INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
N[ SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDEAS
Rey. a. J. Carlyle , D. LiTT.
^.hristian Social Union Handbooks
'ditcd hj Henry Scott Holland , T),T>.
Presented to the
LIBRARY oj the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
by
PROFESSOR R. F. McRAE
CHRISTIAN SOCIAL UNION HANDBOOKS
Edited hv HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND, D.D.
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
UPON SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDEAS
BY A. J. CARLYLE, D.LITT.
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOL.
OUR NEIGHBOURS : A HANDBOOK FOR THE C.S.U.
By Henry Scott Holland, D.D.
THE BOY AND HIS WORK
By the Rev. Spencer J, Gibb
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP
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By CoNSTANXE Smith
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Acting on behalf of the Central Executive.
CHRISTIAN SOCIAL UNION HANDBOOKS
Edited hy HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND. D.D.
THE INFLUENCE
OF CHRISTIANITY
UPON .
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IDEAS
BY
A. J. CARLYLE, D.Litt.
LECTUKER IK ECONOMICS AlfD POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD
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EDITOR'S PREFACE
The Christian Social Union aims at producin«;- citizens
inspired by spiritual convictions and equipped by patient
and thorough study.
It is to further this aim that these Handbooks have
been Avritten.
They ground their appeal on the Name of Christ : and
they set out the actual and precise conditions of social
experience under which the service of men, for Christ's
sake, can be realised.
Each department has been entrusted to an expert
who is in thorough possession of his material. The
reader can be confident that the treatment is adequate^
and the statements trustworthy.
Each has tried to make the Handbook committed to
him a complete exposition of the matter in hand.
It has, also, been considered right that the first
Number of the Sei*ies should rehearse the central
motives and aims with wliich the Union identifies itself.
It is hoped that these direct practical Handbooks
will help the members of our Union to carry out into
efficient action the convictions to which Belief and Study
have led them.
I have been assisted throughout, in all the work
that falls to an Editor, by the advice and judgment of
Dr. Rashdall, to whom the Executive had authorised
me to turn for help, and wlio has always given me
all that I asked for.
HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND.
a2
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2010 with funding from
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PREFACE
I HAVE endeavoured to set out briefly some of the
most important features of the influence of Chris-
tianity upon social and poKtical ideas, and have
given a certain number of references to the writings
of the Fathers and others. For the full text of
these passages I must refer the reader to the
History of Political Theory in the Middle Ages by
my brother and myself.
The subject with which I have endeavoured to
deal is the influence of Christianity on ideas and
principles ; the history of the influence of Chris-
tianity on social and political life is another, and a
much larger and more complicated subject.
A. J. CARLYLE.
Oxford, Dec. \, 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
Need of care in considering the subject, .... 1
Charges made against Christianity, and claims made for
it without sufficient reason, ..... 2
The world into which Christianity came was different
from that of Aristotle and Plato, .... 7
Sources of information for this, ..... 9
CHAPTER n
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY
This is the first and fundamental social principle of
Christianity, of St. Paul and the Gospels, . . 14
Contrast between this and Aristotelian theory of in-
equality, ......... 17
Statement of the principle in the Fathers, ... 20
This principle held by the philosophers of the Christian
era 23
CHAPTER III
HISTORY OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 1
History of the conception in the ninth century, . . 30
In the Middle Ages proper, ...... 35
X THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
PAGE
Influence of the conception on slavery, .... 38
Christian justification of slavery as result of sin, . . 41
CHAPTER IV
HISTORY OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEORY OF EQUALITY — II
Relation of the conception to the democratic theory, . 46
Influence of the conception on social progress, . . 50
Abolition of slavery, ....... 51
Factory legislation, ....... 53
CHAPTER V
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE UNITY OF LIFE
New Testament conception, ...... 56
Relation to recognition of individuality, ... 57
Conception of unity needed to correct this, ... 62
CHAPTER VI
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 1
St. Paul's doctrine of the sacred character of the State, . 65
Meaning and conditions of this, ..... 67
Correction of anarchist tendencies in Church, . . 70
A translation of Aristotelian and Stoic principles, . . 74
CHAPTER VII
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT — II
This conception in the Fathers,
In mediaeval writers, ....
Perversion of it in theory of ' Divine Right,'
An Oriental conception.
Another tradition in St. Ambrose, etc., .
78
81
85
90
92
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER VIII
THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY
PAGE
The mediaeval Church repudiated the theory of ' Divine
Right/ 96
The principle of the two authorities in human life^ . 97
CHAPTER IX
CHRISTIAN THEORIES OF PROPERTY
The supposed communism of the early Churchy . 107
Private property legitimate but not ' natural.' . . Ill
Charity an act of justice, . . . . . .113
Property the creation of the State, .... 114
Scientific and historical conception of property, . 117
CHAPTER X
SUMMARY
The two most important Christian conceptions, . 123
The theory of equality, . . . . . . .124
The theory of the sacred nature and purpose of the
State, 126
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The subject of the influence of Christianity, of
the degree and modes in which Christianity has
influenced the pohtical conceptions and the social
ideals of men, is one of great interest. It is obvious
to any inquirer that the political ideas and the social
ideals of the modern world are very different indeed
from those of the ancient, and it is natural that we
should think that in some measure this difference
is due to the influence of Christianity. It is indeed
a commonplace of literature to urge that in this,
that, or the other respect, Christianity has modified
the tendencies of political and social life. But,
though the subject is one of great interest, it is also
one of great difficulty. The elements out of which
the characteristic structure and conceptions of the
modern world have grown up, are very complex,
and it is by no means easy to trace the different
influences which have affected its development,
to their original sources. It is, I think, histori-
cally of great importance that we should ask our-
selves : What part has Christianity played in the
transformation of the ancient ideas into those of
the modem world ? But we must begin by making
2 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
clear to ourselves that the inquiry is not simple
or easy, and we must be prepared for conclusions
which may not always and altogether fit into the
commonplaces of received tradition.
As soon as we begin to consider this subject
seriously, we shall discover that a great deal that
has been said about the influence of Christianity —
whether in praise of that influence or by way of
criticism of it — has been rash and ill-considered.
Much has been claimed for Christianity without any
sufficient reason ; much has been urged against
Christianity without any serious examination of
the facts. We may take a few examples of what
I mean. Among the charges which have been
brought against Christianity in its influence upon
social and political ideas, it has, for instance, often
been said that it has tended to develop the sense of
the importance of the individual life, as contrasted
with the importance of the social or public life to
such an extent as gravely to interfere with the ideal
of citizenship. It has often been said that while
to the ancient thinker the good man and the good
citizen were identical, to the modem thinker, under
the influence of Christian conceptions, the ideals of
citizenship and the ideals of general goodness have
drifted apart. It has often been said that while
the whole moral conception of the ancient world
centred in the conception of the good citizen, the
moral conceptions of the modern world, under the
influence of Christianity, centre in the good man
who may or may not be a good citizen. And it is
INTRODUCTION 8
argued, therefore, that the influence of Christianity
has been unfavourable to the development of the
highest ideal of citizenship. Now it is quite true
that there is a very great difference between the
tendency of the theory of the ancient philosophers
like Plato and Aristotle with regard to the place of
citizenship in human life, and the tendencies of
thought in the modem world. And it is also
quite true that the development of the conception of
the supreme importance of the individual life, the
individual character, has been fostered and pro-
moted by Christianity. But it is often overlooked
that the high development of the conception of
individuality, of the importance of the individual
as contrasted with, or as independent of social
or public life, was antecedent to Christianity
and found expression in the whole philosophical
tendency of the ancient world after Aristotle.
It is often forgotten that much of the stress which
is laid by Christianity upon the individual life, and
much of the comparative neglect of the obligation
of the social and public life, was anticipated by the
tendencies of the Stoic philosophy. The truth is,
that what sometimes in this respect is taken to be
due to the influence of Christianity, is in a large
measure due to causes and circumstances to which
Christianity is related, but of which it is not the only
source. Let me take another example. It is often
said that the tendency of Christianity has been to
emphasise the virtues of meekness and submission
in such a way and to such a degree as to be un-
4 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
favourable to the development of the demand for
political freedom, and Christianity, it is therefore
said, has been in the past, and for that matter is
still, the enemy of social and political progress.
There is no doubt that there is much truth in this
charge. The influence of Christianity, certainly the
influence of the Christian Church, has often been
thrown in favour of the existing authority or the
existing institution, and Christian teachers have
often urged upon men who demanded reformation
or freedom, the duty, or at any rate the virtue,
of submission. But, on the other hand, it is often
forgotten that when we look more closely at Chris-
tianity in relation to this subject, we also find quite
other tendencies, quite other principles. Where
some Christian writers and thinkers have been the
advocates of submission, other Christian writers
and thinkers have been the foremost advocates of
revolt and of progress. And in both cases the
advocates, whether of submission or of resistance,
have claimed to find sanction for their views within
the Christian tradition itself. These examples will
suffice to bring out what I should call the careless
traditional criticisms directed against the influence
of Christianity.
On the other hand, many claims have been made
for Christianity which are, at least, equally un-
founded. It has often been said that Christianity
was the main instrument in the destruction of
slavery. No doubt there have been times when the
movement against slavery has been inspired, at
INTRODUCTION 5
any rate in a large measure, by men of very strong
Christian convictions, but, when we come to
examine this question carefully, we are compelled
to recognise, in the first place, that the disappearance
of slavery in the western world was primarily due
to political and economic causes, and in the second
place, that, in theory at least, the influence of
Christianity, or at least of Christianity as inter-
preted by the Church and by many ecclesiastical
writers, was exerted in favour of slavery. There
can be no doubt, as I shall have occasion to point
out later, that the Christian Fathers, so far from
destroying the institution of slavery, supplied
it with a new foundation at a time when the older
philosophical justification of slavery had been
abandoned. If we are to measure the whole
influence of Christianity upon the institution of
slavery, we must take account of such facts as the
severe condemnation by the Council of Gangrae
(a.d. 362), of all those who encouraged a slave to
escape from his master, not to speak at all of the
religious arguments of the defenders of slavery in
the southern states of North America in the
nineteenth century. Again, it has often been said
that it is Christianity which has elevated the
position of women, and there is little doubt that
this is substantially true. But, it is not wholly
true. Those who will be at pains to examine the
legal position of women under the Roman Empire,
will at once see that at least the legal emancipation
of women had been carried to a very high point.
6 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
and they will see further that during the Middle
Ages this legal emancipation was in a large
measure lost. In many respects at least, the
position of women was not so independent in the
modem world as it was during the Roman Empire,
until quite recently. It would, of course, be very
hasty and very foolish to maintain that this re-
action was mainly due to Christian influences. I
think it was in the main due to the fact that in
this particular matter the Teutonic societies which
overthrew the Roman Empire were on a very
much lower level of moral civilisation than the
Empire. But I think something also was due to
the fact that Christianity, as it came from the East,
brought with it, accidentally no doubt rather than
essentially, conceptions of the character and of
the position ot women which were Semitic and
Oriental rather than Western.
These illustrations will serve to show how
necessary it is that we should be very careful
and very exact in the consideration of the precise
nature of the influence of Christianity upon political
and social ideas. It is, as I said before, quite true
that the political and social ideas of the modern
world are very different from those of the ancient
world — that is, especially from the ideas of the
ancient world as represented in the writings of
Plato and Aristotle. But we must be very careful
to consider how far this transformation was due to
the influence of Christianity, and how far it was
due to circumstances and causes which were
INTRODUCTION 7
already powerful and operative when Christianity
appeared in the worid.
If we examine the matter with any care, we shall
discover that much which distinguishes the modem
world from the world of Aristotle and Plato
is to be found already existing in the centuries
which immediately preceded the Christian era.
There is a vast gulf between the political and social
ideas of Plato and Aristotle, and the political and
social ideas of the world into which Christianity
came. The gulf indeed is so great, the difference
is so marked, that if it were not too paradoxical,
I should be inclined to say that the real interval
between the modern world and the ancient world
lies in the centuries between Aristotle and Cicero,
while the moral and political civilisation of the
world from that time downwards has been, in the
main, continuous. It is indeed, even yet, far too
little understood, that Christianity appeared in the
world just about the time when certain great trans-
formations of human feeling and even of philosophi-
cal theory, which had been coming about gradu-
ally, were expressed in literary works which have
come down to us. Unhappily we cannot at present
trace fully the earlier stages of the development of
those new ideas and principles, for the literature —
and there was once a great literature which dealt
more or less with them — has in the main disappeared.
Of the philosophical treatises between Aristotle
and Cicero only a few scattered fragments have
survived. Some fragments have survived, and
8 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
have been carefully put together in various collec-
tions, but the fragments are such as to make it
very difficult to trace the history of the develop-
ment, especially of social and political ideas, during
those centuries. Indeed, there is here a task which
is waiting for a competent scholar who will be at
pains to work carefully upon the fragments and
the materials which have survived. I think it is
possible that the sufficiently diligent and careful
study of these fragments, and the comparison of
them with the considerable mass of historical and
other literature which has come down to us, might
throw much light upon this period of transition.
But at present, all that we can say is that we can
recognise in the first century B.C. that the political
and social ideas of Aristotle and Plato have given
place to a system of thought which is, in many
respects, the same as the modern, and which is, in
many respects, very sharply indeed contrasted
with the political and social ideas of Aristotle and
Plato. It is not too much to say that in these
centuries the world had changed, and that men's
conceptions of human life, and especially of the rela-
tion of men to each other, had been profoundly
transformed. It is fortunate for a serious examina-
tion of the nature of the Christian influence, that
from the first century B.C. we have again a body
of literature which enables us, not completely of
course, but with a considerable amount of preci-
sion, and with considerable fulness, to determine
the character of the political and social ideas and
INTRODUCTION 9
tendencies of the world into which Christianity
came. I must briefly explain the nature and
character of these sources.
In the first place, before the middle of the first
century b.c, we have, in the writings of Cicero, a
body of philosophical work in which the movements
of the preceding centuries and the general prin-
ciples current in his own time, are fully, even if not
profoundly, summed up. It may no doubt be said,
and with justice, that Cicero is not in any sense a
profound or original philosopher ; that he is a
facile and rhetorical writer rather than a careful
thinker ; that there is little trace of any originality
or of any independent power in his philosophical
work. This is at any rate generally said, and, as
far as I am capable of judging the matter, this is
more or less true. But this very fact, so far from
detracting from the importance of the work of
Cicero, from our point of view rather enhances it.
Cicero was not an original thinker, but he was
an accomplished literary man and an important
political personage. He knew the books and the
men of his own time, and he had the instinct of the
public man for the general tendencies of thought,
and perhaps, if we may say so without intending any
offence, the tendency of the political man to fall in
with that which was likely to be popularly under-
stood and popularly accepted. But all these
qualities make Cicero's evidence as to the general
character and tendencies of the thought, of the
ideas of the time, peculiarly important. In a more
10 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
original thinker we might often be perplexed by the
question whether this or that conception should
be attributed to the writer himself or belongs to
the stock of general ideas current in his time.
In Cicero's case we have no such difficulty. We
have no reason to attribute to him, at any rate in
most cases, any originality or any great independ-
ence of judgment, and we may be very fairly
confident that what he lays down as established,
in the way of the general presuppositions of
political and social theory, corresponds with the
general philosophical tendencies of his time. In
Cicero's writings, then, we have an extremely
valuable source of information, and we may be very
grateful that we have this information in writings
which are always pleasant and easy, and often
eloquent. We shall presently see the immense
importance of the information with which Cicero's
writings supply us.
In the next place, we have in the writings of
Seneca, about a hundred years after Cicero, a very
complete statement of the standpoint of those
who more rigorously followed the Stoic tradition.
It has often indeed been urged that Seneca is not
a profound or a rigorous thinker any more than
Cicero, and that he is a rhetorician rather than a
moral philosopher. This is probably, in a measure,
true. And yet it remains that Seneca does give
us a very clear and full account, especially of the
social and political ideas which were generally
accepted among those trained in the Stoic tradition
INTRODUCTION 11
of his time, and he furnishes us with what is, in
some respects, a very full and precise picture of
the conceptions on these subjects of the ancient
world at the time when Christianity first appeared.
In the third place, we have some extremely inter-
esting information in the great body of the Roman
jurisprudence of the second and third centuries,
which is contained in what is called the Digest of
Justinian. This Digest, which forms the largest
part of the great collection of the Roman law
made by Justinian in the sixth century, consists
of extracts from the works of the greatest Roman
jurists, almost all of them belonging to the second
century and the beginning of the third century of
the Christian era. In this work we have the
opinions of what is usually a very conservative
class on many great subjects of social and political
importance, and we can derive from them some
very important evidence as to the general tendency
of thought, even in the more conservative quarters
of society, upon some very important social and
political questions — and all this apart from the
influence of Christianity. It is indeed possible,
though I do not think it is probable, that these great
Roman jurists might have been influenced, indirectly
if not directly, by those Christian opinions which,
in the second century, were beginning to spread
through Roman society. But I think there is very
little reason indeed to suppose that such an influence
is represented in these works to any serious extent.
If, then, we are going to try and estimate
12 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
the character and significance of the specifically
Christian ideas, we must be very careful always to
bear in mind that it is necessary to inquire first,
what were the ideas and principles current in the
world into which Christianity came. And, if I
may anticipate a little that to which we shall have
to return later, we shall, I think, find that in many
respects at least, the fundamental Christian
principles of social and political relations are not
new and original, but that, in many respects at
least, Christianity accepted and made its own,
principles and ideas which were already current.
This does not of course mean that the fact that Chris-
tianity did accept them, and did make them its own,
is unimportant. On the contrary, there can be very
little doubt that in many cases Christianity, in
making these principles or ideas its own, gave
them a depth and reality, and added to them a
force, which they had not before possessed.
It is only when we have observed this that we
shall be in a position to recognise that there are
certain aspects of political or social principles
which arose directly or exclusively from conditions
related to Christianity and the character of the
Christian society. Some principles which the
Church held, and which derive their power in
modern society from the impulse of the Christian
Church, are of profound and permanent significance ;
some, on the other hand, have been of doubtful
value, and sometimes it must be admitted doctrines
which originated in the Church and were taught
INTRODUCTION 13
by Churchmen, have been harmful and mischievous.
What we shall finally recognise is this, I think :
that Christianity has embodied in itself, and has,
in some measure at any rate, been the means of
handing down to later ages, many great and
profoundly significant conceptions with regard to
human life and to the nature of human society, and
that while it is true that some of these did not first
begin with the teaching of Christianity, yet they
were recognised by Christianity as being in such a
sense in agreement with all its own principles as
to be rightly and necessarily embodied in its
doctrine of human nature and of human life.
