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.