CHAPTER II.

RELATION BETWEEN THE CIVIL AND THE SPIRITUAL POWERS AFTER CHRIST.

1.--_The Spiritual Power in its Source and Nature._

Taking as our basis the historical outline of the relation between the

Civil and Spiritual Powers which has preceded, let us attempt to have

present to our minds the state of this relation at the death of Christ.

The great world-empire had then been ruled in most peaceful security for

half a generation by Tiberius. Under him lay a vast variety of nations,

professing as strange a variety of gods and of worship paid to them, but

all, with one exception, accepting a religious supremacy in him as

Pontifex Maximus of the Roman religion. The Princeps of the civil power,

the Imperator of the civil force, was also Chief Priest of religion, and

by that union held in his hands those two Powers, an attack upon either

of which constituted, as Tertullian testifies, the double guilt of

majesty violated and sacrilege incurred. Within these limits, and with

this condition, it was free to the several nations to practise their

ancestral rites as well as to believe in their ancestral gods, at least

within their ancient territorial bounds. There can be no doubt that

these nations generally clung to their several rites and beliefs, not

only from the force of nurture and habit, but also as remnants of their

former independence as nations. As little can we doubt that the great

Roman power was employed to maintain and protect them as part of the

constituted order of things and in prevention of _sedition_. This, so far

as the Roman dominion extended, was the outcome of that long succession

of wars, and changes of rule ensuing on wars, which forms the history of

mankind so soon as it leaves the nest of pristine unity at the epoch of

the dispersion. It is clear that through the whole of this Gentile world,

while amity had not been broken between the Civil and the Spiritual

Powers, the priesthood, which represented the latter, had everywhere

become the subject of the former. It is no less clear that this

subjection was repaid with support. This condition of things was most

clearly expressed as well as most powerfully established in the position

of the Roman Emperor, who, as he received the tribunitial power, which in

union with the consular was distinctive of the imperial dignity, from the

Senate, so received also the supreme authority in matters of religion

which belonged to the Pontifex Maximus. This authority had indeed been in

its origin and its descent from age to age in the Roman city distinct

from secular power, but henceforth became practically united with the

civil principate. That undivided supremacy betokened the ultimate

constitution of the heathen State, antecedent to the coming of Christ, in

what concerns the relation between the two Powers. According to this,

the Civil Power prevailed over the Spiritual, and casting off the

subjection to religion in which itself had been nurtured, directed all

its actions to a temporal end.

Far otherwise was it with that people which Moses, under the divine

command, had created according to the pattern which he saw in the Mount.

Chosen by God to conduct the race of Abraham out of captivity into the

promised land, he alone in the history of the Israelitic race united in

himself the three powers bestowed by unction of Priest, of Prophet, and

of King. These powers he left to the people he was forming, but did not

deposit them all in the same hands. His creation of the priesthood in the

tribe of Levi, and of the high priesthood in the person of his brother

Aaron and his lineal descendants, stands without a parallel in all the

history of the world before the coming of Christ as an act of

transcendent authority. For instead of the original priesthood of the

first-born, which he found existing as it had been transmitted from the

earliest time, he selected a particular tribe, which was not that of the

first-born, to bear from that time forth the priesthood among the

children of Israel; and further, he selected a particular person in that

tribe, his brother Aaron, to erect in him the high priesthood, the most

characteristic institution of the Jewish people. In like manner he took

the ancient institution of sacrifice, dating, as we have seen, from

Paradise itself, and formed it into an elaborate system to be carried out

day by day through the whole succeeding history of his people, by

priests springing from the person of the first High Priest. At the door

of the Tabernacle, in the presence of all the assembled tribes, Moses

invested Aaron with the priestly garments, especially the ephod, bearing

attached to it the Rational, which contained the twelve stones indicating

the twelve tribes of the holy nation, by which the High Priest,

consulting God, issued the oracle of doctrine and truth. Moses further

set the mitre on his head, bearing on its golden plate the inscription,

"Holiness to the Lord;" and pouring on his head the oil of unction, he

anointed and consecrated him. Thus the whole Jewish priesthood descended

from above, being gathered up in one person, from whom all succeeding

priests were drawn, and the sous of the first High Priest were to

continue the line for ever according to primogeniture.

The High Priest's office had in it four points peculiar to him beyond the

office of the ordinary priest. First, once in the year, on the great day

of the atonement, he alone entered into the most holy place, "not without

blood, which he offered for his own sins and the sins of the people"

(Heb. ix. 7), inasmuch as he sent into the wilderness one he-goat,

charged with the sins of all the people, and sacrificed the other, whose

blood he carried into the sanctuary, sprinkling it seven times over

against the oracle, to expiate the sanctuary from the uncleanness of the

children of Israel (Lev. xvi. 15, 16). He thus once every year

represented in his person the whole sacred nation in that most remarkable

act of confessing its guilt before God, and offering an expiation of it,

which pointed even more to a future Redeemer. Secondly, he consecrated

the whole body of the priests and Levites for their several work. The oil

of unction poured upon his head was the palpable sign of priestly power

transmitted from him to the priest, in which, again, he was an image of

the future High Priest. Thirdly, whenever the civil rulers of the nation

required advice in matters concerning the good of the whole people, it

was the office of the High Priest to inquire for them by means of the

breastplate of light and truth, which he carried upon the ephod. The

relation of the Civil to the Spiritual Power was symbolised in the first

bearer of the former after Moses, to whom Moses was commanded by God to

communicate "part of his glory." God said to Moses, "Take Joshua the son

of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and put thy hand upon him, and he

shall stand before Eleazar the priest (who had then succeeded his father

Aaron in the high priesthood), and all the multitude, and thou shalt give

him precepts in the sight of all, and part of thy glory, that all the

congregation of the children of Israel may hear him. If anything be to be

done, Eleazar the priest shall consult the Lord for him, he, and all the

children of Israel with him, and the rest of the multitude, shall go out

and go in at his word" (Num. xxvii. 18). Thus David afterwards consulted

God by Abiathar, the High Priest in his day. Fourthly, on all questions

concerning the decalogue, or commands in the moral law, or the ceremonial

law, which embraced the whole field of the divine worship, or the

judicial law, which concerned reciprocal rights and duties between man

and man, the High Priest possessed a supreme and decisive jurisdiction,

from which there was no appeal.

It is necessary to distinguish between the third of those privileges, the

judgment by the breastplate of light and truth, which was an

extraordinary gift of God, bestowed at particular times, and analogous in

this to inspiration, and the fourth, the supreme jurisdiction and

judgment of the High Priest, which belonged to him as an ordinary part of

his office, and may be likened to a perpetual divine assistance inherent

in it.[18]

2. Such was the high priesthood in its institution, and its operation

through the whole of Jewish history down to the final destruction of the

Temple corresponds to its institution.

The children of Israel were made a nation for a specific purpose, that

is, in order that the race of Abraham, by Isaac his chosen son, should

maintain upon earth, in the midst of an ever-growing defection, the

worship of the one True God, and should likewise embody and represent no

less that which was bound up in this worship, the promise of redemption

given at the beginning of the world. The reason of its existence,

therefore, was to be the bearer of the Messianic idea. To this all its

ordinances and sacrifices pointed, and in the execution of all this

purpose the High Priest was the chief organ. The Pontificate was the stem

of the nation, of which the civil unity was made from the beginning

dependent on the spiritual. On Aaron, by God's command, Moses devolved

one "part of his glory;" and when Eleazar had succeeded his father in the

office of High Priest, and Moses was about to die, he devolved, by the

same divine command, another part of his glory upon Joshua, appointing

him to lead the children of Israel into their promised inheritance. To

invest him with this solemn charge, the civil leadership of the nation,

he brought him before Eleazar the priest, that, according to his

instruction, Joshua and the whole congregation "should go out and go in."