CHAPTER II
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY
We have seen that in order to understand the
influence of Christianity on pohtical and social
ideas, we must take account of the conceptions of
the world into which Christianity came, and not
merely of the conceptions of the ancient world of
some centuries earlier. And we have also seen
what are some of the important sources from which
we can derive information. We can therefore now
proceed to consider the character and the signific-
ance of some of the most important of the Christian
conceptions with regard to human nature in society,
in social, and in political relations.
The first and most fundamental Christian prin-
ciple of society is the principle of the likeness or
equality of human nature ; the conception of the
equal value of human nature in the sight of God
and of honest men, and the conception of the uni-
versal capacity of human nature for the highest
life — the life of communion with, and service of,
the Divine. We shall, I think, all remember some
of the great phrases in which St. Paul expresses
this conception, especially his words in his letter
to the Galatian churches. ' There can be neither
Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor
THE DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY 15
free, there can be no male and female : for ye
are all one man in Christ Jesus ' (Gal. iii. 28).
We shall understand, I think, without difficulty,
the immense scope and significance of such a
phrase, how emphatically it sets aside all con-
ception of difference in the highest things between
different classes, how emphatically St. Paul repudi-
ates the idea of any inherent or intrinsic difference
between the nature of the slave and the nature of
the freeman. St. Paul says very much the same
thing again in his letter to the Colossian Church.
' Ye have put off the old man with his doings,
and have put on the new man, which is being
renewed unto knowledge after the image of him
that created him : where there cannot be Greek
and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, bar-
barian, Scythian, bondman, freeman : but Christ
is all, and in all' (Col. iii. 9-11). And we may
again compare the words of St. Paul in the first
letter to the Corinthians. ' For in one Spirit were
we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or
Greeks, whether bond or free ; and were all made
to drink of one Spirit ' (1 Cor. xii. 13). And I
think we may very well find a practical illustration
of the significance of these phrases in the letter
of St. Paul to Philemon, with regard to his run-
away slave Onesimus. ' For perhaps he was parted
from thee for a season, that thou shouldest have
him for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a
slave, a brother beloved.' These phrases of St.
Paul are indeed memorable in the history of
16 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
religion, and in the history of the progress of
human sentiment and ideas. What do they then
mean ? What do they signify ? In the first place
it is well to notice that these phrases of St. Paul
only carry out in a more precise fashion the
principles which are embodied in the doctrine
of our Lord as presented in the Gospels. We
shall remember how in several places our Lord
uses language which implies that the ancient
nationalist religious conceptions of Judaism were
bound to give way to the universalist principle,
that in the sight of God all races of men are
equally dear, and that all men are made for
communion with God. It will be well to notice
one of these phrases. In St. Matthew viii. 11 and
12, our Lord says : ' I say unto you, that many shall
come from the east and the west, and shall sit
down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the
kingdom of heaven : but the sons of the kingdom
shall be cast forth into the outer darkness.' What
St. Paul says is only the more explicit declaration
of the fact that the Gospel of Christ is for mankind,
and not for one nation only.
But we must ask ourselves now a little more
exactly : What do St. Paul's words imply ? They
do not of course imply at all the conception that
all men are possessed of equal capacities and equal
powers even in the spiritual sphere, and still less
in the intellectual or physical sphere. It is
obvious, indeed no one has ever disputed it, that
there are inequalities in human nature, of physical
THE DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY 17
development, of intellectual development, and of
moral development, and we may well say that there
may be great diversities of spiritual development.
Neither Christians nor any other body of people
have ever maintained a conception of equality which
denies this. But the doctrine of St. Paul is none
the less a revolutionary doctrine, and contradicts
the principles recognised by the great philosophers
of the ancient world three hundred and four hundred
years before Christ as being fundamental in the
structure of human society. St. Paul does mean
that human nature is substantially alike, and that
it is exactly in the highest aspects of human nature
that the likeness is most profound. St. Paul does
mean that whatever may be the external con-
ditions or circumstances of life, all men are made
for the life of virtue, of religion ; are equal as regards
the enjoyment of communion with God Himself.
Now, in order to understand the full significance
of this, we must compare St. Paul's principles with
those of Aristotle. And we shall find that between
the principles of St. Paul and the principles of
Aristotle there lies a profound gulf. In the first
book of Aristotle's Politics he finds himself com-
pelled to discuss the nature, the rationale of slavery.
It is obvious that questions were being raised with
regard to slavery even in Aristotle's time, of a
serious and searching nature. It is evident that
some thinkers, at any rate, had begun to doubt
whether the institution of slavery was really a
justifiable institution ; whether it was really
B
18 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
possible to vindicate the servile subjection of
man to man, and the total subordination of the
interests of the slave to the interests of the master.
Aristotle justifies slavery. He thinks that there
are serious and grave reasons which make slavery
both inevitable and justifiable. And Aristotle's
treatment of it is not slight nor reckless of moral
principle. He writes a serious, and, judging from
the standpoint of Aristotle and the men of his
time, a not discreditable defence and justification
of slavery. And it is here that we come to the
important point. Aristotle defends slavery not at
all in the way in which the reckless defender of
modem industrial or economic abuses sometimes
defends those abuses, namely on the ground that
they may be improper and immoral, but that they
are economically unavoidable. Aristotle defends
slavery on the ground that there is a serious moral
and reasonable justification of it. Aristotle finds
the rationale of slavery in the judgment that there
is a profound division or inequality in mankind,
in the judgment that some men are naturally slaves
and some men are naturally masters. For some
men are possessed of reason in the full and complete
sense of the word, while others are possessed of
reason only in a very partial and incomplete sense.
They may have reason enough to recognise and to
follow the guidance of reason in others, but they
have not reason enough to enable them to guide
and control their own lives. The free man, that
is, the man who is properly free, is the man who is
THE DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY 19
capable of controlling himself, capable of directing
and controlling his life by principles of reason.
The natural slave is the man who is not capable
of this. There are men, therefore, for whom it is
really in the long run better that they should be
under the control of a master, for thus, at least, their
hfe is brought into some kind of relation with reason,
and may, at least, be directed towards some reason-
able end, while if left to themselves their lives will
be wasted under the domination of merely animal
and brutal impulses. This judgment of Aristotle
is one of the profoundest significance. To him the
whole economic structure of society rests upon the
principle of an inequality not merely external or
formal, but internal and profoundly significant.
The inequality of human natui'e lies just in the most
intimate and the most significant aspect of human
nature, for these irrational men, as they are not
capable of the life of reason, are not strictly capable
of the life of virtue. Outwardly, as Aristotle says,
the slave may have much resemblance to the master,
but inwardly there is a profound and fundamental
difference.
Now I think we shall be in a position to under-
stand the immense and revolutionary character^
of St. Paul's judgment. For it is exactly where
Aristotle finds the ground of slavery that St. Paul
finds the fundamental equality of human nature,
that is, in the rational and spiritual life. For when
St. Paul conceives of men as being capable of the
life of religion, capable of the life of communion with
20 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
God, he means that men are capable of the Ufe of
reason and of virtue. And it is because all men
are thus capable of the life of reason and of virtue
that they are all alike, that they may be one in
Christ. We shall understand, then, that between
Aristotle and St. Paul there lies a great gulf. The
Aristotelian theory of human life is based upon
the presupposition of the inequality of human
nature ; the theory of St. Paul is based upon the
assertion of the fundamental likeness or equality
of human nature. St. Paul's doctrine is the modern
doctrine, for though I cannot now stop to discuss
the matter, if any one will be at pains to examine
the structure of modem society, he will discover
that the idea of the equality of human nature is
not merely a sentimental conception of the modern
humanitarian, but is actually the basis of the
whole structure of the political order of modem
society — that is, in the civilised countries of western
Europe.
We have, then, seen what is the judgment with
regard to human nature with which Christianity
sets out. We must now make ourselves clear that
this is the continual doctrine of the Christian
writers. I will illustrate this briefly from the
writings of the Fathers. Here is a passage in a
little work of the second century called Octavius,
written by Minucius Felix, one of the first Christian
works, after the New Testament, which comes
evidently from a man belonging to what we call the
educated classes, that is, a man who has something
THE DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY 21
of literary culture and tradition. He says that all
men, without difference of age, sex, or rank, are
born with a capacity and power of reason and feeling,
and they obtain wisdom, not by fortune but by
nature.^ The particular turn of the phrase is, I
think, open to criticism, but the general meaning
is plain, that all men have reason and the capacity
for wisdom. We may, again, notice some phrases
of a writer named Lactantius, in the early part of
the fourth century, a writer interesting to us
otherwise because of the number of fragments of
ancient writings, which but for him might have been
lost, and which he has preserved. In discussing
the nature of justice he gives the first place to
what he calls pietas, and then urges that the second
part of justice is equitas, that is, the temper which
teaches a man to put himself on an equality with
his fellow-men, the quality which, as he says,
Cicero had called ' equabilitas J' God, he says,
who brings forth and inspires men, wished them all
to be equal. He made them all for virtue and
promised them all immortality. No one in God's
sight is a slave or a master ; He is the Father of
all men ; we are aU therefore His children. ^ Here
again is another phrase a little later from the writer
called ' Ambrosiaster,' probably of the middle of the
fourth century. Masters, he says, must remember
that their lordship extends only over the body ;
they have no authority over the soul. God only
^ Octavius, xvi.
* Lactantius, Div. Inst., v. 15, 16.
22 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
is the master of that. Let them remember this,
and only exact just service from their slaves, who
are still their equals, not to say their brethren.^
And then finally we must notice some remarkable
phrases of Gregory the Great at the end of the
sixth century. In his book on Pastoral Care he
admonishes all masters to remember that their
slaves are of the same nature as themselves, lest
they should cease to recognise that those whom
they may hold in bondage are equal with them.^
And in a passage in his work on the book of Job —
a passage which is constantly referred to in later
literature, which is indeed the classical expression
of this conception of human equality — Gregory
admonishes great men to remember that ' by Nature
we are all equal,' that Nature brought forth all
men equal, and that it is only by the secret dispensa-
tion of God that some men are set over, while some
are inferior to, others.^ Omnes namque natura
aequales sumus. This is one of the most famous
phrases in Christian literature, and it is well to
observe it particularly, for here is a writer, not of
the French Revolution, not a modern humanitarian,
not a sentimental enthusiast, but one of the greatest
practical administrators in the history of western
Europe who lays down this great broad proposition :
' All men are by Nature equal.' Here, then, is the
doctrine with which Christianity set out on its
^ Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Coloss. , iv. i .
* Gregory the Great, Lib. Past., iii. 5.
* Ibid., Exp. Mar., xxi. 15.
THE DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY 23
course through the world ; here is the doctrine
which, in spite of all failures, and of all uncer-
tainties, does actually dominate the whole structure
of modem society. We can understand how
significant and far-reaching its influence has been
on the modem world. We can see how far removed
is the conception of human nature in relation to
society which is held by the modem world and
that which was held by the ancient.
But now we must be careful to observe that while
Christianity accepted and made its own this doctrine
of the equality of human nature, it would be a very ;
great mistake to suppose that this doctrine origin-
ated with, or was first discovered by, the Christian ;
thinkers. The truth is that when Christianity
came into the world it found this doctrine already
established as what was probably the most generally
accepted conception of political and social thought.
We will look at some words of Cicero which will
help to make this clear. There is no resemblance,
Cicero says, in Nature so great as that between man
and man ; there is no equality so complete. There
is only one possible definition of mankind. Reason
is common to all. Men differ in learning, but they
are equal in the capacity for learning. There is no
race which, under the guidance of Nature, cannot
attain to virtue. Nature has given to all men
reason, that is, true reason, and therefore the
true law, which is right reason, commanding and
forbidding. Not only in things which are right
but even in those things that are wrong, is this
24 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
resemblance, this likeness of the human race, to be
observed. What nation is there that does not love
courtesy, kindliness ; that does not esteem the
man who is grateful and mindful of a benefit ?
What nation is there that does not hate the proud,
the malicious, the cruel and the ungrateful ? ^
Here is, as you see, the dogmatic statement of
the likeness, the equality, of human nature, not
only superficial but intrinsic, the equal capacity of
human nature for virtue. And this is laid down
in explicit terms some half century before the
Christian era. Had we found these sentiments in
an original thinker, we might have been inclined
to attribute them to some personal conviction of
the writer, but as we have already observed, it is
the great importance of Cicero that he clearly
represents, not an individual judgment, but the
judgments which were generally accepted among
educated people in his time. We may go down
a hundred years later to the Stoic philosopher
Seneca, and we find him again laying down the
same principles. The slave, he says, is of the same
nature as his master. Virtue can be attained by all
— ^the free, the freeman, the slave, the king, and the
exile. Virtue cares nothing for house or for fortune
but only for the man. A slave can be just, brave,
and magnanimous. Or again, in another place
we read : We have the same beginnings, the same
origin, we are all descended from one common
parent, the world. To this we may all trace our
^ De Leeibus, i. 10-12.
THE DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY 25
origin, whether by splendid or by humble steps.
It is fortune that makes man a slave — slavery is
hateful to all men. And finally : Slavery is, after
all, only external, only affects the body of man.
He errs greatly who thinks that the condition of
slaver}' affects the whole man. The better part
of man has nothing to do with it. The body may
belong to a master ; the mind is its own — it
cannot be given in slavery. ^ Nothing is more
noticeable here than the emphatic way in which
Seneca finds the very centre of the essential
equality of human nature, in the mind or reason
of man, just where Aristotle finds the foundation,
the essential principle of inequality. We may
now, again, go down some hundred and fifty
years later to the great Roman lawyers of the
end of the second century, and we find them
again laying down the same general principles.
Here is a famous phrase of Ulpian's : ' As far as
concerns the natural law, all men are equal.' ^
Or again, in another place, speaking of the
nature of manumission : ' Manumission began
with the law of nations, inasmuch as by the
law of nations we were all bom free.' ' And
again, here are the words of another great jurist,
Florentinus : ' Slavery is an institution of the law
of nations by which man is subjected to another,
contrary to nature.' ^ Or again, here are the
words of Tryphoninus : ' Inasmuch as liberty
^ Seneca, De Beneficiis, iii. 18-28. ^ Digest, l. 17, 32.
* Ibid., I. I, 4. * Ibid., i. 5, 11.
26 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
belongs to the law of nature, lordship was intro-
duced by the law of nations.' ^ It is certainly of
very great significance to find that these eminent
jurists, men, that is, who belonged to a class which
is naturally conservative in the matters of the great
institutions of human society, should assume as
clearly and as distinctly as Seneca and Cicero, that
men are by nature equal ; that whatever justifica-
tion the institution of slavery may have, at any
rate this is not found in any natural inequality of
human nature.
I think this will show clearly enough that the
doctrine of equality was not introduced into the
western world by Christianity, but was already
present, and was probably the normal and para-
mount view when the Christian religion appeared.
The truth is, as I have said before, that between
the time of Aristotle and the Christian era, the
sentiment and opinion of the ancient world with
regard to human nature and its characteristics, had
gradually changed. To Aristotle there seemed to
be a profound and impassable gulf between the
irrational and servile nature of the barbarian and
the reasonable nature of the Greek. To the men
of the first century before Christ such a concep-
tion evidently seemed impossible. Of the literary
history of this transition we know little ; we are
not able to trace the stages through which the
new opinion developed, or the nature of the argu-
ments by which it was established. As I have
^ Digest, XII. 6, 64.
THE DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY 27
said, the philosophical literature of the period has
almost entirely disappeared. We can see the
results of the great change ; we cannot clearly trace
the process of the change. But, I think it is at
the same time true that though we cannot trace
the history of the change in theory, we can recognise
without any great difficulty the main circumstances
of fact which produced, or at any rate which helped
to produce, the change in theory. There can be,
I think, little doubt that this unanimous judgment
of the thinkers and lawyers of the later centuries
of the ancient world, was based upon the actual
experience of the civilised western world. Within
a few years of the time when Aristotle wrote,
Alexander the Great set out upon his conquering
march through western Asia, and within a few
years the countries bordering upon the eastern
Mediterranean were united with each other as
parts of a Greek Empire. We might naturally,
at first sight, think that this easy conquest of the
barbarian races by the Greek would have con-
firmed the Greek in his conviction of his intrinsic
natural superiority, but the actual consequences
were just the opposite. The Greek went out into
the world a civilised man among barbarians,
but he discovered within a very short time that
those barbarians were capable of learning almost
all that he had to teach them. This was, indeed,
so much the case, that within no very long time
the centre of Greek culture shifted from Athens
to great Oriental cities like Alexandria and
28 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
Antioch. And the process which was begun by
the Alexandrian and the Macedonian Empires,
was completed by the development of the Roman
Empire. The Romans, indeed, conquered both
Asia and Greece, but the Romans could never
consider themselves as the intellectual superiors,
and hardly even as the intellectual equals, of
the Greeks. Whatever they had of literature and
of art they learned from the Greeks, and it was
impossible therefore for them to look upon them-
selves as being the natural superiors of the Greeks,
and the Greeks as being naturally their inferiors.
The Macedonian and Roman Empires made it
plain to men that all those races were at least
capable of learning the civilisation which they
had to teach. That is, the Greeks and Romans
discovered the homogeneity of their nature with
that of the Orientals and Africans.
It is this experience which probably, more than
anything else, tended to destroy the doctrine of
inequality. It is not certain how far the Jews,
and with them the founders of Christianity,
had learned these ideas from the contact of
Judaism with Hellenism, or how far these con-
ceptions had been growing up in the Hebrew
society itself. I think we may say without any
hesitation that we can trace the beginnings of this
enlarged view of human nature in, at any rate,
the greater prophets of Israel. But how far it is
to them that we must look for the source of the
Christian doctrine, would be more than I can at
THE DOCTRINE OF EQUALITY 29
present say. We have then, in this Christian
doctrine of the fundamental equality of human
nature, the first and most fundamental principle
of Christendom with regard to human nature and
society. It is indeed evident that this notion did
not originate only in Christianity ; but it is also
certain that from the first it Avas essential to
Christianity, and it was chiefly by the influence of
the Christian thinkers and writers that the concep-
tion was gradually drawn out, and applied to the
actual circumstances of human life.
CHAPTER III
HISTORY OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEORY
OF EQUALITY 1
We have seen that Christianity sets out with the
principle of equahty. Whatever else Christianity
means in regard to social matters, it means that
from the standpoint of religion human nature is
recognised as being equal in its essential quality.
