem. During the long 
 pontificate of Gregory, the influence of Austria and the Papacy 
 had crushed out the hope of religious and political reform. 
 Gradually, however, Sardinia had gathered strength as a re- 
 presentative of moderate Liberalism, and Gioberti, in 1843, urged 
 the Church to seek in that direction the " moral and political 
 primacy" of a country which might still hope, but only by 
 some such reconciliation, to be the throne of the world. In 
 the midst of the excitement roused by such ideas the papal 
 chair became vacant, and before the Austrian veto could 
 be interposed, an Italian with Italian sympathies, Mastai 
 Ferretti, was chosen under the name of Pius IX. His im- 
 mediate amnesty to political prisoners and exiles roused 
 popular enthusiasm to the highest pitch, and it seemed at last 
 as if there was to be, in the sarcastic phrase of Metternich, a 
 Liberal pope. While the national feeling surged against Austria, 
 the political feeling extended far beyond the Alps, and a revolu- 
 tion took place in 1847 in Switzerland, by which the Jesuits were 
 expelled. Suddenly, in February 1848, the unease of Europe 
 was changed into universal excitement by the Paris Revolution. 
 In Piedmont, Tuscany, Naples, and Rome constitutional govern- 
 ment was promised, and the youth of Italy volunteered in crowds 
 for the relief of Lombardy from the Austrian. The pope, already 
 shrinking from the principles as well as the excesses of the 
 Revolution, now refused to countenance the movement for a 
 united or republican Italy. He fled to Gaeta ; and while Austria 
 defeated Piedmont at Novara, and Russia helped to crush the 
 insurrection of Hungary, the troops of Louis Napoleon besieged 
 the Roman Commune. The Buonapartist President, while willing 
 to anticipate other Powers in restoring his temporal rule to the 
 pope, was very desirous that it should be exercised constitu- 
 tionally. Pius IX., however, came back ruled by Jesuit and 
 absolutist influences, and the coup (Ctiat of December 1852
 
 262 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 severed the new Napoleon from Liberalism, and made it necessary 
 for him to rely upon the French clergy. They, on the other 
 hand, finding their own religion only one of several now salaried 
 in France, became from this point even more Ultramontane than 
 they had been before. The German Catholic clergy, occupying 
 at last nearly the same constitutional position, also steadily 
 leaned towards Rome ; and the pope took advantage of the 
 triumph of the absolutist armies and of the accompanying re- 
 action from the principles of 1848, to commence a movement of 
 aggression all over the world. Among the earliest steps was the 
 restoration of the old Catholic hierarchies in two Protestant 
 countries, England in 1850 and Holland in 1852, acts which 
 called forth in both countries much popular feeling and violent 
 protests. A concordat with Spain in 1851 recovered to the 
 Church much property and some power. Negotiations were 
 opened with several of the German States, and in Baden and 
 Wiirtemberg these resulted in the passing of concordats, which, 
 however, did not operate long. More important was the agree- 
 ment and concordat with Austria. That empire had so far felt 
 the influence of 1848 as to acknowledge the self-government not 
 of one but of all Churches, subject to the laws of the State. 
 It might have stood upon this general principle alongside of 
 Prussia. But Prussia itself was now receding from Liberalism ; 
 and Austria, which had crushed the Revolution in Italy, seemed 
 called to make a new alliance with the pope. The foundation for 
 this was laid by two ordinances in 1850; and the concordat 
 which followed in 1855 was intended to give the Catholic Church 
 not the same rights merely with other religious bodies, but what 
 it described as " all the rights and privileges which she must 
 enjoy according to the commandment of God and the ecclesias- 
 tical laws." 
 
 But while the hierarchy was thus making advances in its 
 relations with the temporal powers abroad, it was losing ground 
 where it claimed temporal power itself at home. Piedmont, in 
 its Constitution of 1848, acknowledged Roman Catholicism as
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 263 
 
 the sole religion of the State, but other existing cultes were 
 recognised and " authorized." And the legislation following upon 
 this enacted the equal rights of all before the civil law, and the 
 power of the courts of that law over ecclesiastics ; the existence 
 of civil marriage alongside of the religious rite, the disendowment 
 of ecclesiastical and monastic sinecures, and the liberty of the 
 press. But the States of the Church remained unreformed, and 
 at the Congress of Paris in 1856, Cavour urged upon the Great 
 Powers the condition of Italy as a whole. At Plombieres in 1858 
 Louis Napoleon agreed to attack Austria and protect Italy 
 "without shaking the power of the Holy Father;" but the 
 inhabitants of the Legations at once threw off the pope's temporal 
 power, and voted their annexation to the newly constituted king- 
 dom of Italy. Rome and the Romagna still remained to him ; 
 but while the French emperor, supported by statesmen like the 
 Protestant Guizot, expressed their sense of the value to Europe of 
 the temporal power, and even announced to the Chambers that 
 Italy shall " never " find itself at Rome, Italy itself had deter- 
 mined otherwise. The negotiations of Cavour and his successors 
 with the pope, however, failed ; and Louis Napoleon, by the Con- 
 vention of September 1864, withdrew his troops from Rome only 
 on condition of Piedmont respecting the temporal sovereignty of 
 the Holy See. The Romans and Italians, like Mazzini and 
 Garibaldi, refused to consider themselves bound by the agree- 
 ment ; but it kept things afloat for some years more, and made 
 way for the final steps by which the Bishop of Rome was 
 formally raised to the monarchy of the Western Church. 
 
 The first movement was the encyclical and Syllabus of 1864. 
 In the former the now ageing pope repeated once more in express 
 terms his own and his predecessor's condemnation of the " liberty 
 of conscience " of the individual, and of its exercise, whether " by 
 the voice :i or by " the press." He added to it a Syllabus or 
 collection of the principal errors of the time noted in his many 
 previous utterances. Beginning with denouncing absolute ration- 
 alism, it goes on to its more moderate applications, especially to
 
 264 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 matters ecclesiastical. Montalembert had the previous year 
 once more urged upon Catholics the nineteenth-century doctrine 
 of liberty and liberalism, and added in the words of Lacordaire, 
 "If you, Catholics, demand liberty for yourselves alone, you will 
 never get it. Give it in those countries where you are yourselves 
 in power, and you will get it in those where others are so." 1 
 The Syllabus once more authoritatively rejected this idea ; and 
 while the fifty-fifth error branded by it is that " the Church 
 ought to be separated (sejungenda esf) from the State, and the 
 State from the Church," the last condemned is, that "the 
 Roman pontiff can and ought to come to a reconciliation and 
 agreement with progress, with liberalism, and with modern 
 civilisation." 
 
