Thus brought to its true elements, to its essence, religion no longer appears as a matter purely individual, but as a powerful and fruitful principle of association. First take it as a system of creeds and dogmas. Truth belongs to none peculiarly; it is universal and absolute; men require to seek and profess it in common. Then as to the precepts associated to doctrines: an obligatory law for one individual is so for all; it must be promulgated, and all men must be brought under its empire. Lastly, as to the promises which religion makes under sanction of its creeds and precepts: they must be spread far and wide, and all must be called to enjoy their blessing. Therefore it is from the essential elements of religion that religious society arises; and it results so infallibly from them, that the word proselytism, which is especially applied to religious creeds, and seems almost exclusively consecrated to them, is still that which expresses the most forcible of social sentiments, that incessant craving to propagate ideas, and give extension to any particular society.

When the germs of the religious society are once laid, that is, when a certain number of men are united in common religious articles of belief, under a law of common religious precepts, and in common religious hopes, a government is needed for them. No society can exist a week, even an hour, without a government. At the very moment that the society is formed, and by the mere fact of its formation, it calls up a government to proclaim the common truth, the bond of the society, and to promulgate and maintain the precepts which that truth may bring to light. The necessity for a power or government over the religious society, as over every other, is implied in the fact of the existence of the society. And not only is the government absolutely essential, but it forms itself naturally. I cannot linger long in explaining how government is produced and established in society at large; I will confine myself to the remark, that when things follow their natural laws, when force takes no part, power falls to the most able, to the best, to those who will lead society to its object. Is a warlike expedition contemplated? The most valiant will take the power. Has the association in view some skilful investigation or enterprise? The most qualified will attain the mastery. In all cases, whenever the world is left to its natural course, the natural inequality of men is freely displayed, and each takes the place which he is capable of filling. And in the religious relation, men are not more equal in talents, powers, and capacity, than in other respects: such a man will be more capable than another to shed light upon religious doctrines, and to make them generally adopted; another will derive from himself more authority to enforce the observance of the religious precepts; and some other will excel in sustaining and raising the emotions of the mind and the religious hopes. Hence the same inequality in faculties and influence, which gives birth to power in civil society, is equally its cause in religious. Missionaries come forth and declare themselves, like generals. So that, as on the one hand a religious government necessarily results from the nature of a religious society, so on the other, by the mere operation of human faculties, and their unequal distribution, its development also is perfectly natural. Therefore, as soon as religion is planted in man, a religious society is formed; and as soon as the religious society appears, it produces its government.

But here a fundamental objection arises, from the absence of anything to ordain and impose, and from nothing coercitive being legitimate. That there is, in fact, no scope for government, since liberty ought to subsist unrestricted.

It is, I believe, a very confined and rude idea of government to imagine it to reside solely, or even with regard to the force which it exhibits to insure obedience, in its coercitive element.

I leave the religious point of view, and take civil government, following the simple course of events. Society exists: there is something to do, no matter what, for its interest, or in its name; there is a law to give, a measure to take, or a judgment to pronounce. Most assuredly there is likewise a good law to make, a good resolve to follow, and a good judgment to deliver. Whatsoever may be the subject under discussion, or the interest brought in question, upon all occasions there is a truth necessary to be known, and which ought to decide the conduct.

The first act of government is to seek out this truth, and to discover what is just and reasonable, and what is suitable to the society. When it has found it, it proclaims it. Then it must endeavour to impress upon the minds of those upon whom it is to act, that it is right, so as to gain their approval and acquiescence. Is there anything coercive in all this? Certainly not. Now suppose that the truth, which ought to decide the affair, whatever it may be, is found out and proclaimed, that all understandings are immediately convinced, all inclinations determined, that all universally recognise the government to be right, and give it spontaneous obedience; there is still no coercion, there is no need for the employment of force. But is it to be concluded from this that government has not subsisted, that, in fact, there has been no government? Most clearly there has been a government, and it has accomplished its true task. Coercion comes only when the resistance of individual wills presents itself, when the idea, or the measure which government has adopted, obtains not the approbation or the voluntary submission of all. Then the government employs force to make itself be obeyed, a necessary result of human imperfection, an imperfection residing at once both in the governing power and in the society. There will never be any means for absolutely avoiding it; civil governments will always be obliged to have recourse to it in a certain degree. But surely coercion does not constitute them; whenever they can dispense with it, they do so, to the great advantage of all, and their highest state of perfection is to pass from it, and to rely upon purely moral means, upon the influence exercised over the intelligence of men; insomuch that the more a government departs from coercion, the more faithful is it to its true nature, and the better fulfils its end. It is not, therefore, lowered or unduly contracted, as is vulgarly echoed; it acts in another manner, and that manner infinitely more general and powerful. Those governments which employ most coercion, effect much less than those which employ none. By addressing itself to good sense, by convincing free wills, by acting with means purely intellectual, a government, instead of lowering itself, is extended and elevated, and it is under such circumstances that it accomplishes its greatest actions. On the contrary, it is when it is obliged to ceaselessly employ coercion that it contracts and shrinks, effects very little, and that little very badly.