This is the first and, to my thinking, the most
fundamental aspect of the Christian conception of
human nature and society. This conception, this
principle, did not indeed originate with Christianity,
but on the other hand Christianity accepted it, and
made it its own. We must now consider briefly
the later history of this conception. We begin by
asking whether this conception — which was thus
fundamental in primitive Christianity — whether it
has continued to be an accepted principle of the
Christian doctrine of society ? We must ask our-
selves what has been the practical significance of
this theory ? Has it been in the history of the
past a mere theory, or has it been a living and a
dominant principle of life ? And finally, we shall
have to ask ourselves whether it still continues
to be the principle of Christendom ; what is its
significance and its influence to-day ?
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 31
The first question we have to ask ourselves then,
is, whether this conception continued to be the
principle of the Christian Church ? This subject
needs no very lengthy treatment. We can say
without any hesitation that no other conception of
human nature in relation to society has ever been
known to the Christian Church, or been recognised
by the Christian conscience. The principles which,
as we have seen, were set out by the Fathers, were
reproduced with great emphasis and force through-
out the Middle Ages. In order to make ourselves
quite clear about this, we may first consider some
phrases from works of the writers of the ninth
century. It is with the ninth century that the
ideas and conceptions of the new world, which
was being built up on the ruins of the ancient
empire of the west, began to find articulate
expression in a literary form. Until the end of
the sixth century we have a large, even an
abundant literature, but from the seventh and
eighth centuries little has survived, and indeed it
is probably true that little was produced, for the
confusion of Europe, the chaos which followed the
downfall of the great political and social structure
of the western empire, was very great. Our own
Teutonic ancestors were not mere savages ; they
were, after all, barbarians capable of learning, and,
as it proved in the end, not unwilling to learn, and
possessing, even in their own traditions, consider-
able elements of a progressive civilisation, but they
were not yet at the stage at which careful or
32 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
systematic thinking and writing could be expected.
It is not until the ninth century that we again find
a large and abundant literature dealing with the
criticism of life from many different points of view.
It is, as will be easily understood then, of very
great importance to discover what were the ruling
principles or conceptions of life accepted in the
new society. The old world was gone, and it
might be thought that with the old world those
great moral principles or conceptions, such as that
of the equality of human nature, might have
disappeared. We might have imagined that the
new conquering races would be little inclined to
accept, even formally, the principle of fundamental
equality between themselves and those whom they
had conquered. And indeed, here is one of the
points where the Christian Church undoubtedly
played a very important part. For, at any rate
formally, it is through the Christian Church that
the conception of equality was handed down to
our Teutonic ancestors, and it was by it, and by
its great authority, that it was preserved and en-
forced. There are, indeed, some very interesting
questions which might be raised, but which we
have no time here to discuss, as to the actual
tendencies proper to the Teutonic societies. There
was a time when historical students would have
been inclined to lay great stress upon the idea that
the Teutonic races brought with them into western
Europe the conceptions proper to tribes of equals
and freemen, and we might have been inclined to
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 33
say that the conception of the natural equaUty or
freedom of man would fall easily into the prevailing
conceptions of the Teutonic races. I do not think
that the serious historical scholar would nowadays
like to be quite so dogmatic in these views. He
would not pretend to be quite so clear as to the
prevailing tendencies of feeling and thought among
those races. There are at least some serious
historical students who have thought that the
distinctions of birth and blood were very strongly
felt among the Teutonic races, at and after the
period of their settlement in the west, and quite
recently one very learned writer has stated, with
much care and elaboration, the theory that it was
only very reluctantly and very slowly that the idea
of equality, even within the religious sphere, even
within the organisation of the Church, was accepted
by the new races. It has been argued that so
strong was the sentiment of blood and the distinc-
tion of nobility, that when the Christian Church
established itself among the new races, for a long
time all the more important places, both in the
ecclesiastical hierarchy and even in the monastic
life, were generally reserved for men of noble blood,
and that it was only very slowly, and in the later
Middle Ages, that the notion that such distinctions
were improper within the Church, was accepted in
northern Europe, and especially in the empire.^
This subject is, however, still awaiting a more
^ Cf. Professor Aloys Schulte, Der Adel und die Deutsche
Kirclie im Mittelalter.
34 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
complete and careful examination by historical
scholars. However this may be, it is at any rate
extremely important to inquire whether, and how
far, in the new Teutonic societies the Church was
able to maintain and enforce the doctrine of the
natural equality and freedom of human nature
which had established itself in the ancient empire.
There can be no doubt, as I was saying before,
that the Church did maintain this doctrine. Here
is a very interesting and important statement
which we shall find in a work of the early ninth
century, called On the Education of the Layman, by
Jonas, Bishop of Orleans. He first paraphrases
and quotes some of the great phrases of Gregory
the Great which we considered in the last chapter,
and then proceeds himself to say : Let powerful
and rich men therefore learn from these sayings
of divine and eloquent men. Let them learn that
their slaves and the poor are by nature their equals.
If therefore the slaves are by nature the equals of
their masters, let not those masters think that
they can with impunity indulge in fury and
violence against their slaves, and beat them with
cruel stripes, or injure them by the amputation of
their limbs, for they have one God in the heavens.
Let the masters rather recognise that those who in
this world are humble and lowly, and who are in
appearance and in wealth their inferiors, are by
nature their equals.^ Here again is another phrase
which is worth noticing ; a phrase which is put into
1 Jonas of Orleans, De Inst. Laicali, ii. 22.
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 35
the mouth of the Emperor Louis the Pious in a
preface to a collection of Capitularies dealing with
ecclesiastical and with secular matters : We who
are the equals of other men in our nature, and are
superior only in the dignity of authority. ^ And
in another selection of canons the same senti-
ments are expressed at greater length. Christian
men, whether lay or clerical, are bound to behave
towards those who are their inferiors with mercy,
for they must remember that they are their
brethren, and have one Father, that is God, and
one mother, that is the Holy Church. ^ Here is
again another very significant statement in one of
the letters of Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, one
of the most important men of the earlier part of
the ninth century. He is discussing the question
of the position of those who were slaves, especially
of Jews, and maintains that it is in the highest
degree intolerable that any master should have
the power to prohibit the baptism of his slaves,
and argues that men are by nature equal, and this
equality continues in the soul of man whatever
may be his external condition.^ I think these
citations will suffice to illustrate the fact that no
theory of human nature is known to the ninth
century, except this theory of the natural equality,
the natural freedom of human nature.
Such is the theory of the ninth century, and if we
now come down to the Middle Ages proper, we
1 Mon. Germ. Hist. Legum, Sect. ii. vol. i. No. 137.
- Ibid., No. 154. ^ Agobard, Ep. v.
36 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
shall see that the same principles are maintained
'by the mediaeval writers. The canon law, as
indeed we might expect, repeats the patristic
position. Burchard of Worms and Ivo of Chartres
repeat that statement of the collection of canons
which I have just mentioned. Gratian in his
Decretum states very emphatically the unity of
human nature in relation to God. ' We all,' he
says, ' have one Father in heaven, and each of us,
rich and poor, free and freedman and slave, have
equally to render account for ourselves and for our
souls to God.' ^ Burchard again, in another place,
repeats the phrase of St. Isidore, which describes
the origin of slavery as being not due to Nature but
only to sin, and Paucapalea, the first commentator
on Gratian, repeats those phrases of the Roman
law which describe slavery as being contrary to
Nature, and which set forth that by the natural
law all men are bom free. As far as the canon
law, then, of the Middle Ages is concerned, there is
no doubt that the primitive conception of the
equality of human nature is fundamental and
normal. But the same thing is also true of the
mediaeval literature which is founded directly upon
the study of the ancient law. We find the Roman
lawyers or civilians of the twelfth century setting
out very clearly the principles which they derived
from the ancient law, that slavery is contrary to
Nature, by natural law all men are born free, and
by the natural law all men are equal. These are the
^ Gratian, Decretum, c. xxix. q. 2, i.
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 37
views of the great jurists of Bologna in the twelfth
and the thirteenth centuries, such as Imerius,
Bulgarus, Placentinus, and Hugolinus. There can
be no doubt then, that whether we look at the law
of the Church, or at that law of the Middle Ages
which was derived from the legal system of the
ancient world, the doctrine of the natural equality
and liberty of human nature was regularly main-
tained. But what is perhaps even more interesting
is that the same principle is recognised very
explicitly by the great feudal lawyers of the
Middle Ages. And this is the case whether we
consider the feudal law in Germany or in other
countries. One of the earliest compilations
of mediseval German law, the Sachsenspiegel,
lays down this principle very emphatically, that
slavery is not the original condition of men ; ^
and Beaumanoir, perhaps the most sagacious and
accomplished of the French feudal lawyers of the
thirteenth century, is equally explicit.^ \Vhether
the conception is congenial to the Teutonic tradition
or not, there can be no doubt at any rate that by
the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries these
principles had been accepted as fundamental even
by those men, who, like the feudal lawyers, repre-
sented the most conservative aspect of the tradition
of the new nations.
This, I think, will be sufficient to make it clear,
that so far at least as concerns the European
judgment of the JNIiddle Ages, that doctrine of
^ Sachsenspiegel, iii. 42. * Beaumanoir, xlv. 32.
38 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
equality which we have seen to be fundamental in
primitive Christianity, was continued and firmly
held. I do not think, indeed, that at any time
there has been any serious doubt about the matter
among Christian men, though it is probably true
that after the contact between the European races
and the negro races began in the fifteenth century,
there has been an occasional tendency, among
careless or unscrupulous persons, to neglect or to
forget the original Christian principle. Happily in
England, with the great religious revival of the
eighteenth century, and on the continent of Europe
with the beginnings of the great revolutionary
movement, the original and fundamental Christian
doctrine has been reasserted with an emphasis
which has been unmistakable. When the French
revolutionaries placarded the streets of France
with the great phrases of liberty and equality, they
were only restating the fundamental position of
Christianity.
So much then for the continuous history of the
conception. We must now consider for a little
what the significance of this doctrine may have
been. What practical effect has it exercised in
the past ? As I said in the first chapter, it has
often been urged that Christianity destroyed
slavery, and I suppose some people would think
that this means that the doctrine of the Christian
society of the equality of human nature, as it was
inconsistent with slavery, so it did directly and
immediately contribute to destroy it. But this is
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 39
a difficult and intricate question. There can be
very little doubt that the disappearance of slavery
in Europe, as the later disappearance of serfdom,
was in the main due to economic, and in part,
to political causes. It is probably true that the
influence of the Christian principle contributed
something to this. That is, it is at least probable
that the great Christian conception of equality
had something to do with the gradual disappearance
of slavery. There can be little doubt, I think, that
the principle of the equality of human nature had
at least some relation to the gradual modification
of the character of slavery in the ancient world.
But it must be remembered that these modifica-
tions are, in a large measure, antecedent to, and
also in a large measure independent of, the
influence of Christianity. It is at least probably
true to say that the dogmatic assertion in the later
philosophical schools of the equality of human
nature has something to do with the gradual
limitation of the rights of the master over his slave,
or, if we may put it so, with the gradual develop-
ment of the conception of some sort of human
right to be protected by law, in the slave.
This progressive amelioration of the condition
of the slave can be traced in the Roman legisla-
tion, at any rate from the middle of the first
century of the Christian era, when we find the
Emperor Claudius endeavouring to protect the
slave against exposure or desertion by his master
when he was incapacitated through illness or old
40 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
age, and the development of this tendency must
have been very rapid. Almost at the beginning
of the second century, we learn that Hadrian
had banished for five years a certain great lady
who had outrageously ill-treated her slave women,
and Antoninus Pius ordered that slaves who took
refuge from the ill-treatment of their masters at
the statues of the emperors should not be restored
to their master, but should be sold and the price
paid to their owners. The great lawyer Gains
sums up the changed conditions in his time when
he says that while once the slave had been abso-
lutely in the power of his master, so that the
master had the absolute power of life and death
over him, now he had no longer this power, but
that the man who slew his slave without proper
cause was liable to legal proceedings, and that by
the laws also, any extreme cruelty of the masters
against their slaves was prohibited. ^ This ameliora-
tion of the condition of the slave has, it is most
probable, some relation to the conviction of the
natural equality of human nature. Christianity
furthered this, especially in the direction of the
extension of the protection of the law over slave
women. It is very probable that we can trace
to the influence of Christianity the extension of
the legislative provisions for this after Constantine's
conversion ; and whatever may be the truth
about this, there is no doubt that the canon law
of the Church gradually extended its protection to
1 Gaius, Inst., i. 53.
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 41
the marriage of slaves, so that finally the doctrine
of the canon law came to be that the marriage of
the slave was as sacred as that of the free person.
In one of his decretals, Hadrian iv., in the twelfth
century, laid down the principle that inasmuch as
in Jesus Christ there is neither free nor slave, and
the sacraments are open to all, so also the marriages
of slaves must not be prohibited, and that even if
they were contracted against the will of the slave's
master, they were not to be dissolved by Church
authority.! So far, then, it is true that the influence
of Christianity confirmed and enlarged the tendency
to the mitigation of the conditions of slavery. The
Church also always encouraged the manumission of
slaves as a charitable work acceptable to God.^
This does not at all mean, however, that Christi-
anity or the Christian writers attacked or criticised
the institution itself. Whatever may have been
the ultimate indirect influence of Christianity in
contributing to the destruction of slavery, it must
be frankly recognised that immediately and form-
ally, the theory of the Church rather tended to
strengthen the institution. With the disappear-
ance of the theory of inequality and the justification
of slavery as resting upon the inequality of human
nature, the older philosophical justification of
slavery had disappeared ; and it is very noteworthy
that the Roman jurisprudence has no theoretical
justification to put in its place. The only thing
^ Decretals, iv. 9. i.
* Cf. Gregory the Great, Ep. v. 12.
42 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
that the Roman lawyer can say in explanation of
the institution, is connected with the supposed
derivation of the word servus, namely, that it is
derived from the verb servare ' to preserve,' and
that the word servus means a person who is
defeated in battle and who is kept alive instead
of being killed, and that a conqueror who might
have slain him, if he chooses to keep him alive, is
entitled to hold him as a bondservant. The Chris-
tian Fathers unhappily found what amounted to a
new theoretical justification of slavery. Slavery,
-^ Ambrosiaster says, in the middle of the fourth
century, is the consequence of man's sin. God
made man free, but sin brought slavery into the
world. ^ This is drawn out in more precise terms
by St. Isidore when he says that it was on account
of the sin of the first man that the penalty of slavery
was, by the divine will, imposed upon the human
race, in order that those who were not fit for
freedom might be subjected to the discipline of
slavery. Slavery serves to restrain the tendency
to evil-doing on the part of the slaves, by putting
them under the control of their masters. ^ St.
Augustine, in a very famous passage, has expressed
the same conception when he says that God did
not make reasonable men to be lorded over by
men, but that the condition of slavery was, by
God's will, imposed upon the sinner, and the first
cause of slavery was sin. The object of slavery
^ Ambrosiaster, Commentayy on Col., iv. i.
" St. Isidore of Seville, Sent., iv. 47.
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 43
is to preserve the natural and true order. ^ St.
Ambrose puts this in another way when he says
that it is really better for a vicious man to be a
slave. A man who cannot rule himself is better
under the authority of a wise man. When Isaac
put Esau in subjection to Jacob, he was really
conferring upon him a benefit. ^ That is, the Fathers
looked upon slavery as one of those disciplinary ^
institutions which are necessary under the actual
conditions of human nature, that is, the actual
condition of the sinfulness and viciousness of human
nature, though it did not belong to the ideal con-
ception of human life. It is, of course, impossible
to say how far this theory of the Fathers did actually
and practically tend to maintain the institution of
slavery, but it is certainly a thing which is significant,
and of which we must take account in considering
the whole relation of the Christian influence to the
institution of slavery.
There is, however, something more still to say.
The Church not only justified slavery, but the
Fathers urged the obligation of obedience upon
the slave in very strong terms. In one of the
canons of the Council of Gangrae, held in the year
362, the Church laid its anathema upon any one
who, under the pretence of religion, should teach a
slave to despise his master or to escape from his
service.^ And this emphatic assertion of a certain
^ St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xix. 15.
* St. Ambrose, Ep. xxxvii. and Ixxvii. 6.
* Council of Gangrae, Canon 3.
44 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
right of the master over his slave was not only held
by the Fathers, but is repeated in later Christian
history. This canon of Gangrae passed into the
general body of the canon law, and evidently
exercised a considerable influence in the ninth
century. Among the letters of Hrabanus Maurus
in the ninth century there is one in which the
question is discussed as to whether the slave who
flies from his master is virtually excommunicated.
Hrabanus himself is not inclined to take so severe
a view of the offence of the slave, and considers
that it depends to a certain extent on the reasons
for his flight, but he evidently looks upon it as a
very grave offence against religion.^ The canonical
collections of the later Middle Ages repeat the
canon of the Council of Gangrae, and in two of these
collections, in Burchard and Ivo of Chartres, we
find a canon which lays it down that a slave, flying
from his master, is to be excluded from communion
until he return.^ The Church, then, not only
recognised slavery but lent some of its authority
to enforce its permanence upon the slave, and it
may be further noticed that the Church rigorously
prohibited, for reasons which were probably in
themselves justified, the ordination of the slave,
and that the mediaeval Church was itself a slave-
owner on a considerable scale.
Slavery gradually died out, but it will be evident,
from what we have just seen, that we must be very
^ Mon. Germ. Hist. Hrabanus Maurus, Ep. 30.
- Burchard, Decretum, xi. 78.
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 45
careful how far we attribute, to the Church at any
rate, any direct influence in promoting this. And,
as far as I know, when slavery revived in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in consequence of
the first contact between the European races and
the negroes, the Church, at any rate as a whole,
made no effort to prevent it. It appears to me then
that what we must recognise is this : That the
doctrine of equality was continuous in the western
world, and its influence probably combined with
the tendency of the economic and historical
conditions towards the gradual disappearance of
the institution of slavery. We must in the next
chapter consider the meaning, the value of the con-
ception in relation to modem conditions.
CHAPTER IV
HISTORY OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE THEORY
OF EQUALITY II
We have recognised the fact that the first
principle of the Christian conception of life is
represented by the doctrine of human equality :
that is, by the conception that as all men are
possessed of reason and capable of virtue or good-
ness, all men are capable of determining and
controlling their own lives. It is quite true that,
while this principle has never been questioned in
the history of Christian civilisation, it is only very
slowly and partially that it has worked itself out
in the structure of society and the character of
social institutions.
