Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom

by T. W. Allies

What we have just said amounts to this, that the whole life of man, whether single or in society, while he lives upon earth, is subject to the life which he hopes for in heaven as its supreme purpose and end; and that being so subject, as there is a society to aid him in attaining the goods of his natural life, so much more is there a society to aid him in attaining that supernatural good to which the natural goods are subordinate. We have next to compare the regimens of these two societies with each other in regard to their completeness.

The analogy between the Two Powers is full of instruction; but it is to be remembered that as, since the coming of Christ, the Spiritual Power is one in all countries and in all times, whereas the Temporal Power is one only in each country and at each time, the comparison of the two can only take those points which belong to the Temporal Power alike in all countries and times; and this will be found sufficient for our purpose. We have just seen the conception of spiritual jurisdiction as wielding the priesthood and the teaching: it corresponds in this respect to secular sovereignty, under which is ranged on the one hand authority in every degree, as held by all officials in administration, by all councillors in legislating, by all judges in their several tribunals, by all officers in the public force. Whoever in the public service holds a portion of the public authority may be ranged under the general head of magistrate, and stands herein to the sovereign power in the same relation as the priest to the bearer of supreme spiritual jurisdiction. On the other hand, whoever is engaged in the whole circle of human arts and sciences, which comprehends the vast domain of human knowledge as acquired by learning, answers to the spiritual teacher. This triple division runs through every state, at every time, whatever may be its relative advancement in the scale of government. And the comparison as to both Powers is exhaustive with regard to their range, since in both, man, individual or collective, is a being who acts because he first knows and then wills. Sovereignty, presiding in the various kinds of magistracy over all who command, and over all in the various arts and sciences who teach, because they have first learned, covers that triple domain in the one case, and in the other spiritual royalty, which acts through the priest and the teacher. But the society is knit together in a much stricter bond, by a far more perfect interaction of forces, in the spiritual than in the temporal order; and this arises from the fact that all spiritual power in its triple range actually descends from the spiritual head through every degree, which is far from being the fact in temporal sovereignty. That is the pre-eminence of Christ in His spiritual kingdom; and it is the perfection of the Divine Legislator that He exercises His royalty by the indivisible action of His Jurisdiction, Priesthood, and Teaching, communicated to the whole structure at the head of which He stands.

The completeness of the spiritual society in its regimen is likewise shown by the philosophical basis on which it rests. Our knowledge of our dependence upon the Being, the Truth, and the Goodness of God is the foundation of religion in us, and produces in us the idea of three chief duties binding us to God—Faith, Adoration, and Charity.[23] These answer to man’s triple nature, which acts upon the basis of knowing and willing; and they correspond likewise to the office of the Teacher, the Priest, and the Spiritual Ruler. Faith is evidently the virtue in man elicited by the Teacher, and its office is to accept the truth which he communicates. It leads on to Adoration, which ensues when the mind and heart dwell upon the divine attributes and their relation to man, and which includes Hope as a part of itself; and this answers to the special work of the Priest, which is to communicate the whole treasure of grace to the human redeemed family. And, lastly, Charity, which is the ruling principle of all action to the Christian, so far as he acts christianly, is the special virtue of the Ruler, according to the condition imposed by our Lord when He instituted the pastoral rule in its highest degree, saying to Peter, “Lovest thou me more than these?” that is, his brother Apostles and the Apostle of Love himself, and then adding, “Feed my sheep.” And these virtues, Faith, Adoration, and Charity, it may be added, have as intimate a connection with each other as the several bearers of power in the regimen to which they belong are linked together. To exercise Faith, Adoration, and Charity make the Christian man, as the Teaching, the Priesthood, and the Rule make the Christian order.