The essence of government, then, is far from residing in coercion, or the employment of force. That which constitutes it most especially, is a system of means and powers, based on the principle of truly seeking the discovery of what is fitting to be done upon each occasion, the discovery of the truth which ought to govern society, so that it may be afterwards made to penetrate the minds of men, and procure their voluntary and free adoption. The necessity for, and the existence of a government, are therefore quite conceivable, even when there is no scope given to coercion, or when it is absolutely interdicted.

Now this is exactly the government of a religious society. There is no doubt that coercion is prohibited in it, for inasmuch as the human conscience is its only territory, the employment of force is unquestionably illegitimate, whatever may be the object in view; but it does not the less subsist, nor is it the less incumbent upon it to accomplish all those things previously mentioned. It behoves it diligently to search for the religious doctrines which solve the problems upon the human destiny, or if there be already a general system of articles of belief in which those problems are solved, then, in each particular case, to unveil and place in full light the ordinances of the system; it must promulgate and enforce the precepts which correspond to its doctrines, and it must preach and expound them, and when society falls from them, call it back. But nothing compulsory; simply investigation into, the preaching and the expounding of, religious truths; in case of need, admonitions and censure. In this lies the task, as also the duty, of the religious government. Set aside coercion out of view altogether, still, all the essential questions as to the organisation of government arise and claim a solution. For instance, the question whether a body of religious magistrates be necessary, or whether it be possible to trust to the religious inspiration of individuals?— a question which is at issue between the majority of religious societies and the Quakers—is one which will always exist, and must always demand discussion. So also the question, whether, when it is agreed that a body of religious magistrates is necessary, preference should be given to a system of equality, where the ministers of religion are equal amongst themselves, and deliberate in common, or to a hierarchical constitution with different degrees of power? is one which will never cease, on account simply of all coercitive power being denied to the ecclesiastical magistrates, whatever may be their denomination. Instead, therefore, of seeking the dissolution of the religious society, so as to attain a right to destroy the religious government, we are bound to remember that the religious society is formed in the natural order of things, and that the government results as naturally from the society; and that the real problem to resolve is, to determine upon what conditions this government ought to subsist, and what are the bases, the principles, the conditions of its legitimacy. This is the true investigation which the necessary existence of the religious government, as of every other, imposes.

Now the conditions of legitimacy are the same for the government of the religious society as for every other. They may be reduced to two: the first, that the power devolves upon and remains constantly in the hands of the best and most capable, so far, at least, as is practicable in the imperfection of human affairs; that the men, legitimately superior, scattered through society, be sought out, brought forward, and called upon to decide the social law, and to exercise the power; the second, that power, rightfully constituted, respects the rightful liberties of those upon whom it is exercised. A good system in the formation and organisation of power, and a good system of guarantees for liberty, are the two conditions which imply the goodness of government in general, religious or civil. They must all be judged by this twofold criterion.

Therefore, instead of urging its existence as a reproach to the church, or government of the Christian world, it is incumbent upon us to investigate how it was constituted, and whether its principles corresponded to the two essential conditions of every good government. Let us examine the church under this double aspect.

With regard to the creation and transmission of power in the church, there is a word in frequent use in speaking of the Christian clergy, which I desire to repudiate—namely, the appellation of caste. The body of ecclesiastical magistrates has been often styled a caste. The expression is far from being a just one; for the idea of hereditary descent is inherent in that of caste. If we take the countries in which the system of castes was produced, India and Egypt, we shall find it was essentially hereditary, the transmission of the same situation and power from father to son. Where the hereditary principle did not prevail, neither did the caste, but a corporation. The spirit engendered in an established body has its evil results, but it is quite different from the spirit arising from the system of castes. The word caste cannot be at all applied to the Christian church. The celibacy of the priests prevented the Christian clergy from becoming a caste.

Now the consequences of this difference are considerable. To the system of caste, to the fact of hereditary descent, monopoly is inevitably attached. The very definition of the word proves it. When the same functions and powers become hereditary in the same families, it is clear that an exclusive privilege is transmitted, and that no one can acquire these functions or powers independently of his origin. Such, in fact, was the result; for where the religious government fell into the hands of a caste, it became matter of privilege, and no person entered it but those who sprang from the families of the caste. But nothing of this sort is met in the Christian church, and indeed so far from that being the case, the church maintained the principle of the equal admissibility of all men, whatever might be their origin, to all its charges and dignities. The ecclesiastical career, more particularly from the fifth to the twelfth century, was open to all. The church was recruited from all ranks, from the inferior as well as the superior, and most frequently, indeed, from the inferior. All things were crumbling around it, under the influence of the exclusive system; it alone maintained the principle of equality and fair competition, and summoned the possessors of legitimate superiority to the assumption of power. This was the first great consequence that naturally resulted from it being a body and not a caste.

Again, there is a spirit inherent in castes, that of immutability or stagnation. This assertion has no need of proof. All history informs us that the spirit of stagnation has possessed all societies, political or religious, in which the system of castes predominated. The fear of change or progress was certainly introduced into the Christian church at a certain epoch, and up to a certain point. But we cannot say that it predominated, nor can we assert that the church has remained immovable and stationary: during many ages it was in movement and progress, sometimes stimulated by the attacks of an outward opposition, sometimes impelled from within by the necessities for internal reform and development. Upon the whole, it is a society which has constantly changed and progressed, and whose history is marked with corresponding characteristics. It admits of no doubt that the indiscriminate admission of all men to ecclesiastical charges, and the continual recruitment of the church upon a principle of equality, powerfully aided in maintaining and unceasingly reanimating its activity and energy, and in preventing the triumph of the immutable or stagnant spirit.