This relative position of Eleazar and Joshua is continued in the

respective religious and civil rulers during several hundred years down

to the kingship of Saul. When the Israelites chose themselves a king

after the pattern of the nations round them, the word of God to Samuel

respecting their act is, "They have not rejected thee, but me, that I

should not reign over them" (1 Kings viii. 7). Nevertheless God sanctions

the erection of a kingdom, leaving unaltered the position of the High

Priest. During the time of the kings the high priesthood continues the

centre of Jewish worship; and when the civil unity is broken by the

revolt of the ten tribes, they revolt likewise against the worship which

had its seat in Jerusalem and was gathered up in the High Priest. The

long-persistent iniquity of the people is punished by the captivity, and

when a portion of the nation comes back to take root afresh in its own

land, it is in the high priesthood more than ever that its unity is

restored and maintained. Thus, through the three periods of Israelitic

history, under the judges, under the kings, and after the return from

captivity, the High Priest remains the permanent centre of Jewish life,

the organ of spiritual, and therein of civil unity. Our Lord recognises

this spiritual ruler as at the head of the Great Council, "sitting in the

chair of Moses." At His birth Herod inquires of this authority where

Christ should be born, and receives the undoubting answer, "In Bethlehem

of Juda." Of Him Caiaphas, being then High Priest, uttered the famous

prophecy denoting the great act of His mediatorial sacrifice; and the

same Caiaphas, sitting as supreme judge of the nation, adjures Him by the

living God to declare if He be the Christ; and our Lord answers the

adjuration by the explicit declaration of His divine Sonship, and His

authority to be Judge of the living and the dead.

The judges pass, the kings pass, the nation goes into captivity; it comes

back chastened, and faithful at length to its belief in the divine unity

and the promises attached to it; and through all this, up to the time of

accomplishment, the High Priest sits in the chair of Moses, and offers

expiation on the day of atonement, and the priests emanate from his

person, and prophecy speaks from his mouth. He is the ordinary judge of

the whole people, the guardian and interpreter of the divine law, whose

decision is final and supreme.

3. That people lost its civil independence, which was merged in the great

Roman empire, but its spiritual independence, centred in its High Priest,

was preserved to it. At no period of its history was this independence

more remarkably maintained. Philo, himself a Jew settled in Egypt, says,

"Innumerable pilgrims from innumerable cities flock together by sea and

land, from East and West, from North and South, on every festival to this

Temple (of Jerusalem) as to a common harbour and refuge, seeking peace

there in the midst of a life of business or trouble."[19] "The Holy

City," he says in another place, "is my country, a metropolis not of the

single country of Judea, but of many others, on account of the colonies

from time to time thence sent forth." But not only was this city such a

metropolis to all Jews in every part of the world, and the High Priest

the centre of the worship which drew them from all parts of the world,

but his spiritual authority extended over them in the several cities

which they inhabited as well as when they came up to Jerusalem. This was

the power borne witness to by St. Paul, when "yet breathing out

threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, he went to

the High Priest and asked of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues,

that if he found any men and women of this way, he might bring them bound

to Jerusalem." This was the power which counterworked and persecuted St.

Paul himself wherever he went, through which "five times he received of

the Jews forty stripes save one, and was thrice beaten with rods" (2 Cor.

xi. 24). This was the power which, wherever the Apostles went, preaching

the Gospel under the cover of a religion which enjoyed legal sanction,

and so disobeyed no Roman law, encountered them, and, after endless

particular persecutions, succeeded at last with Nero in getting them put

beyond the pale of the protection which their character of Jews might

afford them, and placed under the ban of the empire as preachers of a new

and unsanctioned religion. They were but summing up a long course of

previous persecution in this act, which was the master-stroke of Jewish

antagonism, by which they fulfilled to the uttermost the divine

prediction: "Therefore, behold I send to you prophets, and wise men, and

scribes; and some of them you will put to death and crucify, and some of

them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to

city" (Matt. xxiii. 40). And it was followed at once by the destruction

of the city, the Temple, and the priesthood, as the prophecy ran, "Behold

your house shall be left to you desolate." The position of the High

Priest in this last period of Israelitic history, the forty years which

elapsed from the day of Pentecost to the destruction of the city and

Temple, represents him most vividly as the guardian, judge, and

mouthpiece of a religion which, though national, had colonies in all

parts of the world, and in which not only the central seat of the worship

and the country of Judea, but the colonies also, in whatever part of the

world they might be situated, acknowledged his spiritual jurisdiction.

This privilege was given by Julius Cæsar, as to the Roman empire, and

continued by Augustus. It is of much moment to understand the history of

the first forty years of the Christian Church.

4. So completely had the high priesthood created by Moses, and the whole

system of worship, sacrifices, rites, and ceremonies which it presided

over and guarded, fulfilled the purpose for which it was created. It

presented in all its parts a type and a prophecy of Christ and His

kingdom--a type and a prophecy which through fifteen hundred years of

action and suffering had wrought itself out in the heart of a people who,

now deprived of their civil, but enjoying a spiritual, independence, lay

scattered through the whole world, ready to receive the spiritual

kingdom. Through all Gentiledom the sacerdotal authority had become, by

its corruption of the high truths of religion, the serf or minion of the

Civil Power, but to the Jews the worship of their God was in its own

nature supreme, and did not admit of interference even from that power

which they acknowledged to rule absolutely in temporal dominion. The same

scribes and pharisees and people who cried out before the Roman governor,

"We have no king but Cæsar," were ready a few years afterwards to

sacrifice their lives rather than admit into Jerusalem a statue of the

Emperor Caligula, which seemed to them an impugnment of their religious

law. And the Jewish people during the years of our Lord's teaching and

ministry were looking for their Messias, and when they should acknowledge

Him, were ready to acknowledge Him not only as Priest and Prophet but as

King also. So deeply had the words of Moses sunk in their hearts: "That

God would raise up to them a prophet of their nation and of their

brethren like unto him, whom they were to hear" (Deut. xviii. 18); that

is, a Prophet bearing, as Moses alone had done, the triple unction, and

who was to be supreme in teaching, in priesthood, and in rule. The civil

subjection of the people brought out more strikingly by its contrast

their spiritual independence, and the banishment, which scattered a

number of them into all lands, provided everywhere a seed-plot in which

the Gospel might be planted--a little gathering not only of Jews, but of

Gentile proselytes, "who feared God" in every place, and so could more

readily receive the doctrine of God incarnate and crucified upon their

belief of God the Creator. Had the Jews remained in their own land, they

would not have had the perception of a spiritual jurisdiction founded

upon a divine hierarchy alone, and stretching over the whole earth,

disregarding all national divisions and restrictions, and binding

Parthians and Medes, Elamites and Mesopotamians, Egyptians and Libyans,

Cretes and Arabians, Greeks and Romans into one. The mould into which the

Gospel was to be cast had been wrought out even through the obstinacy,

the sins, and the punishments of the chosen people, and was now complete

to receive and bear the tree for the healing of the nations. The high

priesthood had come forth from Moses by express inspiration, and bearing

its people through centuries of most various fortune, had imaged out

exactly the Christian high priesthood and rule to which it was to

yield.[20] A prophecy embodied in a fact which unites a people into an

indissoluble organisation, and works through centuries moulding

generation after generation, and gathering into one prodigious monument

of priesthood, sacrifices, ceremonies, and temple, and the hopes and

devotion of a race, this is the ground which our Lord selected for the

basis of the spiritual kingdom which He would set up. He had provided

Moses as a servant to construct the model of the house which hereafter He

would build Himself; He had inspired Moses to create Aaron and draw out

of him the levitical priesthood, because Himself would commission Peter,

the perpetual fountain of the Christian priesthood, and would make Peter

for all nations that which Aaron had been for one.

But, as in all the preceding history, God left to man the exercise of his

free-will. It was not open to the Jews indeed to frustrate the divine

purpose, but it was open to them to receive or not receive the Christ

when He came. They were ready to receive a glorious but not a suffering

Christ. And the High Priest, sitting at the head of the Great Council of

the nation, in the chair of Moses and in the dignity of Aaron, instead of

accepting, rejected and slew Him with the Roman death of crucifixion, by

the hand of the Roman governor, the bearer to the nation of the Roman

imperial power. The High Priest slew Him further on the affected charge

that He was plotting against the emperor's power; in reality because He

acknowledged Himself to be the Christ, the Son of God.

