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CHURCH AND STATE.

The Four Experiments of Church and State, and the Conflicts of Churches. By LORD ROBERT MONTAGU, M.P. London : Longman and Co. 1864.

WE have before us a handsomely printed volume of 434 pages on a subject, which cannot be otherwise than interesting. The author of this book is a tory nobleman, well known to the world; and we expected that we were about to peruse a disquisition on the best means of gathering up the shattered remains of that link which once held Church and State together, before the growing tendency to disruption had rendered all attempts at consolidation a vain and fruitless task. We had not, however, read many pages before we were constrained to turn again to the title page in order to ascertain whether Lord Robert Montagu had edited a reprint of some book originally published in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, or had actually written it himself in the nineteenth century.

The state of things, on which Lord Robert Montagu's theory rests, no longer exists. Nous avons changé tout cela is a fact, whether it were wisely done or no. When Hooker said that one and the same line might be both the base and side of a triangle, as one and the selfsame man might be viewed either as a churchman or a citizen, none but churchmen were admitted to civil privileges; but the progress of religious toleration, which has gone on increasing in the interval, has introduced an entire change in the constitution of our nation. The Jewish Member of Parliament or the Quaker Alderman may be considered as a citizen, but it no longer follows that because he is a citizen he is also a churchman; and so the whole superstructure, which Lord Robert Montagu has built, falls at once to the ground, because the foundation solely rests upon his own imagination; and he might as well have written a history of England as it would have been if the Norman Conquest had never taken place, as a treatise on Church and State, omitting all consideration of the qualifications which the removal of civil disabilities from Jews and Dissenters has necessitated.

In noticing this book we shall, therefore, have to combat a theory rather than to deal with facts, for although facts abound, they are not presented in such combination as to have any practical bearing on the present state of the question. The four experiments of Church and State reviewed by Lord Robert Montagu are these,1. Where the Church and State are coincident, as in England. 2. Where the State overrides the Church, as in Russia. 3. Where the Church overrides the State, as in Rome. 4. Where they are independent of each other, as in America.

The objections which may be brought against the latter three are contrasted with the excellence of the first, and if Church and State were really coincident, such a position might possibly be capable of demonstration.

In the Jewish Church no doubt they were identical, so far as every Jew was a member not only of the nation but also of the Church, and when he ceased to be one, he lost of necessity the privileges of the other. But the Jewish state was a theocracy, and the chief end of its civil institutions was the defence of the Church, but even in this there was a distinction between things civil and religious which Lord Robert Montagu denies to the English Church and nation. The kingdom and the priesthood were essentially distinct, although the subjects of the one owed allegiance to the other, and the duty of providing that the priests did their duty appertained to the office of the king. David, king and prophet, divided the family of Aaron into monthly courses, and deposing the high priest set another in his stead. The Jewish kingdom was a theocracy, and as long as its civil rights remained intact, the alliance between Church and State was a divine institution, but when in after days the civil power had passed into alien hands, the alliance of necessity ceased. Spiritual things appertained to spiritual governors, whilst in civil matters obedience was due to the Roman Ruler. It was of spiritual things that our SAVIOUR said, "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat, whatsoever therefore they bid you observe, that do;" and it was of the distinction between the two that He again said, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Thus even under the Jewish dispensation, although the alliance had originally a high sanction, it was not essential to the existence of the Church, and the distinction between things secular and spiritual was at least acknowledged not only under the kings but under the judges also.

Passing on to the Christian dispensation, we find that for the first three centuries no alliance could possibly exist between Church and State. Granting therefore the four divisions which Lord Robert Montagu lays down, and admitting for the sake of argument his theory respecting the union between Church and State in England, each has been at most but a temporary expedient. The Russian Church was not the slave of the State until the day when Peter the Great entered the conclave at Moscow and declared himself the Patriarch of the Church. The Roman State was not subject to the Pope in civil matters until the Papal dominions had fallen into the temporal power of the Bishop of Rome. The way of the sectaries, too, the complete independence of Church and State, was not always the established form of American Christianity. The Puritan Government of Massachusetts exacted conformity under the most rigid penalties, and the "Blue Laws" of Connecticut restrained all liberty of conscience within that settlement. The Church of England was

endowed by royal grant in New York; and in Carolina and Virginia the Church of the mother country was established by articles of the constitution, whilst Maryland was a Roman Catholic colony.

That which had a beginning may also have an end. The Russian Church will not cease to be the Russian Church, if its emancipation should ever be accomplished. The Church of Rome will not cease to be a Church when the temporal dominion of the Pope shall be abolished. The Church of England has already passed through several phases of existence, and if the hopes of some and the fears of others are ever realized, her present condition will not be permanent. At first we find the British Church independent of all secular support. In Anglo-Saxon times she was allied to the civil power. In the middle ages she appealed to Rome for protection. At the Reformation the king's supremacy was re-established. At the Rebellion her ministers were ejected from their benefices; and since the Revolution the civil constitution has been drifting from its ancient landmarks, until the union between Church and State has become little more than such a protection of law as might defend the rights of any society existing in the land; and if the tide should still flow on, and even this be swept away, the Church of England will still be the same Church which S. Augustine found in Britain. Civil disabilities cannot interfere with her divine rights. She may lose her endowments, but she can never forfeit her commission, except through her own unfaithfulness. Through many experiments of Church and State she may have yet to pass, but on no one of them does she depend for her existence. She might equally exist under each or apart from any one of them; but Lord Robert Montagu considers the Church of England as a society which has no being apart from the State, or rather as identical with it. Thus when under the Commonwealth the established form of religion was Presbyterian, Presbyterianism was then the Church of England, and to depart from it was both a civil and a religious crime. If, then, according to the theories of Locke and Warburton the State is bound to support the religion to which the majority of the nation adheres, on what a shifting sand must churchmen rest. Happily, however, for us, the Church has herself defined the nature of her office as "a [qu.? the] congregation of faithful men anywhere in which the pure Word of GOD is preached, and the Sacraments be duly administered according to CHRIST's ordinance in all things that of necessity are requisite to the same. There is no mention here of State authority, although the framers of the Articles would have been the last of men to overlook it, if it could in any way have been considered as a note of the Church.