How was the church, thus admitting all men to power, assured as to the justness of their claims? How did it discover, and draw out from the obscurity of the mass, those legitimately superior spirits entitled to take part in the government?

Two principles were vigorous in the church: first, the election of the inferior by the superior, a power of choice and nomination exercised by the latter; secondly, the election of the superior by subordinates, properly an election such as we esteem it at the present day.

The ordination of priests, for example, the faculty of making a man a priest, belonged to the superior alone; the choice was exercised by the superior upon the inferior. Likewise with regard to the presentation to certain ecclesiastical benefices, amongst other benefices attached to feudal grants, it was the superior, whether king, pope, or lord, who named the incumbent. In other cases, the principle of election proper was in force. The bishops had been for a long time, and were frequently, at the epoch which now engages our attention, elected by the body of the clergy, and the congregations even sometimes interfered. In the cloisters of the monasteries, the abbot was elected by the monks. At Rome, the pope was elected by the college of cardinals, and formerly the whole Roman clergy took part in that nomination. Therefore we find these two principles, the choice of the inferior by the superior, and the election of the superior by subordinates, recognised and active in the church, especially at the epoch in question, and it was by the one or the other of these means that it designed the men called to exercise a portion of the ecclesiastical power.

The co-existence of two principles so essentially different was accompanied by a struggle for mastery. After many ages and vicissitudes, the nomination of the inferior by the superior has prevailed in the Christian church. But in general it was the other principle, the choice of the superior by the subordinates, which prevailed from the fifth to the twelfth century. There is no reason for astonishment in the co-existence of two principles so very distinct; for looking at society in general, at the natural course of things, and at the manner in which power is transmitted in the world, it is unquestionable that this transmission is effected, sometimes according to one of these modes, and sometimes according to the other. The church did not invent them; it found them in the providential arrangement of human things, and it thence borrowed them. There is much sound sense and utility in each mode, and their combination might often be the best means of discovering the really legitimate claimant to power. It is a great misfortune, in my opinion, that one of the two, the choice of the inferior by the superior, has been victorious in the church. But the other has never completely perished, and under different names it has been reproduced more or less successfully at every era, so as at all events to enter protests, and interrupt the prescription.

Returning to the epoch immediately under view, the Christian church then derived a prodigious strength from its respect for equality and legitimately superior minds. It was a society in the highest degree popularised, illimitably accessible and open to all the faculties, to all the noble aspirations, in human nature. Thence sprang its power, much more than from its riches and the illegitimate means of influence which it has too frequently employed.

With regard to the second condition of a good government, respect for liberty, the church was greatly deficient.

Two evil principles met in it; the one avowed and incorporated, so to speak, in its doctrines; the other introduced into it by human weakness, not as a legitimate consequence of its doctrines.

The first was the debasement of the rights of individual reason, the pretension to transmit articles of belief from high to low throughout the whole religious society, without allowing any one the right of private judgment. It is more easy to lay down this pretension as a principle, than to make it actually prevail. A conviction does not penetrate the human intellect, unless the intellect be itself accessory to its admission; it must be made acceptable to reason. In whatever manner it presents itself, whatever sanction it may invoke, reason weighs it, and if it prevail with the human understanding, it is because of its rationality. Thus there is always, under whatever form it may be veiled, an action of individual reason upon the ideas which are pretended to be imposed upon it. It is true, nevertheless, that reason may be perverted; it may to a certain extent nullify or emasculate itself; it may be induced to make a bad use of its faculties, or not to make such use of them as it has a right to do. Such, in fact, has been the consequence of this evil principle admitted into the church, although it never had, and never could have, an unmixed and uncontrollable action.

The second evil principle was the right of coercion arrogated to itself by the church—a right contrary to the nature of a religious society, to the origin of the church itself, and to its primitive maxims—a right contested by several of the illustrious fathers of the church, Saint Ambrose, Saint Hilary, and Saint Martin—but which, nevertheless, was upheld, and became a predominant assertion. The pretension of forcing to believe—if we can put these two words together—or of physically punishing belief, as the persecution of heresy—that is to say, contempt for the legitimate liberty of human thought, is an error which was introduced into the church even before the fifth century, and has cost it dear.

If, therefore, we consider the church in its relations with the liberty of its members, we perceive that its principles in this respect were less legitimate and salutary than those which presided at the formation of the ecclesiastical power. We are not, however, to conclude that one evil principle radically vitiates an institution, nor even that it does all the mischief with which it is pregnant. Nothing falsifies history more than logic. When the human understanding has fixed upon an idea, it deduces therefrom all possible consequences; it makes it bring forth all that in pure possibility it could bring forth, and then represents it in history as attended by all these results. But matters do not come out after this fashion; events are not so prompt as the deductions of the human mind. There is in all things a mixture of bad and good so deep-seated and invincible, that when you dive to the most hidden elements of society or the mind, whatever portion you open out, you there find these two orders of things co-existent, developing themselves side by side, and struggling with, but not exterminating each other. Human nature never goes to the last limits either of good or bad; it passes unceasingly from one to the other, recovering itself when it seems nearest the fall, and faltering at the moment that its step seems firmest. We discover here once more that characteristic of discordance, variety, and strife, which I have already remarked as the fundamental characteristic of European civilisation.