Let us take, then, what I am about to say as facts which have been

hitherto undisputed. There have been, and there are, unbelievers in

plenty of the Christian truth and Church, but no one has, I believe,

hitherto been found to deny that Christ was put to death by Pontius

Pilate at the instigation of the Chief Priest and the Sanhedrim. Let us

take this as a fact, and put ourselves in thought at the great Sabbath

during which His Body rested in the tomb. It is the Body of one executed

with the greatest ignominy, between two thieves, by a most cruel death,

under the authority of the Roman governor, upon the charge that He

claimed a kingship which interfered with that of the emperor, at the

instigation of those who rejected His claim to be their Messias, the Son

of God. His Body, even when dead, ceases not to be under the jurisdiction

of the Roman governor, who commits its custody to His chief enemies,

those whose instigation has brought about His death. Their seal is set

upon His tomb, and their guards watch it. Taking these bare facts, as

acknowledged by friend and foe, can any situation of more complete

impotence be conceived by human imagination than this? He has come, and

taught, and worked miracles, and been rejected by His own. He has been

put to death in the name and by the power of the world's lord, who bears

the crown of majesty and wields the authority of worship. The guards of

His enemies sit beside His tomb.

Such was the fact on the great Sabbath, the high day of the Jewish Pasch.

What can be conceived more improbable at that moment, and under these

circumstances, than the fact which we have now to record as following in

its evolution during so many ages? The sovereign in whose name and by

whose power that Body had been put to death held undisputed in his hands

the supremacy of Spiritual as well as Civil Power through the great world

of Gentilism, represented by the Roman empire. From that Body was to

spring, beginning with the morrow, the distinction and independence of

the Spiritual over against the Civil Power, which was to dissolve this

twofold supremacy throughout the whole range of that empire. And this was

to be accomplished by a series of actions arising out of the sole

proclamation of envoys taken from the people which had rejected Him--a

proclamation derived from the commission which He should give in the Body

raised again to life. The distinction, indeed, of the two Powers, so far

from being new, has been coeval with the human race itself, as we have

seen; but it has been broken down by human sin in all nations but one,

and that one, created for its maintenance, made, through all its history,

prophetical for its fulfilment when the time of that fulfilment came, has

rejected its Bearer; and yet out of its bosom, on the morrow, is to go

forth that word of power which in the end shall change the condition of

human society, and create it after another order.

It will be well thoroughly to grasp the truth that all which followed

depended upon a fact, the supernatural character of which cannot be

exaggerated. We are considering the Spiritual Power which arose and

diffused itself in the world from the Person of Christ. It took its

origin from the Body in which He appeared to His Apostles after His

resurrection. Without their belief in that resurrection, as evidenced to

all their senses, there was no ground for their conduct. Without the

reality of that resurrection there was no source for the Power. It would

seem that, whatever else the Christian order of things may be, it must be

supernatural and miraculous, since, to exist at all, it presupposes a

fact which is a lordship over nature and a miracle in the highest degree.

Without this primary miracle all Christian faith is vain, and in the

power which worked it all subsequent miracles are included. That the fact

took place, let the results which followed testify, at the beginning of

which our exposition stands. The Jews expected a Messias, who, according

to the prophecies long enshrined in their nation about Him, was to be

Priest, Prophet, and King. They put to death one who claimed to come

before them in this triple character. From one dead, so long as he

continues dead, no life can spring. But life and multifold life sprung up

here; therefore He who was dead had arisen, and all of which we have to

speak is the result of His life. The fundamental truth on which we have

to dwell is the going forth of a supernatural power from the Person of

Christ.

We have seen Adam in Paradise created in the full maturity of intellect

and will, and placed at the head of a double order of things, of civil

and of spiritual authority. We have now to consider that greater One whom

Adam prefigured, and who, coming forth from the tomb, assumed forthwith

that double headship. When the great act of His pontificate had been

accomplished in giving up His Body to death for the sins of the world,

and its efficacy acknowledged by His resurrection, He declared to His

Apostles "that all power had been given to Him in heaven and upon earth."

This all-power in heaven and on earth, given to the God-man as the fruit

of His incarnation and the reward of His sacrifice, divides itself into

two--temporal and spiritual. The first is that by which He disposes of

all persons and all events. This power He has not delegated to any one in

chief, but keeps it in His own hands. Yet it is a part of this power of

which it is said, "By me kings reign, and princes decree justice." The

whole civil sovereignty is founded on an apportionment to it of the

divine sovereignty for the maintenance of human society. A part of the

second or Spiritual Power He delegated to St. Peter in chief, and to the

Apostles, with St. Peter at their head. Out of this all-power He set up

and sent forth in them a royal priesthood to proclaim and maintain the

truth which He had come to declare to the world; that is to say, He took

His own priesthood and put it upon them, investing it with a reproductive

ordering and maintaining power in His spiritual kingdom. To it He

attached the gift of truth, that is, of communicating, unfolding,

guarding, the whole body of doctrine which He came upon earth to declare;

and in it He placed the jurisdiction which is necessary to the priesthood

in order to exert itself in offering the sacrifice and in dispensing the

sacraments which He instituted, and in guarding the truth with which

they are bound up.

That power, then, which He designated in the keys given to Peter, in the

Rock which He set in his person, in the pastoral charge which He laid

upon him over His sheep, and in which He sent forth His Apostles to make

disciples all nations, to baptize them in the sacred Name, to teach them

to observe all which He had commanded, and in the exercise of which He

promised to remain with them to the end of the world, is one and

indivisible in itself, and triple in its range and direction--a

priesthood proclaiming the truth and ruling in the sphere which belongs

to its priesthood and its teachings. As Adam is created one and complete,

and his race springs from him, so this kingdom of Christ springs complete

from Him in its regimen, which is not the result of history, but formed

in His Person before its history begins, as He is at once Priest,

Teacher, and King. Thus this Power comes from above, not from below;

proceeds from emanation; is not gathered gradually by accretion; is an

effect of positive institution, derived from the Head; not the effect of

a need or the working out of a natural capacity in the body.

The root of that Power is the act for the accomplishment of which our

Lord Himself took our flesh upon Him--the act of His high priesthood, by

which, having taken our flesh, He took also the sins of the world upon

Himself, and offered Himself for them on the cross. It is as Redeemer

that He is Priest, the sacrifice of His body being the offering which He

made. It is in the perpetual service and offering of that body that the

priesthood which He created for others exists and provides the perpetual

bread of life, which is the food of sanctification, for His people. In

the priesthood, therefore, we have to deal with the whole range of

subject which embraces grace on the part of God and worship on the part

of man. It is most fitting that all spiritual power should grow upon this

stock. All priesthoods in the world from the beginning had been

connected, as we have seen, with the sense and acknowledgment of guilt;

and with the rite of sacrifice. In the Aaronic priesthood this has been

specially noted. Thus it bore a perpetual prophetical witness to the act

which Christ accomplished. All future priesthood dated from the

accomplishment of that act, and took its force from it. Thus it was truly

the central act of human history. Had not the Son of God assumed our

nature, He could not have been a Priest. His priesthood, therefore,

carried in it the two great divine acts--His incarnation and His

satisfaction, which make up the economy of human salvation. The first

direction, then, of the power which He delegated is that of the Priest.

The second is that of the Teacher. A principal part of His ministry while

on earth certainly was to teach. He was the Prophet that was to come into

the world, and all that He taught bore reference to the two acts just

dwelt upon, that He came forth from God and was going to God. Not a

sentence of His teaching but presupposes His Incarnation and His Passion.

That whole body of truth, therefore, which He did not write down

Himself, but committed to the living ministry of His Apostles, proceeds,

as it were, out of His Pontificate, and rests upon it. It is the truth of

the Word made flesh, and of God sacrificed for His creatures. The gift of

teaching, as the illuminating power in His Church, corresponds to the

virtue of faith in the taught, and implies the possession of truth in the

teacher. As the priesthood has a perpetual sacrifice stored up within it,

and a perpetual gift of grace accompanying it, so the teaching has a

perpetual gift of truth. The fountain of truth, therefore, in this Power,

can be no more discoloured and polluted than the fountain of grace in the

priesthood can be turned into sin. By virtue of it Christ remains for

ever the one Teacher and Master whom all His people have to follow.

Theology is an outcome of this Power. The issuing of doctrinal decrees is

grounded upon it, and the censure of writings and of all false opinions

on whatever subject which may impair Christian doctrine.

The third direction of the one Power is that of ruling and ordering, not

to be separated from the former two, since it consists, in fact, in the

free, legitimate, and ordered use of them, and has, therefore, been

termed Jurisdiction, inasmuch as it is government in the whole domain of

grace and truth. In every government there is a power which administers,

a power which legislates, a power which judges, and all these in the

sovereign degree; that is, in a degree not liable to revision and

reversal in the respective subject-matter. If we apply these three acts

to the full domain of grace and truth, which is the domain of the

Incarnate Son (John i. 14), set up in the world, we express that royalty

which is the third attribute of the priesthood. It comprehends supreme

pastorship in all its range; legislation in the kingdom of truth; and

judgment, whether external or internal, in the spiritual tribunal.

