II

THE OLD WORLD IDEA

That questions as to the relation between things religious and things political have occupied large space in the history of Europe, is evident to the most casual reader. It will be difficult, indeed, to find any other question so important, so insistent for solution, so widely affecting society, and so efficient in guiding historic development. Thus, in very emphatic words, Ranke declares, “The whole life and character of Western Christendom consists of the constant action and counteraction of Church and State.” From the beginning of the Christian state it was assumed that, among its first duties and missions was care for the interests of the Church or submission to its demands; and it was soon made evident that the union between the two was so intimate that, whatever became of interest to the one was matter for action by the other. In all matters of peace and war, in all arrangements of society, in all movements and policies of government, and in all popular ferments, the loudest and most imperative voice came either from this settled principle of union, or from the determined efforts to shake off its bonds.

This thought is expressed by Story in perhaps somewhat exaggerated language:¹ “Half the calamities, with which the human race has been scourged, have arisen from the Union of Church and State.” If the view were confined to that portion of the race which has dwelt under European institutions, we might accept the statement without great reduction of its terms. Such is the more guarded expression of Bryce:²

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“half the wars of Europe, half the internal troubles that have vexed the European States, from the Monophysite controversies in the Roman Empire of the fifth century down to the Kultur Kampf in the German Empire of the nineteenth, have arisen from theological differences, or from rival claims of Church and State.”

To thoroughly understand, then, the character of the unique development of the American principle of entire separation, and to appreciate the gravity of the revolution thereby introduced, the student must hold in mind the more salient features of the European principle and its development. At the outset, also, it must be noted that the study is necessarily confined almost entirely to western Christendom. The eastern Church, resigned to the protection of the empire, sank into dependence and subsequent decadence, alien to those movements of thought and purpose out of which struggle and advancement come. It was content to be the servant and creature of the state.

Quite diversely, the western Church, cast on its own resources of courage, faith, and resolution by the destruction of the empire, grew increasingly virile and ambitious as the centuries advanced. The sole saviour of society in the midst of the chaos of empire, it found itself guide and arbiter in countless matters other than those which concerned faith and worship. It is not strange that its ambition, thus nurtured, should reach to the complete mastership over kings, governments, and people. Nor is it strange that, with the resettlement of society and the growing consciousness of national life, there should arise struggle and revolt against an exacting ecclesiasticism — a revolt to which the Renaissance of art and letters, with its logical consequent of the Reformation, added both strength and variety.

From the nature of the case the problem of Church and State is entirely Christian. It could arise only within the pale of a Christian society, more or less civilized and advanced. To the Hebrew cultus it was unknown, and its propositions would

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be unintelligible. The Hebrew State and Church were one, merged together, not as by union of two distinct entities, but as the component factors of one substance, neither of which could exist without the other. This finds illustration throughout Hebrew history, both in that divine institution wherein the civil and the ecclesiastical law are seen to be identical, and in those results of recurrent impiety, which instantly entailed rational degradation only to be retrieved by a revival of religion. Thus, the Hebrew state was set as the embodiment of the supreme religion. God was declared the Ruler and head, not only as He is the Governor of all the nations, but as the recognized constitutional Source of all authority for the Hebrew in things secular and things religious. David was the viceroy of the true King of Israel, and his realm constituted the visible Church of God  — a genuine Theocracy.

In the heathen world other conditions were exclusive of our Christian problem. Religions were many, differing not alone in service and customs in different lands, but also in the names and characters of the gods and goddesses who dwelt in the mythological heavens. Their literature was an aggregation of myth and fable, here and there underlaid by a more or less recondite philosophy. But of institutional character, with system of doctrine, and channels of settled polity, the religion was entirely destitute. Making no pretence to a divine statement or foundation, the religion of a people was at the caprice of superstition and of the conditions of life under various climes. Out of the cold north, sterile and forbidding, issued Odin and Thor, with their hammer and fire; while Aphrodite, rising from the southern sea, invited the lusts of Olympus. In the far east, the Persian and Vedantic philosophies reached to immensely higher principles and, discoursing on the meaning of life, sought to nurture the moral powers of men. But in all there was no such thing as systematized organization, nothing that resembled the embodied Church. What religious institutions

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existed in any land were the creation of the governing power.

It was only when Christ came, establishing a kingdom in the world, which should be amid the kingdoms of earth and as leaven penetrate throughout them all, and yet saying, “My kingdom is not of this world,” that the possibility arose of any such question as that of the mutual relations of Church and State.

The question, indeed, did not come to expression at the beginning of the Church. The conditions of the problem required the existence, side by side, of the two institutions of Church and State, each recognizing the other, and each having an inherent right to be and to exercise its functions, with more or less of independence, according as the prevalent solution or compact should decide. But such conditions did not obtain during the first three centuries of the Church. The state did not recognize the Church, seeing in it no institution with inherent right to be. Its very existence was an infraction of the imperial edict against associations. Its assemblies were simply gatherings of the followers of a pestilent and dangerous doctrine, which should be forbidden and destroyed — a religio illicita. Thus, for three hundred years the only relation between the two was that of disapproval and denunciation by the civil power, asserting itself with varying intensity as the dispositions of successive emperors desired; now in long periods of inactive contempt, and again in waves of most cruel and widespread persecution.

Meanwhile, the doctrine spread itself throughout the empire; “So mightily the word of God grew and prevailed.”¹ penetrated among all the provinces, claimed its votaries in the imperial palace, honey-combed the army, and counted its adherents by the hundred thousand.

It had founded, also, and elaborated a permanent polity and order with episcopal and presbyterial powers, vigorous with life, — an organization that had clearly come into the world to

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stay, and making no secret of its mission and desire to reclaim that world to the service of its own Master. Never was an aim more glorious and never a progress more magnificent. Undeterred by the prohibitions of law or the cruelties of fire and sword, bearing the burden of persecution without a thought of violent resistance, it yet lifted up its testimony for Christ after so persuasive fashion, that it were difficult to tell whether at the end of the third century the people of the Roman Empire were more heathen or Christian.

Out of either the recognition or the fear of this situation came the persecution of Diocletian, the last of the persecutions and the most severe in its terms and acts. In this it was like the dying throes of a monster, whose bitterness of spirit increases as his power wanes. In the year 303 Diocletian issued a series of edicts, the terms of which indicate the despairing and yet determined effort to root out every vestige of the Christian faith and Church. “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; Christian slaves were to be incapable of receiving freedom; all bishops and clergy were to be thrown into prison and there compelled to sacrifice; and all Christians everywhere ordered publicly to worship the gods, under the usual penalty of torture and death.”¹

The severity of these edicts marks the extreme of imperial proscription, giving way in a few years to a liberal policy of toleration equally extreme and sudden. This change of attitude and disposition is indicated by the edict of Galerius in the year 311, which at once put an end to persecution, and opened the new era of toleration and freedom. The edict, while declaring the purity of motive, “to regulate everything according to the ancient laws and public discipline of the Romans,” as a justifying reason for the persecution, at the

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same time acknowledges that the Christians had become so numerous and were so tenacious of their faith, as to render futile all efforts towards the repression of their religion. Therefore, the edict recites, “We have come to the conclusion that the most frank and open toleration should be extended to them, to the effect that they may now again be allowed to be Christians, and gather together in their societies; provided, however, that they take no action against the religion of the State.”¹

This was a long step towards the freedom of the Church, a complete liberty of conscience and worship to whomsoever should elect to be Christian. Christianity, long proscribed, now takes its place by the side of Judaism as a religio licita. But not long did it remain in such condition of humble sufferance by a heathen power. The strides by which the Church passed from the state of bondage to that of emancipation, and thence to empire, were few and rapid. Hardly had Galerius published his edict of toleration when death removed him from the throne; and in the next year, 312, Constantine, having conquered his rival Maxentius in the battle of the Milvian Bridge, ascended the throne as sole emperor of the west. It is in the night before the battle that legend places the vision of the cross with its motto, “in hoc signo vinces.” However much truth the legend holds, it seems to be the fact that in the battle the soldiers of Constantine bore a banner with the sign of the cross. Without any such vision it might well be that such banner should appear in an army, a large constituency of which was Christian, while Constantine himself was disposed, not only to toleration, but to the Christian faith.