There is, furthermore, a general fact illustrative of the government of the church of which it is necessary to take notice. At the present day, when the idea of a government, whatever may be its nature, presents itself to us, we feel that there is no longer any pretension of controlling aught else than the outward actions of men, and their civil relations amongst themselves; governments profess to go no farther. As to the human thought and conscience, morality, properly so called, or as to individual opinions and private manners, they do not interfere; those matters fall to the domain of liberty.

Now the Christian church did, or wished to do, directly the reverse. Human thought, human liberty, private manners, and individual opinions, were precisely what it endeavoured to rule over. It did not make a code like other powers, to define the actions at once morally culpable and socially dangerous, and to award them punishment in proportion only as they bore this double character; but it set out a catalogue of all actions morally culpable, and, under the name of sins, it punished and acted on the design of repressing them all; in a word, the government of the church was not applied, like modern governments, to the outward man, and to the purely civil relations of men amongst themselves; it was applied to the inward man, to the thought and the conscience—that is to say, to what is held by man as most intimately his own, to what is most free and restive to constraint. The church, then, by the very nature of its enterprise, in combination with the tendency of some of the principles upon which its government was founded, was placed in peril of becoming tyrannical, and of using an illegitimate employment of force. But at the same time the force encountered an opposition which it could not vanquish. However little movement or scope may be left to them, human thought and love of liberty react energetically against every attempt to prostrate them, and repeatedly compel the very despotism which they endure to step down and abdicate its supremacy. This is what happened in the bosom of the Christian church. We have enumerated the proscription of heresy, the anathema upon the right of examination, the contempt for individual reason, and the principle of the imperative transmission of doctrines through those in authority. Yet scarcely a society is to be found in which individual reason has been more boldly developed than in the church. What are sects and heresies but the fruit of individual opinions? And these sects and heresies, and all this species of opposition encountered by the Christian church, afford incontestible proof of the moral life and activity which reigned in it; a troubled and painful life, strewed with dangers, errors, and crimes, yet noble and potential, and giving scope to the finest developments of intellect and opinion. But setting aside the opposition, and entering into the ecclesiastical government itself, we find it constituted and acting in a manner quite different to what some of its principles seem to have prescribed. It denied the right of examination, it wished to deprive individual reason of its liberty; yet it is to reason that it for ever addressed its appeals; liberty was actually its mainspring. What were its institutions and means of action? Provincial councils, national councils, œcumenical councils, a continual correspondence and an incessant publication of letters, admonitions, and other writings. Never did any government proceed to such an extent in the way of discussion and common deliberation. We might imagine ourselves in the schools of the Greek philosophy. And yet it was not a mere discussion or investigation of truth which was at issue; it involved questions of authority, of measures to adopt, of decrees to promulgate, a government in fact. But the energy of the intellectual life in the heart of this government was such, that it became the predominant and universal standard to which all others yielded, and the main fact displayed on all sides was the exercise of reason and liberty.

I am very far from concluding, on this account, that the evil principles which I have endeavoured to unfold as existing, in my opinion, in the system of the church, remained without effect. At the epoch which now engages our attention, they had already produced bitter consequences, and afterwards they were productive of much more disastrous results; but what I mean to affirm is, that they did not perpetrate all the mischief of which they were capable, and that they did not smother the good which was growing out of the same soil.

Such was the church considered in itself, in its internal state, in its nature. I proceed to its relations with sovereigns, the masters of temporal power. It is the second point of view under which I promised to consider it.

When the Empire fell, and instead of the old Roman system, instead of that government in the midst of which it had taken root, with which it had common feelings and long-formed ties, the church found itself exposed to those barbarous kings and chiefs roaming over the country or quartered in their castles, to whom no tie founded on a community of traditions, creeds, or sentiments, united it; the danger which impended over it was great, and of corresponding magnitude was its terror.

The idea which then seized predominantly upon the church was to gain possession of the new-comers, or, in other words, to convert them. The relations between the church and the barbarians had scarcely any other object at first.

In order to captivate the barbarians, it was chiefly necessary to address their senses and imagination. Therefore we find that at this epoch the number, pomp, and variety of ceremonious rites were augmented. The chronicles prove that it was mainly by these means that the church acted upon the barbarians. She converted them by imposing spectacles.

When the barbarians were finally established and converted, and some ties formed between them and the church, it did not cease to incur great danger from them. The brutality and recklessness in the barbarian manners were such, that the new creed, and the sentiments with which it had inspired them, exercised very little sway over them. Violence soon reassumed the upper hand, and the church was a victim to it equally with the rest of society. As a means of defence, it proclaimed a principle formerly asserted, although more indefinitely, under the Empire—namely, the separation of spiritual from temporal power, and their reciprocal independence. By the aid of this principle it was that the church continued unmolested by the barbarians. The church maintained that force could have no action upon a system of religious articles, hopes, and promises, and therefore that the temporal world was completely severed from the spiritual.