This was the Power, one and indivisible in itself, triple in its

direction, which Christ took from His own Person as part of the all-power

given to Him, and delegated to the Ruler of His Church, that in the

exercise of it He might fulfil all prophecy concerning Himself, and be at

once Priest, Prophet, and King: and out of this He made and makes His

people.

In the transmission of that Power to the persons to whom He gave it He

observed two principles: that of unity, and that of hierarchical

subordination. To maintain the first, He made the Primacy; to maintain

the second, the College of Apostles. For the whole of this triple power,

the keys of the kingdom of heaven in the priesthood, the guardianship of

faith in the office of teacher, and the supreme pastorship of rule He

promised to one and bestowed on one, Peter. Thus He made Peter the

Primate, and by the centering this triple authority in his sole person

set him as the Rock on which the Church is built. At the same time He

associated with Peter the eleven, to exercise this same authority in

conjunction with Him. Thus at the very founding of the Church we find the

two forces which are to continue throughout, and from the union of which

the whole hierarchy with its graduated subordination springs. From the

Apostolic College descends the Episcopate, the everliving source of

which is in Peter the head, by union with whom it is "one Episcopate, of

which a part is held by each without division of the whole." Only on this

condition is the Episcopate one, without which, in all places and in all

time, it would be a principle of rivalry and division, using the triple

power of priesthood, teaching, and rule against itself. With this

condition we have exactly realised the image of the Rock on which the

Church is founded, and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail,

in the establishment of the Episcopate, as one indivisible power, having

its fountain and fulness in one person, a part of whose solicitude is

shared by a body of bishops spread through the whole world, speaking with

one voice the faith of Peter, because they are united with the person of

Peter.

All that we have hitherto said as to the emanation of power from the

Person of Christ is comprehended by St. Peter when he calls our Lord,

"the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls," and by St. Paul when he calls Him

"a High Priest over the house of God," "the Apostle and High Priest of

our confession," "called of God High Priest after the order of

Melchisedek." And by Himself when He bade His disciples to have no other

Master, that is, Teacher, "for one is your Master, Christ;" and when,

treating on the eve of His passion this very subject, He said to His

Apostles, "I dispose to you, as my Father disposed to me, a kingdom;" and

after His resurrection, saying to them collectively, "As my Father sent

me, even so send I you;" and "Behold I am with you all days, even to the

consummation of the world;" and when He said to Peter on the shore of the

Lake of Galilee, after He had drawn in the unbroken net full of great

fishes, "Lovest thou me more than these? Feed my sheep."[21] For is He

not in priesthood, teaching, and government the prolific Father of the

age to come? He remains not solitary in His triple dignity, but is the

Adam of His race, and rules in it from His resurrection by those whom He

appoints.

It may further be observed that in the supernatural regimen thus

established by our Lord, viewed as the one indivisible power which

constitutes it, there is an image traced upon His spiritual kingdom of

the ever-blessed Trinity, its royalty representing God the Father as the

source: its priesthood, wherein lies the whole economy of human

redemption, God the Son, who carries it out; its teaching, God the Holy

Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, whose ever-abiding presence guides its

subjects, as by the hand, into all truth. The regimen is the generative

power in His kingdom; and this image, wrought indelibly upon its society

in all lands and times, is as distinctly Christ's work upon the Christian

commonwealth as the image traced upon individual man in the soul's triple

constitution of memory, understanding, and will, when it has been

sanctified by His grace, is His work upon the individual.

That in the Episcopate there should be a triple power: of priesthood,

comprehending the whole divine worship, and the imparting of grace

through the sacraments; of teaching, which contains the communication of

the whole divine truth; and of ruling, that is, over the whole region of

action comprised by the priesthood and the teaching, the prototype of

which exists in the eternal relations of the Blessed Trinity, while

itself is that one undivided power which represents the divine unity,

seems to shadow out the very citadel in which the Divine Wisdom set up

His kingdom.

Who could have imagined beforehand such a constitution of government?

Who, placing himself at the time of Christ and contemplating as a fact

the actual relations of the Two Powers then in existence _before him_,

could ever have devised such a kingdom? Is not this in very deed the

kingdom of grace and truth? Have we not here visible to the eye of faith

the Priest, the Prophet, and the King, who has set up Altar, Chair, and

Throne together in the midst of the nations?

2.--_The Spiritual Power a Complete Society._

That man, who was originally made after the image and likeness of God, is

sent into this life in order that he may in a future life attain the end

of his being, that is, the enjoyment of God, is the primary fundamental

truth which is presupposed in that whole work of Christ just described.

The supernatural society exists for a supernatural end. The total denial

of this end would be the complete and perfect heathenism of which the

original heathenism was but a shadow; for that state of man in which the

whole of his public and private life was encircled by the ties and

consecrated by the rites of religion, even though those rites were

prostituted by being offered to false gods, was not a denial of this end.

In such a state man acknowledged a power beyond himself--beyond visible

nature: his mind, his heart, his imagination were filled with the sense

of that power. This is true of the great mass of the heathen before the

coming of Christ, and is true in a large degree of those nations

remaining still outside the Christian faith in their traditional

religion, which descends in however fragmentary, however perverted a

form, from the religion of Noah, and the primal and universal covenant

for all his family struck with him. It is only the apostasy of a few from

the Christian faith itself which has readied that final and absolute

impiety--the greatest which the human mind can reach--of entirely denying

this end of man.

Now, in considering the relation between the Civil and the Spiritual

Power in all its bearings, we assume as a postulate this supernatural end

of man. As it is the kernel of our belief, so it is the absolute basis of

our argument. It cannot be put in a terser form than that in which our

Lord stated it to those about Him when He asked the question, "What shall

it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Those

only who have come to such a negation of reason as to suppose that they

have no souls can disregard it. And as it is of absolute necessity, so it

is all that is required for a full consideration of the subject.

"There is then a certain good beyond the natural society of man in this

his condition of mortal life, which is that ultimate beatitude which is

looked for after death in the enjoyment of God. And so the Christian, who

has acquired a right to that beatitude by the blood of Christ, and has

received the earnest of the Holy Spirit in order to attain it, requires,

beyond the aid which temporal government gives him for the concerns of

this life, a spiritual care which is given to the faithful by the

ministers of Christ's Church. Now, as to the ultimate end which they are

to seek, the same must be said of the whole mass of men as of one man.

If, then, the one man's end lay in any good existing in himself, the

ultimate end of government for the mass of men would be similarly that it

should reach such good and secure its possession. But all the goods of

this present life offer no such end, whether it be health, or riches, or

knowledge, or even virtue. For the virtuous life, whether of the

individual or the mass, is subordinate to a further end, which is the

future enjoyment of God. If that end could be obtained by a power of

human nature, it would belong to the office of temporal government to

direct men to it, since that is supreme in things purely human. But since

man does not attain the end of enjoying God by any merely human power but

by divine power, according to St. Paul's word, that 'the grace of God is

eternal life,' it requires not a human but a divine government to lead

men to that end. And so it is that such a government belongs to a King

who is not only man but also God, that is, to our Lord Jesus Christ, who

has introduced men to the glory of heaven by making them sons of God.

This, then, is the kingdom which has been delivered to Him, and which

shall not be broken up, on account of which He is named in Scripture, not

Priest only, but King. Hence a royal priesthood is derived from Him; and,

what is more, all the faithful of Christ, so far forth as they are His

members, are called kings and priests. Therefore the ministry of this

kingdom, in order that spiritual things might be distinguished from

temporal, has been entrusted not to the kings of the earth but to

priests, and in the highest degree to the priest who is over all, the

successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff, to whom

all kings of the Christian people are to be subject as to our Lord Jesus

Christ himself; for this is in accordance with the principle that those

to whom belongs the care of antecedent ends should be subject to him who

has the care of the final end, and be directed by his rule."[22]

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.

2. It is not a kingdom of this world, inasmuch as it governs with a view

to an end which is outside and beyond this life. This end determines

everything within it, as also we have seen above.