Educated in the principles of Neo-Platonism, he had no faith in the gods of Rome and Greece, and was ready to accord to Christianity a broad and philosophic tolerance at the very outset of his career. His high order of statesmanship at once recognized it as an element to be reckoned with, not with the

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sword of repression, but with such enactments of law as should assert its right to come into the public life, and to open for its doctrine the fullest freedom of speech and discipleship. Nor was it long before his own mind, convinced of the truth of that doctrine, led him to give the adhesion of his personal faith.

It is to be noted that, while the edict of Galerius gave to Christianity the fullest toleration, yet Paganism still remained the religion of the state, the established religion, so far as the thought of establishment can be applied to the situation. This condition continued but two years. In the year 313 Constantine met at Milan Licinius, the emperor of the east, and then the two monarchs issued the famous proclamation known as the “Edict of Milan.” By this edict was established the fullest toleration of all religions and freedom of worship, without hindrance from the state and without preference by the state of one religion before another. Its terms are most broad and explicit. It gives” both to the Christians and to all others free power of following whatever religion each man may have preferred. . . . The absolute power is to be denied to no one to give himself either to the worship of the Christians, or to that religion which he thinks most suited to himself, . . . that each may have the free liberty of the worship which he prefers; for we desire that no religion may have its honor diminished by us.” The edict not only declares this freedom of the individual conscience and worship, but accords it to all religious associations and institutions, and in addition ordains that the losses of property sustained by the Churches in the recent persecutions should be made good to them.

By this edict was “introduced a universal and unconditional religious freedom,” in the enactment of which, as Innes remarks, “two points are to be noticed: 1st. It was the chief act of disestablishment in history. Paganism was disestablished throughout the Empire. 2d. No religion is established by it.”¹

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This may be recognized as the ordination of the fullest religious liberty the world has known until the foundation of the American republic. Its enactment is one of the marvels of history, so diverse from all that had preceded and from all that followed. Its continuance of the policy was short lived, enduring but little longer than a single generation, but it remains an object-lesson to all subsequent history.

Though the edict of Milan was issued in the name of both emperors, it expressed the will of Constantine alone, whose greater force of character had overborne Licinius. Despite this enforced consent of Licinius to the principles of toleration, he remained attached to the pagan religion, and in his own dominion of the east took many measures hostile to religious freedom and to Christianity. He encouraged the exercise of heathen worship and endeavored to suppress the Christian, sentencing many Christians to exile and slavery. This anti-Christian attitude of Licinius served as fuel to the flame of jealousy between Constantine and himself, and became a strong cause of the war between the two emperors, which broke out in 323, and in which Constantine completely destroyed the power of Licinius, uniting in his own person the empire of the entire Roman world. He was now in a position to give world-wide effect to his views of religious policy. Himself more pronouncedly Christian than in the past, confessing his faith in God and in Jesus Christ, he yet stands clear from all narrowness of view as to individual liberty of religion. At once that he assumed the sovereignty of the empire of Licinius he issued the famous “Proclamation to the Peoples of the East,” in which he emphasized the principles of toleration in the edict of Milan, and explained them with larger and more exact detail. The form of the proclamation is unique. It is not couched in the ordinary terms of a governmental edict, but in the forms of religious address, conveying the expression of the emperor's own faith and the religious reasons which controlled his action. Thus, the immediate address of the edict is not to

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the people, but to God Himself, and it becomes on the part of Constantine a covenant with God for the policy his government assumes towards questions of religion. The specially significant passages to be here cited are as follows: —

“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 enjoy the same peace and security with those who believe: this very restoration of common privileges will be powerful to lead men towards the road of truth. Let no one molest his neighbor. 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. . . . Let all men henceforth enjoy the privilege placed within our 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 neighbor with it. Rather, whatever he has himself seen and understood, let him help his neighbor with it, if that is possible; if it is not, let him desist from the attempt. For it is one thing to voluntarily 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.”¹

The terms of this proclamation leave nothing to be desired, and the reader of it is impressed alike by its breadth and the

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deep spiritual insight it declares. That the privilege of freedom would “lead men towards the road of truth”; that “to constrain by fear” is no proper means of conversion; and, that conscience demands for all men what it demands for itself; are truths which speak to us out of the turmoil of the fourth century with startling accents, soon condemned to silence until fourteen hundred years should give them voice again, in a far distant land.

For the most part Constantine adhered to this policy of religious liberty with admirable consistency. The most glaring infraction was legislation against conversion to Judaism, threatening such converts with “deserved pains.” This was accompanied by the denunciation of death to Jews for stoning converts from their own faith to Christianity and may be looked upon as reprisal for their persecuting actions. Moreover, it was issued in the year 315, after the edict of Milan, but eight years before the broader Proclamation to the Peoples of the East.

Undoubtedly the strong moral influence of Constantine was exerted for the furtherance of Christianity. He founded Constantinople on the site of old Byzantium as a Christian city. He turned “to Christian uses the revenues of some of the less frequented heathen temples.” He presided in Church councils and often brought his personal power to bear in the decision of controversies in the Church. But he never attempted to constrain the religious preferences of his subjects, never forbade heathen sacrifices or service, and never established Christianity as the religion of the state.

At the same time, it is true that his personal influence towards the furtherance of the Christian faith had been so constantly exerted, that the whole moral weight of government, devoid of all enactment, was thrown into that scale. Beyond that he could not go. Of a profoundly philosophical habit of mind, he was far removed from the disposition of the persecutor. He reverenced not only the majesty, but the dignity of human nature, and though with advancing years

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his own persuasion of the Christian truth became constantly firmer, he yet maintained and defended the rights of the individual conscience. This makes the attitude of Constantine altogether unique in history, until it is resembled by Williams and American statesmen of the eighteenth century. Desirous as a Christian ruler that all his subjects should be enlightened by the gospel, he yet never resorted to his imperial power to force that issue, recognizing the fundamental truth, to which the following centuries were blind, that only by the inner persuasion of the mind could the truth prevail.

It was impossible that the successors of Constantine should have equally broad conceptions. Of far lower powers, to them the personal addiction of their father to the Christian faith seemed by logical and natural consequence to demand resort to power for its advancement, and to those measures of repression and enactment from which he had scrupulously abstained. He died A.D. 337, leaving the throne to his sons Constans and Constantius, who almost at once began to draw upon their imperial power to discourage paganism and advance the Christian doctrine. Thus four years after their father's death, they issued the first decree against the old religion; “Let superstition cease; let the madness of sacrifices be abolished.” In 353 Constantius alone ordered that all the heathen temples should be closed, saying, “We will that all abstain from sacrifices: if any be found doing otherwise, let him be slain with the sword.”¹

The natural issue of such policy was the formal establishment of Christianity as the religion of the state, but it was delayed for a quarter of a century. A slight reaction followed under Julian, whose preferences for the pagan religion endeavored to make themselves felt, though the shortness of his reign hindered his efforts from their desired effectiveness. His successors, Jovian in the east and Valentinian in the west, reasserted the just balance instituted by Constantine, and not until 380 did the Christian doctrine assume the purple. In

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that year Theodosius the Great, being baptized, accompanied the confession of his personal faith with a decree establishing Christianity as the religion of the whole empire. This edict, in which Gratian and Valentinian were associated with Theodosius, declared, “We will 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 Alexandria, . . . the belief of the one God-head 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 gospels. . . . Those who follow this doctrine we authorize 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 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.”¹ The senate of Rome, which city remained predominantly heathen, urged upon the emperors that liberty of sacrifice should be allowed to the Romans. This, it would seem, they were at first disposed to grant, but gave way to the argument of the celebrated Ambrose of Milan: “Wrong is done to none of your subjects when Almighty God is preferred before him. To Him belong your convictions, and you must carry them out. . . . If you 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.”² Thus, for the first time, and that by the most masterful Christian voice of the age, was uttered the specious principle that the conscience of kings must be the law to the conscience

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of subjects; that for kings alone among men their faith is as well public as personal; and that upon them must rest the responsibility for whatsoever errors in faith and practice any of their subjects may be guilty of, unless they exert their authority for the abatement and punishment of such errors. This principle we shall see appearing in various guise, the informing principle in all effective union of Church and State. The argument of the great bishop was effective. The desire of the Roman senate was denied; and in the next few years the emperors proceeded to enforce their decree of establishment. Valentinian, for the west, in 391 forbade any one to “pollute himself by sacrifices,” and punished the frequenters of the temples. On the death of Valentinian, A.D. 392, Theodosius made a law for the whole empire, defining sacrificing and soothsaying as public crimes, “like high treason.” Says Innes: “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.”¹

By the end of the fourth century Christianity thus became the religion of the state, and the domain of the one was considered coterminous with the dominion of the other. The character of the relation between the Church and State, however, differed materially from that which in later centuries marked divisions in Christendom itself. The Church was one in all lands, subject to jealousies and rivalries of contending episcopal jurisdictions. It was subject also to heresies, which precipitated fierce disputes and demanded ecumenical councils, and in the settlement of which the imperial government often exercised its power. Even before the establishment of Christianity the authority of the emperors had been invoked. The councils of Nicæa, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, were called by imperial rescripts, their decrees largely

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shaped by the emperor's sympathies and enforced by his authority. The exile and recall of Arius and of Athanasius illustrate the varying sympathies of the throne and the effectiveness of its interference. A like illustration is seen in the progress of the Donatist controversy through its century of strife. But it is to be noted that these interferences were on the appeal of the Church, without which appeal the emperors did not assume to intervene until after the Christian establishment.