We must now briefly consider the relation of this
doctrine of equality to the gradual development
of democratic or free government. If we consider
the matter a little closely we shall recognise that
there is now, and probably always has been, a very
intimate relation between the assumption of the
equality of human nature and the demand for
political liberty. It is very noticeable that Cicero,
who, as we have already seen, laid down so emphati-
cally the general principle of human equality,
although he repeats the Aristotelian classification
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 47
of governments, was dissatisfied with the Aristotel-
ian conception that an absolute monarchy, or an
aristocracy, even if directed to the benefit of the
whole community, was a good government. In
Cicero's view an absolute monarchy or an absol-
ute aristocracy, however well intentioned and well
directed, was not a satisfactory form of govern-
ment, because it did not represent adequately the
principle of self-government. There is, he says,
about such governments something of the nature
of slavery. 1 It is at least very significant that a
conception like this of Cicero's should find expres-
sion at such a time, when the doctrine of the
principle of human equality was coming to be
clearly recognised.
Cicero represents the last phases of the con-
stitutional republicanism of Rome, and was writing
thus at a time when that great constitutional
system was about to give place to a system of
practical absolutism. The hasty observer might
conclude from this that the idea of the expression
of liberty and equality in the character of political
organisation for the time being disappeared, but
this would be to fall into a very grave mistake.
It must be clearly understood that the theory
of the imperial authority in Rome was always
and only that the authority of the emperor was
derived from the will of the people. There is no
trace in the political theory, especially of the
Roman jurisprudence, of any other theory of
^ Cicero, Dc Republica, i. 26-7.
48 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
political authority than this, that the authority
of the ruler is derived from the people. The
emperor's will, in the famous phrase of the great
Roman jurist, TJlpian, has the force of law, but
only because the Roman people have chosen to
confer upon him their authority. ^ The ancient
Aristotelian conception of the authority of govern-
ment as possibly arising from some supreme pre-
eminence on the part of the ruler over his fellows,
had given place to the doctrine that authority was
only derived from the gift of the community
itself.
It is doubtful whether we can assert any direct
connection between the mediaeval conception of
the self-government of the community and the
doctrine of equality, but it may, I think, be
reasonably said that the mediseval conception
of political power as representing not so much
the superiority of the ruler as the authority of the
whole community, does imply that the free members
of the community had at least some right to a share,
direct or indirect, in the control of the more vital
aspects of the common life. We cannot stop here
to discuss the question of the development of the
constitutional machinery of government in the
Middle Ages, but it is worth while to notice that it
is in the Middle Ages that there first grew up the
conception of the authority of the ruler as resting
upon a contract between himself and the ruled.
The doctrine of the social contract, I think, was
^ Digest, I. 4, I.
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 49
derived from the conception of the mutual
responsibihties of the people and the ruler as
embodied in the reciprocal oath of the mediaeval
coronation ceremony. As can still be seen in the 7
English ceremony of coronation, the first and one
of the most essential aspects of the coronation
ceremony lies in the recognition by the people,
and in the oath which the ruler takes to maintain
justice, and to administer government according to
the national law, while the people, in virtue of
this oath, through the chief members of the
community, swear allegiance to the king. I think
it may be properly said that behind all this there
does lie the conception that political authority
in the community represents the authority of all
the equal and free citizens of the community.
It is quite clear that whatever interruption there
may have been in the nature of political thought
between the ancient empire and the Middle Ages,
mediaeval society had the same conception of politi-
cal authority as that which was characteristic of
the empire, namely, that all authority ultimately
is derived from the people as a whole in virtue of
their own action. And this is why the great
writers of the Middle Ages are so fond of describing
the king as acting in the place of the people — ^that
is, as their representative.
There can be no doubt that it is the concep-
tion of equality which lies behind the whole
structure of constitutional government in the
modem world. The normal assumption of all
D
50 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
constitutional governments, that is, of all govern-
ments which have something of that representative
machinery, which is best illustrated in the English
constitution — the normal assumption of these
governments is that all the citizens are equal in
such a sense that they are equally entitled to have
their share in determining the action and character
of the community. And every extension of the
franchise, every inclusion of a larger number of
people in the body of the electors, represents the
further extension of this idea. Wliile no doubt the
history of the gradual development of this con-
ception is best studied in the history of the English
constitution, the great revolutionary movement
of Europe, which began in 1789, has gradually
established it as the controlling principle of the
political civilisation of the west, and, in spite of a
great deal of irresponsible and unthinking talk, no
one seriously doubts the propriety of this prin-
ciple, as no one who seriously reflects can dream of
doubting its significance. The political authority
of the modem democratic or constitutional State
rests upon the assumption that men are as a whole,
and normally, equal in the sense we have just
described. The principle of self-government in
the community is in the first place nothing more or
less than the extension of the principle that every
normal man is possessed of reason and capacity
to control and direct his own life.
The political structure of modem society, then,
may properly be taken as representing the gradual
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 51
development and working-out of the conception of
equality. But this principle will no doubt carry
the progressive and civilised societies very much
further, for while the political organisation of
society rests on the assumption of equality, there
is comparatively little recognition of this principle
so far in the structure of society in its economic
aspects. If we are to understand the whole
significance of this principle, we must examine
this aspect of the matter a little further. We have
already noticed that the slavery of the ancient world
disappeared in the Middle Ages, and we may now
notice that the serfdom of the Middle Ages gradually
died out after the fourteenth century. But in the
fifteenth century, in consequence of the contact
between the white and the negro races, the institu-
tion of slavery once more grew up and became an
important factor, not in European life, but of the
European settlements in the new world. For the
time it might have seemed as though the Christian
principle of human nature exercised no restraining
influence either on the development of this new
slavery or upon the conditions of it. It was not
till the eighteenth century that there gradually
developed the movement which in the nineteenth
century finally destroyed slavery. This movement
was connected partly with the development of the
democratic idea in Europe, but it may also be
truly said that it was very closely connected,
especially in England, with a new recognition by
Christian men of the incompatibility of their
52 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
religious principles with the fact and with the
circumstances of slavery.
It is extremely interesting to observe the very
close connection in Great Britain between the
great revival of religion, of which John Wesley
was the most representative figure, and the agitation
for the abolition of slavery. It might at first sight
seem a little difficult to understand what relation
there is between these, but I think that a closer
examination makes it comparatively easy to
understand the matter. ' It is very difficult to
describe in any one phrase the essential or funda-
mental aspects of the great Methodist and evan-
gelical movement in Great Britain, but I think
we may perhaps put it in some such way as the
following. John Wesley and his companions and
followers went out to preach the Gospel to every
creature, and brought a new life into the whole
religion of England, because of their firm conviction
that even the humblest, the most ignorant, and
the most degraded of men had in them the capacity
for the life of communion with God. They did not
undervalue — John Wesley certainly never under-
valued the benefits of education and culture —
but they did profoundly believe, and they acted
upon the belief, that, whatever a man had or might
not have, he had, and always had, the capacity in
him for the highest life — the life of virtue and reason
as the ancients would have called it — the life of
communion with God as the religious man calls it.
It is this which explains how the great modem
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 53
missionary movement really sprang in Great
Britain from the Methodist and evangelical move-
ment. It was this principle, that all men every-
where are capable of the knowledge of God and
of conversion to God, which caused Christian men
to recover their sense of the missionary duty of
the Christian Church.
It is not difficult to understand that the
Evangelicals, who believed with so fresh a con-
viction that all men were capable of the life
of communion with God, found it very difficult
and finally impossible to acquiesce in such an
institution as that of slavery, which treated a
man as the mere instrument or chattel of his
fellow-men. It was not by any accident that
Cowper, the representative poet of the new
religious movement, should also have been one of
the first to express his profound aversion to the
whole system and conditions of slavery. It is at
any rate certain that it was the new Evangelicals
joining with that Society of Friends which had in
a sense anticipated the evangelical movement by a
hundred years, who carried through in the teeth of
obloquy and contempt and misrepresentation the
great struggle for the emancipation of the slave.
And here at least we may feel that the Christian
doctrine of equality was no abstract thing, but has
had an immense and vital significance.
I think it is probably true that we may trace the
influence of the Christian conception of equality
not only in the revolt of Christian men against
54 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
slavery, but in the beginning and development of
the revolt against the dreadful social conditions
produced by, or connected with, the industrial
revolution and the factory system. I think that
it was not by any accident that one of the
chief leaders in the movement for the reform
of industrial conditions like Lord Shaftesbury
represented the evangelical opinions or prin-
ciples. It must, indeed, be remembered that the
claims of humanity, the horror of inhumanity,
and of the degradation and waste of human
life, were not exclusively apprehended or repre-
sented by religious men. Fenelon and Voltaire
in different ways represent the beginnings of the
great humanitarian movement of the last two
centuries. But in England, at any rate, it was a
great Evangelical like Lord Shaftesbury, supported
in a considerable measure at any rate by other men
of the same school, who succeeded in compelling
the attention of Englishmen to the horrors of these
industrial conditions, especially with relation to
the employment of women and children, and who
finally succeeded in persuading the country to
begin that great series of Factory Acts which have
done so much to improve the conditions, and even
to further the efficiency, of English industry. It
would of course be idle to pretend that all religious
men in England, or even all men of the evangelical
type, either understood or supported men like Lord
Shaftesbury, but I think it is true to say that the
Christian religion in the nineteenth century has
THE THEORY OF EQUALITY 55
done much to compel men's attention to these
matters, and to further the efforts of society to
create humaner and kindUer conditions.
We are only beginning to work out the meaning
of the conception of human equality in the industrial
world. It will probably carry us much further
than we yet understand. It is true, as indeed a
good many timid though well-meaning people feel,
that the doctrine of human equality is subversive
and intolerant ; it is true that just as this concep-
tion becomes more firmly rooted in our minds, we
shall find ourselves driven to recognise the necessity
of even more fundamental reconstructions of social
conditions than those which we have yet seen. There
are some signs of a tendency of a quasi-scientific
kind, represented mainly by men lacking historical
knowledge, and not having any intimate acquaint-
ance with the actual history of civilisation, to
go back upon this principle ; and the Christian
religion has a great part to play in resisting these
reactionary and unscientific tendencies, and in
keeping alive in the minds of men the truth of the
great apprehension of the equality of men, the
children of the most high God.
CHAPTER V
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE UNITY OF LIFE
We have been considering the meaning and the
significance of the conception of equahty, and I
hope that we have succeeded to a certain extent
in understanding both its original significance,
and the immense importance of this conception
in the whole sphere of political and social theory.
We must now consider a principle of life which
is of equal significance, and which is set out with
equal clearness in the New Testament. This is
the principle of the necessary inter-dependence
of human lives, the principle that the individual
is not self-centred or self-sufficient, but is neces-
sarily and always a member of a larger body in
whose life he lives, and through which he derives
a great part of his character and his capacities.
There are very few phrases of the New Testa-
ment which are more familiar than the words of
St. Paul : ' For as the body is one, and hath many
members, and all the members of the body, being
many, are one body; so also is Christ,' or again,
'And whether one member suffereth, all the members
suffer with it; or one member is honoured, all the
members rejoice with it ' (1 Cor. xii. 12, 26).
56
PRINCIPLE OF THE UNITY OF LIFE 57
St. Paul's conception is set out most completely
in this passage of his first letter to the Corinthians,
but it is one which is characteristic of his whole
mode of thought, and he returns to it in other
letters, as in the twelfth chapter of the Romans,
and the fourth chapter of the Ephesians. This
phrase of St. Paul's has, of course, primarily refer-
ence to the unity of the spiritual life, but it is, I
think, proper to take it as the expression in the
spiritual sphere of a conception which dominates
the whole Christian conception of life. To the New
Testament and to all serious Christian thinkers,
humanity presents itself not as a mere multitude
of incoherent and independent units, but as one
great society whose members are mutually depen- y
dent upon each other, and who find in this de- \
pendence, not a sign of weakness or inferiority,
but the characteristic principle of real human
life.
This conception is one not only important and
significant in itself, but of peculiar importance and
significance in its historical circumstances, and in
its relation to that other principle of life which we
have been considering. For it might easily seem
at first sight as if the doctrine of human equality,
the conception of the individual value, the con-
ception that every man is an end in himself and not
merely an instrument of other men's well-being — it
might well seem that this conception might tend
to the destruction of the conception of the necessity
of human relations ; it might easily seem as though
58 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
the doctrine of human equality might destroy the
conception of mutual dependence, and leave us
with a conception of humanity as composed of
detached, struggling, and competing individuals.
No doubt there have, at various times, been strong
tendencies in this direction, and it is probably
true to say that at the time of the appearance of
Christianity, the circumstances, both of civilised
thought and of civilised life, were, in some
measure, tending in this direction. The great
empires, first of the Macedonians and then of the
Romans, had broken down and almost destroyed
the old compacted and coherent social groups, and
were themselves on so enormous a scale as to make
it very difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of
any organic unity as characteristic of society.
And it is also true that the later philosophical
systems of the ancient world had tended to sub-
stitute the individual for the society as the primary
unit of life. The Epicureans, for instance, seem
to have taught that the wise man should with-
draw himself from the common affairs of the
State, except, and in so far as he found himself
compelled to take some part in them, and while
it is true that the Stoics maintained that the
obligations, even of the wise man, to society were
imperious and sacred, yet the Stoics themselves
did conceive of the wise man as being self-sufficient,
as sufficing to himself. Some well-known phrases
of Seneca may serve to bring this out. In one
of his treatises, he says that no man can either
PRINXIPLE OF THE UNITY OF LIFE 59
injure or benefit the wise man. There is nothing
which the wise man would care to receive from
others, and just as the divine order can neither
be helped nor injured, so is it with the wise man.
A wise man is, except for his mortality, like God
Himself.^ And in another treatise : It is only in
some general outward and loose sense that it can
be said that the wise man can receive a benefit
from his fellows.^
This mode of thought, which found expression
just about the time of the appearance of Chris-
tianity, represents, of course, a very radical change
in philosophical thought, and is indeed a symptom
of an immense transformation of the conception
of human life. It represents the revolt against
the ideas and the practical conceptions of older
society. In the earlier stages of human life, in
primitive society, there is nothing which is more
remarkable than the insignificance of the indi-
vidual. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that
the conception of the separate and independent
individuality scarcely existed. In primitive
society, a man is not merely a member of a group,
but we might almost say that the individual man
is absorbed by the group. In primitive society
the group is everything, the individual is practically
nothing. The individual has no freedom of action ;
he has, as we shall see later, very little, if any,
individual relation to property, and he can hardly
be said to have any consciousness of individual
^ Seneca, Ad Serenum, viii. 2 Jbid.^ De Ben., viii. 21.
60 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
moral responsibility. This characteristic of
primitive society, which can be traced more or
less in all its various aspects, is perhaps most
clearly seen when we consider the religious aspect
-y' of primitive society, for the religion of the primitive
world is not an individual religion, but is the
religion of the family or the clan, of the tribe or
the nation. We can find clear examples of all
this in the religion of the Old Testament as every-
where else. The individual responsibility can
scarcely be said to exist. The tribe suffers for
the offence or guilt of its members, and the indi-
vidual suffers for the guilt of the tribe. The sins
of the fathers are visited upon the children, and
the sins of the children upon the fathers. It was
only very slowly and very gradually that the
individual emerged from such conditions, and
even in the great progressive civilisation of Greece,
we can see the strength and tenacity of these
conceptions. It has even been said that the great
philosophers of the ancient world, in spite of their
profound analysis of human nature and human
life, never really arrived at any clear conception
of individuality at all. Aristotle's great phrase,
' The State is prior to the individual,' is no doubt
profoundly and permanently true, but uncor-
rected as it was by an adequate treatment of the
individual, it can scarcely be said to have pre-
sented a complete or sufficient view of human life.
Slowly and gradually men had begun to move
away from these conceptions, and it is again in
PRINCIPLE OF THE UNITY OF LIFE 61
the Semitic literature that we can find, perhaps,
the sharpest statement of the new tendency. I am
not certain that it is quite clearly understood how
revolutionary are the phrases of the Book of
Ezekiel : ' What mean ye, that ye use this proverb
concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers
have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth
are set on edge ? . . . Behold, all souls are mine ; as
the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son
is mine : the soul that sinneth, it shall die. . . . The
son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither
shall the father bear the iniquity of the son ; the
righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him,
and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon
him ' (Ezek. xviii. 2, 4, 20).
It has not always been understood that in these
phrases Ezekiel represents the revolt against an J
older theory of society. It is clear that in the
later Semitic religion, the individual consciousness,
the individual responsibility, was becoming the
centre of men's thought, and what was true of
the Semitic races was true also in the western
world. As we have seen, Aristotle and Plato had
no very clear conception of individuality ; it is
in the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophy that
we first begin to find a clear development of the
conception of individuality, and we have already
observed some of those phrases in which the new
conception embodies itself.
No one can doubt that this great development
in human thought was profoundly just and
62 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
necessary ; that it is exactly in this conception
of the individual responsibility of the individual
moral and spiritual life — this conception of the
supreme significance of individuality — that the
modem world finds one fundamental aspect of
truth. We cannot go back upon it ; on the con-
trary, we can never insist upon the sense of the
individual responsibility too much. At the same
time it is also obvious that this conception is not
adequate, that it is one-sided ; that the primitive
undeveloped conception of human life contained
elements which are equally and permanently true.
For somehow we have to recognise alongside of
the sanctity of the individual, the fact of the
solidarity of human life.
It is here that we can understand the immense
importance and significance of the Christian
conception of the unity of life. Christianity did
take up into itself the doctrine of individuality ;
indeed it carried it out even further than the
philosophical schools had tended to do. On the
other hand, in the conception of the unity of the
one body of which all are members, it supplied the
necessary corrective. It is, indeed, the essential
characteristic of the whole of the Christian religion,
that while accepting the principle of the sacred-
ness of the individual, it recognises that all human
life is bound together by ties and links from which
no one can escape. That is the final meaning of
the great doctrine of the Atonement : even God
Himself is within the unity of life, and not outside
PRINCIPLE OF THE UNITY OF LIFE 63
it ; God Himself suffers with the sufferings of men
as He rejoices in their rejoicing.