3. Again, it is not of this world because the source of its regimen lies

in the Incarnation and Passion of the Son of God, acts the virtue of

which consists in God's supreme government of the world, in His absolute

lordship over it as Creator and Redeemer. All authority in it descends

from Christ, "as the Apostle and High Priest" by this divine appointment,

from whose Person the apostolate and priesthood are transmitted to those

whom He sends, in like manner as He Himself was sent by His Father.

4. Again, it is not of this world because its subjects are produced as so

many copies of this divine original; it is the only kingdom in which the

people proceeds out of the King as much as the regimen by which it is

ruled. He is strictly the Father whom His children imitate so far as they

are His children; in Him Fathership and Kingship are identical.

5. Again, it is not of this world because its sacraments bestow grace, a

gift of God coming down upon the world, in it, but not of it; the

fountain-head of the gift being that God has taken the flesh of Adam and

borne the sin of Adam, and therefore, through seven sacramental streams,

dispenses the grace which heals the sin, as it affects the whole life of

man as the offspring of Adam.

6. Again, it is not of this world in the perpetual witness which it bears

to the truth, in which witness specially our Lord declares that His

sovereignty lies. If this witness had closed with His death, that would

have been the triumph of falsehood. And those who allege that truth has

been corrupted in His kingdom do, in fact, declare with the same breath,

though they often do not perceive the consequence, that His witness has

ceased and failed. But truth, as the token and inheritance of His

kingdom, depends, like grace, upon a divine gift attached to His Person,

and transmitted through the order of His kingdom's regimen.[25]

7. Furthermore, it is a kingdom because of the complete analogy with that

civil government which makes a temporal kingdom. It has jurisdiction for

jurisdiction, and a graduated hierarchy of officers descending more

directly from the head than exists in any temporal monarchy. And what

the multifold arts and sciences which embellish natural life are to any

of these kingdoms, that the divine inheritance of teaching Christian

truth, in its bearings upon the acts and thoughts and philosophy of

mankind, is with a much higher degree of perfection in the Christian

kingdom.

8. And if man has naturally need to live in society, if to do so is a

fulfilment of God's purpose in creating him a race, much more has he this

need of the supernatural society; and in so living he fulfils the purpose

of God in so much higher a degree as Christ exceeds Adam. All the

sacraments fulfil this purpose according to the needs of human life, by

incorporating him with a divine order; most of all the divinest of them,

in which the King appears for ever in the act of His Priesthood,

dispensing bread to His people. And here again this spiritual

nourishment, whereby His people live in society, testifies that the

kingdom is not of this world.

9. Nor is it to be forgotten that the kingdom thus far described

generated for itself a law, not confined, like the law of any earthly

kingdom, to a particular time or place, but universal as itself, defining

and arranging the various relations by which it subsists, that is, the

whole order of the internal Christian life and the external Christian

society. The power of the Legislator who is seated in this empire nowhere

is shown more manifestly than in the great and uniform fabric of

Christian law which He has caused to proceed out of it, and which, made

for the rule of a Christian people gathered out of all the tribes of the

earth, contains in it, drawn out and applied, all the principles needed

to provide a mirror of justice and equity for the nations of the earth in

their intercourse with each other.

10. Most striking is this witness to the truth that it is not of this

world in the essential and inherent independence of the civil government

which the kingdom possesses as to its end, as to its regimen, as to the

production of its people, as to its sacraments, as to its maintenance of

the truth committed to it, and as to its Canon Law. With regard to all

these it is in the midst of these governments, but it is not of them. No

one of these things can their mechanism produce, while the divine kingdom

consists in the exercise of them all within the limits of these various

kingdoms, with or without their concurrence, but never with any

originating power in temporal rule as to any of them.

11. And this leads to two of the most striking differences between the

Temporal and the Spiritual Power. Every temporal kingdom is limited in

space. The proudest and most imperial which has yet existed, that great

Roman empire of which Christ was a subject, and in the bosom of which His

greater kingdom arose, how small a portion of the earth's surface did it

cover! Not so the Kingdom of Truth. It is in place, but not local; it

runs through all the kingdoms of the world, grasping them, not grasped by

them. By the token of ubiquity it is in them, but not of them; and if it

be retorted that this attribute has but imperfectly been fulfilled in

fact, I reply that it has been sufficiently fulfilled to mark to all eyes

that it is a token of the one kingdom, fulfilled more and more, and

advancing to greater fulfilment; besides that I am here considering the

divine kingdom in its conception, in its idea.

12. And still more than in place is the Temporal Power limited in time.

Immortal in the institution itself, so far as the human race is immortal,

it is subject to decline and death in numberless individual applications.

If man is likened to a flower in duration, many a kingdom lasts not so

long as a tree. All change in the character of their government, passing

from the one to the few, from the few to the many, or again reabsorbed

from the many to one. The succession of human governments is likened to

the sea in its changes, whose turbulent waves image forth the

fluctuations of empires. Where is the government that has remained one

and the same but that concerning which Christ said, "Feed my sheep;" "I

will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;" "Confirm thy

brethren;" "Thou art the Rock on which I will build my Church"? By its

domination over time and space the kingdom of the truth shows that it is

in but not of the world.

13. There is yet one more quality, as distinctive and as peculiar as any

which we have yet passed in review. It is the kingdom not only of the

truth, but of Charity. Not that within it there have not been innumerable

scandals; not that within it sin has not ever been fighting with grace;

but that the whole kingdom is compacted and held together by a divine

charity, and has in it as a common possession the treasure of the merits

of Jesus Christ. "The king is one with the kingdom, because He bears its

sins; the kingdom is one with the King, because it bears His cross."[26]

This is an interchange of charity which goes on for ever. It is an effect

of this bond that no virtue and no suffering in it is lost. The whole

kingdom, from the beginning to the end, makes up "that which is wanting

of the sufferings of Christ." There is no such bond of unity, no such

fruit of communion, in any temporal kingdom comparable to this. I suppose

that patriotism in the natural society corresponds to the charity

engendered in the supernatural kingdom; and patriotism is limited to the

temporal objects of the particular society; charity extends to the

eternal interests of the kingdom without end.

3.--_Relation of the Two Powers to each other._

In the treatment hitherto pursued we have divided the consideration of

the two Powers into the period before Christ and the period which ensues

upon His coming.

In the period before Christ we have found that both Powers were

originally of divine institution in the beginning of man, and that both

belonged to him as a race. Civil government began with the family;

worship, and with it priesthood, began also with the family; both were

united in the head of the race; both were instituted for the good of man

as he lived in society. Their subject was the same--man--the secular

Power treating him in his relation to his natural end, its object being

to provide all things which concerned the temporal prosperity of his

life; the Spiritual Power treating him in relation to his supernatural or

last end, its object being to provide whatever concerned his eternal

state after this life. And their relative importance was determined by

their end, with regard to which the temporal life was subject to the

future life. No fact was more strikingly illustrated by the whole history

than this; for three times the condition of the whole race upon the earth

was affected by its conduct in regard to the last end, which belongs to

the Spiritual Power. Once, and at a stroke, the whole race fell in its

first sire from its state of original justice, and from the happiness

which depended on the preservation of that state, by disregard of the end

for which it was created. A second time the whole race, with the

exception of one family, because disobedience to God became universal,

fell in like manner, and was destroyed. A third time the lapse proceeded

to the corruption of the idea of God Himself; the unity and brotherhood

of the race was broken up in consequence; it divided into nations at

enmity with each other, and man, from being a family of brethren, became

the bitterest foe of his fellow-man, inventing war, and slavery as its

result, and inflicting on himself worse evils than those which came to

him from any external cause. By the same lapse the Spiritual Power was

specially affected. The unity of the priesthood was destroyed with belief

in the unity of the Godhead; the truth which it was intended to attest

and carry on, that is, the sense of man's guilt and the promise of his

restoration, was overclouded; the sacrifice which it was intended to

offer to the one God was offered to a multitude of false gods; the rites

which accompanied the sacrifice and the prayers which explained its

meaning lost their force. The corruption of religion entailed with it a

terrible descent in the moral character of its ministers. In this state

it may be said that the Spiritual Power was so far fallen from its

original purpose, that it had almost ceased to have relation to the

supernatural end of man. In every country it continued to be, it is true,

in amity with the civil government, but at the price of absolute

subjection at last. The truth which should have guarded it was all but

lost, and the honour which belonged to it was seized by the civil ruler

as a decoration of his crown.