 The Syllabus was received with extreme disapprobation by the 
 Catholic governments and populations, with whose Constitutions it 
 is really at war. France forbade its bishops officially to promulgate 
 it ; but the hierarchy generally, as well as the mass of the clergy, 
 were now Ultramontane and in sympathy with the manifesto. 
 Two days before its publication the pope privately proposed 
 a still stronger move the calling of the Vatican Council to 
 acknowledge his official supremacy and infallibility. It was not 
 till the year 1867, however, that this project was made public, 
 amid strong protests from French and German theologians. 
 But already a more faithful prop than either France or Germany 
 was struck from under the absolutist Church. Austria-Hungary, 
 defeated at Sadowa, found it necessary to carry out her former 
 promises, and now at last to govern her many allied peoples con- 
 stitutionally. And the fundamental article of her Constitution of 
 1867 on this head is, "Full and entire liberty of religion and ot 
 conscience is guaranteed to every one. The enjoyment of civil 
 and political rights is independent of religious profession ; but 
 the exercise of religious liberty is not to prejudice the performance 
 of civil duties." Every Church "or religious society recognised by 
 the law," it is provided, has the right of public worship, of teaching 
 1 But see note on p. 249.
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 265 
 
 in its own schools, and of administering its internal affairs " in 
 full independence," and it retains also the endowments which 
 have been destined to its use ; but, " like every other society, it is 
 subject to the laws of the State." Unrecognised confessions, it is 
 added, may meet and worship, but only in private buildings. 
 The last great Catholic State has thus a second time adopted 
 the modern principles of liberty, and by the laws of 1868 they 
 were applied in detail with much fairness to questions of 
 mixed marriages and education, of conversion and proselytism, 
 and of the relations to religious communities of individuals. Of 
 course, this was inconsistent with the concordat which had been 
 entered into by the State only in 1855 ; but that was not formally 
 put an end to till a memorable opportunity about to arise, and 
 the relations it dealt with have been since revised so as to leave 
 Catholicism in a relation to the State not unlike what it enjoys in 
 France. 1 This great defection from Ultramontanism was felt 
 more severely at Rome because it followed not only the change 
 in the German balance of power, but the addition of Venice and 
 the Quadrilateral to the hostile kingdom of Italy. Garibaldi's 
 insurrection, however, was suppressed under the influence of 
 France, where the empress had become a stronger friend of the 
 Church than her husband ; and every preparation was made for 
 the coming Council of the Vatican. 
 
 It met in December 1869, with a larger attendance of bishops 
 than had met at any council before. Of these the great majority 
 
 1 This revision, in 1874, is expressly founded upon the constitutional law 
 of 1867 above quoted. Under it the Catholic Church, though classed as one 
 among other bodies, is still in Austria a privileged and public body ' ' recognised 
 by the law," and its peculiar relation to the Roman bishop, deeply modified 
 by the Vatican Council, may explain or excuse the special relations to the 
 State which still remain. For the emperor-king nominates the bishops, and 
 the State has a veto on other appointments and on proposed offices, retains 
 an influence in ecclesiastical education, has large rights in Church parochial 
 property, and controls that of the monastic orders. 1'he pope protested on 
 the one hand, the Liberals on the other; but the measure passed by the vote 
 of 224 deputies against 71. The constitutional toleration and endowment of 
 other bodies remain.
 
 266 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 were in favour of the decrees of infallibility and supremacy pro- 
 posed from Rome ; and the 1 50 who at the preliminary discussion 
 voted against their publication gradually broke down under 
 pressure, or left the council with a protest, until at the public 
 vote on iSth July 1870 there were only two dissentients. The 
 retroactive effect of the doctrine on that day announced is not 
 without interest. It runs back through all the centuries reviewed 
 in these pages, and passes judgment on the acts of Christians in 
 innumerable conjunctures in the past in a sense very different from 
 that accepted by history. In particular, it makes it most difficult 
 for the present Church to escape from the doctrines of civil 
 intolerance so often authoritatively laid down. But its main 
 purpose is to bind the present to the future. Even the decree that 
 there is infallibility when a pope defines "a doctrine regarding 
 faith or morals to be held by the universal Church," would not be 
 so grave taken by itself. But that which precedes it demands the 
 obedience to him of all the faithful, not only in matters of faith 
 and morals, where infallibility comes in, " but also in those which 
 belong to the discipline and government of the Church through 
 the whole world." This seems to leave no room for self-govern- 
 ment by the people, or even for the old episcopal independence ; 
 and it brings the whole Church members immediately under the 
 now irresponsible ruler. 
 
 The change would have been great in any case ; but, as it 
 happened, it was immediately followed by European explosion as 
 well as protest, and by the loss of the temporal power. Twelve 
 days after the decrees above quoted were promulgated on iSth 
 July 1870, a despatch from Austria-Hungary announced that the 
 act " placed the relations of Church and State on a wholly new 
 basis." The Church had both put forward claims larger than were 
 competent to her, and had concentrated them in the person of one 
 man. " A change so radical revolutionizes the conditions hitherto 
 existing," and the emperor-king therefore intimated that the con- 
 cordat of 1855, concluded under the previous state of things, was 
 no longer valid, and was abrogated. Prussia had already refused,
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 267 
 
 through Count Bismarck, to open diplomatic negotiations with the 
 council, 1 and had instead authorized a warning to the German 
 bishops, that absolutist changes in the organization of the Church 
 might affect its relation to the State. 2 France also had spoken 
 doubtfully; but the Curia trusted in its ruler's friendliness and 
 good fortune, and the very day after the Council's utterance of 
 1 8th July the French Declaration of War was delivered at Berlin. 
 On 2nd September the second empire collapsed at Sedan ; the 
 French garrison had already been withdrawn from Rome ; Jules 
 Favre on the part of the new Government released Italy from the 
 bargain of 1864; and at the end of the same month of September 
 the votes of Rome and its territory were cast for its annexation as 
 capital of the kingdom of Italy. The temporal sovereignty thus 
 passed away at the very moment when the spiritual sovereignty 
 was made irresponsible and absolute. 
 
 The assumption by the Italian and Roman people of their own 
 temporal power, has been more strongly protested against by 
 the see of Rome than any other act of modern Constitutionalism. 
 But in point of fact the constitution of Italy is more favourable to 
 the Church than that of any of the greater continental Powers. 
 In the othors, except Russia, there is strictly no State Church. 3 
 In Italy "the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion is the sole 
 religion of the State." So, too, as to the claims of the chief of 
 
 1 It could only be done, he wrote Count Arnim, upon a footing which belongs 
 to the past, and had a meaning only when the State stood confronted with the 
 Catholic Church as the one and only Church. 
 