The salutary consequences resulting from this principle are discernible at a glance. Independently of the temporary utility it was to the church, it had the inestimable advantage of placing on the basis of right the separation of the two powers, and of controlling them by means of each other. Furthermore, by sustaining the independence of the intellectual world in general, in its full extent, the church prepared the way for the independence of individual intellect and of thought. The church said that the system of religious belief could not fall under the yoke of force, so each individual was tempted to use the same language on his own account. The principle of free discussion or examination, and of liberty for individual thought, is exactly the same as that of the independence of the general spiritual authority with respect to the temporal power.

Unfortunately, it is an easy matter to pass from the want of liberty to the lust of dominion. The church exhibited a proof of it at this period. By a tendency natural to human ambition and pride, the church endeavoured to establish for the spiritual power not only independence, but supremacy over the temporal power. Yet we must not believe that this pretension had no other source than the failings of humanity; there were others still deeper, which it behoves us to inquire into.

When liberty reigns in the intellectual world, when the human thought and conscience are not subjected to a power which denies them the right of discussion and decision, and employs force to crush them—when, in fact, there is no visible and constituted spiritual government, arrogating and exercising the right of dictating opinions—then is the idea of the dominion of a spiritual order over a temporal impossible. Such is pretty nearly the present state of the world. But when there exists, as in the tenth century did exist, a government of the spiritual order; when thought and conscience come under laws, institutions, and powers, which assert a right to command and coerce them; in a word, when the spiritual power is constituted, when it has taken effective possession, under the sanction of right and of force, of human reason and conscience, it is natural that it should be tempted to lay claim to dominion over the temporal order, and that it should exclaim, 'How! I have right and sway over what is most lofty and independent in man—over his reason, his inward will, his conscience—and shall I not have right over his outward, material, and fleeting interests? I, who am the interpreter of justice and truth, shall I be debarred from regulating earthly matters according to justice and truth?' By the mere provocative of this reasoning, the spiritual order was sure to be urged into an invasion of the temporal order. And this was still more certain when the spiritual order monopolised all the developments of the human mind then possible: there was but one science, theology; but one spiritual order, the theological: all the other sciences, rhetoric, arithmetic, even music, everything was comprised in theology.

The spiritual power thus finding itself at the head of the whole activity of the human brain, naturally fell into a self-assumption of the general government of the world.

A second cause was equally powerful in urging it to this appropriation—namely, the frightful state of the temporal order, and the violence and iniquity which prevailed in the temporal government of all communities.

We can speak of the rights of the temporal power without difficulty; but at the epoch under review, the power in question was a mere brute force, an intractable ruffianism. The church, however imperfect its notions of morals and of justice might still be, was infinitely superior to such a government, and the cry of the people was continually raised, beseeching it to take its place. When a pope or a few bishops proclaimed a sovereign denuded of his rights, and his subjects freed from the oath of fidelity, such an intervention, although doubtless open to serious abuses, was often in particular cases legitimate and salutary. In general, whenever liberty has been wanting to mankind, its restoration has been the work of religion. In the tenth century, the people were not in a state to defend themselves, or to make their rights available against civil violence, and religion came to the rescue in the name of Heaven. This is one of the reasons which have mainly contributed to the victories of the theocratic principle.

There is a third cause for the arrogation of the spiritual order, which has been too little noticed, arising out of the complexity in the situation of the chiefs of the church, and the variety of aspects under which they appeared in society. On the one hand they were prelates, members of the ecclesiastical order, part and parcel of the spiritual power, and by right thereof independent; on the other they were vassals, and, as such, engaged in the bonds of civil feudalism. And, furthermore, they were not only vassals, but also subjects: some portion of the old relations of the Roman emperors with the bishops and clergy had passed into those formed between the priesthood and the barbarian kings. By a series of causes which it would be too tedious to develop, the bishops had been led to regard, to a certain extent, the barbarian sovereigns as successors of the Roman emperors, and to attribute to them all their prerogatives. The chiefs of the clergy had therefore a triple character—an ecclesiastical character, and, as such, independent; a feudal character, and, as such, bound to certain duties, and holding by certain services; and the character of a simple subject, and, as such, held to obey an absolute sovereign. Now, the temporal sovereigns, who were not less greedy or ambitious than the bishops, frequently availed themselves of their rights as lords or sovereigns to encroach upon the spiritual independence, and to possess themselves of the presentation to benefices, the nomination to bishoprics, &c. On their side, the bishops often intrenched themselves behind their spiritual independence, to get rid of their obligations as vassals or subjects. In this manner there was an almost inevitable tendency leading the sovereigns, on the one hand, to destroy the spiritual independence; and the chiefs of the church, on the other, to make that independence an instrument to work out universal dominion.

This result has been illustrated by facts notorious to all, as in the disputes concerning investitures, and the struggles between the priesthood and the empire. The distinct positions of the chiefs of the church, and the difficulty of reconciling them, have been the real source of the uncertainty and the contests with regard to these pretensions.