It would be difficult to discuss in precise terms
the exact mode in which this Christian concep-
tion of the unity of life influenced the progress of
social ideas. It is evident enough to any one who
considers the New Testament and the history of
the Christian Church, that however imperfectly
the idea may have been carried out. Christians
never altogether failed to recognise the mutual
dependence and the mutual obligations of men,
and I think it is probably true to say that it is
this conception of the unity of human life, which
is related to the determined opposition of the more
serious Christian thinkers, to certain anarchist
tendencies in the Christian society, which we shall
have to consider presently. I do not think it can
be said that St. Paul clearly connects the con-
ception of the necessity of the State with this
conception of the unity of human life, and yet it
is probably true to say that the relation is there,
even though St. Paul himself may not have been
clearly conscious of it, or may not have drawn it
out in clear and definite terms. But we shall deal
with the question of the Christian conception of
the State in the next chapter. It is enough in
the meanwhile to observe that to understand the
Christian conception of human nature, we must
be very careful to put alongside of the principle
of the equality of human nature, alongside of the
conception that every individual is himself in an
64 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
immediate relation with God, the doctrine which
the Christian reUgion taught and still teaches,
that men are inseparable members of one body,
inseparably and mutually dependent partakers in
one life, of which Christ is the head.
CHAPTER VI
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF THE NATURE .
OF GOVERNMENT 1
We have so far discussed what appear to me to
be the fundamental Christian social and political
ideas, that is, the theories of the essential equality
of human nature and of the unity of life. How
fundamental these conceptions are we cannot
wholly recognise here. In order to do this we
should have to consider in detail the whole struc-
ture of political and industrial society in the modem
world, and that would carry us far beyond our
present purpose. But it is necessary to remember
that any serious examination of the structure of
political society in the modem world, will show that
the assumption of equality and of unity underlies
the progressive development of the institutions,
especially of the constitutional and democratic
institutions, of modem civilisation. We must
now go on to consider another, and almost equally
important aspect of the Christian conception of
society, and that is the Christian conception of the
nature of government.
The most significant and profound aspects of the
Christian conception are summed up in some great
E
GG THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
phrases of St. Paul's which have become almost
classical in the political literature of the mediaeval
and modern world. I think we shall all remem-
ber those great phrases with which St. Paul begins
the thirteenth chapter of his letter to the Roman
Church : ' Let every soul be in subjection to the
higher powers : for there is no power but of God ;
and the powers that be are ordained of God.
Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth
the ordinance of God : and they that withstand
shall receive to themselves judgement. For rulers
are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil.
And wouldest thou have no fear of the power ? do
that which is good, and thou shalt have praise
from the same : for he is a minister of God to thee
for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be
afraid ; for he beareth not the sword in vain ; for
he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to
him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be
in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also
for conscience sake' (Rom. xiii. 1-5). This phrase
has been constantly quoted in the theological litera-
ture of politics, and it must be frankly recognised
that it has been as often misquoted and misapplied,
as it has been justly and wisely used. Indeed, the
first part of this sentence was very often quoted
while men forgot the second, just as the defenders
of absolutism have often quoted the first words
of the famous phrase of the Roman jurist Ulpian :
* Whatever pleases the Prince has the force of law,'
and forgotten the rest of the sentence.
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 67
What, then, do these words of St. Paul mean ?
First of all they lay down in the clearest and most
explicit way the principle that political authority
is a thing sacred, a thing which belongs to the
divinely ordered constitution of society ; a thing
not at all indifferent or irrelevant to religion, but
rather in the closest way connected with the
religious conception of the order of the world. It
is well to observe this at once, because there have
been moments, especially during the periods of the
great struggles between the Church and the State,
when it might seem as though great religious
writers had repudiated the principle. Political
authority is sacred, and obedience to authority is
part of the religious obligation of the Christian
man.
But this is not all that St. Paul says. We must
ask : Why is authority sacred ? And St. Paul
supplies the answer. The sanctity of authority ' y
lies in the end or purpose for which authority exists.
' Rulers are not a terror to the good work but to
the evil.' ' He is a minister of God, an avenger
for wrath to him that doeth evil.' Government
exists, that is, in order to maintain righteousness,
in order to punish the wicked, and to protect the
just. Thus government is a sacred institution
which exists in order to maintain a just order ;
not any order, we must be careful to notice, but a
just order. I think we can understand without
any difficulty the immense significance and im-
portance of this conception. Political authority
6,S THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
is a thing sacred to the Christian man, but it is
sacred in view of the purpose for which it exists,
and the end which it seeks to attain. It is of course
true that no government does, or can, fully satisfy
these conditions. There is not, and never has been
in the world, such a thing as a perfectly just order,
but we can say that government is sacred, just so
far, and in so far, as it represents some just principle
of order ; just so far as its normal character
is that of the defence of righteousness, and the
promotion of justice. Here, then, we have a very
great and profound conception of society.
In order to understand more fully what is meant
by these phrases of St. Paul's, we must now try to
consider the circumstances under which they were
written. We must, that is, ask ourselves what it
is that leads St. Paul, in a letter which is occupied
with the great principles of the Christian life, to
deal with this question of the obligation of obedience
to the secular authority. We shall do well to begin
by observing that these phrases occur as part of a
very careful treatment by St. Paul of the obligation
of the Christian to recognise the religious character
of every aspect of his daily life. He has besought
Christians to remember that it is their part to offer
themselves as a living and holy sacrifice to God, and
he has explained that this means the dedication of
every aspect of the individual life to the service
of God and of men ; evidently he treats the obliga-
tion of the Christian man towards the State as
belonging to the same conception, of the dedica-
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 69
tion of the whole of human Ufe to God. The mode
in which St. Paul introduces the subject bears elo-
quent testimony to his conviction of the essentially
sacred character of the secular organisation of
society in the State. But we must ask ourselves
now more particularly why should St. Paul have
laid this stress upon the obligation to obedience ?
Is there any reason to suppose that any Christian
person denied or even doubted this obligation ?
Certainly the emphasis with which St. Paul treats
the subject gives us the impression that there was
some danger lest Christian men should not fully
understand the nature of their relation to the secular
authority.
When we begin to examine this matter carefully,
we might very well at first sight be inclined to think
that what St. Paul is here dealing with is the danger
that the Christian society should be identified with,
or should identify itself with, the tendency on the
part of the Jewish community to dislike and to
revolt against the authority of the Roman Empire.
A large number of those to whom St. Paul was
writing were, no doubt by birth, Jews, and it
is extremely probable that among the Jewish
Christians in Rome there were many who shared
the nationalist sentiment, and the nationalist
hatred, which the Jews entertained towards Rome.
It is very probable that even at that date the state
of feeling which ultimately led to the great revolt
against Rome, was already active in the Jewish
community. It is further true that the Christian
70 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
society was always in danger of a charge of dis-
loyalty. It is clear enough from various references,
both in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles,
that the Jewish enemies of the Christian society
would have been glad to attribute to the Christian
societies something like an active disloyalty to
Rome. And it is further true that there is no
literature in which the hatred for the Roman
power is expressed in such fierce and burning words
as it is in that Apocalypse or Revelation of St.
John, which is at least in its final form a Christian
work. We shall all remember the tremendous
denunciations of that Babylon, which, I think,
all now recognise stands for Rome, and the exulta-
tion over what the author conceives of as the
impending fall and destruction of the great city.
To some Christians of the time of the author of the
Apocalypse there is no doubt that the Imperial
power came to present itself as an embodiment of all
that was opposed to the power of God. It is
therefore quite intelligible if some people should
think that these phrases of St. Paul have a primary
and special reference to the duty on the part of
the Christian communities to recognise the Roman
authority.
I think, however, that a rather closer examina-
tion of the subject will convince us that this is not
an adequate explanation of St. Paul's phrases.
The first epistle of St. Peter, in a parallel passage,
exhorts Christians to be subject to the civil power,
and continues : ' For so is the will of God, that by
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 71
well-doing ye should put to silence the ignorance of
foolish men : as free, and not using your freedom
for a cloke of wickedness, but as bondservants of
God ' (1 Pet. ii. 15, 16). I think there can be little
doubt that what he and St. Paul were dealing with
was the tendency to misunderstand and misapply
the conception of the freedom of the Christian man,
that the mistake which they were endeavouring
to counteract was the notion that the Christian
man, recognising himself to be the free child of
God, is not under any obligations of obedience
to a mere secular authority. The truth is that
there are very clear traces in the New Testa-
ment of a dangerous tendency to what we might
call anarchism in the primitive Church, a danger
very real and very serious, especially among those
Christians who were most closely related with
St. Paul — that is, the rather anti- Judaic Gentile
members of the Christian communities. I think
we shall remember how emphatically St. Paul
insists upon the doctrine of the freedom of the
Christian man : it is also evident that St. Paul
found it very necessary to guard against the
possible misinterpretation of this conception.
It is easy to see that the first letter to the
Corinthians is, to a very large extent, con-
cerned with the misapplication of this concep-
tion of freedom ; it is probable that amongst the
Corinthians, especially the Gentile Christians in
Corinth, there was a great tendency to misuse such
catchwords as ' All things are lawful.' St. Paul is
72 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
at great pains to counteract this by pointing out
that alongside of the Uberty and freedom of the
Christian man, it must also be recognised that the
principle of the love, which is to govern the mutual
relations of men, must constrain a man to serve
others and not only to please himself. I think
there can be little doubt that we may connect
with this such phrases as those in St. Paul's letters
to the Thessalonians when he exliorts them ' That
ye study to be quiet, and to do your own busi-
ness, and to work with your hands, even as we
charged you,' or again : ' We exhort you, brethren,
admonish the disorderly,' or again : ' We com-
mand you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every
brother that walketh disorderly. . . . For we hear of
some that walk among you disorderly, that work
not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that
are such we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus
Christ that with quietness they work, and eat their
own bread' (1 Thess. v. 14 ; 2 Thess. iii. 6, 11, 12).
I think there can be very little doubt that the
great and fundamental doctrine of the liberty
of the Christian man, had produced in the early
Church a tendency which easily ran into disorder
and a contempt for all authority. The truth is
that this difficulty with regard to the Christian
doctrine is one which has perpetually recurred in
the history of the Church. At almost every time
when the life of the Church has been revived by
some great movement of spiritual exaltation, by
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 73
some great movement to renew the life of the
Church by putting aside the worn-out forms and
methods of other times, there has been a great
tendency to carry this out into an extreme revolt
against all kinds of settled order, whether in the
Church or in the State. The anarchism of the
primitive Church is probably strictly parallel to the
anarchist tendencies which were connected with the
Anabaptist movement in the sixteenth century,
and the situation which confronted Luther at that
time was very much the same as the situation which
confronted St. Paul in the first century. I think
there can be very little doubt that St. Paul's
vindication of the authority of the civil ruler, and
the parallel phrases in the first letter of St. Peter,
were intended to counteract anarchical tendencies
in the Christian societies, were intended to counter-
act an error which would have destroyed the unity
of human life and set the Christian societies in
ruinous opposition to the general order of the world
in which they lived. St. Paul endeavours to
persuade them of their obligation towards the order
of the world by enforcing upon them the doctrine
of the essential sacredness of the order of civil
government.
Such is, then, the meaning, the purpose, of St.
Paul's discussion of the subject ; such is the nature
of the mistake which he wants to correct. And
we shall do well once again to observe the immense
importance of this conception of St. Paul. It is
quite true that the subject is surrounded with
74 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
difficulties ; it is quite true that the attempt to
apply these conceptions to any actually existing
order in political society, presents us with grave
perplexities and raises great and serious problems ;
but still we must notice how profoundly significant
and important the principle is. We should recog-
nise how immensely important it is that the
Christian world set out with a conception of
political society as representing the principle, not
of mere force, not of mere order, but of justice ;
how immensely significant it is that the principles
^of Christian society should be dominated by this
conception of justice as being the divine order.
It is quite true that any given human authority
may, or rather must, represent it inadequately or
imperfectly ; that there neither is, nor can be,
any human authority in which the great conceptions
of justice, and of the common well-being, are per-
fectly and sufficiently made real ; but we must
remember that whatever sanctity any political
organisation has, it derives from the fact that it
does, so far at least, represent the divine and the
just order. The State is sacred to us just in so far
as it does represent the principle of justice ; the
normal political society is sacred because normally
it does represent this ideal, this principle. Here
we have, then, the Christian principle of political
obligation.
But now I must ask you again to consider the
relation of this principle to the political theories
which were current in the western world, and again
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 75
we must observe and recognise frankly that this
is not a new conception ; that this is only a re-
statement in the terms of Christian theology of an
old and fundamental conception of political society.
Aristotle, several centuries earlier, had laid down
with great force, the natural and necessary
character of the political order, had laid down the
principle that man was a political animal, who
could only find the reality and the completeness
of human life in relation to a political organisation.
And further, Aristotle had found the test of a good
government, in the question of the end or purpose
which it pursued. Government might have many
forms ; it might be a monarchy, or an aristocracy,
or a commonwealth ; and any one of those forms
was legitimate and praiseworthy so far as it was
controlled by the principle that it existed to pro-
mote the good of the whole community, not merely
the good of the governing person or classes, but
the good of the whole, while any form of govern-
ment which existed for the benefit only of certain
classes, and of the governing class in particular,
was an illegitimate and unjust and pernicious form
of government. The Pauline conception that
government exists for the punishment of evil-
doers and the reward of them that do well, corre-
sponds very closely with the principle of the
pursuit of the common well-being, as the test of a
good government. This had been the doctrine of
Aristotle centuries earlier, and it is restated by
Cicero, a hundred years before St. Paul, with great
76 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
eloquence and conviction. Indeed Cicero, if any-
thing, goes rather further than Aristotle. If the
government, he says, is unjust, whether it is that
of the king, or of the few, or of the people, such a
State is not to be called corrupt, but rather we should
say that it is no State at all. There is no common-
wealth or republic where all are oppressed by the
authority of one, where there is no bond of law,
no true agreement and union. And Cicero defines
the commonwealth or State as being, not any society
of men, but only a society of men which is joined
together in the bond of a common law, and which
endeavours to secure the common well-being.
And that law which alone constitutes the uniting
principle of the State, is nothing but the application
to the particular circumstances of some definite
society, of the eternal principles of the law of nature.^
This principle of the supremacy of justice is again
set out with admirable eloquence and force in the
Roman jurisprudence. The definitions of the
meaning of justice set out by Ulpian and other
jurists, may be rather superficial and facile, but
there can be at least no mistake about their
conviction that the law is nothing if it does not
represent the principle of justice. ^ This had been
the view of Aristotle, this Avas the view of those
who, at the beginning of the Christian era, followed
the Stoic tradition and principles, and the Christian
doctrine is, as I have already said, properly speak-
^ Cicero, De Republica, i. and iii. ; De Legibus, i.
2 Digest, I. I.
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 77
ing, nothing else than a translation into the terms
of Christian theology of these great philosophical
conceptions. It would be a great mistake, how-
ever, to think that the translation and restatement
were unimportant. For there was another view
current in the world at that time, a view which was
characteristically represented by those who followed
the Epicurean tradition, a conception which denied
altogether the notion of any ideal significance or
meaning in justice and law, but looked upon the
conception of justice as representing merely the
recognition by some form of agreement, of that
which was found to be convenient.
It was, then, a matter of immense importance
that St. Paul should have, in so thorough-going a
fashion, taken up into the Christian system the
principle of government of the Aristotelian and
the Stoic tradition. It was of immense importance,
for after all in large measure the political principles
and theory of the mediaeval and modem world have
been governed by the Christian conceptions. The
Christian theory, then, is that government is a thing
sacred, representing the authority, not only of man,
but of God, and that this sanctity rests upon the j
principle that the civil order stands for the main- 1
tenance and the security of justice in human life.
Such are the general Christian principles of
society, but there are serious difficulties in the
working out of these principles, and we must next
proceed to consider the nature of those difficulties.
CHAPTER VII
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF THE NATURE
OF GOVERNMENT — II
We have considered the great significance of the
statement of the sacred nature of government by
St. Paul, and we have seen that under the terms
of Christian theology St. Paul was restating for
the Christian world the philosophical conception
of the nature of political society. St. Paul set out
very clearly the great principle that the authority
of government is sacred, not because it represents
any order, but because it represents that just
system of order whose purpose and function it is
to maintain righteousness and justice in the world.
We must now consider shortly the history of this
principle of the sacred authority of government in
the Christian writers, and we must then go on to
consider the meaning of certain applications of this
doctrine, certain perversions of this idea, which
sometimes passed current as properly representing
the principle itself.
There can be no doubt that St. Paul's principle
of the sacred character of government, is the normal
view of all Christian writers, whether in the early
centuries or in the Middle Ages. In the first
78
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 79
epistle of St. Clement, written probably about the
end of the first century, there is a very interesting
passage in what seems to be a great liturgical
prayer, in which Christians pray to God for the
rulers of mankind as those to whom God has given
authority and glory. ^ And if we go down to the
end of the second century we find a singularly
interesting passage in the writings of Irenaeus,
which sets out this conception in a somewhat
characteristically strange context. Irenaeus is
formally discussing, not the nature of society but
the nature of the devil, and among other things
that he says about him, he insists upon the fact
that the devil is, above all things, a liar, and gives
as a crucial example of this mendacity, the state-
ment of the devil, when in the narrative of the
temptation of our Lord, he is represented as taking
our Lord on to a high mountain, and showing Him
all the kingdoms of the world, and offering to give
those to Him if He would fall down and worship
him. The devil, Irenaeus says, was as always lying,
for the kingdoms of the world were not his at all ;
were not his to give away. It is not the devil who
has appointed the kingdoms of the world but God
Himself, and he quotes a passage from the Proverbs :
' By me kings reign, and princes administer justice,'
and the great phrases of St. Paul which we have
already considered.^ The view which Irenaeus
here presents is indeed the view of all writers of the
second century. Justin Martyr laid great stress
^ I Clement, 6i. ^ irenaeus, Adv. Haer., v. 24.
80 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
upon the fact that Christians had been taught by
Christ Himself to serve the king in all things
compatible with the worship of God,^ and Theo-
philus of Antioch a little later, urged, that while
the Christians could not worship the king or
emperor, they were ready to honour and obey him,
for it might be properly said, at least in some sense,
that he had received his authority from God.^ If
we pass on a little later, we may notice a very
interesting phrase which is used by Optatus of
Milevis in a tract on the Donatist schism, in which
he severely rebukes the Donatist schismatics for
want of respect for the imperial authority. The
orthodox party had secured the assistance of the
imperial government in putting down those
irregular Christians, and the Donatists were
naturally enough indignant, and protested that
the emperor had nothing to do with Church
matters. St. Optatus replied by asserting that
the empire is not in the Church but the Church
in the empire, and that there is no one over the
emperor but God only, who made him emperor.^
And it is very interesting to find that a little
earlier the writer known as Ambrosiaster, in a
passage of his Questions on the Old and New
Testament, expressed this conception of the divine
nature of the authority of the emperor, by giving
him the title of the ' Vicar of God ' ; and in
^ Justin Martyr, First Apology, 17.