Even then the controlling attitude was that of a Christian empire facing the heathenism out of which itself had lately emerged, covenanted, not to the maintenance of one distinctive Christian Church among others — for there were no others — but to the maintenance of the general Christian faith as against all the forms of heathenism, which it doomed to extirpation. With the arms of the empire went the preacher of the cross. Far in advance of its legions the Christian apostles penetrated into the north and west. In the wreck of the western empire the Church maintained its seat and subdued to its faith the Gothic hordes. Goth, Visigoth, Vandal, Frank, alike bowed to the majesty of the faith. The empire of the west owed its continuity to the Church, and remained Christian against all forms of invading paganism.

For centuries the relation between Church and State was one rather of alliance and mutual helpfulness than of organic union. The two institutions existed side by side, for the most part mutually independent as to functions and order, the one not attempting interference with those matters which were peculiarly the property of the other. Held in the bond of a common faith, each contented itself with such measure of influence on the other as would secure from the crown the exercise of power in defence of the Church, and from the Church the voice of spiritual authority to constrain peoples to obedience and rulers towards righteous enactments.

But the seeds were early sown, which in later years should blossom and bear fruit in those colossal struggles between the

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two which make up the history of mediæval Europe. When the empire had just declared itself Christian the great Augustine came to his African bishopric; and while that transition was yet new and was seeking ways of legitimate expression, he was employing all the powers of his profound and subtle mind and all the energies of his fervid heart in defining both the terms of Christian doctrine and the relationship of the Church to the state. Incontestably the greatest of the early fathers, his influence on the human mind has been more profound and enduring than that of any other man since the day of Paul. The Augustinian theology still holds the faith and affections of millions, while the Augustinian view of the “City of God” remains to this day the chief ground for every system of union between Church and State. His theory of the new civic and religious system revealed in the Church, as it is embosomed in society and the state, has proved the most elastic of human speculations and capable of endless applications. Defining “the duty of the powers of earth to buttress the invisible City of God,” it laid the foundation for all religious persecution in subsequent ages. It was seized on by the papacy as the strongest weapon for ecclesiastical aggrandizement. In the age of the Reformation it was accepted as axiomatic by all the Reformed Churches; and in this dawn of the twentieth century every religious establishment must appeal to it as justifying its principles and methods.

While the great African bishop was thus laying the foundation for all after efforts towards ecclesiastical imperialism, and all appeals of the Church to the secular arm for the protection of the faith and suppression of heresy, there very early appeared another element the widening of the episcopal jurisdiction. In the circumstances of the time this was a matter almost of necessity. Though the empire had established the Christian religion, and had thrown its powerful influence towards the furtherance of the faith, it had yet taken no legislative action for the support of the Church. After that establishment, as before, the financial support of the Church

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came from individual benefactions, the difference being that, while formerly such benefactions had been forbidden, under the Christian empire they were both allowed and encouraged. To this were added the frequent gifts of imperial favor; many times, indeed, drawn from the public treasury, but bestowed in the name of the emperor. For Christian uses, under the control of the Church, were also appropriated the confiscated revenues of many heathen temples.

Thus, though not for centuries arose the legislative taxation, or tithe, for the support of religious institutions, there soon came into the possession of the Church large funds and endowments, which, either by the tacit consent or the direction of the emperor, were committed to the care and administration of the bishops, whose duties and powers connected therewith added a semi-civic function to the religious character of their office. To this chamberlainship the bishops soon aspired to add judicial powers, especially in all cases in which the rights of the clergy, either general or individual, were involved in the vast majority of instances, especially in the western empire, such an episcopal court was not only desirable, but also necessitated; for in that chaotic condition of society which followed the irruption of the northern hordes, the only hope of wisdom or justice was found in the Church.

But while this grafting of civil function on the episcopal office may thus be considered a necessity of the age, at the same time it is evident as a foundation for those lofty ambitions which afterwards moulded the papal policy. Here is the seed of that ecclesiastical arrogance which for centuries refused to the civil law the right of judgment upon offences by the clergy. Here, also, is the seed of that tremendous struggle over the right of investiture, which convulsed the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In view of the growth of episcopal power with functions reaching into civil and judicial matters, it was inevitable that the bishop should become in certain important particulars an officer of the state, in whose appointment the emperor should claim to be considered

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as having authority. This claim the Church, as it grew in power and ambition, was increasingly ready to resist, until at Canossa it obtained its greatest triumph.

Meanwhile, the Church of the west was the saviour of society. In the downfall of the empire and the wreck of all social and civil institutions, towards the Church alone turned the hopes of men, the only stable thing in the midst of universal ruin, the only anchor in the storm. It was a city of refuge for the fugitive and the oppressed. It listened to the cry of the afflicted. It stretched out the hand of authority or uttered the voice of persuasion, to check many turbulences and to make many crooked things straight. As society recast itself after the violence of the storm, the moulding hand of the Church was everywhere present, as the sole possessor of light and knowledge, the constant witness for law and righteousness.

Though the tone of the Church remained humble, her strength waxed greater, nor were occasions wanting which revealed the future that was in store for her. The resistance and final triumph of Athanasius proved that the new society could put forth a power of opinion such as had never been known before; the abasement of Theodosius, the emperor, before Ambrose, the archbishop, admitted the supremacy of spiritual authority. In the decrepitude of old institutions, in the barrenness of literature and the feebleness of art, it was to the Church that the life and feelings of the people sought more and more to attach themselves; and when in the fifth century the horizon grew black with clouds of ruin, those who watched with despair or apathy the approach of irresistible foes, fled for comfort to the shrine of a religion which even those foes revered.

“But that which above all we are concerned to remark here is, that this Church system, demanding a more rigid uniformity in doctrine and organization, making more and more vital the notion of a visible body of worshippers united by participation in the same sacraments, maintained and propagated afresh the feeling of a single Roman people throughout

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the world. Christianity as well as civilization became conterminous with the Roman Empire.”¹

The prestige of the Eternal City was also a colossal force, both as holding the veneration of the people and directing the ambitious policy of the Roman bishops. The Augustan City had administered the affairs of the empire in a dominion which the bishops of Rome claimed as a pattern for their own. Already, with the proclamation of Theodosius, had begun the dispute for supremacy between the Churches of the east and the west, never settled indeed by any concord between the two, but confirming in the western mind the claims of the Roman see. Long before the final rupture, the entire Church of the west had accorded the primacy of Rome and the universal authority of its bishop. Thus to the evident tokens of inherent power, on the beneficent action to which the very life of society and civilization had depended, was added the conscious ambition to become the vicegerent of God upon the earth. With such inspiration and with a system built up by centuries of spiritual guidance and of wise statecraft, Rome at last presented an institution, with which, when the kings of the earth attempted to cross swords, the struggle was as a battle of the gods.