In the period which ensued upon the coming of Christ we have found a new

basis given to the Spiritual Power. As it lay through all Gentilism with

its truth corrupted, its power appended to the State, its offices

stripped of all moral meaning, it needed to be renewed from its very

source. A foul pantheon of male and female deities, differing as to names

and functions with every country, could generate no priesthood. Such

generation was the work of the Most High God, and for it He sent His Son.

The nation which He had built up to form the Altar, the Chair, the Throne

of His Son refused, through the worldliness of its rulers, to discharge

its office. Yet in its despite He sent forth the law from Sion, where the

act of His Son's high priesthood was effected by the very sin of His

people; and henceforth we find the Spiritual Power a derivation from the

Person of Christ as the Incarnate God in His work of redemption. We have

seen it one and indivisible in its essence, triple in its direction or

modality; in its Priesthood representing the Son; in its Teaching of the

truth, the Holy Spirit; in the Spiritual Royalty, from which Priesthood

and Teaching both proceed, and which both exercise, the Father, the

source of the Godhead; thus rendering an image, perfect so far as the

weakness of created things allows, of the Divine Trinity in Unity,

according to the prayer offered for it by our Lord in His Passion: "They

are not of the world, as I am not of the world: as Thou hast sent me into

the world, I also have sent them into the world; that they all may be

one, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in them, that they also may be one

in us."

It is, then, out of the union of the divine and human natures in Christ,

in virtue of His Passion, and from His Person when He rose from the dead,

that the Spiritual Power is drawn. The Spiritual Power itself makes its

subjects; and thus the Father of the future age creates His people from

Himself, as of old time and in figure of Himself He made the race out of

Adam. Thus, as regards Gentilism, He formed anew the priesthood to

replace that original priesthood which had so fallen from its duties, so

corrupted its witness, so lost its honour. The act in view to which that

original priesthood was set up being accomplished, He resumed its power,

for the symbolical sacrifice became useless so soon as the real sacrifice

was offered. As regards Judaism, he fulfilled the purpose for which it

had been created, offering Himself as the Paschal Lamb in the midst of

it; and by His resurrection He caused the prophet-nation to subserve for

the generation of an universal kingdom of truth, whose power lay

henceforth in Himself.

This is the condition of things established by Christ, and all that we

have further to say as to the relation between the Two Powers is a

deduction from it.

1. And, first, it is clear that all Christians are subject to the

Spiritual Power. This subjection rests upon the same ground as subjection

to Christ Himself, for the power represents Him. As regards any

individual Christian this will hardly be contested. But it is equally

true of all corporate bodies, whether small or great. This obligation

touches us strictly the mightiest kingdom, if it be Christian, as the

humblest private person. There is nothing in the quality of numbers or of

temporal sovereignty which exempts from obedience to the law of Christ

those who acknowledge Him for their King; and the King's government is as

the King Himself. Of course it is only so far as the spiritual domain

extends--that is, over the things which belong to the Priesthood, the

Teaching, and that Spiritual Jurisdiction which makes their Royalty--that

the obligation of obedience extends.

2. Secondly, all Christians are subject likewise, as all men in general,

to the Temporal Power, in the respective country in which they live, so

far as the domain of that Temporal Power extends, which even more than

the Spiritual has its limits. The Spiritual Power has itself laid down

in absolute terms the obligation of this obedience and the ground on

which it rests. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers, for there is

no power but from God, and the powers which are have been ordained by

God. So that he who resists the power, resists the ordinance of God, and

they that resist purchase to themselves condemnation, for the power is

God's minister to thee for good." And again, "Be subject to every human

creature for God's sake, whether it be to the king as excelling, or to

governors as sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the

praise of the good; for so is the will of God." This may be termed the

comment of the two chief apostles, Peter and Paul, upon the words of

their Lord, "Render to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's," which is

followed by the limitation, "and to God the things which are God's."

Temporal government is herein declared to be the vicegerent of God; to

have been such from the beginning of the world; to continue to be such to

the end of it. The statement that authority, as such, is the minister of

God to man for good applies, of course, not to any particular form of

temporal government, as emperor, king, or republic, in which the

government is administered in the persons of many or few, and in various

degrees of delegation, but to temporal government in itself, in the

principle of its authority. And being spoken by the highest Christian

authority in regard of what was actually a heathen government, it

manifestly belongs not only to Christians under Christian governments but

to the subjects of civil power in all times and conditions of things.

And, further, it is remarkable that our Lord and His apostles, who so

strongly recognise civil government as the ordinance of God, "as the

minister of God for good," themselves suffered the loss of their lives in

obedience to it, by an unrighteous judgment.

We have, then, the two Powers set forth as two Vicegerences of God, in

the government of His human world: the temporal Vicegerency belonging to

each sovereignty for the country which it rules, so far as the sphere of

that sovereignty extends; the Spiritual Vicegerency belonging to His one

spiritual kingdom in all times and places in the sphere of its

sovereignty.

3. Here we are in presence of two societies, the authority in each of

which is a divine Vicegerency, whose subject is the same man, whether

individual or collective. The one is the minister of God for good to man

in all his natural relations in every country; the other is the very

authority of the Incarnate God Himself, unlimited as to time and place,

over the same man in all his supernatural relations. Not only do both

represent God, but both govern the same man. These two conditions fix

what is the divinely intended relation between them. It cannot but be one

of amity. As these powers existed in the beginning they were united even

as to the person bearing them. The great sin of unfaithfulness to God in

the race caused them to be placed in different bearers. Amid all the

corruption which ensued, as to worship on the one hand, as to civil

government on the other, the two Powers never ceased to be in amity with

each other. For the basis of this amity is, in truth, a condition of

human nature which never varies, being, in fact, the subjection of man's

natural life to his supernatural end. As long as man is sent into this

world for the purpose of trial, to live in another world an endless life,

the quality of which shall be determined by his conduct as a free moral

agent in this life, so long the power which rules him in reference to the

concerns of this life is bound to live in amity with the power which

rules him as to the concerns of that future life. This, on the one hand,

being the reason for amity in man himself; on the other hand, both Powers

proceeding from the same God. must be intended by Him to work in harmony.

He has no more made them rivals in the government of His moral world,

than He has made the sun and moon rivals in the physical enlightenment of

the earth, and the government of its motions.

To illustrate further the necessity of amity between the two Powers for

the good of man's life, let us consider three other relations which have

been conceived as possible to exist.

4. A separate action of the two Powers in their respective spheres, that

is, a complete division between Church and State, has been imagined by

some as feasible and desirable. But with regard to this it must be

observed that the two Powers rule over one human commonwealth, whether

that be viewed as existing within the limit of any particular state, or

as spread over the whole world. Again, that they rule conjointly over

both soul and body. For, if we use accurate language, it is not as if the

Church ruled over the soul, and the State over the body. It is, indeed,

true that, in order to bring home the relative importance of the two ends

pursued by the two Powers, this illustration has been constantly used, by

the Fathers first, and by other writers afterwards; but it is only an

illustration, not an accurate statement of a real relation. They rule, in

fact, over both soul and body, but in different relations; the State over

soul and body as to their natural end, the Church over soul and body as

to their supernatural end. The State's rule is over all those things

which are ordered for the tranquillity and stability of human society;

the Church's rule is over all those things which concern the salvation of

souls, all those things which fall under the domain of her priesthood,

her teaching, and her jurisdiction. It is obvious that both these classes

of things belong both to soul and body. How, for instance, can rule over

the soul be denied to the State if it can demand of its subjects, for the

defence of country, the sacrifice of life, in which the condition of the

soul as well as that of the body is involved? How can rule over the body

be denied to the Church, when the body enters into every act of worship

and receives the sacraments?--when the inward belief requires to be

testified by word and deed, in order to confess Christ before men?

The Temporal Power, therefore, rules over all temporal matters, that is,

those which concern natural right and man's natural end; the Spiritual

Power rules over spiritual things, those which concern man's

supernatural end. Can the former perform rightly the duties which belong

to it without considering the rights appertaining to the latter?

To answer this question, let us take the case of the individual man. Is

it possible for a man rightly to perform his duties to the State without

consideration of his duties to God? As we have before seen, all the

duties of man in life are subject to his supernatural end. Every particle

of natural right rests upon the authority of God the Creator; and if God

has created man for a supernatural end, to discharge the civil duties of

life without regard to that end is simple impiety. It is plain that,

according to the intention of God, every part of man's natural life has

been ordered with a view to the end of his supernatural life.