Finally, the church had a third relation with the sovereigns, the least favourable, and the most disastrous, for itself: it laid claim to coercion, to the right of repressing and punishing heresy: but it had no means to effect this; it had no physical force at its disposal; so that when it had condemned heresy, it was unable of itself to put its judgment in execution. In this strait it invoked what was called the secular arm; in other words, it borrowed the force of the civil power as a means of coercion. In consequence, it placed itself, with regard to the civil power, in a situation of dependence and inferiority. Such was the deplorable necessity to which the adoption of the evil principle of coercion and persecution reduced the church.

There remains to be considered the relations of the church with the people, which I shall enter upon in the next lecture, as well as such other questions as arise out of this branch of our inquiry.

Lecture VI.
Relations Of The Church With The People.

I have preliminarily laid down that the church ought to be considered under three principal aspects: firstly, in itself, in its internal constitution, in its nature, and as a distinct and independent society; secondly, in its relations with sovereigns and the temporal power; and finally, in its relations with the people. We have accomplished the two first divisions of this task, and I now proceed to the last. I shall subsequently endeavour to draw from this triple examination a general appreciation of the influence of the church upon European civilisation from the fifth to the twelfth century. I shall then verify my assertions by an epitome of facts, by the history of the church at that epoch.

In speaking of the relations of the church with the people, I am of course obliged to restrict myself to very general terms. I cannot enter into a detail of the usages of the church, or of the every-day relations of the clergy with the faithful. The predominant principles, and the great results of the system, and of the conduct of the church towards the Christian people, are what I concern myself with.

The main characteristic, and the radical vice (for so it must be called) of the relations of the church with the people, was the separation of the governing and the governed, the non-influence of the governed over their government, the independence of the Christian clergy, with reference to the body of the faithful.

This evil must have been provoked, one would imagine, by the state of man and of society, for it was introduced into the Christian church at a very early date. The separation was not fully consummated at the era we are contemplating, as upon certain occasions, the elections of bishops, for instance, there was still an occasional direct interference by the Christian flocks in their government. But such efforts were weak and rare; and even from the second century of our era, this intervention had commenced a visible and rapid decline. A tendency to the isolation and independence of the clergy is in some degree the burden of church history from its dawn.

It cannot be denied that from this circumstance has arisen the major part of the abuses which, at this period, and still more at a later date, have so injured the church. We must not, however, impute them absolutely to it, or regard this tendency to isolation as peculiar to the Christian clergy. There is, in the very nature of a religious society, a strong inclination to raise the government far above the governed, and to attribute to the former something distinct and holy. It comes from the mission itself with which they are charged, and from the character under which they offer themselves to the eyes of the multitude. Yet this result is more baneful in a religious society than in any other. What is at stake to the governed? Their reason, their conscience, their immortal destiny—that is to say, such considerations as are most strictly inward, most individual to each, and most incapable of thraldom. We can, to a certain extent, imagine that, although some evil may result from it, mankind may abandon to a visible authority the direction of their material interests and temporal destiny. We can understand the philosopher who, on being informed that his house was on fire, answered, 'Go and tell my wife: I have nothing to do with the affairs of the household.' But when the matter at issue is conscience, thought, the inward moral existence, for men to abdicate the government of themselves, and to give themselves up to a foreign sway, is an actual moral suicide, a servitude a hundred times more abject than can befall the body, or than that endured by the tethered serf.

Such, nevertheless, was the evil which overbore the church in its relations with the faithful, though its weight became alleviated, as I shall hereafter demonstrate. We have already seen, that for the clergymen themselves, and in the heart of the church, liberty had no guarantee. For laymen, and outside the church, the matter was much worse. Amongst ecclesiastics, there was at all events discussion, deliberation, and a deployment of individual faculties; with them the excitement of dispute supplied in some sort the lack of liberty. But there was nothing of this description between the clergy and the people. The laymen assisted in the government of the church as simple spectators. And thus we perceive that idea so early vegetate and expand, that theology, or religious questions and affairs, are the privileged domain of the clergy, that the clergy alone have a right to decide, or even to canvass them, and that on no account, or under any pretence, ought laymen to interfere. At the era under review this theory was already in full blossom; and it has required ages and terrible revolutions to subdue it, and to bring back, even partially, religious questions and science to the public domain.

Therefore, in principle as well as in fact, the legal separation of the clergy and the Christian people was nearly complete before the twelfth century.

In spite of this, however, the Christian people were not without influence, even at this epoch, upon their government. Legal interference was wanting to it, but not influence. In fact its extinction is scarcely possible in any government, much less in one founded upon articles of belief common to the governing and the governed. Whenever an actual community of ideas is developed, or an intellectual movement of the same order is participated by both government and people, a bond necessarily exists between them which no viciousness in the organisation can utterly break. To give a clear explanation of my meaning, I will take an example from our own history of the political cast. At no date in the history of France have the French people had less legal control over their government, by means of institutions, than in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under Louis XIV. and Louis XV. Every one knows that almost all the direct and official interference of the country, in the exercise of authority, had died away at those periods. Yet there is no doubt that the public and the country then exercised much more influence over the government than at other times—in those, for instance, in which the States-General were frequently convoked, in which the parliaments took considerable part in politics, and in which the legal participation of the people with power was unquestionably greater.

