ties, the nation, through the same agency, may discharge." But the ministers of the one Church may also be the ministers of the other; the ministers of the visible Church of Christ may be, also, the ministers of the national or established Church. This is, for many reasons, expedient, and is actually the case. Thus the titles, emoluments, and political power of the clergy, belong to them, not as ministers of the Church of Christ, which is not national or local, but as an estate of the realm; as a body charged with the vast responsibility of preserving and promoting the moral culture of the people. In this capacity they may sit in Parliament, which is the great Council of the nation.

Mr. Gladstone, in his work on "Church and State," some of the doctrines of which he has since renounced, does not differ materially from Coleridge.1 Mr. Gladstone holds, that the State is a moral person, bound to act in the name of Christ and for the glory of God, and to make religion the paramount end in guiding and governing the nation. But he claims that the true Church, which has in it the apostolic succession, must be the body chosen by the nation for the performance of this high office. He admits that there may be a condition of religious opinion, where this alliance of the State with the Church is impracticable, as is the case in the United States; but in all such communities, he considers the life of the State maimed, imperfect, conventional.

Chalmers maintains that an establishment is necessary to the proper effect of Christianity upon a people.2 The State, he thinks, is bound to select and support some one denomination, and maintain its religious teachers. In making the selection, the State must be governed, if this be practicable, by a consideration of the truth or error of the tenets of the various religious bodies. It must in

1 The State in Connection with the Church (4th ed., 1841).

2 Works, vol. xvii.

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quire, what is truth. But if religious opinion is so divided, or the circumstances are such, that this cannot be made the sole criterion, some one "Protestant," "evangelical" denomination must be chosen.

Macaulay, in his review of Gladstone's book, represents the lowest, or most moderate type of opinion among the advocates of an Establishment.1 He denies that the direct end of government is the propagation of religion. The direct end of governments is the protection of life and property. This is the proper and only essential function of the State. But while pursuing this end, the State may and should, as a collateral object, have in view the moral and religious improvement of the people. Especially may public education be defended as necessary to the safety of the State. The promotion of religion is an incidental, not a direct or main business of the civil organization. In selecting its Church, or the religious instructors of the people, the State or government must be determined, not, indeed, by the mere will of a majority, but not by its own views of truth exclusively; but must act in such a way as to secure the largest proportion of truth with the smallest admixture of error. Hence the religious views and prejudices that prevail in the community must always be consulted and respected.

In the English system, the filling of all high ecclesiastical offices devolves on the sovereign, the ecclesiastical bodies not being at liberty to refuse the formal concurrence which is required to fulfill the election. The two provinces of York and Canterbury have each its Convocation, composed of two houses, the first consisting of the bishops, and the second, of the rest of the clergy; and the two Convocations may combine. But Convocation cannot assemble without authority from Parliament, nor is it possible for any ecclesiastical laws or canons to be 1 Macaulay's Essays, vol. iv.

passed without the consent of Parliament. The result has been that for nearly two centuries, Convocation has had little more than a nominal existence. To this extent has synodal government vanished in the English Church, and the government of the Church been surrendered to the State.1

Turning to the Catholic Church, we find, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, a singular development of doctrine on the origin and nature of civil authority. High views of Papal authority, as extending over mundane affairs, were promulgated by the Popes themselves, and by the Catholic theologians, especially those of the Jesuit order. The centralization of Europe, which gave such increased vigor to national feeling and to temporal authority, made it for the interest of the Papal See to divest that authority of a portion of its sanctity. Bellarmine adopted the figure which had been used by Thomas Aquinas to define the distinction, but close connection, of the civil and the Papal authority. The former is to the latter as the body to the soul. The two are not the same, but the one is inferior and subordinate to the other; at the same time that the body has functions of its own. Bellarmine affirmed only an indirect control on the part of the Pope over the temporal power. The Pope does not immediately legislate in temporal affairs. Yet as the