 2 In point of fact, the Old Catholics who, with the celebrated Dr. Dollingcr 
 of Munich at their head, were cut off from the unity of Rome because of their 
 refusal to acquiesce in the " innovations " of the Syllabus and the Vatican, 
 were at once recognised by Prussia and in Germany generally as still Catholic, 
 and entitled to their share of the Church funds. They have still a position 
 as members of a theological faculty in some of the Universities, but the mass 
 of the people have gone with the hierarchy, and students for the priesthood 
 are forbidden to attend their prelections. 
 
 8 That is, according to the constitution. But the State, in France, Germany, 
 and Austria- Hungary, allies itself in public solemnities with the Church of 
 the majority, though others are recognised, and even endowed by it, and the 
 members of a!I faiths are guaranteed equal rights.
 
 268 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 that religion. In Britain and America he would be a private 
 gentleman, venerated by those who had selected him as chief of 
 their religion, and protected like all others by the law. In France 
 and Austria he would be the chief of the largest of those religions, 
 Christian and other, which are recognised and salaried by the 
 State. In Italy the Guarantee Laws of 1870-71 give the bishop 
 of the capital the dignity, inviolability, and personal preroga- 
 tives of a sovereign, though without a kingdom ; an untrammelled 
 correspondence with his hierarchy outside ; and the perpetual 
 possession of great palaces, with the wealth of centuries in their 
 halls. In addition, too, to the contributions from the whole 
 Catholic world, they provide an annual dotation from the State 
 of three and a quarter million of lire. But Pius IX. and his 
 successor Leo XIII. have hitherto refused to touch this money. 
 They feel rightly that the exceptional privilege granted to 
 their Church by Italy is chiefly valuable as a step to cosmopolitan 
 and universal influence. They would prefer an international 
 guarantee. But the only Church guarantee which the European 
 democracy has hitherto favoured is that of equal laws for all. 
 
 The Church and State question in the present day is in any 
 case likely to assume an aspect of cosmopolitanism such as it has 
 not had since the days of the Holy Roman Empire. The world 
 is shrinking into small compass, and each man has now a visible 
 interest in all parts of it. Even labour finds it impossible to fix 
 its demand upon any one country, until it has sounded the level, 
 European or world-wide, on which it elsewhere rests. And the 
 rights of conscience and of religious brotherhood are still less 
 capable of being confined within national limits. Nationalism, 
 indeed, has played a great part as an intermediate stage in our 
 modern civilisation. But it has obviously no final answer to 
 give to any of the more important questions. And all ideas 
 upon Church and State, and human welfare generally, like gases 
 poured into different sides of the same chamber, must henceforth 
 meet and mix in the one European democracy.
 
 EUROPE FROM 1815 TO 1870. 269 
 
 This cosmopolitan aspect became prominent about the year 
 with which our record closes. Congresses of International Social- 
 ism sat in the capitals of Europe for some years before 1870. That 
 year, indeed, which brought the challenge of both these principles 
 to the front, brought it also for the time to a close. But 
 socialism as well as internationalism is sure to be influential in the 
 future. As a phase of nineteenth-century democracy, it has 
 hitherto held itself apart from religion and the Church in all their 
 forms. This neutrality may not always continue. There is no 
 reason why it should. The Christian Church was itself a huge 
 experiment in voluntary socialism. And State socialism would 
 sooner or later raise the old questions in a new form. If 
 the State in the interest of all its members is entitled to cut 
 down the individual's rights of property, it is natural next 
 to ask why it should not, in the same interest, exert pres- 
 sure upon his rights of conscience. If the mass of the new 
 democracy comes to accept a system of belief or of unbelief, is it 
 not entitled to establish that system, and to suppress hostile 
 organizations which call themselves Churches? At home this 
 danger for the future is favoured by a recurrent tendency, derived 
 from the less respectable side of our national history, to found 
 toleration on indiflference. But that tendency is not so likely to 
 make its way in the new world which has been called into exist- 
 ence "to redress the balance of the old," or indeed among any 
 part of the English race now spreading round the globe, a race 
 in which individual character is still largely fortified by individual 
 conviction. On the Continent the protection against the same 
 risk hitherto has been the general recognition, since the Revolu- 
 tion, of an absolute right of religious toleration. But that 
 recognition is too seldom found associated there with personal 
 or religious conviction, and it often takes the form of mere in- 
 tolerance of (religious) intolerance. In the event, therefore, of the 
 European democracy pressing to an unlimited extent its tendency 
 to legislate for the community against the individual, two dangers 
 will arise. On the one hand, it may legislate against all religion,
 
 270 CHURCH AND STATE. 
 
 at least in an organized or ecclesiastical form, as injurious to the 
 State. On the other hand, when any part of Europe shall be 
 again swept by a warm wave of belief (as the South was in the 
 fourth century, and the North in the sixteenth), the majorities 
 will be strongly impelled, on the same general principle of the 
 common good, to legislate against irreligious or dissenting 
 minorities. 
 
 There is no reason whatever to believe that the great drama 
 of Church and State, whose evolution occupied the stage of 
 Europe for a thousand years, has yet closed. The Church 
 in the future is to have mighty and manifold relations to society 
 as a whole. And many will ask why it should not be related to 
 that coercive form of society which we call the State. The 
 motives which in the past attracted the highest minds of 
 Christendom to intolerance in the interest of the masses 
 whom they ruled, will in our day appeal to the masses 
 themselves. And the mere perception by the democracy of 
 a better principle which those centuries have evolved, will not 
 save it. It will need, in addition, the practical assimilation 
 of the principle, in a stedfast and sometimes a heroic surrender 
 of the will of the people to the rights of its minorities. At many 
 points, too, in that arduous future it will have occasion to 
 remember the teachings of the past. History assures us, that 
 while the cheapest of all virtues is a toleration founded on 
 indifference, the true toleration has been in times of crisis a high 
 attainment the privilege of souls pure and strong by nature, or 
 lifted above themselves by religious conviction.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A6us, 167. 
 
 Acesius, 48. 
 
 Alexander III., Pope, 79, 96. 
 
 Ambrose, 37, 42. 
 
 America, 180, 196-202. 
 
 American law, 199. 
 
 Anabaptists, 125, 128. 
 
 Apollonius, 13. 
 
 Appeal to Rome, 58, 77, 81, 91, 97, 
 
 98, 101, 148. 
 
