'r HI 
 
 JItltara, Nem farh 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAtlE 
 
 1891 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IT is now nearly seven years since these lectures were 
 delivered. At the time I delayed publication in 
 order to secure completeness. Since then, many causes 
 have increased the delay, and made perfection farther 
 off than ever. Still, I have read a good deal more in the 
 six literatures, all so vast, with which the lectures deal, 
 and the conclusions are based on a wider induction than 
 when first set forth. The volume, however, is but a 
 course of lectures, intended merely to convey sugges- 
 tions, and not a comprehensive treatise. Some day, 
 perhaps, Mr Carlyle will give us that. 
 
 So far as the notes go I have made them as little 
 numerous as possible. Those familiar with the litera- 
 ture will be aware that adequately to illustrate by 
 quotation topics in the text would swell this little volume 
 into a Cyclopaedia. I have reduced the errors, both in 
 text and notes, so far as was practicable for one with 
 many other occupations, to whom the use of a great 
 library has been the fleeting boon of an occasional 
 holiday. In so vast a range of topics I cannot hope 
 to have avoided mistakes. They will not, it is hoped, 
 militate against such interest as the book may possess. 
 
vi Preface 
 
 Increasing reading in this subject has had one main 
 result. It has confirmed the writer in his opinion of the 
 unity of the subject, of the absolute solidarity of the con- 
 troversies of our own day with those forgotten conflicts 
 which form the argument of these lectures. The debt 
 of the modern world to the medieval grows greater as 
 one contemplates it, and the wisdom of the later ages 
 less conspicuous. Some phrases, especially in the first 
 lecture, would be different if they were to be written 
 again. A glance at Lord Acton's essays on "The 
 Protestant Theory of Persecution," or " Political Thoughts 
 on the Church," or his lectures on Liberty will show 
 what I mean. The mention of his name leads me to 
 say that the obligations of this book to great Cambridge 
 teachers are too obvious to need more elaborate ex- 
 pression. I feel, however, bound to set down here my 
 gratitude to the Rev. T. A. Lacey for a suggestion 
 respecting the Church as a societas petfecta, which 
 more than anything else has helped to illuminate the 
 subject, and is the main ground of any improvement there 
 may be in the present form of the lectures on that in 
 which they were delivered. The introductory lecture 
 then, as now, is the least satisfactory ; and would have 
 been omitted were not some such preface a necessity. 
 Besides, it has for the writer a personal interest. The 
 late Professor Maitland, whose kindness was even greater 
 than his genius, was good enough to come and listen to 
 it. Since then, while the book was being rewritten, 
 nearly three years back, I asked his permission to 
 dedicate the lectures to one who had taught me so 
 much. At the very time when he accepted this sug- 
 gestion with his accustomed graciousness, I felt that 
 the end might come before my task was accomplished. 
 
Preface vii 
 
 It has come. And now I can only say how unworthy 
 of his memory is this bungling treatment of a subject 
 spn^ aspects of which he had himself illuminated. 
 •Maitland, as a student and a writer and a friend, touched 
 nothing that he did not adorn ; and his grave needs 
 fairer wreaths than most of us can offer. Yet the 
 humblest of his pupils may be allowed to say that he 
 wishes his work had been more worthy of his teacher. 
 
 J. N. F. 
 
 May, 1907. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 I. Introductory i 
 
 II. The Conciliar Movement and the Papalist 
 
 Reaction 35 
 
 ^lU- Luther and Machiavelli 62 
 
 IV. The Politiqves and Religious Toleration . 108 
 
 V. The Monarchomachi .... 133 
 
 VI. The Jesuits 167 
 
 VII. The Netherlands Revolt . . . .191 
 
 Notes 220 
 
 Index 255 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Emerson did not say whether it was a student of 
 political theories who made the remark that "there is 
 nothing new and nothing true, and nothing matters"; 
 yet this must assuredly be the first, though not the 
 better thought of such a student. Rarely indeed can he 
 declare of any political idea, that it is quite new. Even 
 though it seems to him to appear for the first time, 
 probably his feeling is due to ignorance and someone 
 better informed could tell him differently. In regard to 
 truth, the more one reads of man's notions about the 
 meaning and method of civil society, the more often 
 is one inclined in despair to say that truth has as little 
 to do with politics as it has with most politicians. 
 