It is because there is a force which laws do not entomb, and which, upon occasion, can shake off the burden of institutions, the force of ideas, of public intelligence and opinion. In the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was a public opinion much more potential than at any other epoch. Although it was debarred from legal means of acting on the government, it acted indirectly, by the sway of ideas common to the governing and the governed, and by the impossibility experienced by the rulers to set at nought the opinion of society. A similar fact occurred in the Christian church of the fifth to the twelfth centuries: the Christian people, it is true, were deficient in means of legal action, but there was a great mental movement in religious matters, which operated conjointly upon laymen and ecclesiastics, and gave means of action to the people upon the clergy.

In studying history, it is essential to set great value upon indirect influences in all things, for they are much more efficacious, and sometimes more salutary, than are commonly represented. It is natural for men to wish that their action should be prompt and palpable, and to derive pleasure from taking part in their own success, power, and triumph. But this is not always possible, nor even useful. There are times and situations in which indirect and imperceptible influences are alone advantageous and practicable. I will again adduce an example of the political order. More than once, in 1641 especially, the English parliament has claimed, like many other assemblies in analogous cases, the right of directly nominating the great officers of the crown, the ministers and councillors of state, &c. regarding this direct interference in the government as a great and precious guarantee. It has sometimes exercised this privilege, and the experiment has always met with bad success. Yet what takes place now in England? Is it not the influence of the two houses of parliament which decides the formation of the ministry, and the nomination of all the great officers of the crown? Certainly; but it is an indirect and general influence, instead of a special intervention. The result for which England has long laboured is produced, but by another course; the first had never worked beneficially.

There is a reason for this, upon which I shall linger for a moment. The direct action requires, in those to whom it is confided, an unusual share of enlightenment, sound sense, and prudence: as they aim at reaching their point at once, and without delay, they have good need of caution, lest their enterprise be ill-timed, and fail. Indirect influences, on the contrary, encounter obstacles ere they come into play, and undergo trials which test and rectify them: before succeeding, they are subjected to discussion, opposition, and restriction: their triumph is slow, and upon conditions, in a certain degree. Therefore, when the minds of men are not sufficiently advanced and ripened to render the direct action secure, indirect and mitigated influences are preferable. It was thus that the Christian people acted on their government, very incompletely, and far too stintedly, I am aware, yet they certainly did act.

There was likewise another cause of reconcilement between the church and laymen, existing in the dispersion, so to speak, of the Christian clergy amongst all the conditions of society. Almost everywhere, when a church has been constituted independent of the people whom it governed, the body of priests has been formed of men nearly in the same situation; not that marked inequalities did not prevail amongst them; but still, upon the whole, the power has been vested in colleges of priests, living in community, and governing, from the depths of a temple, the people bowing under their yoke. The Christian church was quite differently organised. From the miserable hut of the boor or serf, at the foot of the feudal castle, to the palace of the king, there was throughout society a priest or member of the clerical body. Clergymen were associated to all conditions of men. This diversity in the situation of the Christian priests, this sharing in all fortunes, has been a great principle of union between the clergy and laymen, which has been entirely wanting to the majority of churches invested with power. The bishops and chiefs of the Christian church were furthermore, as has been previously mentioned, mixed up with the feudal organisation, and were members of the civil as well as of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Hence arose common interests, usages, and manners, between the civil and religious orders. It has been judged scandalous, and reasonably, that bishops waged war, and that priests led the life of laymen. Assuredly it was a great abuse, and yet one infinitely less disastrous than was elsewhere the existence of those priests who never issued out of the temple, and who were altogether separated from the people in their course of life. The bishops, who took part, to a certain extent, in the civil disorders, were of more avail than priests, complete strangers to the population, its affairs, and its manners. In this respect there was a parity of destiny and situation between the clergy and the people, which, if it did not correct, certainly lessened, the evil of the separation between the rulers and the governed.

Now, this separation being admitted, and its limits and countervailing influences determined, let us next inquire how the church governed, in what manner it acted upon the populations subject to its empire; what it effected, on the one hand, for the development of the man, for the moral advancement of the individual, and, on the other, for the amelioration of the social state.

To speak the truth, I do not believe that, at the era in question, the church concerned itself greatly about the development of the individual. It endeavoured to inspire the powerful in the world with milder sentiments, and to induce them to act with more justice in their relations with the weak; and it taught the oppressed to lead a moral life, and to indulge in sentiments and hopes of a loftier order than those to which their immediate destiny condemned them. Yet for individual development, properly so called, for imparting value to the personal nature of men, I do not believe that the church then did much, at least so far as laymen were concerned. What it did was confined to the ecclesiastical society itself; it made great exertions for the development of the clergy, for the instruction of priests; for them it had schools, and all the institutions which the deplorable state of society allowed. But they were ecclesiastical schools, appointed for the instruction of the clergy alone, and, with their exception, the church acted indirectly, and by very slow means, towards the progress of ideas and manners. It doubtless gave a stimulus to general mental activity by the career it proffered to all those whom it judged capable of serving it; but that was pretty nearly all it did, at that period, for the intellectual development of the laity.