2 Theophilus of Antioch, Ad. Autolicum, i. 11.
^ Optatus of Milevis, De Schisma Donatistarum, iii. 3.
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 81
another passage he drew this out in a very curious
phrase when he says that the emperor or king
' has the image of God as the bishop has the
image of Christ.' ^ It is very interesting to notice
this, as far as I am aware, the earhest appHcation
of the title of the ' Vicar of God ' to the secular
ruler. It will be remembered that the title in
the Middle Ages proper, while it is also used of
the secular ruler, is perhaps more frequently used
of the head of the Church, that is of the Bishop
of Rome, and the phrase is very significant. If
we now pass to some of the great Fathers, it is
worth while noticing that St, Augustine, in his
treatise on The City of God, very clearly expresses
the same conception. Indeed, St. Augustine puts
it with a certain new emphasis, when he urges
that it is true that a ruler is the representative
of God, and receives his authority from God, not
only when he is good, but also even when he is
bad. 2 St. Gregory the Great draws out this con-
ception in some passages to which we shall have
to refer again immediately, when he urges that
whether the ruler is good or evil, he must be
reverenced as one who derives his authority from
God Himself.^
These passages will be sufficient to show how
1 Ambrosiaster (pseu do- Augustine), Qwaes^iOMes Veteris et Novi
Testamcnti, xci. xxxv.
2 St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, v. ig.
3 St. Gregory the Great, Libvi Morahum in Job, xxv i6, and
Regulae Pastoralis, iii. 4.
F
82 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
very emphatically the Christian Fathers of the
first six centuries reproduced the great concep-
tion of St. Paul, and if we go on from this time to
the earlier Middle Ages, to the writers of the ninth
century, we find again, in a great body of litera-
ture dealing with political ideas, the same con-
ception expressed with much emphasis and breadth
of phrase. We may take as a very characteristic
example some phrases from the Capitula Pistensia.
This capitulary was promulgated in view of the
great disorders of the time, and the authors lament
the disturbances and discord in the kingdom, and
complain that some men will not endure subjec-
tion to the king. Men forget, they say, that, as
St. Paul affirms, all power is from God, and that
he who resists the power resists the ordinance of
God. God is indeed the true King of Kings, and
Lord of Lords, but He has ordained that the ruler
is to be king and lord in God's place {vice sua) on
the earth. The devil fell from heaven because
he would not accept his subjection to his Creator,
and so he who will not recognise the power ordained
by God in the world, makes himself the servant
of the devil and the enemy of God.^ I think this
passage serves as a very good illustration of that
which is the conception, the continually reiterated
principle of the writers of the ninth century,
for we could parallel these phrases from any one
of the more important writers of the time. It is
this conception which is again represented by
^ Capitula Pistensia, i.
THE NATURE OF GOVERN^IENT 83
the repeated use of phrases such as that the king
is the ' Vicar of God,' and one writer called
Cathulfus puts this in words which have a very
close relation to those of Ambrosiaster. He bids
the king remember God always with fear and love,
for he stands in His place, that is, in God's place —
in vice illius — over all His members, to guard
them and reign over them. The bishop is said
to stand in the second place and to represent
Christ.i
The truth is, that it was at this time, and in
this connection, that there came into use those
great phrases which are still employed in all
Christian countries in describing the nature of the
authority of the king or ruler. Charles the Great
calls himself ' King by the Grace of God,' or in
another place, ' Charles the most serene Augustus,
the great and peaceable Emperor who is crowned
by God, who rules over the Roman Empire, and
who by the Divine mercy is King of the Franks
and Lombards,' and again, Louis the Pious calls
himself ' Louis, Emperor Augustus by the Divine
providence,' or in another place, ' Louis, crowned
by the Divine will.' The proper meaning of these
phrases is, that the authority of the secular ruler
is looked upon as being in some sense a divine
authority as representing that of God Himself.
If we now look at the literature of the Middle
Ages proper, we find the same conception very
^ Cathulfus in Monamenta Germaniae Historica. Epistolae, iv. ;
Epistolae variorum Carolo Magno regnanfe scriptae, 7.
84 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
clearly and emphatically laid down. One of the
earliest important collections of canons, that of
Regino of Pnim of the ninth century, contains
a canon which pronounced the anathema of the
Church on any who ventured to resist the royal
power, inasmuch as it derived its authority from
God Himself. This and similar canons are repro-
duced in almost all the great collections, ^ while
Cardinal Deusdedit, in his collection of canons, cites
the passages from Romans xiii. and 1 Peter ii., and,
along with others whom I have just mentioned,
cites a letter of Pope Innocent i. which defends the
exercise of justice in criminal cases as being derived
from the authority of God Himself.^ And finally,
the same principle is laid down in the Decretals,
in a very important letter of Innocent iii. to the
Emperor Alexius of Constantinople. ' God,' he
says, ' has placed two great lights in the firma-
ment of heaven, that is the universal Church ; He
has instituted two great dignities, one of which
is the pontifical and the other is the royal power.' ^
The persistence of this judgment is made most clear,
when we notice the immense importance, both in
the ninth century and in the canon law of the
twelfth century, of those great phrases of Pope
Gelasius i., written in the fifth century, in which
he had very emphatically laid down the principle
1 Burchard, Decretum, xv. 22, 23; Ivo of Chartres, Ibid.,
xii. 78; Gratia, Ibid., c. xxii. q. 5, 19 (Palea).
* Deusdedit, Collectio Canonum, iv. 33, 34, 42.
' Decretals, i. 33, 6, 4.
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 85
that the world is governed by two authorities,
the secular and the ecclesiastical, both of which
receive their authority from Christ and God
Himself.^ Whatever disputes there may be about
certain details of mediaeval ideas with regard to
the nature of secular authority, there can be no
doubt at all that the normal view of the Middle
Ages was quite clearly and definitely identical
with St. Paul's great conception that the authority
of the secular ruler is derived from God.
So much, then, for the general principle, but
we must now consider briefly a theory related to
this, and no doubt in some measure even derived
from it, though by a perverse misunderstanding
and misapplication of its meaning. This is the
theory of what in later times was called the divine ^
right of the monarch, the theory of the unlimited '
and indefeasible power of the king ; the theory
that, as far as related to his subjects, the king
or ruler was absolute, that his conduct could not
be challenged or questioned, and that it was in
all cases unlawful or irreligious to resist the royal
authority. It is easy to see how this conception
might be derived, from the first aspect at any
rate, of the phrases of St. Paul ; it is easy to see
how it might be derived from that, even though
the derivation was illogical and inconsistent with
the whole scope of St. Paul's phrases. Here,
as in many other cases, men remembered the
^ Gelasius i., Tract, iv. ii ; Ep. xii. 2.
86 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
first part of a great saying and forgot the
second.
Now this theory of the divine right, of the
indefeasible power of the king or emperor, is,
as far as I can make out, a conception which was
new to the western world. We have here a doc-
trine which, as far as I can judge, was peculiar to
Christianity. There is no evidence at all that
any such conception was held by the pre-Christian
writers, or by the heathen writers contemporary
with the Christian Fathers. There are, indeed,
some phrases in Seneca's treatise Be Clementia, and
in Pliny's great panegyric upon Trajan, which
might seem to point in this direction. Seneca, in
recommending clemency to the emperor, appeals
to him to show himself such towards his subjects,
as he would wish the gods to be towards himself,
and adjures him to remember that he has been
chosen out of all mankind to act in the place of
God, that the life and death, the fate and the lot
of all men, are in his hands, that he was the source
of the laws which he has dra%vn out of darkness
and obscurity, that the ruler, whether he is called
prince or king, or by whatever other name he
is known, is the very soul and life of the common-
wealth. Nothing, he says, can check his anger,
and not even those who suffer under his sentences
will resist. How great will be his magnanimity
if he restrains himself and uses his power well and
gently.^ We might say of this phrase that it
^ Seneca, De Clementia, i. 1-5.
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 87
is at least conceivable that some doctrine, such
as that of the divine right, might have grown up
apart from the influence of Christianity, but as
a matter of fact there is really no trace in the
general system of the political ideas of the empire,
apart from the Christian influence, of any notion
other than that the emperor derives his authority
from the people.
The proper origins of this doctrine must be
looked for in the Christian writings. We have
already observed a passage of St. Augustine in
which he maintains that the authority of the
ruler, whether he was good or bad, represented
the authority of God, and he mentions Nero as an
example of the worst tj^e of ruler, and maintains
that even such rulers received their power through
the providence of God, when He judges that any
nation may require such governors.^ And St.
Isidore, following St. Augustine no doubt, and
expressing the same view, thinks it necessary even
to explain away a passage of scripture, which, as
it appeared to him, might be intei'preted as con-
tradicting this theory. The prophet Hosea, as he
quotes him, had said of certain kings that they
reigned, but not by the appointment of God, and
Isidore explains that this means that God had
given them to their peoples in His anger, and he
concludes that a wicked ruler is appointed by God
as much as a good ruler. ^ I think that we may
^ St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, v. 19.
2 St. Isidore of Seville, Sententiae, iii. 48.
88 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
very properly find the germ of the doctrine of the
divine right of the kings in this conception.
What is suggested by St. Augustine and St.
Isidore is drawn out in very expHcit phrases by
St. Gregory the Great in his book on Pastoral
Care. He admonishes all subjects to be careful
lest they should even criticise the conduct of their
rulers hastily, even if they see them do some evil
things. He warns them lest, when they recog-
nise the faults of their rulers, they should grow
bold against them, and urges that even if the
rulers' actions are evil, subjects should be con-
strained by the fear of God to submit to their
yoke. When we transgress against our rulers,
we transgress against the ordinance of God, who
set them over us.^ And in another passage in his
treatise on the Book of Job, he says that he who
murmurs against the authority which is set over
him, is really murmuring against God, who gave
this authority to men.^
Here we have very clearly stated the doctrine
of the divine right, and of the unlawfulness of
resistance. We have here the beginnings of that
doctrine which, in the seventeenth century, was
completely developed, especially by some Anglicans
and Galileans.
Such, then, is the doctrine of the divine right
of the king, and in considering the whole nature
of the Christian influence upon western civilisa-
1 Gregory the Great, Regulae Pastoralis, iii. 4.
2 Ibid., Libri Moralium in Job, xxii. 24.
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 89
tion, we must take account of the fact that this
conception is due, in the main at least, to influences
which came into the western world through Chris-
tianity. How did it come about that these great
Christian writers should have thus perverted and
misapplied the Christian conception of the sacred
character of political authority ? It is at least
probable that the sources of this error were com-
plex. Something, I think, we must allow for the
reaction against those anarchical tendencies in
the primitive Church which we have already con-
sidered. It is at least quite possible that it was in
part the imperative necessity of counteracting these
tendencies, which might easily have proved fatal
to the continuance of the Christian Church, and
fatal also to the orderly development of western
civilisation, which led these great Fathers into
this mistake. Something also is, I think, very
clearly due to the unhappy development in the
Church, after the conversion of Constantine, of the
policy of the repression and persecution of irregular
and unorthodox forms of Christianity, and finally
of the older religious system. Before the con-
version of Constantine, the Church had claimed
liberty and demanded toleration, but unhappily,
scarcely had the empire recognised the lawful-
ness of Christianity and come into close relations
with it, before various parties in the Church began
to look for the support of the imperial government
against those who differed from them. No doubt
these persons would have said that they had no
90 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
intention of suggesting that the State had authority
in matters of religion, but actually the policy of
persecution did tend to make the State into the
arbiter between the contending factions in the
Church, and did increase the tendency to an
exaggeration of the position of the secular power.
I think we must take account of these considera-
tions, in trying to explain the development of the
theory of the unlimited divine right of the ruler.
But, I think, in the end there can be very little
doubt that this doctrine represents the introduc-
tion into the western civilisation of an Oriental
conception of government. I think that here,
as in some other matters, we can see some of the
bad effects of Semitic and Oriental traditions
which the Christian Church had inherited with
the Old Testament. It is noticeable that St.
Gregory the Great, in those passages in which he
sets out this doctrine of the divine right in the
strongest terms, bases his judgment upon passages,
especially in the Books of Samuel — passages which
present one side of the Hebrew conceptions of
the position of the ruler, the conception of the
sacredness of the king as the Lord's anointed.
In the passages referred to by St. Gregory the
Great, this is represented as having prevented
David from taking any violent action against
Saul, even when he was unjustly and unreason-
ably persecuting him. It is upon this attitude
of David that St. Gregory the Great founds his
principle that the subject must not rashly criticise.
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 91
and still less violently resist, the ruler, his doc-
trine that an offence against the existing political
authority is an offence against God Himself.
It must be remembered that our knowledge of
the Hebrew conceptions of government is vague,
and it is certain that there were other and most im-
portant elements in it. No reader of the prophets
can fail to see that for them the king was only the
servant and minister of God, and that he was
responsible to God for the maintenance of justice
and mercy ; and that they were very confident that
neglect or injustice would bring upon him the swift
and certain judgment of God.
There are few stories in literature so vivid as
that of the denunciation of David by the prophet
Nathan for the murder of Uriah and the judgment
that followed ; the best parallel is the story of
Elijah and the punishment of Ahab and Jezebel
for the murder of Nabett. Certainly the prophets
of Israel were no soft-spoken courtiers, and to them
the king was nothing if he was not the servant of
God.
But it remains true that the conception of the
monarch as being in some sense an embodiment of
the divine power, was probably a common feature
of the great monarchies of Asia. I think there
can be very little doubt that in the main we
shall be right in thinking that this theory of the
absolute divine authority of the monarch, is to
be regarded as an intrusion of orientalism into
western civilisation.
92 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
We should all be agreed nowadays that this
view was foolish, and I think any student of history
will recognise that in the end it became extremely
mischievous. Happily it is true to say that the
Church, though it was some Christian writers
who had set out the doctrine, did much, especially
during the Middle Ages, to counteract it. In the
course of the centuries which intervened between
Gregory the Great and the political writers of
the Middle Ages, the theologians as a whole
gradually came to take a view which was quite
different, and maintained that while the authority
of the State is sacred, the authority of the ruler
is normally derived directly from the people, and
not from God directly, and that the ruler is
answerable to the people for the mode in which
he exercises the authority which is entrusted to
him.
It is also very important to notice that while
the view which we have been considering was
held by Gregory the Great, and was at least
suggested by St. Augustine, there was from the
first current in the Church quite another mode of
conceiving of the nature of government, a view
which represents more normally the view of the
Christian Fathers. I think it is true to say that
normally the Christian Fathers did understand
not only the great principle of St. Paul, that
political authority is sacred, but also the second
part of his principle, that the sacredness of this
authority ultimately rests upon the fact that the
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 93
function or purpose of secular authority is to
maintain righteousness and justice in the world.
This aspect of the Christian theory is best illus-
trated in the works of St. Ambrose, and it will
be useful to observe some of the phrases in
which he embodies this conception. St. Ambrose
lays down the principle that justice and benefi-
cence form the ratio of the State ; it is justice
which builds the State up, and injustice which
destroys it, and he draws this out more exactly
when he says that authority is from God in this
sense, that he is God's minister who uses the
authority well.^ He draws, that is, a distinction
between the sacred order and the possibly faulty
character of the person who may administer it.
These views of St. Ambrose are again very well
stated by Cassiodorus. He quotes the great
passage from St. Paul with a very interesting
comment, pointing out that the ruler is God's
minister to secure justice. He recognises that it
is justice which exalts the ruler and causes the
State to prosper, and he exhorts the minister of
the State to just conduct as being that which
alone renders him worthy of the name of judge.
And in another passage, he cites as a saying of
Trajan, a very interesting phrase in which the
emperor desires his counsellors to speak, even
against him, in the name of the commonwealth.^
1 St. Ambrose, De Officiis, i. 28, ii. 19 ; Exp. Ev. S. Lucae, iv. 5.
2 Cassiodorus, Complexiones in Epist. Aposi. Rom. xiii. i. ;
Varia, iii. 27, 34, iv. 12, viii. 13.
94 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
And again, if we turn to St. Isidore of Seville, who
is the best representative of the normal tradition
which was handed down from the last centuries
of the ancient empire to the mediaeval world, it
is very interesting to find him defining society,
in the terms of the definition of Cicero, as a body
of men joined together under one system of law
(jus) and he draws out very sharply the contrast
between the true king and the tyrant : ' The king,'
he says, ' is so called from ruling ' {rex a regendo) ;
the king holds his name when he does rightly, he
loses it when he transgresses against right. And
he quotes with approval a proverb which he
attributes to the ancients : ' Thou shalt be king if
thou doest rightly ; if thou doest not do rightly, thou
ceasest to be a king ' ; and again, * Justice with pietas
is the chief virtue of kings.' And in another series
of passages he points out that the duty of the
ruler is to set forward justice in truth and reality,
and he maintains that it is a just thing that the
prince should obey his own laws.^ I think it is true
to say that we have here the normal view of the
Christian Fathers, namely, that the sacred authority
of the ruler does depend upon the fact that he is
God's instrument for justice and righteousness.
It is very important to observe that this doc-
trine is handed on by the Fathers to the writers
of the ninth century and of the Middle Ages.
The political writers of the ninth century are
indeed never wearied of insisting that the function
^ St. Isidore of Seville, Etym. ix. 3, 4 ; Sent., iii. 49, 51.
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 95
of the king is to maintain righteousness and
justice. They constantly quote the phrases of
St. Isidore of Se\dlle, to which I have just referred,
and they constantly urge upon the king that
his principal duty is that he is to do justice and
judgment. 1 And the same conceptions are re-
peated in the canon law of the Middle Ages
proper.^ While therefore it is true that it is from
the Christian -w-riters of the first centuries that
the mischievous and foolish doctrine of the seven-
teenth century of the unlimited, indefeasible
divine right of the monarch is derived, it is, on
the other hand, important to notice that the
Christian Fathers also laid down very clearly the
principle that the authority of the ruler is really
dependent upon the degree in which he is actually
the maintainer and defender of those just pur-
poses and ends, to secure which secular society
exists.
1 E.g. Hrabanus Maurus, De Universo. xiv. i, xxi. 3; Jonas of
Orleans, De Institutione Regta, 3 ; Hincmar of Rheims, De
Divortio Lotharii et Tetbuygae : Praef; Smaragdus, Via Regia, 8, 9 ;
Sedulius Scotus, De Rectoribus Christianis, 2, 3, 8.
2 E.g. Burchard, Decretum, xv. 38-43, x\-i. 25-9 ; Deusdedit,
Collectio Canonum, iv. 108 ; Ivo, Decretum, xx-i. 39-45 ; Gratian,
Dec, D. ix. 2. ; Rufinus, Siinia Decret, c. cxxiii. q. i. 4.