But in this the case of the individual in no respect differs from the

case of the collective mass. The State has been created with a view to

the ultimate end of man as much as the individual. In fact, the cause of

its creation was to establish an order in human things which should help

man continually to attain that end. It was not created for itself. The

society of man in this life is not the ultimate fact. Once more; the

Fall, the Deluge, and the Dispersion have uttered three voices upon that

truth which can never be silenced, which have echoed through the whole

world and touch all human nature. The State, then, as much as the

individual, must perform all which it is intended to perform in the

government of man, in obedience to the principle that man's present life

is ordered with a view to his future life.

To apply this more particularly, it means that the State, in its

administration of all temporal things, is bound incessantly to have

regard to the free exercise by the Spiritual Power of its authority over

spiritual things. It must allow that power to administer the whole work

of the priesthood, and the whole work of the teaching, with that liberty

of internal government which constitutes its jurisdiction, the seat of

its royalty. It is not the place here to enumerate in detail how much

that involves. It is enough to say that the ordinary action of the State

and the ordinary action of the Church run daily into each other, as being

concerned with the same man and the same society of men; and accordingly,

that the allowing such a liberty to the Church by the State carries with

it great consideration and regard for the Church by the State. But such a

consideration and regard are quite incompatible with separate action of

the two Powers in their respective spheres. An instance in point would be

the State compelling a subject, who is a minister of the Church, to

become a soldier. It is a purely natural right of the State to require

the service of the subject for such a purpose. It is a purely spiritual

right of the Church to have the use of her ministers for her own work.

The use of the former right without consideration of the latter would

constitute a separate action of the State in its sphere. But it would be

at the same time an act of the utmost hostility on the part of the State

to the Church. And other instances of the same kind present themselves

through the whole domain of things which, in themselves, are purely

temporal or purely spiritual. Besides these there is the class of mixed

things, and, as one of them, let us take education.

Education, so far as it embraces instruction in the several arts and

sciences which subserve man's natural life, belongs to the domain of the

State; so far as it embraces the formation of the spiritual character in

man, which includes instruction in religion, and that not only as it

concerns dogma, but also philosophy and science, belongs to the domain of

the Church. If the State exercises its natural right over education with

regard to the former, without allowing the supernatural right of the

Church over the latter, which in itself would be no more than a separate

action in its own sphere, it would constitute, at the same time, a

complete infringement of the Church's rights in her spiritual power of

teaching and jurisdiction.

This is enough to show that the separate action of the two Powers in

their respective spheres leads to the disjunction of man's natural life

from his supernatural end. This was not the intention of God in creating

the two Powers, and placing man's life under their joint government.

5. Another relation between the two Powers which may be conceived, is

that of hostility upon the part of the State to the Church. This cannot

be reciprocal. The Church can indeed and must resist, with her own

weapons, unlawful aggression against the exercise of her rights in

administering the "things of God," but she cannot war against the State

as such, because it is in her sight "the minister of God." The hostility

of the State which invades the Church's exercise of her Priesthood,

Teaching, and Jurisdiction constitutes persecution. There are many

degrees of this. A heathen State may aim at the complete destruction of

the Christian Church within its borders, as at times the Roman emperors

did. A Christian State may also vex and hamper with every form of

impediment the exercise of the Church's powers. A State which has been

Christian, becoming heretical or apostate, may assault the Church with a

hatred, combined with deceit, which shall surpass the malignity of the

Roman State of old or the heathen State at any time. In the course of

centuries every degree of persecution has been exercised by the State,

heathen, Christian, heretical, or apostate, against the Church, by the

permission of the divine Providence; but no one will pretend to say that

such a relation as hostility on the part of the State, and of suffering

on the part of the Church, is the normal relation intended by God in the

establishment of the two Powers. On the contrary, the States which

persecute the Church, while they fulfil the divine purpose for its trial

and purification, incur punishment in many ways for their crime against

God in assaulting His kingdom, and, if they persevere, have been and are

to be rooted up and destroyed.

6. In contrast to such relation between the two Powers, let us look for a

moment at the divine Idea as it is thrown out in strong projection upon

the background of ages. We have human government founded indeed by God

at and with the commencement of the race, and continued by the strong

sanction of His power ever since, through the dispersion, through the

various races of men, one rising and another falling; human government

possessed in common by a vast number of sovereignties, great and small,

particular in place, with changing constitutions, everything about them,

the people who bear them, the boundaries within which they flourish, the

laws by which they are administered, shifting and transitory: no one of

these sovereignties having a claim to say that it was founded by God,

inasmuch as they all spring out of a long series of conquests and changes

which succeed after the original patriarchal rule. These are

distinctively the kingdoms of men, and in them is fulfilled, with a

little longer range, what the poet says of each human generation--

"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found;"

the only thing about them which is not shifting and not transitory is the

one thing which is of divine appointment, government itself. And in the

midst of these nations, borne upon them, and shaken indeed, but

imperturbable amid their fluctuations, behold the one government founded

immediately by Christ in St. Peter, as no other sovereignty has been

founded; in St. Peter, made by express language His Viceregent. Here is

one sovereignty, universal in time and place, with no changing

constitution, after the fashion of its human shadows, which are a royalty

one day, a democracy another day, an empire a third, but one and the

same for ever. Here is the kingdom of Christ.

But that which rules the relation of the one kingdom and the many

kingdoms to each other, is the _end_ for which they are constructed:

human government, the one abiding because divine element in the many

kingdoms, exists for the peace, the order, and the prosperity of man's

life on earth. But this, its highest end, is subject, like all the

natural goods of man, to a higher end, the eternal beatitude of man. In

the last resort temporal government itself was originally founded and

actually exists only for this purpose. But the one kingdom of Christ is

directed immediately to this very purpose. Because there is an

inseparable relation of all earthly things to that highest end, therefore

each of these temporal kingdoms and the one spiritual kingdom have a bond

between them which cannot be broken. If it were not for this, their range

is so apart from each other, their powers so independent of each other,

that they would speedily part company. The strong hand of God has joined

them to draw together the chariot of human government by the yoke of the

last end.

How entirely independent in themselves are their constituent parts! On

the one hand, earthly might, grounded indeed in right but ruling by

force, cemented by riches, carrying the sword of life and death in its

hands, exulting in all the vast accumulation of human arts and sciences,

the work of civilised man through long ages; on the other hand, a royal

priesthood, with a divine truth, carried through the ages by an order of

men generated spiritually in virtue of the consecration once given by the

hands of Christ to Peter and his brethren. The temporal government marked

by wealth and force; the spiritual by poverty and weakness. Yet both

reign over the soul and body of man individual and collective. These

powers are both ordained by God; can they be also ordained with

co-ordination?

The following passage of St. Thomas[27] leads, I think, to a full answer

to this question:--

"As the life by which men live well here on earth is as means to the end

of that blessed life which we hope for in heaven, so whatever particular

goods are obtained by man's agency, as, for instance, riches, profits of

trade, health, eloquence, or learning, have for their end the good of the

mass. If then, as we have before shown, the person charged with the care

of the last end ought to be the superior of those who are charged with

means to an end, and to direct them by his authority, it is evident from

what we have said that, just as the king ought to be subject to that

domain and regimen which is administered by the office of the priesthood,

so he ought to preside over all human offices and regulate them by his

supreme authority. Now whoever has the duty of doing anything which

stands to another thing as means to an end, is bound to see that his work

is suitable to that end; so the armourer furbishes his sword for

fighting, and the builder arranges his house to be lived in. Since, then,

the beatitude of heaven is the end of that life by which we live at

present virtuously, the king's office requires him to promote such a life

in his people as is suitable for the attainment of blessedness in heaven,

by ordaining what tends thither, and by forbidding, so far as is

possible, the contrary."

The king will here stand for whoever has sovereign authority. That

sovereign authority therefore is itself subject to the law of God through

all its exercise. The bearer of that law of God is the Spiritual Power

which stands over against all sovereigns, in all countries, with the

commission placed expressly in its hands by Christ. So far, therefore, as

the law of God is concerned, which is precisely the same for the

individual and the multitude, the sovereign is in every country subject

to it, and the more stringently because, in the words of St. Thomas, he

presides over all _human_ offices. These by their nature are subject to

the _superhuman_ office.