The periods of development may be roughly noted as follows: —

The change from one to other, save as regards the revolution wrought by Hildebrand, was by slow steps and ever subject to fluctuations, with issues unsuspected at the beginnings. Thus it is impossible to suppose that Augustine divined the historical sequence of his theories. His principles, that the civil power should constrain unity of faith, and should subserve the interest of the Church, did not reveal at once their baneful possibilities. They were potent in present usefulness for the resettlement of society and securing of peace, of salutary effect in almost all applications. So long as the two institutions, Church and State, were content to live in the early spirit of alliance, each regardful for the other, and each practically independent in its own internal administration, there could arise few reasons for friction. These reasons were brought forth when either party, forgetting the rights and dignity of the other, attempted interference and dictation.

Out of such attempts came the first change in the form of the question of Church and State, and in the attitude of one to the other. No longer satisfied with a mutually respecting alliance, each sought a superiority. Especially did the Church learn to resent and deny all theories of equality. Confessedly a divinely instituted power, it early claimed precedence of all earthly kingdoms. Keeper of the king’s personal conscience, it claimed direction of his civil rule. It took to itself the words of Wisdom, “By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.” (Prov. viii. 15.) Thus, in the full outcome of its claims, it demanded from kings homage for their crowns; interfered at pleasure with the internal affairs of kingdoms, and even presumed to absolve from allegiance the subjects of monarchs bold enough to resist the authority of the pope, who affected to be a king of kings. The complete claim is seen in Boniface VIII. (A.D. 1300), seated on the throne, crowned with the tiara and girt with a sword, exclaiming, “I am Cæsar. I am Emperor.” In such increasing claim of universal dominion in things secular as religious, the

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Church by degrees outlined and finally enforced an imperialism vaster and further-reaching than that of the Proudest Cæsars.

For this issue affairs were in long training and with many fluctuations, until the culmination of papal ambition was reached in the audacity of Boniface VIII. The beginnings of it may be found in Gregory the Great, who, coming to the pontificate, A.D. 590, exercised vast influence, chiefly moral, in the pacification of political affairs in Italy and the west, and showed an example of genius for government, which his able successors were not slow to emulate. The success of their pretensions was due, fully so much as to their ability, to the disorder of society and the weakness of the princes. This process of papal aggrandizement thus begun, received a long and decided check from the power of Charlemagne, though at the same time his benefactions to the Church laid the foundation of further progress.

This greatest of Frankish kings had compacted under his sceptre the whole of western Europe, conquered Italy and Rome, revived the empire of the west, of which in the year 800 he was, at Rome and by the pope, crowned emperor. Himself devoted to the Church, he confirmed the hierarchical system to which he abandoned the government of the Church; sanctioned the canon law; constituted the “States of the Church,” as representing the temporal sovereignty of the popes; and established throughout his empire “the tithe, a 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.” At the same time he reserved to himself the convoking of synods and the confirming of their actions; the appointment of bishops whom he regarded as vassals of the crown; and the final decision as to the legislation of the Church.

Far in advance of former rulers, Charlemagne asserted a supremacy of the state over the Church, and initiated a policy which continued operative with more or less effectiveness for

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two centuries. He regarded his own office as equally spiritual as secular, and his empire as a theocracy. “Among his intimate friends he chose to be called by the name of David, exercising in reality all the (theocratic) powers of the Jewish King, presiding over the kingdom of God upon earth.”

There are letters of his extant, in which he lectures Pope Leo in a tone of easy superiority, admonishes him to obey the holy canons, and bids him pray earnestly for the success of the efforts which it is the monarch’s duty to make for the subjugation of pagans and the establishment of sound doctrine throughout the Church. Nay, subsequent popes themselves admitted and applauded the despotic superintendence of matters spiritual which he was wont to exercise, and which led some one to give him playfully a title that had once been applied to the pope himself, Episcopus episcoporum.

Within his own dominions his sway assumed a sacred character; his unwearied and comprehensive activity made him, throughout his reign, an ecclesiastical, no less than a civil, ruler; summoning and sitting in councils, examining and appointing bishops, settling by capitularies the smallest points of Church discipline and polity.”¹ His immediate successors were weak, and his dominions were divided for nearly half a century, but the empire was reconstituted, as the “Holy Roman Empire,” in 852, by the Saxon Otto the Great, who added to the policy of Charlemagne the demand that no pontiff should be elected at Rome without the emperor’s consent. This demand could not be refused, and “The pope became a secular subject to the emperor.” The weakness of succeeding Franconian emperors suffered the papacy to fall under the power of Italian princes until, in 1046, Henry III. entered Italy with an army, and calling a synod, deposed three contending popes and secured for himself the right of nomination, a right exercised in the appointment of three successive pontiffs.

This marked the extreme of the supremacy of the state,

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the power of which after the death of Henry, waned rapidly, in consequence, partly of the long minority of Henry IV. and chiefly of the character and power of Hildebrand. Of this pope writes Ranke in graphic words: “Gregory VII. was a man of bold, bigoted, and aspiring spirit; straightforward as a scholastic system, invincible in the stronghold of logical consequence, and no less dexterous in parrying just and well-grounded objections with specious arguments. . . . He resolved to emancipate the papal power from the imperial yoke. . . .

The bond between both was the right of investiture. The determination that this ancient right should be wrested from the emperor was of the nature of a revolution.”¹ Hildebrand, first as counsellor to Popes Victor, Stephen, Nicholas II., and Alexander II., and afterwards as Gregory VII., was the ablest of the long line of pontiffs. Taking advantage of the minority of Henry, he succeeded not only in setting aside the nomination of the pontiff by the emperor, but in removing the election of the pope from the clergy and citizens of Rome to the college of cardinals. Further than this, he asserted the right of the popes to inquire into the civil administration of the empire. This was a tremendous stride of ecclesiastical ambition, for the taking of which an immediate event gave occasion.

The young Henry had attained to his majority, and in the exercise of his power had been so arbitrary that many of his subjects appealed to the pope, who summoned him to Rome to answer the complaints. To this summons Henry replied with a synod of the German Church at Worms, which called on Gregory to retire from the pontificate as having abused his office. Gregory’s response was terrific. Nothing like it had ever been attempted by any bishop of Rome, and could hope to be effective only by reason of the Church’s hold upon the mind and affection of the people. He excommunicated Henry and released from allegiance all his subjects. Henry was forced to submit, illustrating his penitence by standing

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for three days barefoot in the snow at Canossa, until the proud Gregory was willing to receive his confession. It is true that this severity brought a reaction; that Henry’s indignation at this insulting treatment was shared in by the majority of his subjects; that he conquered Rudolph, who with the pope’s approval had usurped his throne; and, invading Italy, captured Rome and shut up Gregory in the castle of St. Angelo. Thus Henry revenged his wrongs and asserted his power. But none the less the action of Gregory had given to the theory of state supremacy a shock from which it never recovered. Though Gregory, having escaped to Salerno, died there in the following year, his successors held fast to his claims.

Closely allied thereto was the question of investiture. On the one hand, the emperors claimed that, inasmuch as bishops exercised many civil functions, and in many eases were princes with temporal jurisdiction, the right of appointment and investiture with the insignia of office belonged to the crown and that the pope was bound to consecrate to the spiritual office the appointees of the secular power. On the other hand, the Church claimed that, inasmuch as the episcopal function was predominantly spiritual, the crown was obliged to acquiesce in such appointments as the Church should make. The state refused as vassals those over whom it could exercise no authority; and the Church refused as spiritual officers those whose title came from a secular source. On this issue battle royal was joined, the varying features of which it is not needful here to recount. It is only needful to note that on this, as on other questions, the policy of Hildebrand was carried on by his successors, to the general triumph of the ecclesiastical power.

The effective application of that policy is illustrated in the Emperor Lothair holding the stirrup of Pope Adrian, and in many acts of Innocent III., whose ambition was greater than Hildebrand’s and whose exercise of power met with less resistance. Innocent insisted that all kings should do him

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homage for their crowns; that their title by inheritance was not good until ratified by him. He insisted on his right as supreme lord to interfere in any kingdom for the redress of wrong, himself being the sole judge. “He excommunicated Sweno for usurping the throne of Sweden.” He laid an interdict on Spain, because the king of Leon had married his cousin. He commanded Philip to take back his divorced wife, and on the king’s refusal, laid an interdict on all France.

