one side it would be easy or the reverse to reject the unevangelical Protestants, he has on the other very greatly underrated the difficulty of the questions at issue between the Church of Rome and her opponents. But no more: it is painful even to indicate points of difference from a most distinguished and excellent man, who has done his subject and his country permanent service by his lucid and powerful explanations of the machinery of a religious establishment. 33. The reader will probably agree that it is unnecessary, with a view to the practical purposes before us, to enter upon any detailed investigation of two other theories of the connection between Church and State, which embody the respective extremes of opinion adopted on the one hand by Hobbes, and on the other by Bellarmine and ultramontane Romanists. They are theories of derivation rather than of connection, properly so called. According to the first, the Church and her religion are mere creatures of the State. According to the second, the temporal power is wholly dependent and subordinate. These views are not avowed amongst ourselves. A third extreme opinion of a different kind, namely, that the magistrate has no concern with religion, is that against which the general argument of the succeeding chapters is directed. It is observed by a German author that the first of these schemes has been the peculiar danger of Lutheranism, the second of Romanism, and the third of Calvinism.* 34. Several other writers have touched collaterally * Stahl's Kirchenverfassung, Anhang i. on the subject, of whom the following are most familiar. Machiavelli treats of religion as an instrument of government, and holds it needful beyond everything else to be in the care of states.* Lord Clarendon's treatise, entitled 'Religion and Policy,' is historical. He considers that the verse of Isaiah (xlix. 23) sufficiently proves the "sovereign care, protection, and propagation of religion to be committed to Christian princes;" and proceeds to investigate the origin and progress of the papal supremacy, which, as he argues, had been the great obstacle to the full discharge of this obligation. Justice Blackstone writes briefly but rationally upon this topic as on others. His propositions are-1. That the State ought not to punish the sin of schism as such; 2. That it should protect the Church; 3. That if this can be better effected by the imposition of tests, it is not precluded from using them, since the disposal of offices is matter of favour and discretion. The object of Montesquieu, in his work on the genius of laws, is much more to exhibit the actual than to embody the ideal: De présenter ce qui est, ce qui fût, et non ce qui aurait dû être, according to his Parisian editors of 1796. He seems, however, to assume as axiomatic the doctrine of a national religion, and treats of its relations to many of the forms of life. He belonged to a school not in harmony with the spirit of the Church of Rome, but he enunciates his general opinion in these terms: Ce ne fût ni • Discorsi, i. 11, 12. + Commentaries, iv. 52. la crainte, ni la piété, qui établit la religion chez les Romains; mais la nécessité où sont toutes les sociétés d'en avoir une.* Neal,† the historian of the Puritans, bears witness that a state may give sufficient encouragement to a national religion, without invading the liberties of dissidents. + * Sur la Politique des Romains dans la Religion. + Vol. iv. Preface. The following are among the recent productions which touch upon the relations of the Church and the State: Vinet's Mémoire en faveur de la Liberté des Cultes. Paris, 1826. Armstrong's Civil Establishment of the Church Indefensible. London, 1831. And Abuse of Power in the State. 1838. Smith's Letters on National Religion. London, 1833. Inglis's Vindication of Church Establishments. Edinburgh, 1833. Brown on Church Establishments. Glasgow, 1833. Lorimer's Condition of Religion in the United States. Glasgow 1833. Esdaile's Connection of Civil and Religious Institutions. Perth, 1833. Sewell's Letters to a Dissenter. Oxford, 1834. Essays on the Church, by a Layman. London, 1834. De Tocqueville's Démocratie en Amérique, Vol. II. ch. ix. Paris, 1835. Visit to the American Churches. London, 1836. Rothe's Anfänge der Christichen Kirche, B. I. Wittemberg, 1837. La Mennais, Les Affaires de Rome, in the Chapters on Les Maux de l'Eglise et de la Société. Paris, 1838. Maurice, on the Kingdom of Christ, Vol. III. London, 1838. Wardlaw's Lectures. London, 1839. Angus's Voluntary System. London, 1839. Swaine's Shield of Dissent. London, 1839. Macneile's Lectures. London, 1840. Stahl's Kirchenverfassung, Anhang II. Erlangen, 1840. Hutchinson's Reasons for Conservatism. London, 1840. VOL. I. Ꭰ CHAPTER II. THE THEORY OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND PART I. THE DUTY OF THE STATE IN RESPECT TO RELIGION. 1. THE maxim, phrase, or cry of "Church and State," so familiar to our ears and mouths, has been adopted in the present day, as one of its leading symbols, by a great political combination, which is unjustly treated when it is denominated a party, because it is entrenched in a broader and more comprehensive position than any party, properly so called, can occupy; because it is composed of men belonging to many once separate parties, who have now come into cordial union, not (of necessity) through any change in their original and peculiar opinions, but in consequence of having fallen back with the movement of events upon those larger and deeper principles which formerly, as now, they held in common. 2. The notions, however, which are attached by each man, or class of men, to this celebrated and effective watchword, are various and fluctuating. In the minds of some it may represent what is no better than one among the thousand forms of egoism and intolerance-an impression that some opinion must, according to the law of this world's course, preponderate over all others in influence and distinction, and a selfish eagerness that, among competing claims essentially equal in authority, our neighbour's rather than our own should be in relative depression. Others again will befriend the connection of Church and State for the same reason which would, in different circumstances, have induced them to discourage it; simply, that is to say, as an existing connection, the sheer acquiescence in which, for no other reason than that it does exist, flatters and indulges the indolence of our nature. With a larger and a higher class than either of those which have been named, the phrase is the index of some hereditary or personal attachment, laudable in itself, valuable in its results, yet falling very far short of its real signification. 3. But underneath and beside all these faulty, or at best deficient conceptions, there is much of that instinctive attraction towards truth which has often saved men from themselves: an unconscious bias, the merciful though unappreciated gift of God, not to be despised nor lightly esteemed by any one who studies in practical philosophy, inasmuch as every such person must be well aware that it is futile, that it is insane, to refuse the aid of right conclusions merely because they have not been formed on right premises, or because they have been reached and entertained without any distinct intellectual analysis of their grounds. Thankfully, however, accepting all assent, and employing all |