 Whether, again, these ideas have much practical 
 effect may well seem doubtful, when we see how circum- 
 stances conquer principle, and necessity is the mother of 
 invention. Political thought is very " pragmatist." 
 
 Yet we must not leave the other side out of our 
 reckoning. If ideas in politics more than elsewhere are 
 the children of practical needs, none the less is it true, 
 that the actual world is the result of men's thoughts 
 The existing arrangement of political forces is depen- 
 
2 Introductory [lect. 
 
 dent at least as much upon ideas, as it is upon men's 
 perception of their interests. If we allow little to the 
 theorist in momentary influence we must admit, that_ 
 his is the power which shapes the " long result of time.V'' 
 The normal value, in fact, of political theories is a 
 " long period value." The immediate significance of an 
 Algernon Sidney or an Althusius is small and less than 
 nothing as compared with a practical politician, like 
 Maurice or Jeffreys. But his enduring power is vast. 
 Hildebrand, Calvin, Rousseau, were doctrinaires, if ever 
 there were such. Yet neither Bismarck, nor even 
 Napoleon has had a more terrific strength to shape the 
 destinies of men. In literature as in life, the thinker 
 may be dull ; but it is with a significant dullness. 
 
 In these Lectures we shall be regarding a Literature 
 without charm or brilliancy or overmuch eloquence, 
 \ voluminous, arid, scholastic, for the most part; dead it 
 J seems beyond any language ever spoken. 'Dust and 
 ashes seem arguments, illustrations, standpoints, and 
 even personalities. Its objects are forgotten, and even 
 the echo of its catchwords rings faintly. Yet it was 
 ^ living once and effectual. And it is worth studying if 
 we would understand the common facts of to-day. For 
 these men whose very names are only an inquiry for the 
 curious, are bone of our bone, and their thought like the 
 architecture of the Middle Ages, is so much our common 
 heritage that its originators remain unknown. It is 
 because of this common heritage that the study seems 
 to be worth making. Owing to the nature of the subject 
 much that is said here will be dry. But I desire to 
 confess that I have made no conscious effort to be dull. 
 Such a confession will not be regarded by all as credit- 
 able. 
 
i] Introductory 3 
 
 No subject illustrates more luminously the unity of 
 history than the record of political ideas. Although 
 there is no value in erudition as such, it is not purpose- 
 less erudition to dive into Gerson or Cusanus. They 
 are, though we do not know it, a part of our own world ; 
 and even from those forgotten controversies we may 
 perhaps find something more than mere explanation of 
 the world we live in. The study, remote and recondite 
 though it appears, may give us an added sense of the 
 dignity of our heritage and a surer grasp of principles 
 amid the complexities of the modern world. 
 
 It is not to revive the corpse of past erudition that I 
 have any desire, but rather to make more vivid the life 
 of to-day, and to help us to envisage its problems with a 
 more accurate perspective. Otherwise my task would 
 be as ungrateful as it is difficult. To raise once more 
 the dust of controversies, which time has laid, seems 
 both useless and disagreeable. There is no adventitious 
 attraction to allure us. No one who has the descriptive 
 faculty would seek for its material in the dignified 
 decorum of John Torquemada, the inartistic invective of 
 Boucher or Reynolds, or the exhaustive and exhausting 
 lucubrations of Peninsular divines. Thfe taste for the 
 picturesque is often misleading. These lectures may be 
 misleading but nobody shall call them picturesque. If 
 they guide only into a blind alley, it will not be through 
 an excess of " atmosphere." 
 