All religious services ceased: “the dead were unburied; the living were unblessed.” He threatened John of England with deposition and an interdict, and annulled Magna Charta. In the theory of Innocent, all kings and emperors were temporal vassals of the pope. “He declared explicitly that as the power and property of the realm belonged to the Roman Church, its vassal-king could make no change in its condition, to the Church’s prejudice.”¹

This was the high-water mark of Church supremacy. It remained practically stationary for one hundred years, though during that period were increasing tokens that the ebb could not be long delayed. The second Frederic — a man of great powers and great vices — carried on long battle with Gregory IX. and Innocent IV. Twice excommunicated, he “appealed to the indelible rights of Cæsar, and denounced his foe as the anti-Christ of the New Testament. He scoffed at anathema, upbraided the avarice of the Church, and treated her soldiery, the friars, with a severity not seldom ferocious.”² At the end he was forced to a qualified submission, and died under the ban of the Church.

The death of Frederic brought the end of the empire as a world power, and seemed thus to remove from the stage the greatest obstacle to papal ambition. In reality it made way for conditions which efficiently checked that ambition, and put a term to ecclesiastical supremacy. The NATION was beginning to appear. France and England, under the rule of

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vigorous monarchs, were presenting the spectacle of emergence from the confusion and rivalries of feudalism into the higher state of national life, which grew instantly more and more impatient of Papal dictation, The dawn of the Renaissance was bringing to the mind glimmerings of liberty. “It was already indicative of the dawn of the new epoch that the national languages arose everywhere at the same time. Hitherto the Church had been predominant over the sense of nationality.” This rising sense of a special, individual national life, with speech and aims of its own, gradually bred a profound impatience of dictation, which, however religious, clearly demonstrated the domination of a foreign and selfish power. Men were beginning to question the secular aims of the Church, and some to suspect even certain of its religious dogmas. Europe was making its first unconscious movements, which were to result in the great upheavals of the sixteenth century.

It is in such beginnings of change that we find the reason of the failure of Boniface VIII. on the field where Hildebrand, Innocent, and Gregory IX. had been successful. More audacious than they all, he failed to read the tokens of changing times. When he joined issue with Edward I. and Philip the Fair, he found facing him wills strong as his own and peoples who refused to be absolved from loyalty by a papal bull. On this last factor he had not counted, nor dreamed that the popular mind could be less submissive to the pontiff’s will than in the past.

In the struggle of Boniface with Philip and Edward, a struggle induced by his interference with their taxation of the clergy, there was brought to expression the theory of Nationalism. For this St. Louis in his Pragmatic Sanction, A.D. 1269, had prepared the way in France, defining that the election of bishops should be free from the control of the pope, and that no money should be levied for the pope without the consent of the Church and king. This was the first

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assertion of what afterwards came to be called “the Gallican Liberties.”¹

Both Edward and Philip for their respective kingdoms declared also their entire independence of the pope in things political, and their right to levy upon the already enormous wealth of the clergy. To the remonstrances of Boniface and his threats of interdict and excommunication they paid no regard, in which attitude they were sustained by the estates of their realms. The bull, “Unam Sanctam,” declared that the acknowledgment of the universal lordship of the pope was necessary to salvation. Philip publicly burned the bull and declared his independence; forbade his clergy to go to Rome; imprisoned the papal legate, a French bishop, for insolent behavior and quoted the scripture, “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.”² The battle was long, bequeathed from king to king and from pope to pope. Boniface was captured at Anagni by Philip, and never recovered from the humiliation, dying broken-hearted. His ambitious claims also lost their power. Though they were repeated by his successors down to the opening of the eighteen century, they were not admitted or submitted to by any considerable secular power.

The spirit of opposition here involved rapidly assumed power and wide influence in the greater nations. Beginning in France, it spread to England, as we have seen, where the policy of Edward I. became as a law to the kingdom, by reason of which the third Edward refused the payment of tribute to Rome, and was sustained by his parliament.

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Germany came next, and “The electors assembled at Reuss to concert measures in common for manifesting the honor and dignity of the empire.”

Thus the principle of nationalism intrenched itself firmly in the policy of states. The papal imperialism came to an end. In place of it was the assertion of entire freedom of the state in all secular affairs, and the integrity of the national Church, as a branch of the Church universal, with powers of self-government free from the dictation of Rome. What was further-reaching than all these, Nationalism — or Gallicanism — as defined by the assembly called by Louis XIV., A. D. 1682, insisted that the pope himself was subject to the general councils, both as to authority and as to judgment in matters of doctrine.

In this long dispute the aid of the schoolmen was sought by both sides. Their battle was second only to that of the princes in its fury, and had larger consequence, in that it broke up that lethargy of mind which had made the schools willing captives to the hierarchy. William of Occam, the “Invincible Doctor,” saying to Louis, “Defend me with the sword and I will defend you with the pen;” Egidius de Colonna, and John of Paris, to whom may be added the immortal Dante, opposed the extravagant demands of the papacy and defended the independence of the kings.

It is to be noted that in this development of nationalism no room was made for such a thing as liberty of conscience. The kings, who most stoutly resisted the pretensions of Rome to political domination, were as fully bent on maintaining the unity of the faith. The movement, undoubtedly, as loosening the mind from one of the trammels of the past, had something of a casual relation to the Reformation, and certainly prepared a solution for some of the problems brought up by that struggle; but with that cardinal principle which lay at the heart of the Reformation, the Right of Private Judgment, the new nationalism had no sympathy whatever. This is abundantly evidenced by the Spanish Inquisition; the slaughter of the

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Albigenses, the death of Huss, and, most notably, the attitude of Henry VIII. of England, who, while carrying the theory to the furthest extreme, abjuring the pope and making himself head of the Church of England, yet persecuted on the one hand those who maintained allegiance to Rome, and on the other those who denied the Roman dogmas.

It is a remarkable illustration of the possible narrowness of human judgment that none of the publicists, statesmen, and theologians of the Reformation era, and none of the princes, save William of Orange, were able to follow this principle of revolt to its logical issue in the freedom of the individual conscience. While the Protestant disallowed the faith and the authority of Rome, yet he insisted as stoutly as any Romanist that unity of faith was essential to the integrity of the government. In despite of the rights of mind, it was the practical axiom of the day that the accident of birth and political denizenship must control the form and expression of religious faith.

This, indeed, needs emphasis. While the Reformation broke the power of the papacy and severed some of the nations from the Roman Church, it did not introduce liberty. It made a way for liberty by which, in the fulness of time, she should come to proclaim the dignity and rights of the individual soul. But the recognition thereof by the princes and governments delayed for more than two centuries, while in certain parts of Christendom they are not recognized to-day. The principle of nationalism, already defined as triumphant over the papacy before the Reformation, was at once seized upon by the Protestant princes as the regulative principle which should constitute and control ecclesiastical affairs in their dominions.

A new element also was added to the old question of Church and State. Hitherto the Church had been one, and the sole question had been as to the relation between this one Church, having its head at Rome, and the state. Now is added another question: Which Church shall be followed?

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For the one Church is broken asunder, and a new faith presses itself upon the mind and conscience, demanding the obedience of princes and peoples. It was given to them to choose — Romanist or Protestant — which shall the nation be? Undoubtedly the choice of Protestantism was dictated not only by the preference of princes, but as well by their recognition of the wide spread among their people of the new faith but once that the choice was made, the Church became a national Church, in many matters of control subject to the dictation of the state.

This is further illustrated by the division in the ranks of Protestantism. While in the past there had been but one Church, the Roman, known in western Europe; and while among those nations, which after the Reformation remained faithful to the Roman See, the Church was still one, so that, despite the claims of political freedom, the religious faith of France, Spain, Italy, and southern Germany was unified under the spiritual organization of Rome, yet from the beginnings of Protestant ecclesiasticism the fact of division appeared.

The Protestant Church was not one. Though united by common sympathy of opposition to Rome, the Lutheran and Reformed faiths made for themselves sharp lines of separation from each other.¹ Thus the choice of the Protestant prince called for yet another decision — whether in the Reformation he should follow Luther or Calvin. There was nothing like organic union between these two great churches of the Reformation. More than that, there was no such union of similar churches in different countries, either Lutheran or Reformed. There was no organization common to the Lutheran churches of Saxony and Sweden, or to the Reformed churches of Holland and Scotland. Each Church of the Reformation was distinctly national. Says Ranke,¹ “Religion was diversely seized by the nations in the several modifications of its dogmatic forms; the chosen body of dogmas became blended with the feelings of nationality. It became

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the first question respecting each country, What was the dominant religion there?