This is the indirect Power over temporal things possessed by the Royal

Priesthood which has been instituted by Christ. The indirect Power rests

simply on the supernatural end of man, and cannot be denied without the

denial of that supernatural end. And on account of this end the relation

between the two Powers cannot be one of co-ordination, and must be one of

subordination.

Nothing can be further removed from the confusion of the two Powers, or

from the absorption of the one by the other, than this Idea of their

relation. For it is a purely spiritual power which belongs to the

priesthood: any power which it exerts over temporal things is indirect,

based simply upon the subjection of those temporal things to the bearer

of the divine law; and therefore this indirect Power extends over _all_

temporal things without exception, but over all only so far as they

concern the last end of human life.

The sum is this. God is the one Creator, Designer, and Ruler of the order

of Nature and the order of Grace, and in both has one end in view, the

glorification of Himself by His creatures; which glorification in beings

possessed of reason can only consist in the knowledge and love of His

infinite perfections.

There is no power on earth of man over man but that which is derived from

God, either mediately or immediately; and therefore every power is,

strictly speaking, vicarious, a portion of His lordship over the human

race, committed to man, and subject to the end of His glorification by

His creature: in which is comprehended the ultimate happiness of that

creature; since that happiness is itself the exercise of his mind and his

will in knowing and loving his Creator, so that God's honour is the

creature's bliss.

But, further, the order of nature was in its origin united with the order

of grace, and subordinated to it. The intervention of the Fall did not

dissolve this subordination. The long ages of the Revolt only led up to

the Restoration, which was prophesied at the moment of the Revolt, and

intended even before it. Thus the Power divinely instituted to carry on

the human race--the Power of civil government--the power which represents

God in the order of nature, is yet subordinated by Him to the power

which He Himself has instituted in the order of Grace.

This second Power at the time of the Restoration springs directly from

the Person of the Son; who as He was sent by the Father, so sent His

apostles; but He conveyed that power especially to Peter and his heirs in

the fulness of a royal priesthood which teaches His faith for ever; so

that no power on earth exists so directly instituted by God, and so

manifestly vicarious of God's own power, as that of Peter, viewed in

himself and in his heirs; and given with the express promise that all the

power of the enemy shall not prevail against it.

In all this God, who cannot be at variance with Himself, made the two

Powers to help each other, conferring upon each distinct offices, which

concern respectively the natural and the supernatural life of man, but

likewise subordinating the natural to the supernatural end in the person

and race of the Second Adam, as He had subordinated it in the person of

the First Adam.

One of the greatest saints and rulers, who shines in the firmament of the

Church with almost unparalleled lustre, has expressed this union under

the image of a human body, seeing the natural light by two eyes, but

directed by one mind, the mind of Christ. He is the one Head of the two

Powers, ruling in temporal sovereignty by the hand of kings, in spiritual

by the Priesthood which He has inaugurated. If we imagine the one mind of

the God-man thus ruling the Christendom which He has made out of Himself

by the two eyes of the kingdom and the priesthood, we reach the divine

ideal of the relation between the two Powers. Thus St. Gregory VII.

observes in his letter to Rodolph, Duke of Suabia, A.D. 1073:[28] "The

sovereign reigns most gloriously, and the Church's vigour is

strengthened, when priesthood and empire are joined in the unity of

concord. There should be no fiction, no dross, in that concord. Let us

then confer together, for as the human body is directed in the natural

light by two eyes, so when these two dignities are united in the harmony

of pure religion, the body of the Church is shown to be ruled and

enlightened with spiritual light. Let us give our best attention to these

matters, so that when you have well entered into what is our wish, if you

approve of our reasons as just, you may agree with us. But if you would

add or subtract anything from the line of conduct which we have marked

out, we shall be ready, if God permit, to consent to your counsels." The

words "if God permit" indicate very gently that subordination, grounded

upon the pre-eminence of the divine law, and the divine Ruler who upbears

it, which, in case of difference, the natural must yield to the

supernatural authority. There is the fullest recognition that to temporal

sovereignty all things belong which concern natural right. In these few

words I think that St. Gregory VII. has summed up the settled view,

policy, and practice of all his predecessors and of all his successors

upon the relation between the two Powers, and the importance of their

agreement for the good of human society. Never has any one of them

denied to human sovereignty the exercise of all those rights which belong

to natural law. Never has any one of them failed to maintain that all

things which belong to natural law are subordinate to those things which

touch the salvation of man, and accordingly that when the two orders of

things come into conflict, the natural must yield to the supernatural. It

is obvious to add how many mixed things there must be, which enter into

both domains, and the treatment of which will affect the harmony between

the two Powers.

From all the above it results that the denial of the supernatural end in

man, individual or collective, constitutes that which is the complete

heathenism. In proportion as the bearers of the Temporal Power have more

or less approached this heathenism has their opposition to the Spiritual

Power been more or less intense; in proportion as they have acknowledged

and acted with a due regard to the supernatural end, they have also

acknowledged the Spiritual Power and acted in harmony with it.

The perfect ideal relation between the two Powers has been expressed by

the term of marriage, in which Christ, the celestial Bridegroom in the

Spiritual Power, espouses the temporal order. This image is in remarkable

accordance with the origin of the race, and with the prefiguration of

Christ in Adam. It is as if the divine order at the Fall fell into the

background, and in its slumber the human was taken out of it. But when

the human race awoke in the new Adam, the divine order greeted the human

as bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh, and wooed it to rule the

world with it in the stable union of wedlock. This image at least may

serve to indicate the various relations which have hitherto existed

between the two Powers. It is itself the ideal relation intended by God.

Then, as a matter of fact, during the first three centuries the Church,

with her divine claims, turns to the Temporal Power inviting it to an

alliance. This is the Church's relation to the heathen State, as it were

the time of wooing. Next the Temporal Power accepted this invitation and

united itself with the Church, so that each preserving its own domain,

they ruled the world together. That was the relation of the Church to the

truly Catholic State, a marriage disturbed by no division and separation,

when unity of faith preserved the marriage vow unbroken. Each then,

indeed, might have misunderstandings, because the bearers of the two

Powers, like husband and wife, are human beings; but since there was the

stable will in both to preserve the marriage vow undefiled in Christ,

such misunderstandings were easily overcome. Perhaps this expresses the

whole medieval condition of things in this respect as accurately as can

be done. Thirdly, the Temporal Power divorced itself from the Church's

faith, and from obedience to her in divine things; that is the state of

broken wedlock. It has various decrees. First, the housewife divorces her

husband and breaks the marital band: that in itself constitutes the

apostate State. Secondly, she dissolves the marriage by entering into

connection with another, to whom she gives power over the household, and

with his aid oppresses the lawful husband: that is the position of the

heretical State. Thirdly, the housewife will no longer tolerate the

single rule of him who has alienated her from her husband; she is willing

to have more than one temporary connection, and amongst the many perhaps

the husband, if he will accept such terms: that is the position of the

indifferent State. Thus we get from this image of marriage[29] an

adequate measure of all the relations which have hitherto subsisted

between Church and State.

But the purpose of the foregoing chapter has been to set forth the ideal

relation between the two Powers intended by God in the Incarnation and

the Passion of His Son, and springing out of the junction of these two

mysteries of His love.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] See Die Harmonie des alten und des neuen Testamentes, von Dr. Konrad

Martin, p. 190.

[19] Philo de Monarchia, lib. 2. Legation to Caius, quoted by Vincenzi, p.

21.

[20] Observe in St. Clement's Epistle how it is assumed as undoubted that

bishop, priest, and deacon had succeeded to the three orders of the

levitical worship.

[21] 1 Peter ii. 25; Heb. x. 21, iii. 1, v. 10; Matt. xxiii. 8; Luke xxii.

29; John xx. 21; Matt. xxviii. 20; John xxi. 15.

[22] S. Thos. de Reg. Prin., lib. I. c. 14, translated.

[23] Taparelli, Saggio teoretico di dritto naturale.

[24] Bossuet.

[25] See Ephes. iv. 11-16.

[26] Bossuet.

[27] De Regimine Principis, lib. I. c. xv.

[28] Mansi, Collectio Conciliorum, xx. p. 75.

[29] I am indebted to Phillipps' "Kirchenrecht" for this illustration of

marriage. It is a work to which I am under many obligations.