Political Science Of The State

4/8 POLITICAL SCIENCE.
Hooker had to maintain his position that a church and com-
monwealth may form the same community. They held, as he
states, their position, that church and commonwealth "are
distinguished not only in nature and definition, but [are] in
subsistence perpetually severed ; so that they which are of the
one can neither appoint nor execute in whole nor in part the
work belonging to them which are of the other, without open
breach of the law of God, which hath divided them and doth
require that, being so divided, they should distinctly or sever-
ally do their works. With us [that is, with Hooker and the
non-puritans of the Church of England] the name of a church
importeth only a society of men first united into some public
form of regiment, and secondly, distinguished from'other soci-
ety by the exercise of religion." With them the name of a
church not only denoteth a multitude of men so united, but
also the same divided necessarily and perpetually from the
body of a commonwealth, so that, even in such a political
society as consisteth of none but Christians, the church and
commonwealth are two corporations, each independently sub-
sisting by itself. " We hold that, seeing there is not any man
of the Church of England but the same is also a member of
the commonwealth, nor any member of the commonwealth
which is not also of the Church of England—therefore, one
and the same multitude may be in both. Nay, it is with us
true that no person appertaining to the one can be denied also
to be of the other."
But objections to this view of his would arise on the ground
that the Christian church among the heathen has a separate
communion, and that things pertaining to religion are distin-
guished from others, and are under spiritual persons. He
admits an absolute separation between the church among the
'heathen, and the heathen state, although all Christians be-
longed to the state. There are, then, not only conceivable*
but also historically real conditions in which state and church
are separated. But he adds that when Rome became Chris-
tian this separation could not continue without supposing that
the clergy are the church in a commonwealth, to the exclu-