CHAPTER VIII
THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL
AUTHORITY
The Christian principle of the sacred nature of
poUtical authority, we can now understand, might
easily lead to, and did actually in many cases
lead to, an exaggeration of this conception
which threatened western civilisation with the
great danger of a political absolutism founded
upon some supposed religious authority. And as
we have seen, some of the great Fathers, and
especially Gregory the Great, did actually draw
this conclusion from the Christian principles. It
is at least true to say that Gregorj^ the Great
allowed himself to make statements which, strictly
interpreted, must bear that meaning. It must
remain doubtful whether Gregory the Great really
understood his phrases in their natural sense. It is
certainly a strange thing to find one of the greatest
bishops of Rome taking up an attitude which
would imply so much of almost servile deference
to the State, for actually there can be little doubt
that no one did more to extend and to organise
the authority of the Roman pontiff and the
authority of the western Church, than Gregory
90
THE SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 97
the Great. It is very difficult to reconcile his
words with the general character of his position.
Still it remains true that one tradition which the
Christian Fathers handed down to the Middle
Ages, was the doctrine of the indefeasible divine
right of the king. When, however, we turn to
the Middle Ages themselves, we find that the
attitude of the Church towards the State is a very
different one ; that if we take the most represen-
tative churchmen of the Middle Ages, they are
far from being inclined to hold that the authority
of the king was absolute, and that it was impious
to resist him. We find that they were, on the
whole, clearly of opinion that normally political
authority was derived from the community, from
the whole people, and that in some sense at any
rate, the head of the State, the king, was respon-
sible to the whole community for the mode in
which he used his authority.
How had this transition come about ? There
were many circumstances, no doubt, which tended
to produce this change ; the insistence upon the
limitation of authority by the jDrinciple of justice ;
the political tendencies of the Teutonic societies,
and no doubt others. But we are for the moment
concerned with another of the circumstances which
tended to counteract the absolutist theory of the
State ; that is, the theory or principle of the inde-
pendent authority of the Church itself. It was
through the Church, no doubt, that the Oriental con-
ception of an absolute divine monarchy came into
G
98 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
western Europe, but the Church did much to
correct the results of this conception by main-
taining, and stoutly defending, the principle of
the independent authority of the spiritual society.
It is perhaps the most significant characteristic
of mediaeval civilisation, as contrasted with the
civilisation of the ancient world, that mediasval
society recognised the presence of two authorities
in society. To the mediaeval, and I think we may
say to the modern world, men are under two
authorities, not only one ; they are governed by
two systems of law and not only by one system ;
and these two authorities and these two systems
have each got their own organisation. This concep-
tion was, I think, a new thing in the west. It
is possible that there may have been a tendency
to a development of something of this kind apart
from Christianity and the Christian Church,
though I think that if there were such tendencies,
they were very little developed. It is possible
that in the later stages of the ancient world we
might trace the beginnings of the tendency to
constitute some sj^stem of moral authority inde-
pendent of the State. It is at least possible to
suggest that the later philosophical systems of the
ancient world, perhaps especially the Stoic philo-
sophy, were tending to some kind of organisation
which might have constituted the leaders of the
philosophic schools into authorities claiming in-
dependence of the political society. I do not
know how far it is reasonable to think that some-
THE SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 99
thing of this kind may have underlain the suspicion
which the empire seems to have sometimes enter-
tained of the influence of the philosophical schools.
It is certainly reasonable to conjecture that the
great Oriental religions which invaded the western
world about the same time as Christianity, would
have tended to develop a position somewhat
analogous to that of the Christian Church. All
this, after all, is a matter of conjecture ; the one
thing which is clear and distinct is, that from the
first the Christian Church claimed that the spiritual
life was outside of the authority of the State, and
that with the development and organisation of
the Christian Church, the spiritual aspect of life
found for itself a definite organisation which, in
the nature of things, claimed to be independent
of political authority.
There can be no doubt as to the nature of the
conditions in the first few centuries of the Christian
Church. The Christians were at first persecuted
by the Jews, and to a certain extent protected by
the empire, but before the end of the first century,
the protection or the tolerance of the empire had
been transformed into an active, and sometimes
a violent hostility. We cannot here discuss the
causes of this hostility of the empire ; no doubt
the reasons for it were complex, and their character
was not altogether the same probably in the first
or second century, as it was in the third. It is
enough for our purpose to observe that from the
time of Nero, down to the time of Constantine,
100 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
the empire was constantly hostile to the Church,
and from time to time apparently did its utmost
to suppress the Church. But Christian men con-
ceived themselves to be bound to obey God rather
than man, and to defy the authority of the emperor
in order that they might render obedience to God.
The Church in the first three centuries not only
claimed to be independent of the State, but held
to its own convictions and its own principles of
life, against the utmost efforts of the State to
suppress them.
With the conversion of Constantine, the rela-
tions between the Church and the empire were
completely transformed. The empire ceased to
be the enemy of the Church, and became its friend
and protector, and there can be very little doubt
that this change involved very considerable risk
to the independence of the Church. It has even
been sometimes suggested that for a time, at any
rate, the Church tended to recognise the authority
of the Christian emperors, not only in matters
concerning temporal things, but even in regard
to religious and ecclesiastical things. And it
would not be difficult to find, in the writings of
the Fathers, phrases which might seem to imply
a deference to the State which might almost be
taken as implying subordination. As we have
already seen, it was in the fourth century for
the first time that a Christian writer spoke of the
emperor as the ' Vicar of God.' This was done by
Ambrosiaster, who, indeed, uses that very strange
THE SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 101
phrase, the interpretation of which is quite un-
certain when he says that ' The emperor has the
image of God as the bishop has the image of
Christ.' We have seen that there are parallels to
this to be found in such phrases as those of St. Op-
tatus of Milevis, who, writing during the Donatist
controversy, rebuked the Donatists for their want
of respect for the emperor, and urged that they
should remember that the State or commonwealth
is not in the Church, but the Church in the common-
wealth. The truth is, no doubt, that we have to
reckon not only with the natural gratitude of the
Church to the emperors, who were its protectors,
but with the unhappy fact that the Church very
early began to look to the secular power to sup-
press its enemies, both in the outer world and
within its own borders. The policy of persecu-
tion which the Church came to sanction in the
fourth and fifth centuries, did not necessarily
imply that it was for the emperor to decide what
was or was not religious truth, but it did un-
doubtedly tend to give the State the appearance
of having a real and effective authority in all
spiritual disputes and controversies.
While, however, this is true, I am myself very
clear, that even in the fourth and fifth centuries
the western Church, at least, never for a moment
admitted that the secular power had any authority
in strictly ecclesiastical or religious matters. It
is very significant of the opinion of the western
Church that Rufinus of Aquileia, in those books
102 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
which he added to the Church history of Eusebius,
gives an account of Constantine as expressing
his deference for Church authority. He repre-
sents Constantine as speaking to the bishops
assembled at the Council of Nice in the following
words : ' It is God who has made you priests and
has given you authority to judge of us, but you
cannot be judged by men.' ^ And it is perhaps even
more significant to notice the phrases of Hosius of
Cordova, one of the great churchmen of that time,
who was himself in very close relation to the
imperial court. St. Athanasius, in his history of
the Arians, has quoted a letter which Hosius
addressed to the Emperor Constantius : ' Do not
interfere in ecclesiastical matters ; do not take
upon yourself to command us with regard to
those things, but rather do thou learn those things
from us. God gave thee the kingdom, but to us
He has entrusted the affairs of the Church. And
as he who would take away thy authority resists
God, who has set thee over us, so also do thou fear
lest if thou takest into thine own hands the affairs
of the Church, thou shouldest find thyself guilty
of great crime. It is written, " Give the things
which are Caesar's to Caesar, and the things which
are God's to God." It is not lawful for us to rule
over the things of the world, nor hast thou, O
king, authority to sacrifice.' ^ And it is worth
while noticing that about the same time we find a
^ Rufinus, Eccl. Hist., i. 2.
2 St. Athanasius, Hist. Arianorum, 44.
THE SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 103
well-known Christian bishop, Lucifer of Cagliari,
no doubt a man of somewhat violent temper,
using language to the emperor which anticipates
the language used by churchmen to the icono-
clastic emperors in the eighth century, and by
Hildebrand to the mediaeval emperors. ' Prove,'
he says, ' that thou wast made a judge over us,
show to us by what authority you were made
emperor, in order that by thy power thou
mightest compel us to fulfil the will of thy friend
the devil. Thou canst not prove that it was
commanded thee to reign over bishops, but rather
thou art in such a sense bound to obey their com-
mands ; that if thou dost attempt to overturn
their decrees, thou art condemned to death. How
canst thou say that thou canst judge of bishops ?
rather unless thou obeyest them, thou by God's
command shouldest be punished with death. As
these things are so, why is it that thou who art a
profane person takest upon thyself the authority of
the priests of God ? ' ^ These are no doubt extreme
and violent phrases, but it is important to re-
member that they were used in the fourth century,
and they serve to illustrate the fact that, at any rate
in the western Church, the notion that the secular
power was possessed of authority over spiritual
things, was emphatically repudiated. The best
illustrations of this will again, no doubt, be found
in the correspondence of St. Ambrose, and in the
relation of St. Ambrose to the emperors, for
^ Lucifer of Cagliari, Pyo Sancto Athanasio, i.
104 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
some of whom he had apparently a very warm
personal friendship, and a very sincere regard.
The story of the exclusion of the Emperor Theo-
dosius from the Eucharist is of course familiar,
but it is very significant of the principles and
convictions of the Christian Church, and it is
worth while to notice some phrases of St. Ambrose
in his letters to various emperors. ' When didst
thou hear,' he says in one place, ' most clement
emperor, that laymen judge bishops in matters
of faith ? The truth is, that if we consult the divine
scriptures of ancient times, it is evident that in
matters of faith bishops were wont to judge of
Christian emperors, not emperors of bishops.'
And again, ' What title is more honourable than
that the emperor should be called the son of the
Church ; the emperor is within the Church and
not over the Church.' ^ The independent posi-
tion of the Church in relation to the empire is
most clearly brought out and stated in the course
of the controversies of the fifth century, between
Pope Felix ii. and Gelasius i. and the Byzantine
emperors, and the relation of the two authorities
of the Church and State is definitely and formally
set out in the fourth tractate and the twelfth letter
of Gelasius. Before the coming of Christ, Gelasius
says, there were some who were justly and legiti-
mately both kings and priests, and Satan imitated
this among the unbelievers. Hence it was that
the pagan emperors held the office of Pontifex
^ St. Ambrose, Ep. xxi. 4, 36.
THE SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY 105
Maximus. The only true king and priest was
Christ Himself, but Christ, knowing the weakness
of human nature, and being careful for the welfare
of His people, separated the two offices, giving to
each its peculiar function and duties. Thus the
Christian emperor needs the ecclesiastic for the
attainment of eternal life, the ecclesiastic depends
upon the government of the emperor in temporal
things. There are, then, two authorities by which
chiefly the world is ruled — the sacred authority of
the prelates and the royal power. But the burden
laid upon the priests is the heavier, for they will
have to give account in the divine judgment, even
for the kings of men. The authority of the
emperor is derived from God, and the rulers of
religion obey his laws ; he should therefore the
more zealously obey the bishops and priests.^ It
is very interesting to see how clearly in this defini-
tion the spheres of the two powers are differen-
tiated and distinguished, to observe how clear
Gelasius is in holding the principle that the two
authorities are independent of each other, each
supreme in its own sphere, but that each is sub-
ject in the sphere of the other — the king is subject
to the bishop in spiritual matters, the bishop to
the king in temporal matters.
Here we have then what was, I think, the
normal and the constant attitude of the Church
to the State, at any rate in the west, and these
are the principles which the Church of the Fathers
^ Gelasius l., Tractaius, iv. ii and Ep. xii. 2.
106 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
handed down to the Middle Ages and to the
modern world. And it cannot be too clearly-
recognised that all this represents not only a new
but an immensely important element in civilisa-
tion.
CHAPTER IX
CHRISTIAN THEORIES OF PROPERTY
There is another aspect of the social ideas of
Christianity which it is important to consider, and
that is, the relation of Christianity to the theory,
or conception, of property. There has been a great
deal of discussion about this matter, and it some-
times has been a little careless. On the one side,
there have been persons who have wished to repre-
sent the Christian Church, as holding some theory of
the sacred and inalienable character of private pro-
perty, while on the other, some persons have main-
tained that the proper doctrine of Christianity
is to be found in a theory of the community of
Christian men's goods. It is of some importance
that we should try to clear the matter up so far
as may be, and that we should recognise both to
what extent the Christian Church has a conception
of property, and what are its relations to the more
strictly scientific and historical conception of pro-
perty.
We had better begin by recognising that what-
ever theory of property the primitive Christian
Church had, it probably shared with others. There
is no reason to think that the Christian Church had
107
108 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
any theory which was peculiar to itself. To begin at
the beginning, we are all familiar with the account
in the Acts of the Apostles, of what has been called
the communism of the Church at Jerusalem* "The
first reference to this is at the end of the second
chapter of the Acts. ' And all that believed were
together, and had all things common ; and they
sold their possessions and goods, and parted them
to all, according as any man had need.' And there
is another passage in the fourth chapter : ' And
the multitude of them that believed were of one
heart and soul : and not one of them said that
aught of the things which he possessed was his
own ; but they had all things common. . . .
Neither was there among them any that lacked :
for as many as were possessors of land or houses
sold them, and brought the prices of the things
that were sold, and laid them at the apostles'
feet : and distribution was made unto each,
according as any one had need.' ^ There is no
doubt that if these words stood alone, we might
easily conclude that every one was expected to
bring what he had into a common stock, out of
which all the members of the community were
maintained. But this impression is corrected
when we notice the circumstances connected, in
the narrative of the Acts, with the death of Ananias
and Sapphira. These people sold their property
and brought a part of the price to the apostles,
but kept back a certain part, and then, as the
1 Acts ii. 44, 45 ; iv. 32, 34, 35.
CHRISTIAN THEORIES OF PROPERTY 109
narrative reports, Peter said to Ananias, ' Why-
hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost,
and to keep back part of the price of the land ?
Whiles it remained, did it not remain thine own ?
and after it was sold, was it not in thy power ? ' ^
The words seem clearly to imply that the apostle
at least did not think that there was any obliga-
tion upon members of the community to bring
all their possessions into the common stock. It
would be very interesting to inquire what ante-
cedents there may have been for this action on
the part of the Church at Jerusalem, whether it
proceeded entirely from the new spirit of brother-
hood and the sense of mutual obligation, or
whether it may have been related to the tradition
and practice of other religious societies of that
time among the Jews. There are at least some
traces of this to be found in the literature of the
time, and it is perhaps worth noticing that the
so-called Epistle of Barnabas, and the early-
Christian work known as The Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles, both contain the following phrase :
' Thou shalt not turn away from him that hath
need, but shalt share all things with thy brother,
and shalt not say that they are thine own : for, if
ye are sharers in that which is immortal, how much
more in those things which are mortal.' It is
generally held that these phrases of Barnabas and
the Teaching are derived from some common source,
which has been supposed to be of Jewish origin.
1 Acts V. 3, 4.
110 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
The matter after all is not one of very great
importance, for whatever may be the exact ex-
planation of the circumstances in the Church
at Jerusalem, it is quite clear from the evidence
of the apostolic epistles, that no such system of
community of goods existed in the other Churches
of the apostolic time. It is quite clear from the
references in these, that the individual Christian
continued to hold property like other people. At
the same time, it is of great importance to notice
the great stress laid, not only in the Acts, but in
all the epistles, upon the obligation of the Christian
man to support his brother who is in need, as being
a thing of paramount obligation. The words,
especially of the first epistle of St. John, are very
forcible : ' But whoso hath the world's goods, and
beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up
his compassion from him, how doth the love of
God abide in him ? ' (1 John iii. 17). St. John's
words represent a fundamental principle of the
Church, and that this principle was recognised in
the sub-Apostolic Church is very evident from
many references, such as those of Justin Martyr in
the First Apology, when he says of the Christians
that they brought what they possessed into a
common stock, and shared with every one in need,^
or when Cyprian, commenting on the narrative
in the Acts, says that such conduct is that of the
true sons of God, for God's gifts are given to all
mankind; the day enlightens all, the sun shines
1 St. Justin Martyr, First Apology, 14.
CHRISTIAN THEORIES OF PROPERTY 111
upon all, the rain falls, and the wind blows upon
all ; to all men comes sleep ; the splendour of the
stars and the moon are common to all ; man is
truly an imitator of God, when he follows the
equal beneficence of God, by imparting to all the
brotherhood the things which he possesses. ^ If
we are to understand the Christian conception of
property, we must begin by recognising this con-
ception of the obligation of the Christian man to
hold that which he possesses, not for his own
use only, but also for the good of the whole
community or brotherhood.
We must now, however, take account of quite
other aspects of the theory. It is quite evident from
many references in the Fathers, that they recog-
nised that private property is in no way evil if y
it is rightly used. Who does not understand, St.
Augustine says, that it is not blameworthy to
have such things (that is, property of various
kinds) but only to love them and to put one's
hope in them, to prefer them or even to compare
them with truth, justice, faith, a good conscience,
love to God and our neighbours. ^ The words of
St. Augustine can be paralleled in almost any of the
Fathers. But at the same time, the Fathers are
undoubtedly agreed in holding the view that pro-
perty is not what they call a ' natural ' institution.
Here is a phrase of St. Ambrose : Men think that
they are fulfilling their obligations, the obligation
1 St. Cyprian, De Opere et Eleemosina, 25.
- St. Augustine, Contra Adimantum, xx. 2.
112 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
of justice, when they recognise common property
as common, and private property as belonging
to this or that individual. But properly speak-
ing, this is not according to Nature, for Nature gave
all things to all men in common. Nature brought
forth a common right ; it is by usurpation that
there exists a private right. ^ This is the general
doctrine of all the Fathers. Property is not a
' natural ' but a conventional institution. What
does this conception mean, and where does it
come from ? There is no doubt as to the source
of the doctrine. It belongs to the general con-
temporary philosophical conception of the dis-
tinction between natural and conventional in-
stitutions. In the philosophical systems of the
later centuries of the ancient world, the great
institutions of human life, such as government,
slavery, and property, were not * natural,' but rested **?
upon convention or agreement. They conceived of
men as having originally lived a happy and innocent
life without government, without slavery, without
private property. It was only as human nature
was corrupted by vice that it came to be necessary
to establish a system of coercive order ; it was only
as men grew avaricious and greedy, and were not
satisfied to hold things in common with their
brethren, that it came to be necessary to establish
distinct and separate property. Property, in the
theory at least of some of the Stoic philosophers,
was the result of the vice of avarice, while it
* St. Ambrose, De Officits, i. 28.