 Appel comme cFAbus, 167. 
 Aquinas, 98, 175. 
 Arbiter, 17, 19, 41, 54, 58, 64, 77, 81, 
 
 97.98. 
 
 Arianism, 46-48, 51. 
 Aristotle, 2, 98, 163, 175. 
 Armenia, 52. 
 Arminians, 160, 161. 
 Arnold of Brescia, 78. 
 Arnold, Dr., 230. 
 Articles, English, 148, 193, 202, 219, 
 
 220. 
 
 Assembly, General, 177, 182, 226-229. 
 Athanasius, 46. 
 Atheism, 211. 
 
 Augsburg Confession, 119, 126-130. 
 Augsburg Peace, 120. 
 Augustine, 44, 50. 
 Aurelian, 16. 
 Aurelius, 12. 
 Australia, 234. 
 Austria-Hungary, 257, 262, 264, 265, 
 
 266. 
 Avignon, 95, 209, 215. 
 
 BACON, 177. 
 Baird Bequest, 229. 
 Bangorian Controversy, 219. 
 Barbarians and their Codes, 50, 53, 
 55- 
 
 21 \ 
 
 Barbarossa, 78. 
 
 Barrowists, 173. 
 
 Basle, 104. 
 
 Becket, Archbishop, 79, 91. 
 
 Belgium, 246. 
 
 Beugnot, 32. 
 
 Beza, 151, 158. 
 
 Bismarck, 254, 267. 
 
 Boehmer, 165. 
 
 Boniface VIII., 85-87, 94. 
 
 Bossuet, 168. 
 
 Browning, 94, 95, 109. 
 
 Brownists, 173. 
 
 Buchanan, George, 136, 152. 
 
 Buck, 198. 
 
 Bureaucracy, 246, 259. 
 
 Burke, 176, 221, 242. 
 
 CALVIN, 136-139-141. 
 Cameronians, 218. 
 Canada, 235. 
 Canning, 222, 244. 
 Canon Law, 56, 60, 77, 93, 97. 
 Canossa, 72. 
 Cape Colony, 235. 
 Caracalla, 12, 13. 
 Cartwright, 173. 
 Catholic, 32, 36, 44. 47, 49, 115. 
 Celsus, 14, 15. 
 Chalcedon, 51. 
 Chalmers, Dr., 226, 229. 
 Charles the Great, 62, 65-68. 
 Charles I., 181, 183. 
 Charles V., 113, 116-120. 
 Charter, the French, 243, 245. 
 Chateaubriand, 243. 
 Chatham, Earl of, 221. 
 " Church-house," 16. 
 Circa Sacra, 09, 162, 163, 186, 249- 
 251, 259, 260.
 
 272 
 
 1NDKX. 
 
 " City of God," Augustine's, 50. 
 
 Civil Constitution of Clergy in France, 
 207-212. 
 
 Claim of Right (1842), 227, 228. 
 
 Clerisy (Coleridge), 230. 
 
 Clubs, 6, 12. 
 
 Codes, of Justinian, 53 ; of the Bar- 
 barians, 53. 
 
 Coleridge, 230. 
 
 Colonies, 233-236. 
 
 Colonies, Crown, 235. 
 
 Commune of Paris, 21 r. 
 
 Concordats, 75, 91, 106, 107, 212, 
 213, 243, 244. 
 
 Concurrent Endowment, 212, 234, 235, 
 240. 
 
 Confessions of Faith, 46, 48, 60, 115, 
 116, 119, 126-130, 138, 140, 141, 
 142, 148, 151, 159, 186, 201-203. 
 
 Confession, Westminster, 186, 202, 
 203. 
 
 Conformity, 163, 164, 179-182, 189- 
 193, 218-223. 
 
 Conformity, Occasional, 218. 
 
 Congress and Religion, 198. 
 
 Conscience, Liberty of (see Toleration). 
 
 Conscience Clause, 233, 239. 
 
 Consistories, 134. 
 
 Constance, Council of, 103. 
 
 Constantine, 23-33, 42, 43, 46, 48, 87, 
 105. 
 
 Constitutions American, U.S., 198 ; 
 France, 205, 210, 212, 243, 245, 
 253 ; Belgium, 246 ; Prussia, 253- 
 255, 260 ; Holland, 255 ; Switzer- 
 land, 256 ; Austria- Hungary, 257, 
 
 264, 265, 266 ; Italy, 263, 267 ; 
 Spain. 246. 
 
 Contrat Social, 204. 
 "Conventicles," 22, 25, 189, 193, 223. 
 Convocation (Church of England), 
 
 145, 149, 150, 219, 236, 237. 
 Corporations, 4, 6, 12, 15, 24, 29, 
 
 200, 254, 259. 
 
 Cosmopolitanism, 3, 14, 15, 89, 268. 
 Councils, 46, 48, 52, 98, 103-105, 154, 
 
 265, 266. 
 
 Counter-Reformation, 154-157, 248. 
 Covenant, 178, 182, 184. 
 
 Creed, 46, 48, 60, 115, 116, 119, 126- 
 130, 138, 140, 141, 142, 148, 151, 
 159, 186, 201-203. 
 
 Cromwell, 184, 187, 188. 
 
 Crucifixion, 10, 28. 
 
 Crusades, 76, 108. 
 
 Cunningham, Dr. W., 159. 
 
 DANTE, 87. 
 
 Decius, 15. 
 
 Declaration of Independence, 196. 
 
 Defensor Pads, 98, 163. 
 
 Democracy, 27, 122, 124, 136, 143, 
 
 268-270. 
 
 Denominational Education, 232, 239. 
 Deposing Power, 81, 82, 83, 97. 
 Despotism, 2, 9, 26, 27, 143, 190. 
 Diocletian, 19, 27. 
 
 Discipline, Scottish Books of, 177, 178. 
 Disestablishment, 25, 197, 198, 235, 
 
 240, 241. 
 Disraeli, 240. 
 Disruption, the Scottish, 227, 228, 
 
 241. 
 
 Divorce, 237. 
 Dollinger, 267. 
 Donatism, 43-45. 
 Doraer, 133, 134. 
 Dubois, 169. 
 