 There is indeed as little of philosophical depth as 
 there is of literary charm in this wilderness of books. 
 With the exception of Hooker and Machjavelli none of 
 these writers has the charm that conquers time. Mariana 
 is indeed pleasant reading, and a few pamphleteers like 
 Louis D'Orleans are amusing. But nobody travels 
 
 I — 2 
 
4 Introductory [lect. 
 
 through a desert merely for the sake of the oasis; it 
 is to get somewhere else, that men ride over the Sahara. 
 And so here. We seek to see our own day as from a 
 watch-tower ; and we are trying to know more closely 
 the road we have been travelling. Our subject is those 
 changes in men's thoughts about politics which bridge 
 the gulf between the medieval world and the modern. 
 We cannot, indeed, cover all the time of transition, 
 or even attempt to treat of every aspect of the revolu- 
 ^tion. For there ^"was a revolution. No theory of the 
 unity of history, no rhetoric about continuous evolution 
 and orderly change must blind us to the fact. The most 
 significant illustration of this is the recent judgment of 
 the House of Lords in the Free Church of Scotland 
 Appeals. This judgment in its implication marks the 
 final stage in that transposition of the spheres of Church 
 and State which is, roughly speaking, the net result of 
 the Reformation. In the middle ages the Church was 
 not a State, it was the State ; the State or rather the civil / 
 authority (for a separate society was, nqt.j-ecognised) I 
 was merely the police department of -t n tv CWf ehr The | 
 llitter took over from the Roman Empire its theory of 
 i the absolute and universal jurisdiction of the supreme 
 1 authority, and developed it into the doctrine of the 
 1 plenitude potestatis of the Pope, who was the supreme 
 \ dispenser of law, the fountain of honour, including regal 
 i honour, and the sole legitimate earthly source of power, 
 / the legal if not the actual founder of religious orders, uni- 
 I versity degrees, the supreme "judge and divider" among 
 j nations, the guardian of international right, the^aveng^^'Lj 
 I of Christian blood. All these functions have passed else- 
 where, and the theory of omnipotence, which the Popes 
 held on the plea that any action might come under their 
 
i] Introductory 5 
 
 cognizance so far as it concerned morality^, has now been 
 assumed by the State on the analogous theory that any 
 action, religious or otherwise, so far as it becomes a matter 
 of money, or contract, must be matter for the courts^. 
 
 The change which substituted the civil for the ec- 
 clesiastical authority is a part of our subject ; for though 
 we can trace the later claims of the civil power in the 
 controversies of the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, 
 yet the main stages of the transition took place in the 
 period before us, and its chief promoters were Martin 
 Luther and Henry VIII and Philip II, who really worked 
 together in spite of their apparent antagonism. 
 
 But if we study this aspect of things, we must also 
 study the other; the steps by which some limits were 
 imposed to the new autocracy of the State ;- and the 
 growth of the principles on which the distribution of 
 power was justified. The task is no easy one. Yet 
 something, even in six lectures, may be said which may 
 suggest a little, even if it does not instruct much. We 
 may see something of the way in which certain new-old 
 ideas found expression more potent, though little more 
 perfect than before ; how they allied themselves with 
 political needs, and so were no mere dreams, but active 
 forces ; how out of conflicts and controversies, in essence 
 religious, modern politics have developed themselves. 
 
 The difficulty of understanding the history of the 
 Reformation is not lessened by the fact that in a 
 very real sense the age of the Reformation is still pro- 
 ceeding. As Newman said, "the Reformation set in 
 motion that process of which the issue is still in the 
 future." What I hope to do is to bring into a little 
 clearer light the figures of modern politics, as seen upon 
 this background. Whether the motive was opportunism 
 
6 Introductory [lect. 
 
 or conviction, the fact remains that to religious bodies 
 the most potent expressions of political principles has 
 been due. Political liberty, as a fact in the modern 
 world, is the result of the struggle of religious organisms 
 to live. Of political principles, whether they be those 
 of order or those of freedom, we must seek in religious 
 and quasi-theological writings for the highest and most^ 
 
 /"notable expressions. Treumann justly remarks that the 
 
 \ democratic politics of the Scotch reformers were the 
 '^., result of their determination to prevent the whole of the 
 
 ; monastic endowments from falling into the hands of the 
 
 i nobles*. 
 
