revelation was unknown, imparted sufficiently the grounds and proofs of the principle of public religion, together with those of other elementary truths and duties; which if we reject under this double confirmation, we do it with enhanced guilt. 9. Secondly. As respects the argument from consequences, it has received I think its full proportion of attention it is no less liable to indefinite prolongations through the spirit of controversy than any other course of reasoning; and the discussion upon it, if exclusively pursued, has a tendency to lower that moral tone with which the mind should engage itself in the pursuit of truth. 10. On the other hand, the conclusion from history is allowed to be in our favour; but an appeal is entered to a different tribunal. It is imagined that for the present age has been reserved the discovery of a grand and determining moral principle, the duty of separating the Church from the State; and that, having exploded the axioms of former times, we must no longer argue from their practice. I desire then to test this great discovery, and to afford some aid towards conjecturing its final results, by looking for those manifestations of the will of God, which are afforded by the structure of His creatures; and by showing that, until we can radically change and invert the very nature of political society, we cannot, except with fearful guilt and hazard, consent to its divorce from the consecrating principle of national religion. 11. If government be in its substance a divine ordi nance; if the testimony of primeval records, repeated in the individual history of every one among us, bear witness to the fact that our social relations do not derive their origin from the private, or even from the general will; then I submit that the most authentic, the most conclusive, the most philosophical, and, in the absence of literal and undisputed precept from Scripture, also the most direct method of handling this important investigation, is that which examines the moral character and capacities of nations and of rulers, and thus founds the whole idea of their duty upon that will which gave them their existence. And indeed this province is one almost untrodden. We have not given free scope to the resources of the ethical argument. Undoubtedly it lies in a region of abstraction to which the temper of the age, and the prevailing pursuits of this country, are averse. Yet, though the sphere be narrow, contemplative investigations are not wholly disused among us, nor are they likely so far to fail as that there shall not be left space and ample reward for every man that brings his gift, though mean, to the altar of truth; the seed he sows in weakness may find entrance into minds whence it may again and again become prolific. 12. In attempting then to investigate, by such a course of argument, the truths indicated by the popular symbol already cited, I shall commence by considering what place association in general occupies with reference to our moral being, what is its proper work in the Divine organisation of the universe, what addi tional necessities it superinduces, and what moral guarantees it requires: in what degrees these securities are demanded by, and applicable to, the several descriptions of human combination: whether, among these, what we term the nation, and what we term the State, eminently demand the guarantee of religion, in respect both of capacity and of necessity: by what law or criterion the nation or State must supply itself with this requisite to its well-being: by what form of religion this guarantee is most legitimately and most effectually provided. By these steps we shall find ourselves led up to the conclusion, never more succinctly, popularly, or forcibly embodied, than in the peculiarly English watchword "Church and State;" the union of a Christian government with the Catholic organ of Christianity. 13. The universe everywhere bears testimony to, oneness of life and action, to absolute and invariable dependence on a centre, as the characteristic and the law of its nature, and therefore also the condition of its well-being. The Grecian tongue spoke with an unbiassed simplicity in giving it the name of κόσμος, or essential order: arrangement everywhere referred to a single and pervading law. Plato has delivered, in the noblest manner, the conception of that fellowship which sustains the universe and controls the tendencies to disorder. Φασὶ δ ̓ οἱ σόφοι, ὦ Καλλικλεῖς, καὶ οὔρανον, καὶ γῆν, καὶ Θεοὺς, καὶ ἀνθρώπους, τὴν κοινωνίαν ξυνέχειν, καὶ φιλίαν, καὶ κοσμότητα, καὶ σωφροσύνην, καὶ δικαιότητα· καὶ τὸ ὅλον τοῦτο διὰ ταῦτα κόσμον καλοῦσιν. * The Latins retained in their language, and have conveyed into ours, the fundamental notion of Tò av, of a fixed point and a revolving system, the universum.† The idea is that expressed in the fine lines of Virgil: Cœlum ac terras, camposque liquentes Lucentemque globum Lunæ, Titaniaque astra, The physical confirmation of our solar system attests the veracity of this designation. And the moral structure, as dimly traced in tradition, or conjectured by philosophy, or as fully revealed by the Holy Scriptures, agrees with these independent witnesses. It was because this idea of oneness of life and of a paramount sovereignty in the world had a ground in our human consciousness, that some have evaded the truth by that perversion, which absorbs the whole system into the centre, and deifies every particle of matter. It was, perhaps, on the same account, that the schemes of polytheism, however inconsistent and defaced, have ever retained the notion of some kind of supremacy or superiority in some one of their idols. From this cardinal idea of unity, as the fundamental law of beauty and of well-being to creation, let us commence. 14. It needs not to travel back into the region of deeper mystery; the history of our own race affords matter sufficient for our instruction. The origin of * Plat. Gorg. i. 137 (p. 507, Steph.). Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 43. He usually employs the term universitas. ↑ Æn. vi. 724. evil in this world of ours was the infraction of the established rule of reference to a supreme and single will. Our first parents were not content to derive from a source that lay out of themselves the ultimate ground and reason, and the definitive criterion of their acts: they would seek for themselves another image of good they would entertain it in the mind under a different conception: they would be the judges of its nature, and would not have God to be the judge for them. One act disorganised the earth and all its moral destinies. It constituted as many new centres, as many rebellious and divided systems of action, as there should be human beings; atomic centres of limited and petty influence, but without subordination to Him from whom they had derived even the power to rise in revolt against Him. Nay, even more. So long as man was obedient to God, the whole being of man was obedient to his controlling faculties; but when he ceased to be the servant of his Lord, he ceased also to be the master of himself.* Nor has he ever regained, nor can he recover, that self-mastery, that inward consent and harmony of all his faculties in and in action, which is essential to his peace, purpose until he has once again received and enthroned over his whole heart, to reign there without reserve, the Divine will so madly repudiated. 15. The actual law of human conduct, then, before the fall, was out of man himself, and was in God. The actual law of human conduct after the fall was in * S. Aug. de Civ. Dei, xiii. 13. |