1 Convocation, in 1665, surrendered the privilege of taxing the clergy, which had before pertained to it, to the House of Commons. Within the last twenty years attempts have been made to revive Convocation, and to invest it with some real function. Boswell records a vigorous expression of Dr. Johnson, on this matter, under date of August 3, 1763: "I had the misfortune before we parted to irritate him unintentionally. I mentioned to him how common it was in the world to ascribe to him very strange sayings. JOHNSON. 'What do they make me say, sir?' BOSWELL. 'Why, sir, an instance very strange indeed (laughing heartily as I spoke). David Hume told me you said that you would stand before a battery of cannon to restore Convocation to its full powers.' Little did I apprehend that he had actually said this; but I was soon convinced of my error; for, with a determined look, he thundered out: And would I not, sir? Shall the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland have its General Assembly, and the Church of England be denied its Convocation?'"'

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guardian of religion and morals, he may interfere to prevent the passing or execution of a bad law. He may absolve subjects from their allegiance to a heretical or unworthy king. A vast and sweeping, though, in form, an indirect prerogative, in reference to the government of States, is thus attributed to him. The right to rebel against heretical sovereigns, and to dethrone them, was taught by the Jesuits, William Allen and Parsons, who were laboring to overthrow Elizabeth, and by other Catholic teachers in the time of the League, and of the assassination of Henry III. The right of rebellion, in the case supposed, was solemly affirmed by the Sorbonne. The first defense of regicide had come from a priest, Jean Petit, who delivered a discourse in 1408, defending the murder of the Duke of Orleans by the Duke of Bur gundy. It had required the strenuous exertions and repeated harangues of Gerson, at the Council of Constance, to procure from that body a condemnation of the doctrine of Petit. The attempt of the Poles to obtain from Martin V., and from the Council, a condemnation of the book of Falkenberg, which was of kindred tenor, and which aimed to stir up insurrection in Poland, entirely failed. The Jesuits were expelled from Paris in the early days of Henry IV., on the charge of inculcating the right to slay, by private hands, a heretical ruler. The old doctrine of tyrannicide assumed a new form, and found adherents among doctors of the Church. But in the theory of popular sovereignty, and of the social compact, the peculiar tendencies of Catholic theology are most apparent. This was advocated by Lainez, the second General of the Jesuit Order, by the eminent Spanish Jesuit, Mariana, and by Bellarmine. It is the doctrine that power, as far as temporal rule is concerned, originally resides, by the gift and appointment of God, in the people. Government is a divine ordinance, but what form that government shall take, and in whom it shall be

vested, it is for the people to determine. What the Protestants asserted respecting ecclesiastical government, the Jesuits declared of civil government. As the former taught that ecclesiastical power is originally deposited in the body of the Church, the latter declared that temporal power inheres, originally, in the body of the people. The political theory of the Jesuits had the advantage of placing the authority of the Pope and his tenure of office, on a more solid foundation than that of the power of any particular dynasty or king. The rule of the Pope was given him directly from God, and, therefore, could neither be questioned nor wrested from him by men. The authority of the king, on the contrary, came to him mediately, through the people, and might be recalled at their will. This political doctrine, moreover, furnished a sufficient defense for a popular rebellion, especially if it were undertaken with the sanction of the Pope. It is curious to observe that the radical speculations of Locke, Rousseau, and Jefferson, as to the origin of government, and the right of revolution, were anticipated by the Jesuit scholars of the sixteenth century. It is remarkable, moreover, that, in opposition to these novel dogmas, there appeared, on the Protestant side, a theory of the divine right of kings, and the related doctrine of passive obedience, a theory not known to the cultivated heathen nations of antiquity, and drawing no real sanction from Hebrew history. The extreme devotees of the principle of authority stand forth as the champions of the most liberal, and even revolutionary notions, in politics; the advocates of freedom and of revolt against spiritual authority, are equally strenuous for slavish maxims of political obedience.

Transplanted to America, the various ecclesiastical systems were furnished with a new theatre for the manifestation of their characteristic features, but underwent changes, from the effect of the new circumstances in