It had a greater influence, and acted in a more efficacious manner, towards the amelioration of the social state. It resolutely struggled against the great vices of the social state—for example, against slavery. It has been often asserted that the abolition of slavery in modern Europe was exclusively owing to Christianity. I think that is saying too much. Slavery long existed in the heart of the Christian society, without greatly exciting its astonishment, or drawing down its anathema. A multitude of causes, and a great development in other ideas of civilisation, were required to eradicate this evil of evils, this iniquity of iniquities. Yet it is indubitable that the church employed its influence in restraining it. There exists an unquestionable proof of this fact. The greater part of the formulas of enfranchisement, made out at different eras, are founded upon a religious motive; it is upon the invocation of religious ideas, of hopes of eternal bliss, and of the equality of men in the eyes of Heaven, that the enfranchisement is almost invariably pronounced.

The church laboured likewise for the suppression of a great many barbarous practices, and for the amelioration of the criminal and civil legislation. Although containing certain principles of liberty, the laws were absurd, and fruitful of injustice; the most stupid ordeals, the judicial combat, and the unsupported oaths of a specified number of men, were esteemed the only means of arriving at the discovery of truth. The church strove to have more rational and legitimate means substituted. I have already spoken of the difference observable between the laws of the Visigoths, derived principally from the councils of Toledo, and the other barbarian laws. It is impossible to compare them, without being struck with the immense superiority of the ideas of the church on the subject of legislation and the administration of justice, in all that relates to the investigation of truth and of what is befitting to man. Doubtless most of these ideas were borrowed from the Roman legislation; but if the church had not preserved and asserted them, and done its utmost to propagate them, they would certainly have perished. For example, the employment of the oath in process is wisely regulated in the law of the Visigoths.

'Let the judge, in order fully to understand the cause, first interrogate the witnesses, and then examine the writings, so that the truth may be discovered with more certainty, and the oath not too lightly administered. A determination according to truth and justice requires that the writings on both sides be carefully examined, and that the necessity for the oath, kept in suspense over the heads of the parties, come upon them unexpectedly. Let the oath be administered only in causes in which the judge shall not succeed in discovering any writing, any proof, or any certain clue to the truth.'—(For. Jud. 1. ii. tit. i. 1. 21.)

In criminal matters, the relation of the punishments to the offences is determined according to philosophical and moral notions, of singular justness. The efforts of an enlightened legislator struggling against the violence and irreflectiveness of the barbarian manners, are clearly distinguishable. The enactments under the title or head of 'Cœde et morte hominum'—['Of the slaying and death of men'], compared to those of a correspondent nature in use amongst other nations, is a very remarkable example of these characteristics. In other codes, it is almost exclusively the damage which is held to constitute the crime, and the penalty is comprised in that tangible reparation which results from a principle of composition. But here the crime is reduced to its moral and true element, intention. The different shades of criminality, the purely involuntary homicide, accidental homicide, justifiable homicide, and homicide with or without premeditation, are distinguished and defined almost as well as in our codes, and the punishments vary on a very equitable scale. The legislator has rendered justice more indiscriminate; he has attempted, if not to abolish, at least to lessen, that diversity in the legal value of men established by the other barbarian laws. The only distinction he has maintained is that of the free man and the slave. With regard to free men, the punishment is not varied either according to the national origin, or according to the rank of the defunct, but simply according to the different degrees of moral culpability in the murderer. With regard to slaves, not venturing to completely deprive masters of the right of life and death, attempts are at all events made to restrain it, by making it subject to a public and regular process. The text of the law deserves to be cited.

'If no malefactor or accomplice in a crime ought to remain unpunished, how much more ought he to be put down who commits murder wickedly and trivially! Thus, as masters in their pride frequently put their slaves to death without any fault on their parts, it is expedient to utterly abrogate this license, and to ordain that this law shall be for ever observed by all. No master or mistress shall be allowed to inflict death, without public judgment, upon any of their slaves, male or female, or upon any person dependent upon them. If a slave or any other servant commits a crime which may subject him to capital punishment, his master or his accuser shall immediately make it known to the judge of the place where the action has been committed, or the count, or the duke. After investigation into the matter, if the crime is proved, let the guilty undergo, either through the judge or his own master, the sentence of death he has deserved; provided that, if the judge will not put the criminal to death, he shall draw up in writing a capital sentence against him, and then it shall be in the discretion of the master to slay him or to spare his life. At the same time, if the slave, by a fatal audacity, offering resistance to his master, has struck him, or attempted to strike him, with a weapon, a stone, or any other thing, and if the master, endeavouring to defend himself, has slain the slave in his anger, he shall not be at all held amenable to the penalties of homicide. But it shall be necessary to prove that the fact has thus happened, and that by the testimony or oath of the male or female slaves who were present, and by the oath of the perpetrator himself. Whoever, from pure wickedness, by his own hand, or by that of another, shall kill his slave without public judgment, shall be declared infamous, and incapable of appearing as a witness, condemned to pass the rest of his life in exile and penitence, and his possessions fall to his next of kin, to whom the law accords the inheritance.'—(For. Jud. 1. vi. tit. v. 1. 12.)