 Ductor Dubitantium, 190. 
 Dupin, 259. 
 Duplex Persona, 134. 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY (Hooker), 
 
 174-176. 
 Ecthesis, 60. 
 Edict of Emperor, 15, 19, 22, 23, 
 
 25- 
 Education, 232, 233, 239, 245, 247, 
 
 249, 257. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 148, 156, 171-174. 
 Emancipation, Slave, 39. 
 Emancipation Act (R.C.), 222, 223. 
 Emigration, German right of, 132, 
 
 157- 
 Emperor, Roman, his offices, 4, 9, 26; 
 
 his worship, 13. 
 Empire, Holy Roman, 67, 78, 79, 83, 
 
 88, 96, 98, 114, 116, 117, 123. 
 Empire, Knights of, 123. 
 England, 82, 89-93, IOI > IO 3. I 43~ I 5 I > 
 
 171-195, 217-242. 
 Episcopate, 16, 41, 42, 54, 57, 59, 69, 
 
 74, 98, 104, 134, 178. 
 Equality, Religious, 26, 194, 198, 241. 
 Erastus, 161. 
 Espen, Van, 168. 
 Essays and Reviews, 236. 
 Eusebius, 19. 
 Excommunication, 17, 42, 43-48, 72, 
 
 81, 83, 86, 92, 97, 114, 128, 192.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 273 
 
 FEBRONIUS, i63. 
 
 Fenelon, 169. 
 
 Feudalism, 65, 68, 69, 73. 
 
 Formosus, 94. 
 
 France, 66, 81, 85, 94, 106, 141, 142, 
 
 166-170, 203-213, 215, 216, 221,244, 
 
 247. 
 
 Franconian Dynasty, 70-78. 
 Frederic II. (Hohenstatifen), 83. 
 Frederick the Great, 214. 
 Free Church of Scotland, 227, 228, 
 
 241. 
 Friars, 82, 101. 
 
 GALERIUS' Edict, 22. 
 
 Gallicanism, 166, 208, 259. 
 
 Geffcken, 135, 246. 
 
 Geneva, 139-141. 
 
 Germany, 66, 70, 72-76, 78-80, 84, 
 
 95-100, 106, 111-135, 244, 251-255, 
 
 257, 260, 266, 267. 
 Gladstone, 198, 229, 240. 
 Gobel, 210. 
 Gorham Case, 236. 
 Greater Britain, 233-236. 
 Green, T. H., 184. 
 Gregoire, Bishop, 210, 212, 
 Gregory the Great, 56-60. 
 Gregory VII., 71-74. 
 Grotius, 161-163. 
 Guarantee Laws (Italy), 268. 
 
 HALLAM, 81, 85, 92, 162, 175, 177. 
 Hampton Conference, 179. 
 Headship of Church (Knglish), 145, 
 
 146, 147- 
 
 Russian, 258. 
 
 Hegel, 252, 260. 
 
 Helvetic Confessions, 139. 
 
 Hengstenberg, 260. 
 
 " Henoticon," 52. 
 
 Henry VIII., 143-147. 
 
 Heresy (see Toleration). 
 
 Hesse and Luther, 133. 
 
 Hildebrand (see Gregory VII.). 
 
 Historical School, English, 238. 
 
 Hobbes, 164, 189. 
 
 Hohenstaufen (Swabian) Dynasty, 
 
 78-84. 
 
 Holland, 142, 160, 255, 256. 
 Homage, 73-75, 90, 91, 95. 
 Hooker, 174-176. 
 Humanism, 109. 
 Humboldt, W. von, 242. 
 
 ICONOCLASM, 6l, 63. 
 
 Idolatry, 13, 28, 33, 35, 37, 142. 
 
 Image-worship, 61, 63. 
 
 Imperialism, 4, 13, 26, 65, 67, 79, 88, 
 98, 99, 114, 116, I2i, 147, 248. 
 
 India, 235. 
 
 Indulgence, 15, 22. 
 
 Infallibility, 81, 266. 
 
 Inglesant, John, 155. 
 
 Innocent III., Pope, 80-83, 92. 
 
 Inquisition, 82, 155. 
 
 " Intercession," 39. 
 
 Internationalism, 269. 
 
 Intolerance (see Toleration, Persecu- 
 tions). 
 
 Investiture Controversy, 71, 73-76, 
 90, 91, 106, 227. 
 
 Ireland, 222, 231, 232, 233, 240-241. 
 
 Italy (United), 261,263, 2 ^5. 267, 268. 
 
 JAMES I., 156, 177-181. 
 
 Sames II., 191, 192. 
 ansenism, 169. 
 esuits, 155, 243, 248,254, 256, 257, 261. 
 ewish Emancipation, 231, 237. 
 ohn, King of England, 82, 92 
 Jones v. Watson, 201. 
 oseph II. of Austria, 214. 
 bvian, 34. 
 "[ulian, 34. 
 ustinian, 53. 
 
 KANT, 242. 
 " Kirchenhoheit," 160. 
 k'irchenrecht (Richter), 2 "XX 
 Knox, 151, 152, 156. 
 Kostlin, 131, 134. 
 
 LACORUAIRE, 247, 264. 
 
 Lactantius, 31. 
 
 Lafayette, 205, 212. 
 
 Lamennais, 247. 
 
 Landrecht, 214. 
 
 Lateran Council, 82. 
 
 Laud, 181. 
 
 Leviathan (Hobbes), 164. 
 
 Lewis of Bavaria, 92-100. 
 
 " Liberty," Mill on, 237. 
 
 " Liberty of Prophesying," 189. 
 
 "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" 
 
 (Stephen), 238. 
 Locke, 193-195, 242. 
 Lon% v. Capetown, 201. 
 Luther, 111-135. 
 Lutheran Church, 252, 254. 
 S
 
 274 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 MAECENAS, 9. 
 
 Magistrate, The, 99, 128-143, 158, 
 
 101, 180, 186, 194, 202. 
 Magna Charta, 82, 92. 
 Mahomet, 60. 
 Maine's Ancient Law, 40. 
 Majestas, 8. 
 
 Manning, Cardinal, 249. 
 Mansfield, Lord, 217. 
 Marprelate, 174. 
 Marriage, 231, 250, 251. 
 Marsilius, 98, 99. 
 
 Mary Queen of Scots, 151, 152, 172. 
 Matilda, 72. 
 Maynooth, 233, 240. 
 Mayo, Lord, 240. 
 
 Melanchthon, 112, 126, 128, 132, 133. 
 Melbourne, Lord, 226, 231. 
 Metternich, 244, 
 Milan, Edict of, 24. 
 Mill, j. S., 237. 
 
 Milton, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188. 
 Mirabeau, 205-208. 
 Mixed Questions, 249-251. 
 Montalembert, 247, 264. 
 More, Sir T., 146. 
 