 / Religious forces, and religious forces alone, have had 
 sufficient influence to ensure practical realisation for 
 political ideas. Reluctantly, and in spite of themselves, 
 religious societies were led by practical necessities to 
 employ upon their own behalf doctrines which are now 
 the common heritage of the Western world. In fact 
 that world, as we live in it and think it, was really forged 
 , in the clash of warring sects and opinions, in the secular 
 feuds between the clergy and laity. Catholic and Pro- 
 testant, Lutheran and Calvinist. 
 
 In the great contest between Popes and Emperors 
 the Middle Ages witnessed one more attempt of the 
 Titans to scale the height of heaven. But they were 
 hurled back, and the last of the Hohenstauffen perished 
 in ignominy. In the period however with which we 
 shall be concerned the old gods were displaced by 
 new, save for the heroic and partly successful attempt, 
 known as the Counter-Reformation, to bring back 
 the Saturnian reign of the Papacy ruling a united 
 West. 
 
 We may trace back for ages that sovereign conception 
 
i] Introductory 7 
 
 of the original contract, which may be unhistorical and 
 unphilosophical, but is the bulwark of sixteenth and 
 seventeenth -century Liberalism, which only withdraws 
 from English thought with Burke, and has its most 
 renowned exponent in Rousseau. Manegold of Lauten- 
 bach during the Investiture controversy makes use of the 
 notion*. Later on Augustinus Triumphus of Ancona 
 employs it in a form afterwards found serviceable by 
 the Jesuits : the Baptismal vow in this view comprised 
 a series of conditions which cannot be fulfilled by 
 heretics or excommunicate persons and therefore they 
 may be deposed^- Augustine also includes the Pope 
 as a person who, in case of heresy, is ipso jure deprived 
 of his jurisdiction. We may indeed find the source of 
 the Counter- Reformation view of the inadmissibility of 
 heretic royalty in this doctrine propounded by one 
 who treats the Pope as head of the world-state. Even 
 Augustinus Triumphus will not allow infidel monarchs to 
 be disturbed, unless they molest the Church. The Pope 
 has power even then, i.e., of an international order but 
 not of the same kind as that which he wields over heresy, 
 which is essentially rebellion*. Perhaps S. Thomas Aqui- 
 nas may be taken as the beginning of the later medieval 
 rationalising political thought, which either blends with 
 or substitutes for the old mainly theocratic and Scriptural 
 arguments, general considerations derived from the 
 nature of political societies and founded on the "Politics" 
 of Aristotlel Anyhow it is to S. Thomas that many 
 of the writers we shall discuss avowedly go back, and 
 he is made the basis of the various systems of the 
 Jesuits, and of their defence of resistance and even 
 tyrannicide®. 
 
 It was Lord Acton who said that " not the devil but 
 
8 Introductory [lect. 
 
 S. Thomas Aquinas was the first Whig." With the 
 revived study of Roman Law there had come an 
 increasing reverence for the Law Natural with which 
 even a Pope cannot dispense*. This notion was to be| 
 of great service to all theorists, who desired to subject to f[ 
 some limits the all-embracing activity of the modern 
 state, whether these limits were internal and concerned 
 the interests of individuals or external and imposed on 
 the ground of international equity. 
 
 It is not an accident that men like Machiavelli, 
 
 and Hobbes, whose aim is to remove all restraints 
 
 from the action of rulers except those of expediency, 
 
 should be agreed in denying all meaning to the idea 
 
 of natural law. On the other hand for Grotius with j 
 
 his theory of inter-state morality, for Du Plessis Mornay I 
 
 with his claim that the governor must have regard 
 
 to the good of the governed, the notion of natural 
 
 law which makes promises binding anterior to positive 
 
 rules, is essential and obligatory. The basis of both 
 
 the original contract and international law is the same. 
 
 ct^. \ Both ideas have their necessary roots in the belief in the 
 
 'j^JtS I law of nature ; for so only in these days could the idea 
 
 irs4.''*fc4-"f of right be justified against reason of state. 
 