Hence arose the maxim, universal in the Reformation period and

not altogether disallowed to-day, succinctly put into the words, “Cujus regio, ejus religio.”¹ It defines the duty and right of the prince to choose and direct the religion for his people. To this was necessarily added, as a logical consequence, that it is the duty of the prince to root out heresy. This duty and right many a Protestant prince obeyed, understanding as heresy, not only the peculiar doctrines of Rome, but as well also the differing views of other forms of the Protestant faith, or the reluctance to conform to the special ecclesiasticism which the prince had ordained. So the Covenanter was slain because he could not accept either Episcopacy or the National Kirk, and the Pilgrims came across the sea because they could not conform.

The argument in support of this supremacy of the state was very simple. Religion and morality were understood to lie at the foundation of the state, while of morality religion was the base. Therefore it became the first duty of the princes and magistrates to take order for the support of religion and the defence of its Purity. It was taken for granted that two forms of religion, though both might be Protestant, could not co-exist in the same state without peril to civil institutions. The Church throughout Protestant Europe was thus shorn of its divine character in popular estimation and made an adjunct of the state, while the individual conscience was put outside of the law. This is true even of the Scottish Kirk, which, while insisting in its symbols on the “alone Headship of Jesus Christ,” at the same time demanded the secular power for its own support, and made itself an establishment under the crown.

One of the most remarkable things in that most marvellous age of the Reformation is the tenacity with which the general Protestant mind clung to the idea that an intimate union

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of Church and State was necessary to the purity of religion and the perpetuity of government. This was the universal opinion, the exceptions to which can be counted on less than the fingers of one hand. It was formulated as general law. The Peace of Augsburg made the religion of a community determinable by the religion of the prince. The ruler thus became supreme, with a clerical synod, or consistorial body, as his advisors. The only relief to dissenters from the religion of the prince was that of emigration from his dominions.¹ So long as a man remained under the rule of a prince he was bound to conform in matters of religion.

This position of the Augsburg Peace is less liberal than that of the Confession, and was reached as a compromise between Roman and Lutheran princes. The Confession, published twenty-five years before, in 1530, attempted to define the practical independence of Church and State. “The administration of civil affairs has to deal with other matters than the gospel deals with. . . . The ecclesiastical and civil powers are not to be confounded. The ecclesiastical has its own command to preach the gospel and to administer the sacraments. Let it not intrude into the office of another than itself.” The chief stress in the distinction is laid upon the impropriety of ecclesiastical interference in civil affairs, which was the special aspect of the question at that day. It fails to warn the state against interference with the Church, though it in no place recognizes that the civil power has a duty against heresy. In these respects the Augsburg Confession was far in advance of the later confessions of the Reformed churches.

Written by Melanchthon under the influence of Luther, it is clearly expressive of their mind. Luther undoubtedly held in theory the independence and self-government of the Church, but he “considered the Germans too rough, turbulent, and unpractised to take ecclesiastical government into their hands at once.” The princes, as principal members of the Church, should take the lead and the people must follow. In the circumstances

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of the time, that was an easy step by which this moral leadership passed into the requirement of conformity. Luther saw this and was embarrassed by it; but he saw no way of escape from the necessity of reliance to some extent upon the civil power. The practical need was enforced to his mind by the disorders induced by some of the Anabaptists and by the Peasants’ War, which called him from the Wartburg. This accounts for contradictory expressions by Luther. In one place he says, “Whenever the temporal power presumes to legislate for the soul, it encroaches;” and in another, “Since it is not good that in one parish the people should be exposed to contradictory preaching, he (the magistrate) should order to be silent whatever side does not consist with the Scripture!” Of course, this constitutes the magistrate the judge of Scripture and doctrine, and installs him as supreme in the Church. Long before Luther’s death the Princes had become the real governors of the Church, which was organized and regulated entirely by their will. The Lutheran consistory, which governs the Church to-day, was organized in 1540, a body of jurists and theologians, appointed by, and responsible to, the crown, and exercising all the powers of church government and discipline. Luther did not like it, but he knew not how to mend it. “Satan remains Satan,” he said. “Under the pope he pushed the Church into the State; now he wishes to push the State into the Church.”

Calvin, the great leader of the Reformed, while vindicating the independence of the Church as to its order and discipline, yet explicitly demanded the coercive power of the state for suppressing heresy and vice. Differences occurred between Calvin and the Genevan authorities as to the delimitation of the respective powers of the civil and religious authorities, with the result that the Reformer and his friends were banished from Geneva for a short time. Their return was a virtual triumph for Calvin on the matters at issue, and thereafter the government of the Church, with its relation to the civil power,

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was on the lines laid down by Calvin. The regulations of Calvin involved a severe regimen both as to morals and faith, under which offences called for both spiritual censure by the Church and material punishment by the state. Whatever censures were imposed by the consistory were regularly reported to the city council for such action under the civil law as that body might order. To what extreme of persecution that body could go with the consent of Calvin, is shown in the martyrdom of Servetus for denying the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Position of the Swiss Reformers is tersely expressed in the First Helvetic Confession, A.D. 1536, “The chief office of the magistrate is to defend religion, and to take care that the word of God be purely preached.” The same thought is in the French Confession, written by Calvin in 1559, “God hath put the sword into the hands of magistrates to suppress crimes against the first, as well as the second, table of the law of God.” This doctrine is somewhat modified in the Second Helvetic Confession, which, defining the chief office of the magistrate as procuring “the peace and tranquillity of mankind,” adds, “we hold also that the care of religion is a first duty of a religious magistrate.”¹

Under the influence of Zwinglius, readiest among all the reformers to appeal to civil and military power, the situation at Zurich was so moulded that Church and State were practically identical. Ecclesiastical power was lodged in the Great Council, which governed the civil affairs of the city. To this absorption Calvin made a strenuous objection. He argued that the state had no right to absorb the Church, but was bound to cooperate with the Church, enforce its decrees, and give effect to its discipline.²

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In the Netherlands, strange as it appears to us, notwithstanding the untold sufferings to which the people were subjected by reason of Philip’s claim that he could dictate the religion of his subjects, the fathers of the Reformed Church did not hesitate to declare in the Belgic Confession, A.D. 1561, that the magistrate was vested with power not only to guard the state, but to maintain religion and the Church, and “to remove and destroy all idolatry and false service of God.” Practically, indeed, though the Reformed Church was established in Holland and so remains to this day, this theory of repression of other faiths but once attempted enforcement. A large toleration was the unwritten law, as long as religious divergence did not entail disturbances of public order. Their great leader, William of Orange, while himself of the Calvinistic faith, held firmly to the principles of toleration. In this he was broad enough to comprehend Anabaptists. Under him it was impossible for the theoretical demands of the Confession for the magistrate’s interference to find any expression in act. As Fisher aptly remarks, “In the last years of the war with Spain the Calvinists learned that, by reason of their sins, they could not all be reduced to one and the same religion.”¹

There is indeed one great exception to be found in the action of the state toward the Arminians. Finding that they could not remain in the established Church, they petitioned for toleration outside of it. The contention grew fierce and the States forbade controversy. Under the influence of Maurice, the Stadtholder, Grotius was cast into prison and Oldenbarneveldt beheaded. The Synod of Dort in 1618 condemned the heresy, without allowing to its followers a liberty of debate, and deposed them from the ministry. To this the States added a decree forbidding them to preach, on pain of banishment from the country.

If we cross the channel into England, we find a situation quite unique as compared with continental countries, though the

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same rule of state supremacy obtains and with greater force. Save that the teachings of Wycliffe had so affected the popular mind as to predispose it to acquiesce in the separation from Rome, the Reformation in England was a movement set afoot, not as in other countries by the conscience of the people, but by the policy of government. Henry VIII., the most despotic of English kings, threw off the yoke of Roman authority; while in matters of faith he was as much of a Romanist as ever, putting himself at the head of the English Church, a virtual pope. In later years he gave a more open ear to the Reformed doctrine, so that under his son Edward, guided by the shifty Cranmer, England ranged itself with the Reformed countries of Europe. The violent reaction by which Mary sought to return the kingdom to Rome was short-lived, but illustrated the fact that the principles of the Reformation had taken firm hold upon the people. This Elizabeth recognized, while she retained in her own hand the reins of government over the Church as well as over the state. The form of the Church of England remains to-day substantially the same as it became under the moulding hand of the great queen — a creation of the civil power and subject for creed, government, and discipline to the final authority of the magistrate.