Very different from this is Lord Robert Montagu's theory, but that we may not misrepresent, he shall speak for himself:

"The Christian Religion is the knowledge of the only true GOD, and of JESUS CHRIST Whom He hath sent. This regards a work on the soul; yet it comes within the sphere of a statesman's activity. For men's passions are their strivings after the various appearances of good; the difference of men chiefly consisting in the difference of their notions of the summum bonum, or the good thing. Hence men's passions and acts are but the counterpart of their knowledge. Thus Socrates used to say that virtue is knowledge, and that error is ignorance or madness. It must therefore be the aim of the statesman to correct men's notions of what is good; he must endeavour to spread a knowledge of the good thing. Theology, however, is not the statesman's province. He has nothing to do with dogma; he does not deal with doctrines.

"A Christian Church is an association for resisting evil; an institution for maintaining and communicating a knowledge of what is good. To use the words of Dr. Arnold-Religious Society is only civil society fully enlightened. The State in its highest perfection becomes the Church.' By these words he conveyed the same doctrine which Aristotle had asserted more than two thousand years before him: πόλις γιγνομένη μὲν τοῦ ζῆν ἕνεκεν, οὖσα δὲ τοῦ εὖ ζῆν. States may indeed have been framed to enable us to live; while our real welfare is their proper end. The object of the Church is the improvement of man. This is also the object of the State. A National Church is one Christian Society; and the State is the same Society in another point of view."-Pp. 4, 5.

Again, we read,—

"A national Church does not, in fact, rest upon dogma. If it did, there would be a more plausible pretext for that further objection, 'What right has a Government to impose its religion upon us?' To this, however, the retort is obvious: What right has a Government to impose its laws upon us?' The fallacy in each query is the same— namely, a confusion as to the meaning and duty of Government. It is not the duty of what is called the Government to make or impose laws. It has to administer the laws of the land. It is the nation which has to declare the law or make statutes. So also it is the nation which determines the model of the religious establishments, and the kind of worship which shall be established. The Government is not one thing, and the Church another; nor is the Church one thing, and the State or nation another. What we call Government is merely the method which the nation has made for declaring and executing its laws; the machine, in fact, which works for us. The Government, therefore, does not impose its laws, nor does it impose its religion."-P. 23.

We here have two propositions, which are laid down as postulates: one, that the Church is an association for putting down evil; and the other, that a national Church has nothing to do with dogma. Certainly our Articles do not define the Church as an association for putting down evil, and if we go back to the Acts of the Apostles, we never find her exercising this function. If it had been so, the Apostles would have gone about breaking the

images of the heathen gods; but this they evidently never considered as part of their commission. It was with other weapons than these that the Church's victory was to be gained, for her warfare was not carnal but spiritual. S. Paul at Ephesus did not excite the people to break down the image of the goddess Diana, nor at Athens did he declaim against the idol altars. We may allow that Mahometanism, viewed as a national Church, in Lord Robert Montagu's light, was an association for putting down evil, and so may be any religion which is spread at the point of the sword; but surely it was not by such means as these that the Church overcame the world, for the blood which was shed in the conflict was her own, and not that of her enemies. Ethelbert, from whose reign the establishment of Christianity in England as a national Church is dated, certainly did not so esteem it. "The conversion of the people," Bede tells us, "the king so far regarded, that he compelled none to embrace Christianity, but only showed more affection to the believers as to his fellow-citizens in the heavenly kingdom; for he had learned from his instructors and leaders to salvation that the service of CHRIST ought to be voluntary, and not by compulsion." There may have been instances in which the Church has acted differently, and missionaries may have shown an intemperate zeal in putting down idolatry by means which the example of the Apostles does not sanction; but the errors of individuals are not chargeable on the Church. We read of S. Boniface cutting down an oak in Friesland, which was sacred to Jupiter; but this was done, when the people were converted, to prove the utter impotency of that which had been an object of superstitious veneration. Other missionaries may have done the same, under circumstances which did not justify the deed; but usually the SAVIOUR's prophetic saying was verified, "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Few in these days would be found to applaud the crusade against the Waldenses; but Lord Robert Montagu must do so, if he would be consistent.

How far the Church under the Anglo-Saxon régime was an institution for putting down evil, there may be some reason to doubt. The ecclesiastical and civil Courts were not then distinct, and the Bishop sat with the Sheriff in the County Court. The origin of this was probably the superior wisdom and intelligence of the ecclesiastics, which rendered them useful assessors in the Courts of Judicature; and the same reason will no doubt account for the fact, that after the separation of the Courts, ecclesiastics still practised and presided in the civil Courts. Certainly the Bishops in the County Courts compelled the observance of canons on the laity as well as on the clergy, but they scarcely would have regarded the corporation of which they were members as an institution for putting down evil. Their work was rather to build