 NANTES, Edict of, 142, 168. 
 Napoleon I., 12, 13, 15, 16, 221. 
 Napoleon III., 262, 265. 
 Nationalism, 2, 15, 65, 89, 105, 107, 
 
 118, 157, 208, 268. 
 Neander, 25. 
 
 Neo-Platonism, 13, 23, 24. 
 Nero, 10. 
 Nestorianism, 52. 
 Netherlands, 142. 
 Newman, Cardinal, 225. 
 New Zealand, 225. 
 Nicasa, 46, 48. 
 Nicolas I., 129. 
 Nonconformity, 217. 
 Non-resistance, 192. 
 Normal Schools, 232. 
 
 OCCAM, ico. 
 
 Old Catholics, 267. 
 
 Organizations, various Church, 4. 
 
 Origen, 15. 
 
 Oxford Movement, 224, 225. 
 
 PAGANISM, 2, 13, 14, 25, 28, 30, 35. 
 Paris, 15. 
 
 Parliament and the Church, 145-150, 
 227, 228. 
 
 Paschal II., 75. 
 
 Patriarch, 51, 57, 59, 63-65, 82. 
 
 Patronage, 67, 218, 227. 
 
 Paul of Samosata, 16. 
 
 Peasants' Wars, 101, 123, 124. 
 
 Persecutions (Roman), 10, u, 13, 15, 
 19, 20, 22 (Christian), 33, 36, 37, 
 44, 48, 49, 51, 52, 60, 83, 101, 104, 
 117, 128-132, 138, 141, 142, 153, 
 156, 158, 161, 169, 170, 174. 
 
 Peter the Great, 166. 
 
 Philip le Bel, 85, 94. 
 
 Pilate, 8. 
 
 " Pilgrims of Liberty," 247. 
 
 Pithou, 166. 
 
 Pitt, 222. 
 
 Pius IX., 261-267. 
 
 Pliny, ii. 
 
 " Presbyter, New," 185. 
 
 Preventive Police, 253, 259. 
 
 Primacy (see Supremacy). 
 
 Property, Church (Early Times), 16- 
 19, 24, 29, 39, 40, 45, 48, 56; 
 (Middle Age), 67, 74, 91, 93 ; 
 (Modern Times), 200, 206, 207, 
 226, 228, 231, 234, 235, 240, 254. 
 
 Protestantism, in, 115, 119, 122, 
 126-153, 156, 157-160. 
 
 Prussia, 251-255, 260, 267. 
 
 Puritanism, 172-174, 179. 
 
 QUEEN'S COLLEGES, 233. 
 
 RANKE, i. 
 
 Rates (Church), 239. 
 
 Reformation, 111-153. 
 
 Reformed Churches, 136-143. 
 
 Regale, 74, 81, 99, 106. 
 
 Regio-Religio, 118, 119, 132, 134, 
 
 156. 
 
 Regium Donum, 233-240. 
 Religio Illicita, 5, 6, 12. 
 Remonstrants, 160, 161. 
 Renaissance, 76, 96, 108- no. 
 Renan, 7, 19. 
 Rescript, u. 
 
 Restoration, The, 1660, 188. 
 Revolution, English, 171, 192. 
 Revolution of 1789, 170, 221, 224. 
 Revolution of 1830, 245, 246. 
 Revolution of 1848, 253-261. 
 Richer, 167. 
 
 Richter's Kirchenrecht, 260. 
 Rienzi, 100. 
 ' ' Rights of Man," 205.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 275 
 
 Rivet, 22. 
 
 Robespierre, 210, 211. 
 
 Roman Law, 5, 6, 9, n, 13, 22, 28, 
 
 32, 35, 37, 39-4L 49, 53-56, 79, 97, 
 
 116. 
 
 Rousseau, 204, 207. 
 Rudolph, 73. 
 
 Russell, Lord John, 231, 232, 236. 
 Russia, 65, 165, 166, 258. 
 
 SAVONAROLA, 109. 
 
 Schaff, 197. 
 
 Schism, The, of East and West, 61-64. 
 
 Schism, The, in Latin Church, 102, 
 
 103. 
 
 Schleiermacher, 252. 
 Schools, 232, 233, 237, 239. 
 Scotland, 93, 102, 136, 151-153, 159, 
 
 177-189, 181, 182, 184, 190, 191, 
 
 192, 217, 218, 225-229, 237, 239. 
 Session, Court of, 227. 
 Shakespeare. 92, 176. 
 Socialism, 260. 
 Socinians, 158. 
 Spain, 107, 243, 246, 249. 
 Spain, Toleration in, 249. 
 Spencer, Herbert, 237. 
 Speier, Edicts of, 118-119. 
 Spener, 165. 
 Spinoza, 163. 
 
 Spirituality, The English, 147. 
 Stanley, Dean, 230. 
 Stephen, Mr. justice, 238. 
 Stoicism, 12, 13, 15. 
 Sun-day, 29. 
 Supremacy, Papal, 57, 58, 59, 63, 
 
 67, 72, 76-86, 90-105, 266. 
 Supremacy (State over Church), 5, 7, 
 
 13' 48, 54. 55. 67. 79, 92, 98, 100, 
 
 132-135, 145-150, 180, 190, 227, 
 
 228, 238, 260. 
 Sustentation Fund, 228. 
 Switzerland, 136-141, 158, 215, 256. 
 Syllabus, The, 263, 264. 
 
 TACITUS, io. 
 
 Talleyrand, 205, 207. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 189, 190. 
 
 Temporal Power (The Church's), 56, 
 
 57. 61, 66, 78, 80, 82, 85, 87, 94, 
 
 95, 97, 100, 215, 260, 267. 
 Territorialism, 165. 
 Tertullian, io, 14, 30. 
 Tcssarae, 15. 
 
 Test and Corporation Acts, 217 -223. 
 
 Theodoric on Toleration, 51. 
 
 Theodosius, 35, 38, 42, 47, 49, 116. 
 
 Thomasius, 165. 
 
 Tiberius, 9. 
 
 Tithe, 67, 90, 99, 206, 226, 231. 
 
 Toleration (Early Ages), 2, 5, 6, n- 
 15, 22, 24, 26-28, 30, 31, 34, 37, 
 49, 5 1 , 54, 60 ; (Middle Age), 83, 
 86, 87, 101 ; (Modern Times), in, 
 128-132, 138, 141, 153, 160, 180, 
 183, 185, 186, 188, 188-191, 193- 
 
 195, 2O2- ; 2O5, 215, 22O, 222, 238. 
 
 Toleration Act, 193, 217. 
 
 Trajan, n. 
 