The position taken by Elliot on the origin of the Church of England cannot be maintained. He says: “The Church never was established. The institution grew in the same way that other parts of the constitution grew. . . . It does not owe its origin as an institution to any definite act of the legislature or other sovereign authority.” This confounds the two characteristics of the Church as a body of believers, and as an organization under law. It is true that the legislature did not originate the Church as a body of believers. But it is equally true that the legislature did originate that organized institution known as the Church of England. Previous to the rupture by Henry there was in the organic

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sense no such thing as a Church of England. There was a Church in England, but it was an integral part of the one Church of Rome. As a distinct institution the Church of England owes its existence to the act of parliament, 1538, declaring separation from Rome and the supreme headship as resident in the king. In the reign of Elizabeth the “Articles of Religion,” i.e. the Church Creed and the Prayer-book, were approved by acts of parliament, without which action of the civil power the Church had no legal right to so believe or so pray. It is difficult to imagine how the idea of “establishment” could be more clearly defined in act.

The several elements, or features, of this establishment are: —

1. The supremacy of the crown.
   All high offices in the Church are matters of royal gift.
2. Complete control of parliament over the Church, as to articles of faith, order, worship, and discipline.
3. Membership of bishops in the upper house of legislature.
4. National support of the Church.
5. The broad membership in the Church, conditioned on citizenship and not on personal faith or character.
6. Patronage in the Church — the right of presentation to livings without regard to the wishes of parishioners.

In no country is the idea of establishment more strikingly presented than in England, even the England of to-day. The civil and ecclesiastical administration are closely blended, having the same head and united on many lines of mutual dependence, justifying the words of Burke, “The ideas of Church and State are inseparable in our view.”

In the history of this establishment after the age of Elizabeth, though there was no general persecution of individuals

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for conscience’ sake, there was very stringent application of the “Acts of Uniformity.” Dissenting ministers were, time and again, silenced and turned out of their parishes. Dissenting laymen were excluded from office and from the universities. No one could enter parliament without taking the Test Oath, which required subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and communicating according to the rites of the Church of England. Romanist, Jew, Independent, Presbyterian, were alike disabled. Especially was the cry of “Popery” like shaking a red rag before a bull. In these acts of uniformity is to be found the beginnings of America. Under their stress the Pilgrims went to Holland in 1609, and in 1628 the first band of Puritans crossed the sea.

It is abundantly evident that the controlling idea in this establishment was political, rather than religious, not seeking so much the furtherance of a particular form of faith and worship for the sake of religion as the maintenance of the chosen form as an adjunct of the state. Uniformity was insisted on, not as a thing of religion, but a matter of civil order. Dissent was reprobated because, to the mind of the authorities, it was pregnant with public disorder. This is most tersely exhibited by Blackstone: “The sin of schism, as such, is by no means the object of temporal coercion and punishment. The civil magistrate has nothing to do with it, unless their (the dissenters’) tenets and practices are such as threaten ruin or disturbance of the State. He is bound, indeed, to protect the Established Church, and if this can be better effected by admitting none but its general members to offices of trust and emolument, he is certainly at liberty so to do, the disposal of offices being matter of favor and discretion. But this point being once secured, all persecution for diversity of opinions, however absurd or ridiculous they may be, is contrary to every principle of sound policy and civil freedom.”¹

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Among the confessional utterances of the Reformation era, that of Scotland is not behind those already cited, in conceding to the state a duty and power concerning religion. John Knox was not averse to demanding that the civil power should support Christ’s Kirk and Covenant, and should suppress opponents thereto. He did, indeed, emphasize the independence, of each other, of Church and State, with God supreme over both. Yet the assembly of 1560, which formed the First Confession, and “set forth God’s glory and the weal of His Kirk in this realm,” reported their work to the parliament, by which body it was ratified as the true doctrine, and authorized as the law of the land. Thus was the Presbytery established in Scotland, and its confession asserted, “To kings, princes, rulers, and magistrates we affirm, that chiefly, and most principally, the conservation and purgation of the religion appertains.” A religious function is thus asserted as the first duty of the magistrate. On the abdication of Mary, among the legal steps taken were acts of parliament, confessing the Protestant doctrine, forbidding the mass, declaring the Church, whose confession was ratified seven years before, to be “the only true and holy Kirk of Jesus Christ within this realm”; and framing for the sovereign a new coronation oath, binding him “to maintain the true religion and withstand the false,” and to banish from the kingdom “root out” — “all heretics and enemies to the true worship

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of God, that shall be convict by the true Kirk of God of the foresaid crimes.”

Thus in the immediate Reformation era there was in all the Protestant churches a practical unanimity of opinion, that to the civil magistrate belonged a religious function, in some, intimately related to the very life of the Church, in others, restricted to the suppression of heresy.

In the next century, after one hundred years had cumulated their illustrations of this principle, after the expatriation of Pilgrim and Puritan, the Westminster Assembly delivered itself as follows: “The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; yet 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 discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatever is transacted in them be according to the word of God.”

Nothing, in all the utterances of the period, can better than these Words illustrate the tenacity of the principle, that the civil power should perform a religious function. Emancipated from the Roman tyranny which depended on that principle, these men of England had been learning for a century that only an exchange of masters was being made, as they struggled against prelacy. Now the long-oppressed dissent comes to places of power and at once adopts the same principle in its own defence. There is no wonder that the satirist wrote, —

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“New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large!”

It is evident that, while the assembly was unable to free itself from that moss-grown principle, it was yet conscious of confusion and inconsistency. It solemnly declares that “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” and then proceeds to put that conscience at the discretion of the magistrate. Fearing that the magistrate may use his power unjustly, it empowers¹ him to call synods, but leaves to his judgment the question, whether the transactions of the synods are according to the word of God, and therefore binding on him, as guardian of the pure word, and suppressor of heresy. In reality, by this deliverance, the assembly bound the Church, hand and foot, under the power of the magistrate. Though formulated more than one hundred years after the opening of the Reformation, the Westminster Confession was more subservient than any of the precedent creeds of that epoch. The reign of Presbyterianism in England was very short, and no occasion of civil oppression by it is recorded. It is probable that in any event the enlarged sense of religious liberty would have forestalled any gross exercise of this restraining power; but at the same time the state was hereby, in set terms, put into possession of a power over the Church fully so great as that involved in the supremacy of Henry VIII.

To this testimony of the creeds of Protestantism, all of which speak substantially with the same voice, as to the religious function of the civil power, there may be added that of the great company of writers, philosophers, jurists, theologians of the age, who with but little variation agree thereto.

Erastus, who was court physician to the Elector Palatine, and whose name has been borrowed to express that theory which denies all self-government to the Church, taught that there was no power of discipline in the Church, and that sins

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of its members should be punished by the civil magistrate, “for that is his duty and office.” Hugo Grotius, the great leader of the Arminians, notwithstanding the fact that himself was persecuted for opinion’s sake, taught that, while the civil magistrate could not himself exercise sacred functions (administering the word and sacraments), yet he could enforce their exercise by those properly commissioned. Thus it was in the power of the state to abolish false religion and punish its disciples; to establish and control a State-Church.

Spinoza, while pleading for toleration and “liberty of philosophizing,” yet maintains 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” — “a piety accommodated by the decree of the State to public utility.”

Hobbes held that a Church without warrant from the sovereign was unlawful, the sovereign being supreme pastor and head of the Church. As such he could preach and administer sacraments by himself or others.

Cartwright, professor of divinity at Cambridge, 1580, maintained that while the Scripture was the only rule of faith and government, and that the management of Church affairs belonged to the Church itself, yet the Church may call upon the civil power to root out heresy and to preserve the purity of religion.

The theory of Hooker, 1594, merged Church and State together. On this he justifies the control of the crown and parliament over the 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.” Hooker was not in sympathy with the cruel proscription, with which Elizabeth in her later years pursued the non-conformists, and his essay on Ecclesiastical Polity, while attempting a

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reasonable foundation for the royal supremacy, offers no defence of persecution.