Worship, belief, and conduct embrace the whole man in his relations godward; but much more than this is true in the order of the Christian kingdom, for there these three things are inseparably joined with the Person of Christ. As we have said above, the whole power grows upon the root of His Priesthood, the particular act of which is the offering of His Body, the Body of the Incarnate Son, for the sin of the world. His communicated Priesthood consists in the perpetual presentation of that Sacrifice to God by His ministers in the name and in the presence of the Christian people; and the Sacrifice thus offered becomes further to them the food of eternal life. In this great sacrament, carrying with it the perpetual presence of Christ in and with His Church, all the other sacraments are potentially contained. It is the well-spring of the whole sacramental life, which He caused to open when His own Passion was beginning. Of indescribable grandeur is that order, beginning with the eve of His Passion, and stretching unbroken through all times and climes to the consummation of the world. In that great act, carried on by the High Priest through the voice and hands of countless successors, which daily in every generation gathers into one the prayers of His people, the manifold life is concentered which provides for every need.

But this Priesthood it is which carries on the Faith. That Faith is not a belief in God “as the Architect of the universe,” but in the love of God the Father, the Creator of man, who sends His Son to be their Redeemer, and in the love of God the Son, who is so sent; so that the Faith grows on the root of the Priesthood. And out of this Faith is developed that vast fabric of doctrine which in the course of eighteen centuries and a half has made Christian theology, and reared for itself a harmonious system of Christian law. The Eternal Priest carries in His hands eternal truth, which He alone can preserve amid the never-ending conflicts of human opinion, the surging strife of the bottomless sea of human imaginations. The gift of maintaining all the truth which concerns human redemption in every one of its remotest issues cannot be parted from the Priesthood by which that redemption was wrought. Thus it coheres with the sacramental life, and is not a fruit of man’s intellect by itself, but is bestowed on that intellect in union with grace. It is as it were an atmosphere of thought which the Christian people breathe.

And, once more, Christian conduct is the action of those who have this worship and this faith. It springs from an intention united at least implicitly to the Author and Finisher of the Faith. It is this intention which gives to the action the quality of merit. For an action done with it differs incalculably from an action done without it, though the external appearance and effect of the two actions may be the same. It is to Christ as King that we are answerable for our actions, and worship and belief culminate in action. The inward life of His subjects therefore answers to the triple outward order established by the Priest, the Prophet, and the King. It is in virtue of this answering in His people that He has fulfilled the prophecies concerning Him as to His triple character. Had He left no government for His kingdom, how would He be a King? Had He left no priesthood to be perpetuated in His Church, how would He be Priest after the order of Melchisedek? Had He left no truth inaccessible to error, how would He be the Prophet that was to come into the world?

It is then in their worship, their belief, and their conduct that the Christian people one and all are derived from Christ, as much as the triple regimen of His kingdom. Every individual man, so far as he is a Christian, is a copy of Christ, while the whole people “is Jesus Christ diffused and communicated, Jesus Christ complete, Jesus Christ perfect man, Jesus Christ in His fulness.”[24]

Nothing can show the universality of this Christian society more than this derivation alike of the individual and of the mass from Christ. When the children of Noah wore scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth at the dispersion, the great family was broken up and nations arose; but in the baptism of Christ nations disappear and the great family is restored. There it is the member of the human race, the child of Adam alone, who is assumed to be the brother of Christ. All the conditions of human life which have arisen in the society of the nation, which St. Paul has summed up in the words Greek and Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, disappear also; there arises from that fontal birth only the man “created anew to knowledge after the image of the Creator” (Col. iii. 10, 11). Yet there is no interference with the natural society, with its rights on the one side and its obligations on the other. It is the human being, with body and soul, making one manhood, of which the soul is the form, which is thus taken; but he is taken in his relations to that last end with the mention of which we begin. As to the other relations of his natural stale, they continue as they were, subject only to a superior end, which is superior because it is the last.

Our Lord, when traduced before the Roman tribunal as infringing on the sovereignty of the emperor, was solemnly asked if He was the King of the Jews. He replied with a threefold assertion: that He was a King; that His kingdom was not of this world, and yet that it was in this world. How far does the kingdom which we have so far attempted to delineate correspond to these three truths?

1. It is a kingdom because, according to the delineation of it which we have just made, it is a royal priesthood, ruling inasmuch as it deals with the belief, the worship, and the conduct of its people—all the relations of man with God. In all this it does for the divine life in man everything which the temporal kingdom does for his secular life. The analogy between the two is precise and complete.