 "Transfer" of the Empire, 62, 78, 80, 
 
 97- 
 
 Trent, Council of, 154. 
 Trinity College, Dublin, 233. 
 Triumphus, 97. 
 Turkey, 257, 258. 
 "Type," 60. 
 
 ULPIAN, 13. 
 
 Ultramontanism, 243-245, 247-251, 
 262-268. 
 
 Uniformity, Act of, 149, 172. 
 
 Union, England and Scotland, 217, 
 218. 
 
 United Presbyterian Church of Scot- 
 land, 229. 
 
 United States, 196-202. 
 
 "Universal Bishop," 59, 77, 80, 86, 
 97,98. 
 
 Universities, 85, 96, 103, 233, 237, 
 239. 
 
 VANDYCK, 42. 
 
 Vane, 183, 184. 
 
 Vatican Council, 81, 105, 264, 265, 
 
 266. 
 
 Vinet, 256. 
 Voluntaryism, 29, 31, 195, 226, 228, 
 
 229, 234, 235. 
 
 WALPOLE, Sir R., 219. 
 Warburton, Bishop, 220. 
 Westminster Assembly, 184-187. 
 Westphalia, Peace of, 157. 
 William the Conqueror, 90. 
 Worship, Act for Regulation of, 236. 
 Wycliff, 101. 
 
 ZWINGU, 137-139.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 In 8vo, price 15s., 
 THE 
 
 LAW OF CREEDS IN SCOTLAND, 
 
 " Most valuable and interesting book." The Edinburgh Keview. 
 
 "It must become the text-book of the subject among the 
 members of the author's profession, as well as ecclesiastical 
 reformers, statesmen, and politicians of all schools." The North 
 British Review. 
 
 " It might not, perhaps, be too high praise to apply to him 
 Milton's panegyric on Sir Harry Vane the younger 
 
 ' The bounds of either sword to thee we owe.' " 
 The Journal of Jurisprudence. 
 
 " This volume is the first attempt at a thorough and systematic 
 treatment of questions that are daily assuming a higher importance, 
 and which, though hitherto confined for the most part to the law 
 courts, will probably soon occupy the attention of the country at 
 large, and force themselves on the notice of the Legislature. . . . 
 Mr. Innes' learned and able treatise accomplishes this, not only 
 for the first time, but in a manner worthy of the subject." The 
 Daily News. 
 
 "I cannot quote this work without expressing my strong 
 admiration of its learning, ability, and (with a very few exceptions) 
 impartial statement of the whole questions discussed in this 
 address." Dean Stanley's Address on the Connection of Church 
 and State. 
 
 WM. BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON,
 
 T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 PROFESSOR GODET'S WORKS. 
 
 (Copyright, by arrangement with the Author.) 
 
 In Two Volumes, demy 8vo, price 21s., 
 
 COMMENTARY ON ST. PAUL'S FIRST EPISTLE 
 TO THE CORINTHIANS. 
 
 BY F. GODET, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, NEUCHATEL. 
 
 * A perfect masterpiece of theological toil and thought. . . . Scholarly, 
 evangelical, exhaustive, and able.' Evangelical Review. 
 
 ' To say a word in praise of any of Professor Godet's productions is almost 
 like "gilding refined gold." All who are familiar with his commentaries 
 know how full they are of rich suggestion. . . . This volume fully sustains 
 the high reputation Godet has made for himself as a biblical scholar, and 
 devout expositor of the will of God. Every page is radiant with light, and 
 gives forth heat as well.' Methodist New Connexion Magazine. 
 
 In Three Volumes, 8vo, price 31s. 6d., 
 
 A COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 
 
 A New Edition, Revised throughout by the Author. 
 
 'This work forms one of the battle-fields of modern inquiry, and is itself 
 so rich in spiritual truth, that it is impossible to examine it too closely ; and 
 we welcome this treatise from the pen of Dr. Godet. We have no more com- 
 petent exegete; and this new volume shows all the learning and vivacity for 
 which the author is distinguished.' Freeman. 
 
 In Two Volumes, 8vo, price 21s., 
 
 A COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 
 
 Marked by clearness and good sense, it will be found to possess value and 
 interest as one of the most recent and copious works specially designed to 
 Illustrate this Gospel' Guardian. 
 
 In Two Volumes, 8vo, price 21s., 
 
 A COMMENTARY ON ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO 
 THE ROMANS. 
 
 'We prefer tliis commentary to any other we have seen on the subject. 
 . . . We have great pleasure in recommending it as not only rendering 
 invaluable aid in the critical study of the text, but affording practical and 
 deeply suggestive assistance in the exposition of the doctrine. British and 
 Foreign Evangelical Review. 
 
 In crown 8vo, Second Edition, price 6s., 
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY THE HON. AND REV. CANON LYTTELTON, M.A., 
 
 RECTOR OF HAGLEY. 
 
 'There is trenchant argument and resistless logic in these lectures; but 
 withal, there is cultured imagination and felicitous eloquence, which carry 
 home the appeals to the heart as well as the head.' Sword and Trowel.
 
 T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 'HOW TO READ THE PROPHETS/ 
 
 ' It has often been found a difficulty to profit fully from the reading, 
 especially of the smaller prophecies of the Old Testament. To make these 
 prophecies intelligible to the plainest reader, it seems desirable that a 
 chronological arrangement of the prophetic books should be attempted. 
 Alongside of the several prophecies should be placed those portions of the 
 Old Testament historical books which deal with the same period. The aim 
 of these manuals is consequently in this direction : to bring within the reach 
 of the many a clear and succinct presentation of these prophets in their 
 historical environment.' From the Author's Preface, 
 
 1. HOW TO READ ISAIAH; 
 
 Being the Prophecies of Isaiah arranged in Order of Time and 
 Subject, with Explanations, Glossary, and Map. By Rev. 
 BUCHANAN BLAKE, B.D. Second Edition. Crown Svo, price 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 ' An admirable help to the student of Isaiah's prophecies. . . . He shows 
 himself to be quite abreast of modern scholai ship, and has many things to 
 say that are fresh and suggestive. Every biblical student's library should 
 contain this compact and helpful work.' Methodist Recorder. 
 
 'There is certainly room for such a book as this. No one can read it 
 without obtaining a very much more vivid conception of Isaiah and his 
 teaching than can be derived from ordinary sources.' Independent. 
 
 2. HOW TO READ THE PROPHETS: 
 
 Being the Prophecies arranged Chronologically in their Historical 
 Setting, with Explanations, Maps, and Glossary. Part I., con- 
 taining JONAH, AMOS, HOSEA, ZECHARIAH (ix.-xiv.), MICAH, 
 NAHUM, ZEPHANIAH, HABAKKUK, OBADIAH, and JOEL. By Rev. 
 BUCHANAN BLAKE, B.D. Crown Svo, price 4s. 
 