CHRISTIAN THEORIES OF PROPERTY 113
was also intended to be a corrective or remedy
for it.
This is the doctrine which the Christian Fathers
have taken over. They also conceived of human
nature as having been once simple and innocent,
and thought that had that condition continued,
there would have been no need for these great
institutions of actual life ; it was only the fall,
the depravation of human nature, that made them
necessary. Had men continued innocent and
unfallen, there would have been no need of pro-
perty ; but men, being what they are, sinful, and
avaricious, and greedy, it became necessary to
devise some system by which it should be deter-
mined that this thing should belong to one man,
and that to another. This is what the Fathers
meant when they said that God gave the world
and the things in it to men in common, and that
it was only by reason of some system of conven-
tional law that it was recognised that some things
should belong exclusively to some men.
They adapted this view to the traditional
Christian conception of the obligation of sharing
what one has with those of the brotherhood who
are in need, and maintained very strongly, that
while under the existing condition of things it is
right that individual men should hold property, it
is on the other hand an act of justice and not an
act of charity that the Christian man should give
to those who have need of that which he does
not require. Ambrosiaster, for instance, says that
H
114 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
almsgiving is, properly speaking, an act of justice ;
it is an act of justice that a man should not keep
for himself alone that which he knows was given
to all.^ And St. Gregory the Great says that
it is idle that men should conceive themselves
to be righteous who claim for their private use
the common gifts of God, for when we minister
necessaries to those who are in want, we give them
what is their own, not what is ours, we fulfil the
obligation of justice rather than of mercy. ^ This
is the fundamental and permanent Christian con-
ception of the limitation of the right of private
property. It was drawn out in the Middle Ages,
for instance, by St. Thomas Aquinas, in a very
careful distinction between the right to hold pro-
perty and the right to use property as we please.
He holds that the right of property extends to
the acquisition of things, and to the determina-
tion of how they should be distributed ; but so far
as their use is concerned, men are bound to treat
them as things pertaining to all. A man has the
right to use what he needs, and St. Thomas takes
the meaning of need in a liberal sense, but beyond
this a man holds his property for the common
benefit.^
The theory of the Fathers as to the origin of
private property is further developed by St.
Augustine in a series of very important passages,
* Ambrosiaster, Commentary on 2 Cor. ix. 9.
* St. Gregory the Great, Liber Pastor alls, iii. 21.
' Cf. esp. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2. 2, 66, 2.
CHRISTIAN THEORIES OF PROPERTY 115
in which he maintains that property is simply the
creation of the State; that it is by human law
that property belongs to this or that individual,
and that what the State has given the State can
take away. This theory of St. Augustine's is
developed by him in a series of controversial
writings dealing with the Donatist schism of his
time. The imperial government had, under the
persuasion of the orthodox Christians, finally
determined to take steps to put down the schis-
matic or eccentric Donatist Christians, and as a
step towards this the imperial government had
confiscated the Churches and other possessions
of these Donatists in Africa. The Donatists
naturally enough protested, and seem to have
urged, not only that these confiscations were un-
just, but that this interference with the rights of
private property was outside the limits of the
powers of the imperial government. St. Augustine,
in one place, replies something as follows : Here
are your ' villas.' By what law do you defend
your property in these ' villas ' ? Is it by
human law or by divine ? We have the divine
law in the scriptures ; human law in the laws of
kings. By what law is it that a man holds his
property ? Is it not by human law, for by the
divine law the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness
thereof. God has made the poor and the rich of
one dust, and it is one earth which supports the
poor and the rich. It is by human law that this
villa is mine, that this house is mine, that this
116 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
slave is mine ; it is by the human law ; well, it is
by the law of the emperors. But if, then, you
desire to hold your property by human law, let
us read the laws of the emperors ; let us see if
they permit heretics to possess any property ?
But the Donatist replies. What have I got to
do with the emperor ? Well, it is by his law
that you possess your land ; take away the laws
of the emperors, and who could say, This is my
villa, or This is my house, or This is my slave ?
Do not say. What have I got to do with the
king ? or I will reply. What have you got
to do with your property ? for it is by the laws
of kings that men hold property.^ These are
very notable phrases of St. Augustine's, and they
represent what we may call the classical theory
of property of the Christian tradition, for these
phrases have passed from the Fathers to the great
writers of later times, and finally into the great
body of the canon law, and represent the normal
Christian tradition with regard to property, ^
The only theory of property which it can be said
that the Christian Church has ever formally held, is
the theory that, first, property is the creation of the
State, created because it was found necessary to
restrain the cupidity and avarice of human nature,
and that, second, the right of property is always
limited by the needs of those who own it, and by
1 St. Augustine, Tractatus, vi., in Joanni Evangelium, 25,
26.
* E.g. Gratian, Decretum, D. viii., Part i.
CHRISTIAN THEORIES OF PROPERTY 117
the duty of maintaining those who are in want.
It may be said that these conceptions are in-
adequate, and this is of course true. It may
therefore be convenient to compare these Christian
traditions with regard to property with the more
strictly scientific theory.
As soon as we begin to consider seriously the
history of the institution of property, we dis-
cover that the private and individual ownership
of property has gradually, slowly, and never com-
pletely, emerged from group property. As we
begin to go back in the history of civilisation, we
discover that the fact and the idea of the indi-
vidual ownership of property begin to disappear,
and we do not need to go very far back before we
find strong evidence that normally, property, in its
most important forms, was something that belonged
to a group of persons. We may say broadly that
in primitive society there is very little individual
property, but that what is owned, is owned
normally by some group. It is well to remember
that the appearance of the individual as owning
property, is related to the fact that the distinctly
individual life and right is itself a thing which
belongs only to advanced civilisations. As we
go back in the history of society, the individual
tends more and more to disappear ; in earlier
societies the individual is merged in the group, is
always a member of some group of persons, and
the individual right and the individual possession
has little or no significance. The group ownership
118 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
of property corresponds with the general supremacy
of the group over the individual.
Private property has very gradually and very
slowly grown out of group property, and has been
recognised by the State because it was found by
experience to be a thing convenient and useful.
Probably the main reason for the development
of individual rights in property was due to the
fact that it was found by experience that the
individual ownership and control stimulated the
economic energy of the individuals. We must
possibly allow something also for the fact that
it was found convenient, especially by the govern-
ing members or classes in various societies. But
it is probably true to say that it was found to be,
on the whole, and speaking generally, convenient
for everybody. It is probable that the history
of property has varied greatly in different races
and communities, but we have a very interesting,
though not wholly normal illustration of it in the
development of Roman social institutions. In
the earlier stages of the Roman civilisation, the
son of the family could no more acquire property
for himself than the slave, but what the son, even
of mature age, earned, belonged to the family group
of which he was a member ; it was only by gradual
steps that the man of mature age, still a member
of the family group, was allowed to acquire and
to retain things for himself. And the same process
which gradually emancipated the son of the family,
also, though more slowly, tended to emancipate
CHRISTIAN THEORIES OF PROPERTY 119
the property of the women and of the slaves. It
must further be very carefully observed that this
conception of the private ownership of property, as
against the family group, has only in a very few
countries been carried out to completeness. It is,
for instance, very noteworthy, that while, with the
gradual development of the power and rights of tes-
tamentary disposition, the individual has acquired
a large power of determining the person or persons
to whom property should go upon his death, yet,
in almost all civilised countries, this right is still
limited by the rights of the family group. Out-
side of the English law, there are not many cases
where a man can will the whole of his property
away from his wife and children, but in almost
all civilised countries, a certain proportion of his
property, at least, must go to the wife for her
lifetime, and a certain proportion must go to the
children. Still, with this exception, the rights of
individual property have grown and developed in
civilised communities, because it has been found
convenient in these communities to recognise the
right. Private property has grown out of the
convenience of society, and it has been always,
and is still, limited by the convenience of society.
It is probably true to say that the freedom
of the use of private property reached its highest
point with the great industrial revolution of one
hundred years ago. In that great economic up-
heaval, for a time, almost all the limitations upon
the rights of property, even with regard to property
120 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
used for production, or what we call capital, were
swept away. But in the last seventy years there
has been a gradual reversal of this process. Since
the beginning of the nineteenth century there has
grown up in Great Britain, and in all civilised
countries, a great system of legislative regulation,
which has again greatly limited the rights of the
owner in the use especially of capital. It is not
always quite clearly understood that the whole
system of legislation, for the protection first of
the women and children, and then of the labourers
in general — the great system of Factory legisla-
tion— represents an interference, on the part of
society at large, with the rights of the individual
to use his property at his pleasure. WTiat has
been done with regard to one set of the relations
of life by the Factory Acts, has been done in other
connections by such systems as that of the sanitary
laws. It was logical enough that extravagant
individualists should object to the compulsory
enforcement of sanitary regulations upon the
householder, on the ground that these were inter-
ferences with the individual responsibility, and
the individual rights in the use of property. But
this great system of regulation, this great system
of interference with the private rights of property,
was forced upon civilised communities by the
obvious inconveniences attaching to the unre-
stricted use of property by private individuals.
It represents the fact that the same convenience
of society which had once emancipated property.
CHRISTIAN THEORIES OF PROPERTY 121
has in the last seventy years compelled us again
to control and to limit it.
The institution of private property, then, looked
at from a scientific point of view, represents the
recognition by experience of the usefulness of
private property under certain conditions, and
within certain limits ; the development of legal
private property represents the gradual recogni-
tion by the State, that something of this kind is
useful and convenient to the society as a whole,
and to the individuals who form the society. But
it should be very carefully observed that the con-
venience which produced private property has
also limited it, does limit it now, and will limit it
in the future. We may say without any great
hesitation that the State will protect private pro-
perty, so far as it finds and judges it to be useful,
Wd will also limit it and transform it so far as it
JT\'dges this to be useful. On the other hand, it is
at f.ny rate probable that experience will prove
th/at the legal right of private property represents,
V/ithin limits, something which is really necessary
for the protection and the development of that
individuality, which it is the function of the
organised community which we call the State to
shelter and to develop. It is therefore probable
that in £*ome form or another, private rights in
things must always be recognised by the society,
because to destroy these might mean the interfer-
ence with, or the destruction of, characteristics of
human life which it is the very purpose of the
122 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
State to protect. But it still remains true that
private property exists as a matter of fact, through
the recognition and protection of the State, and
that this recognition and this protection will be
limited and determined by the convenience, not
of the single individuals in the State, but of the
whole community.
We can, then, see that while the theory of the
Fathers, the tradition of the canon law, is in-
adequate, and, with all that theory of society which
assumed a transition from a natural to a conven-
tional state, is entirely unhistorical, yet the theory
of the Christian tradition does correspond with
the more scientific theory of property in its con-
clusions. Private property exists, as the Fathers
say, in virtue of the recognition and the protection
of society, and it is subject to the rational control
of society.
The Christian religion, then, is not in any sense
pledged to maintain any one particular form of
the institution of property. It has no mandate
to protect an existing right of private property
against the interests and the progress of the whole
society ; it has no mandate to oppose a legal
transference of property, or a great and even
fundamental change in the whole character of the
tenure of property.
CHAPTER X
SUMMARY
We have endeavoured to set before ourselves some
of the most important aspects of the conception of
human society which originated with or were taken
up into the Christian rehgion. We have dealt with
these subjects under the terms of the equality of
human nature, the unity of human life, the nature
of political society and government, the supremacy
of justice, the independence of the spiritual society,
and the nature of property. In all these matters
the ideas or theories of the Christian writers and
of the Church have been important, and it is not
too much to say that the character and the prin-
ciples of modern society have been in a large
measure formed under the influence of Christianity
and of the Church. We have, I hope, seen clearly
that this does not mean to say that these principles
first began in the Christian society, but it is, after
all, a mistake, and a very serious mistake, to think
that the most important aspects of the Christian
conception of life are necessarily wholly separate
from, or alien to, the conceptions of the world.
There was no doubt a time when it was the custom
of Christian people to lay stress upon that which,
124 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
in their judgment, separated Christianity from other
conceptions of hfe or religion. We are nowadays
anxious to recognise that Christianity fulfilled and
completed the truest aspects of human thought
and judgment.
Which of these conceptions or principles were
the most important ? I think there are two
among them that have an importance which is
larger and more fundamental than that of the
others, or perhaps we may put it in another way,
and say that probably two of these include in
principle all that is most important in the whole
range of the Christian principles of human nature
and society. These two are the principle of human
equality, and the principle of the sacred or divine
nature and purpose of organised political society
in government.
We cannot possibly have any clear view of the
nature of human society at all unless we begin by
making clear to ourselves what is our conception
of human nature in relation to the subject with
which we are dealing ; what are the characteristics
of human nature as they affect men's relations to
each other. This is why the principle or the
doctrine of human equality is of such far-reaching
significance. When we look out on the world and
on history, we are continually confronted by the
urgent question whether the purpose of human life
and the aim of human effort is to be the exaltation,
the advantage, the progress of a few, or whether
SUMMARY 125
Christian and honourable men must set before
themselves the good, the progress and advan-
tage of all. Are we to be satisfied with the
fact that a small number of people are able to
obtain a large part of that which life offers, while
the great multitude leads a narrow and meagre
and undeveloped existence ? Are we to be satisfied
with the fact that a few have the opportunity of
developing all the qualities of human nature, not
only the moral qualities but the intellectual powers,
the capacity for knowledge and reasonable judg-
ment, and the instinct for beauty and harmony
in life ? Are we to be satisfied while a few men
have the opportunity to enjoy all the beauty and
splendour of the world and of art, while the great
multitude live in meagre, squalid, and ugly sur-
roundings ? Are we to be satisfied while a few men
have much — some of them even more than they
can profitably or wisely use — while other men
live upon meagre fragments ? It is, I think,
obvious to any person who will take pains to put
such questions to himself that the Christian doc-
trine of the equality of human nature in relation
to divine life, must make us uneasy when we look
back over the pitiful record of human history and
the actual facts and circumstances of the world
as it is. It is clear enough that no Christian
person whose conscience is alive, who understands
at all the meaning of the first principles of Chris-
tianity, can be satisfied. These men and women
who are, equally with us all, children of God, do
126 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
not attain what we feel they ought to attain. The
doctrine of equahty is no doubt troubhng, disturb-
ing, unsettling, but it is, after all, the first prin-
ciple of the Christian religion.
The second aspect of the Christian ideas which
is of the most profound and permanent significance
is the Christian doctrine of the divine nature of
society, and of political society. We must again re-
member that alongside the Christian principle of
equality, of the sanctity of the individual, along-
side the conception that each individual life is
sacred and has an infinite significance, we must
place the equally significant principle that human
life is only possible under the terms of a real unity ;
that the individual cannot find his satisfaction in a
solitary life, even though it were a solitary life of
communion with God, but that men are all members
of one body, and that as every member lives in and
through the labour of the other members, so also
it is its duty and function to serve the other
members. There is no room in the Christian
religion for an individualism which is self-centred
and self-sufficient.
And it is this principle of unity which lies behind
the doctrine of the sacred nature of the State. As
I have already said, I do not know that St. Paul or
the other writers of the New Testament clearly
realised the relation between their conception of
the unity of human life and their principle of the
sacred nature of the State. But it is not improper
SUMMARY 127
that we should put the two together, that we,
recognising the necessity of unity, should also
recognise that the necessary form of this, under
the conditions and terms of actual human life, is
and must be the organised political society. How-
ever that may be, it is of supreme importance
that we should recognise how emphatically the
Christian religion asserts the sanctity, the religious
and moral significance of political organisation.
Indeed, we have scarcely yet apprehended the full
meaning of the great phrase of St. Paul, ' The
powers that be are ordained of God.' The unhappy
perversion or caricature of this doctrine once current
amongst some Christian men, of the indefeasible,
unlimited, divine authority of the monarch, has
probably prevented us in modern times from taking
these words of St. Paul in their full and simple
meaning.
The political association, the political society
of the State, is sacred. And why is it sacred ?
Because it exists to set forward and to maintain
righteousness and justice ; it is the end or purpose
of the State which sanctifies it, and which justifies
the coercive action of government. It is difficult,
perhaps, for us looking out on the often lamentable
spectacle of public and international life, to believe
that this conception is true. It is difficult for us,
in the face of what often must seem the moral
chaos of international politics, to believe that
these national societies are divine institutions.
And it is difficult for us, even in relation to any
128 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
one particular State, to recognise the reality of
the sacred function, the sacred purpose of the
society. We criticise the methods of government ;
we find fault with the characters or intentions of
political leaders ; we see, or we think we see,
elements of self-interest and unscrupulousness in
political life, and we question whether it is
reasonable to speak of the State as we know
it, as being the minister of God for the main-
tenance of righteousness. And yet, this is, after
all, only a confusion. We recognise — it is easy
to do so — the faults and defects of political
society ; we forget that behind these great
political societies there lie thousands of years of
slow and laborious effort, of gradual growth, of the
slow apprehension of the principles and character-
istics which should govern the relations of men to
each other. We see easily enough the defects of
the State ; we forget the long centuries, the long
ages, through which men have striven to overcome
those defects. The State has often its faults, and
obviously it has its lamentable failures, but it still
remains for us the method of justice and the method
of progress.
I doubt whether it can be said that any serious
political thinkers have ever seriously doubted that
the function of political society, the function of
law, is to set forward justice ; but, on the other
hand, it is true that there have not been wanting
times when the hold of men upon this conception
has been uncertain and faltering, and it is unhappily
SUMMARY 129
true still that we have not yet succeeded in extend-
ing the principles of the supremacy of reason and
justice from the political to the industrial sphere.
It is unhappily still the case that in the industrial
sphere we allow ourselves to be governed, and the
conditions of men to be determined, in a large
measure by unmoral forces, and not by reason
and moral principles.
It is in these two principles that the Christian
conception of human society finds its most com-
plete and significant aspects : first, in the theory or
principle of human equality, the principle that all
men are possessed of reason and capable of virtue,
are made for the life of communion with God, and
that we cannot rest till their intrinsic equality finds
some reasonable form in the condition and oppor-
tunities of human life ; and secondly, in the prin-
ciple of the sacred character of the organised
society of the State, sacred because it is the neces-
sary method of the unity of human life, because it
is its function and end to set forward the supremacy
of righteousness and justice as the normal prin-
ciples of the relation of man to man.
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
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Garlyle, Alexander James
The influence of Ghrist.ianity
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