 Vx> «^ -kfc*-^**To the same source there was due the idea of the 
 ^"^LX' fundamental equality of men^". In addition to this the I 
 '* *?" study of civil law, while leading to the hardening of \ 
 all theories of lordship whether public or private, tended 
 on the one hand to individualism in regard to private 
 property, and on the other naturally raised a controversy 
 \ as to the import of the Lex Regia by which all power 
 I was surrendered to the Emperor. 
 
 If this law be taken not as a mere historical fact in 
 the history of a single people, but as a universal truth. 
 
i] Introductory 9 
 
 expressing the origin of civil authority, it may be used I 
 to assert either the omnipotence of the ruler, as being [ 
 endowed with all authority, or the fundamental sove- / 
 reignty of the people, as the original of that authority. ' 
 Why should the people make the absolute surrender 
 contemplated by Hobbes? Why should they not sayi 
 in the words of the oath of Aragon that the people has 
 as much right and more power than the king^^? '- 
 
 The tendency to argue thus was increased by the 
 fact that there is no text of the Lex Regia in the 
 Corpus. but only an account of it. Salamonius in his 
 very interesting dialogue De Principatu makes great 
 play with this, and takes a text he does find to prove 
 that the royal power is not irresponsible^^. It is also 
 one of the most effective weapons of Papalist advocates. 
 When they desired to shew the essential differences 
 between Papal and regal authority and to rebut the 
 assertion that royal power came "immediately from 
 God alone " all they had to do was to quote this state- 
 ment about the Lex Regia. For in so far as it was 
 generally admitted as a good account of the popular '| 
 origin of political authority, it made against the theory^ 
 of the Divine right of Kings. It might almost be said 
 that the foundation of the anti-autocratic theory of 
 government in the sixteenth century lay in the use 
 of the Lex Regia, to describe the origin of regal | 
 poweri*, and in that of the Digtia Vox to indicate its ' 
 limits^*. It is in the atmosphere created by this 
 text, together with the absolutist maxims, that since 
 the prince was legibus solutus ^^ quod principi placuit f 
 legis habet vigorem 1*, that all political discussion | 
 takes place. Even the maxim salus populi suprema j 
 lex comes into general consciousness through a great / 
 
lo Introductory [lect. 
 
 advocate", and we cannot over-estimate the influence 
 of this legal atmosphere on the development of political 
 thought, even on into modern times. Nor must we 
 forget that the code as developed by Jujtinian, with the 
 few additional extravagants which became authoritative, 
 is at least as much a medieval as an ancient monument. 
 Its conception of the duty of the government in regard to 
 heresy and of the nature of the Christian Commonwealth 
 is definitely medieval. Even if it has not that exag- 
 gerated notion of the clerical authority which became a 
 Western characteristic, its ideas are by no means those 
 , pf the world of antiquity. 1 Ifs fundamental idea is that 
 '[t [of a uniform single state existing on a Christian basis, 
 jwith a place for bishops no less than counts, and ortho- 
 idoxy a condition of citizenship — a Civitas Dei in fact. 
 JAdd to these the maxim which our own Edward took 
 / from the code — qtiod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur^ 
 — and made a basis for his theory of representation, 
 and we see how large a part was played by Roman Law 
 in the development of political thought. 
 
 On the other hand we must not ignore the influence 
 of feudalism in the same development. It tended more 
 V than anything else towards the growth of the doctrine of 
 hereditary right, and the notion that the king's claims ! 
 were unassailable, in fact towards the treating of the f 
 State as an estate. When feudalism decayed and 
 property became pure dominium under the influence 
 of the Roman Law, the king's estate underwent the 
 same change. The Commonwealth under feudal notions 
 is a pure Herrschafts-verband, not a Genossenschaft ; and 
 the king's rights are those of a landed proprietor. 
 