 ' Mr. Blake seems to have hit upon the right thing, and he has proved 
 himself competent to do it rightly. While these books are the very best 
 introductions to the study of the prophets, even the accomplished scholar 
 will find them indispensable.' The Expository Times. 
 
 In crown 8vo, price 3s. Cd., 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF ISRAEL 
 
 A Discussion of the Chief Problems in Old Testament History, as 
 opposed to the Development Theorists. 
 
 BY DR. FRIEDRICH EDUARD KONIG, LEIPZIG. 
 
 ' An admirable little volume. . . . By sincere and earnest-minded students 
 it will be cordially welcomed.' Freeman. 
 
 'Every page of the book deserves study.' Church Bells.
 
 T. and T. Claris Publications. 
 
 WORKS BY PROFESSOR DELITZ8CH. 
 
 Xow complete, in Two Vols. 8vo, price 21s., 
 
 A NEW COMMENTARY ON GENESIS. 
 
 XOTE. While preparing the translation, the translator was favoured by 
 Professor Delitzsch with such numerous improvements and additions, 
 that it may be regarded as made from a revised version of the New 
 Commentary on Genesis. 
 
 ' Thirty-five years have elapsed since Professor Delitzsch's Commentary on 
 Genesis first appeared ; fifteen years since the fourth edition was published in 
 1872. Ever in the van of historical and philological research, the venerable 
 author now comes forward with another fresh edition, in which he incorporates 
 what fifteen years have achieved for illustration and criticism of the text of 
 Genesis. . . . We congratulate Prof. Delitzsch on this new edition, and trust 
 that it may appear before long in an English dress. By it, not less than by 
 his other Commentaries, he has earned the gratitude of every lover of biblical 
 science, and we shall be surprised if, in the future, many do not acknowledge 
 that they have found in it a welcome help and guide.' Professor S. R. 
 DRIVER in The Academy. 
 
 ' We wish it were in our power to follow in detail the contents of Dr. 
 Delitzsch's most interesting introduction, and to give specimens of the 
 admirable, concise, and lucid notes in his exposition ; but we have said 
 enough to show our readers our high estimate of the value of the work.' 
 Church Bells. 
 
 ' The work of a reverent mind and a sincere believer; and not seldom there 
 are touches of great beauty and of spiritual insight in it.' Guardian. 
 
 In Two Vols. Kvo, price 21s., 
 
 BIBLICAL COMMENTARY ON THE PROPHECIES 
 
 OF ISAIAH. 
 With an Introduction by Professor S. R. DRIVER, D.D., Oxford. 
 
 K. By special arrangement with the author, Messrs. CLARK secured 
 the sole right of translation of this Fourth (and last) Edition of his 
 ' Isaiah.' It is dedicated to Professors Cheyne and Driver of Oxford. 
 In his Preface the author states that this Fourth Edition contains 
 the fruit of his continued labour, and that a thorough revisal of the 
 whole work has been made. 
 
 Canon CHEYSB says : ' Students of Isaiah will greet so early a translation 
 of Delitzsch's " Isaiah." . . . Prefixed to it is an interesting critical sketch 
 by Professor Driver, which will be a useful guide to students, not only of 
 this, but of the other works of the accomplished author.' 
 
 ' Delitzsch's last gift to the Christian Church. ... In our opinion, those 
 who would enter into the meaning of that Spirit as He spake long ago by 
 Isaiah, words of comfort and hope which have not lost their significance to- 
 day cannot find a better guide; one more marked by learning, reverence, 
 and insight, than Franz Delitzsch.' Professor W. T. DAVISON in The 
 Expository Times. 
 
 ' Commentaries in Europe are not often ropubhshed after their authors 
 death, whatever is of permanent vulue in them being appropriated by tlnir 
 successors. But it may be long before one undertakes the task of expounding 
 the Prophets possessing so many gifts, and employing them so well. 
 Guardian.
 
 T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 ' The most important contribution yet made to biblical theology.' EXPOSITOR. 
 Just published, in Two Volumes, 8vo, 21s., 
 
 THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 
 
 BY HANS HINRICH WENDT, D.D., 
 
 ORD. PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, HEItELBERO. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY EEV. JOHN WILSON, M.A., MONTKEUX. 
 Copyright by arrangement with the Author. 
 
 CONTENTS : INTRODUCTION. The Problem. First Section The 
 Historical Foundation of the Teaching of Jesus. Chap. I. Religious 
 Conceptions of the Jews in the Time of Jesus. II. Religious Hopes 
 of the Jews iu the Time of Jesus. Second Section External Aspects 
 of the Teaching of Jesus. Chap. I. External Mode of Teaching. 
 II. Ideas in regard to the Natural "World. Third Section Announce- 
 ment of the Kingdom of God in general. Chap. I. Theme of Jesus' 
 Preaching. II. God as the Father. III. Saving Benefits of the 
 Kingdom of God. IV. Righteousness of the Members of the Kingdom 
 of God. V. Nature and Advent of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 'Dr. "Wendt's work is of the utmost importance for the study of the 
 Gospels, both with regard to the origin of them and to their doctrinal 
 contents. It is a work of distinguished learning, of great originality, and of 
 profound thought. The second part (now translated into English), which 
 sets forth the contents of the doctrine of Jesus, is the most important 
 contribution yet made to biblical theology, and the method and results of 
 Dr. "Wendt deserve the closest attention. ... No greater contribution to 
 the study of biblical theology has been made in our time. A brilliant and 
 satisfactory exposition of the teaching of Christ.' Prof. J. IVERACH, D.D., 
 in The Expositor. 
 
 ' Dr. Wendt has produced a remarkably fresh and suggestive work, 
 deserving to be ranked among the most important contributions to biblical 
 theology. . . . There is hardly a page which is not suggestive ; and, apart 
 from the general value of its conclusions, there are numerous specimens of 
 ingenious exegesis thrown out with more or less confidence as to particular 
 passages.' Prof. W. P. DICKSON, D.D., in The Critical Review. 
 
 ' In introducing Professor Wendt's work to English readers, the publishers 
 have done a service to theology in this country second only, if indeed second, 
 to that rendered by the issue of Professor Drivers famous " Introduction."' 
 Literary World.
 
 BV 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
 in f n n ii iii | Hi | nil || i 111 || 
 
 A 001 020 562 3