However, as there have always been a prince and civil laws, this double power and conflict of jurisdiction have made all good polity impossible in Christian States; and men have never succeeded in finding out whether they were bound to obey the master or the priest.
Several peoples, however, even in Europe and its neighbourhood, have desired without success to preserve or restore the old system: but the spirit of Christianity has everywhere prevailed.The sacred cult has always remained or again become independent of the Sovereign, and there has been no necessary link between it and the body of the State.Mahomet held very sane views, and linked his political system well together; and, as long as the form of his government continued under the caliphs who succeeded him, that government was indeed one, and so far good.But the Arabs, having grown prosperous, lettered, civilised, slack and cowardly, were conquered by barbarians: the division between the two powers began again; and, although it is less apparent among the Mahometans than among the Christians, it none the less exists, especially in the sect of Ali, and there are States, such as Persia, where it is continually making itself felt.
Among us, the Kings of England have made themselves heads of the Church, and the Czars have done the same: but this title has made them less its masters than its ministers; they have gained not so much the right to change it, as the power to maintain it: they are not its legislators, but only its princes.Wherever the clergy is a corporate body, 44 it is master and legislator in its own country.There are thus two powers, two Sovereigns, in England and in Russia, as well as elsewhere.
Of all Christian writers, the philosopher Hobbes alone has seen the evil and how to remedy it, and has dared to propose the reunion of the two heads of the eagle, and the restoration throughout of political unity, without which no State or government will ever be rightly constituted.
But he should have seen that the masterful spirit of Christianity is incompatible with his system, and that the priestly interest would always be stronger than that of the State.It is not so much what is false and terrible in his political theory, as what is just and true, that has drawn down hatred on it.45I believe that if the study of history were developed from this point of view, it would be easy to refute the contrary opinions of Bayle and Warburton, one of whom holds that religion can be of no use to the body politic, while the other, on the contrary, maintains that Christianity is its strongest support.We should demonstrate to the former that no State has ever been founded without a religious basis, and to the latter, that the law of Christianity at bottom does more harm by weakening than good by strengthening the constitution of the State.To make myself understood, I have only to make a little more exact the too vague ideas of religion as relating to this subject.
Religion, considered in relation to society, which is either general or particular, may also be divided into two kinds: the religion of man, and that of the citizen.The first, which has neither temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is confined to the purely internal cult of the supreme God and the eternal obligations of morality, is the religion of the Gospel pure and simple, the true theism, what may be called natural divine right or law.The other, which is codified in a single country, gives it its gods, its own tutelary patrons; it has its dogmas, its rites, and its external cult prescribed by law; outside the single nation that follows it, all the world is in its sight infidel, foreign and barbarous; the duties and rights of man extend for it only as far as its own altars.Of this kind were all the religions of early peoples, which we may define as civil or positive divine right or law.
There is a third sort of religion of a more singular kind, which gives men two codes of legislation, two rulers, and two countries, renders them subject to contradictory duties, and makes it impossible for them to be faithful both to religion and to citizenship.Such are the religions of the Lamas and of the Japanese, and such is Roman Christianity, which may be called the religion of the priest.It leads to a sort of mixed and anti-social code which has no name.
In their political aspect, all these three kinds of religion have their defects.The third is so clearly bad, that it is waste of time to stop to prove it such.All that destroys social unity is worthless; all institutions that set man in contradiction to himself are worthless.
The second is good in that it unites the divine cult with love of the laws, and, making country the object of the citizens' adoration, teaches them that service done to the State is service done to its tutelary god.
It is a form of theocracy, in which there can be no pontiff save the prince, and no priests save the magistrates.To die for one's country then becomes martyrdom; violation of its laws, impiety; and to subject one who is guilty to public execration is to condemn him to the anger of the gods: Sacer estod.
On the other hand, it is bad in that, being founded on lies and error, it deceives men, makes them credulous and superstitious, and drowns the true cult of the Divinity in empty ceremonial.It is bad, again, when it becomes tyrannous and exclusive, and makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant, so that it breathes fire and slaughter, and regards as a sacred act the killing of every one who does not believe in its gods.The result is to place such a people in a natural state of war with all others, so that its security is deeply endangered.
There remains therefore the religion of man or Christianity ?not the Christianity of to-day, but that of the Gospel, which is entirely different.
By means of this holy, sublime, and real religion all men, being children of one God, recognise one another as brothers, and the society that unites them is not dissolved even at death.