Thus it appears that for well-nigh two hundred years the general trend of opinion set one way, with variations as to extent and severity, but all agreeing that the state had a right of greater or less supremacy over the Church. Bossuet was substantially correct in saying that on one point all Christians had long been unanimous — the right of the civil magistrate to propagate truth by the sword; that even heretics were orthodox on this point. For the most part, Romanist and Protestant alike would as soon think of assailing any other principle of government as of calling in question this religious function of the civil ruler.

The exceptions were very few. As already noted, William of Orange desired a comprehensive toleration, but it does not appear that he was opposed to a state establishment. In England the only voice lifted for freedom of conscience and worship was that of the Brownists and Barrowists. Barrow and others were executed on the pretext of attacking the ecclesiastical system, which action was held to be treasonable. The majority fled to Holland. Later in the seventeenth century, the great Cromwell showed himself to be more liberal than most men of his age. He had doubts as to hard and fast lines of ecclesiastical policy. “Is it ingenuous,” he said, “to ask for liberty and not to give it?” Yet under the commonwealth, while the persecution of Romanists was relaxed, they could neither vote nor hold office; and the use of the book of prayer was forbidden.¹

By far the most advanced man of his time was Sir Harry Vane. He had suffered somewhat from the intolerance of Massachusetts, and, returning to England, had thrown his energies into the struggle against the king. But, whether from king or commonwealth, he did not approve of interference with religion. In 1656 he published A Healing Question, in which he took the ground that “the magistrate had no

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right to go beyond matters of outward practice, converse, and dealings in the things of this life between man and man.” In this same essay he also maintained that the army should be subject to parliament, for which he was haled before Cromwell and thrown into prison.

In the same decade arose the sect of the Quakers, whose “Inward Light,” resenting all external interference with religion, proclaimed the largest liberty of conscience. But their extreme “iconoclasm,” which would destroy all forms, institutions, and sacraments, added to their many wild vagaries of conduct, brought their vital truth into contempt. Fox was not recognized as a leader, save of visionaries.

John Locke stands highest in this list of individual exceptions. In the year of the accession of William and Mary, 1689, the great Toleration Act of England was passed. With this Locke was delighted, though far from satisfied.¹ His famous first Letter on Toleration written to his friend Limborch, said: “Toleration has indeed been granted, but not with that latitude which you and men like you would desire. But it is something to have got thus far.” This letter was written in Latin and not designed for publication; but William Popple, a London merchant, in some way coming into possession of a copy, translated it into English and published it, much to the annoyance of Locke, who thought the time not ripe for so open utterance. In the preface to the translation Popple used the words, which have been wrongly attributed to Locke, “Absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, is the thing that we stand in need of.”

In fact, however, these words did not misrepresent the opinions of Locke, as appears from his subsequent letters on the same subject. Thus he wrote, “People will always differ from one another about religion, and carry on constant strife and war, until the right of every one to perfect liberty in

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these matters is conceded, and they can be united in one body by a bond of mutual charity.”¹ Again, speaking of the State and Church as related to each other, he said: “The boundaries on both sides are fixed and immovable. He jumbles heaven and earth together, the things most remote and opposite, who mixes these societies, which are in their original end, business, and in everything, perfectly distinct and infinitely different from each other.”²

On William’s Toleration Act, Innes remarks: “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.” The Toleration Act, great as was the relief afforded, only recognized the right of non-confirming worship, and did not relax in any particular the civil disabilities to which its followers were subjected. Under these the non-conformists suffered for yet a hundred years and more; while in Ireland, where the Protestants were in a very small minority of the population, the Romanists suffered extreme oppression. They could not vote, or hold any office whatever. They could not plead, or even sue, in court. They could not teach, or be taught by, a Protestant, and could not go abroad for education. If a Romanist married a Protestant, the union was set aside, and the officiating priest was to be hanged. Priests and monks not registered were banished, and if they returned, were hanged. John Morley says, “The severity of the persecution against the Catholics exceeded that of the ten historic persecutions of the Christian Church.” This is

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overstrained, yet the lot of the Irish Romanists appeals to the compassion of the centuries.

The grudging toleration of William, with its slow after expansions, illustrates most strikingly the slowness with which the general mind came to the conception of true liberty, whether religious or civil. Burke, writing of the French Revolution, put the conception in words that have never been excelled:¹ “The liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which liberty is secured by equality of restraint. This kind of liberty is, indeed, but another name for justice. Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is in my opinion safe.” This acute remark is equally true of religious as of civil liberty, and it makes another comment on the tardiness of human progress to note that the very man, whose profound mind thus declared the nature of true liberty, opposed with all the force of his impassioned speech the first attempt to lighten the burdens on the English non-conformists. Men not seldom, while discerning abstract principles, fall lamentably short in their application of them to concrete matters of life.

But among the few and scattered European voices for religious liberty, heard in the two hundred and fifty years from the day of Luther, the place of honor is undoubtedly to be accorded to the Anabaptists. Their doctrine is one of the most remarkable things which appeared in that wonderful age. It comes to speech with a clearness and fulness which suggest a revelation, just as to Luther dawned justification by faith, soul enlightening and uplifting. And, no less notable, this doctrine came at the very opening of the Reformation, in the year 1524, just after the famous Diet of Worms and while Luther was secluded in the Wartburg.

The doctrine,² making a thorough distinction between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace, insisted that freedom of conscience and of worship was fundamental,

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and that religion should be entirely exempt from the regulation or interference of the civil power, so that a man’s religion should not work his civil disability. Besides this, they declared also that the Church should be composed exclusively of the regenerate, membership therein to be conditioned, not upon residence or birth, but upon the work of grace in the heart. In this last point they anticipated, by more than two centuries, that distinction by Edwards which shattered the union of Church and State in America.

There can be but one mind as to the grandeur of the doctrine thus propounded by the Anabaptists, nor as to the immense blessings which it finally conferred upon the world. This is the great contribution to Christian thought made by this one among the Protestant sects. To the honor of its descendants it should also be noted that they ever clung tenaciously to these principles so early declared. Thus, the English Baptists at Amsterdam, in 1611, made it an article of faith that — “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.” And when, in the following century, the struggle for religious liberty took place in America, among the various Churches the Baptists were most strenuous and sturdy in its defence. They divide the honors, indeed, with the Quakers. But while the Quakers were immovable in their passive resistance to intolerance, the Baptists added to such virtue the active energy which overcomes.

But upon the world of the early Anabaptists their doctrine smote with a voice of alarm. In Romanist and Protestant alike it aroused disgust and anger, seeming to strike at the foundations of both Church and State. And not without reason. It was too radical, and neither princes nor people were ready to recognize its vital and enlightening principle. For them it meant disorder and revolution without good ends or stable aims, merely for disorder’s sake.

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Moreover, the doctrine was too great even for these first proclaimers. It was as though the effect upon them overwhelmed and unbalanced the mind. They lacked a great leader, a Luther or Calvin, who could hear so great a revelation, and with clear vision and firm hand discern and impose those just limitations which true liberty is glad to own. Consequently, they almost at once brought their doctrine into deserved reproach by running off into the wildest and most fantastic vagaries and disorders. They declared that the state was an evil to be endured only so long as there were unregenerate people; that a community of Christians needs no civil magistracy, for law concerns only evil-doers, and the only valid legislation for Christians is the Bible. Princes were to be dethroned; the enemies of the gospel were to be destroyed. John of Leyden, under such fanaticism, attempted to set up at Munster the new “Kingdom of Zion,” in which all things were to be common, and which was to usher in the millennium. He was guilty of many atrocities. All Europe was alarmed, and most stringent measures were adopted. The poor enthusiasts were hunted and slain like wild beasts. With curious and bitter irony, the Protestant Canton of Zurich decreed that all “rebaptizers and rebaptized,” should be drowned. Thus the new and glorious life was eclipsed to reappear after long waiting in America.

The Old World Idea, developed and illustrated in the passage of sixteen centuries, had thus in all lands, both those under the Roman See and those divided between the followers of Luther and Calvin, this common principle — a root out of which came many variations — that the state should legislate for the benefit of the Church; that the Church should look to the state for support and defence; and that the state should recognize and establish a particular Church as the representative of the only legally authorized form of religion and worship. Such was the almost universal mind of Christendom at the time when the Pilgrims, fleeing from persecution, went first to Holland and, eleven years after, to New England.