 Again, it is in the feudal system that the con- 
 tractual theory of government took its rise ; for it is 
 
i] Introductory 1 1 
 
 of its essence. It was feudalism which led to that 
 comparison between private and public rights which 
 makes "the case of the king" a precedent in private 
 law^'. In fact, as Professor Maitland pointed out, under j 
 feudalism there is no public law ; all rights are private, \y' 
 including those of the king^. It is this absence of a 
 theory of the State as such which characterises especially 
 medieval history, except for the great Church as a whole. 
 In the strict sense of the term, there is no sovereign in 
 the Middle Ages ; only as we find even a little later in 
 France, there is an etat which belongs to the king ; but 
 there is also an Etat de la R^publique, while even a 
 lawyer in the Paris Parlement has his itat. Only very 
 gradually does State come to mean the organisation of 
 the nation and nothing else. The change is probably;, 
 due to the influence of Italian life and Machiavelli it&v' 
 exponent. For the contractual theory of government aivf 
 atmosphere was needed, in which politics were argued 
 on legal principles, in which public powers were assimi- 
 lated to private rights, and in which some general 
 system of law was assumed, and government was a 
 matter of bargain. That atmosphere was afforded by 
 feudalism and by the titles De Feudis in the completed 
 editions of the Corpus. ' i 
 
 Of the original ^compact theory feudalism was an 
 obvious basis; not merely did the droit de defiance all 
 but suggest, and the final clause of such documents as 
 Magna Charta inevitably imply it, but the actual legal 
 atmosphere of feudalism is that in which the theory was 
 likely to arise. The two elements, the assimilation oft 
 public to private right, and the mutual nature of the}^ 
 tie between governed and governor, existed in the ? 
 feudal system far more obviously than in any other; 
 
1 2 Introductory [lect. 
 
 and these two elements were necessary to the contract 
 theory. 
 
 It could not have arisen except in an age when 
 public rights were conceived inductively, inferred that 
 is from particular rights of ruling lords, and in an age 
 dominated by the idea of private law ; for the contract 
 theory assumes the existence of private rights and private 
 legal obligations as anterior to all public rights and indeed 
 to the existence of the State. That is, the contract theory 
 really has reference to the medieval world, when all public 
 law except that of the Pope was inductive ; not to the 
 modern world created by Bodin and Hobbes working 
 hand in hand with political conditions in which the theory 
 of the powers of the State is abstract and deductive, 
 and is reasoned down from general ideas of necessary 
 authority. 
 
 In the Middle Ages we see public right shaping itself 
 out of private rights. The powers of the sovereign are the 
 special attributes of a peculiarly placed person, whether 
 prerogative of Crowns or privileges of Parliament. They 
 are not the necessary attributes of public authority con-j 
 ceived as something quite other than any other rights. | 
 The casus regis (John's succession to the Crown, instead 
 of that of his nephew) is to Bracton merely a case like 
 any other case. The contractual theory is in fact the 
 last phase of that juristic conception of politics which 
 is largely medieval, but remained an influence till the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 It is, if not medieval, an important part of the legacy 
 of the Middle Ages to the modern world ; the juristic 
 framework for schemes of popular rights and inter- 
 national duty was the product of conditions that were 
 past or passing. With the full recognition of the State, 
 
i] Introductory 13 
 
 these juristic ideals passed away, although even now we ^ » jj^-^^ 
 sometimes see a moral justification for disobedience to | ^>,^^^ 
 the law masquerading as a legal right. '^ , car 7 
 
 The attitude of the common lawyers in the seven- 
 teenth century was largely due to their failure to perceive, 
 or their refusal to admit, the modern doctrine of sove- 
 reignty. Yet even the claims of the sovereign State 
 were no new discovery. Taken over and developed by 
 the Papacy from the ancient Empire, Hat plenitude potes- 
 tatis asserted nothing less than this, and the Imperialist 
 party grasped (at least in theory) at similar principles 
 for themselves. The writer of the Tractatus Eboracensis 
 under Henry II developed a theory of royal omnipotence 
 by Divine right, as complete if not as systematic, as that 
 which we shall have to consider later^\ His theory of f 
 excommunication might have given hints to Erastus. ' 
 His arguments on the superiority of royal to priestly 
 authority might have arrested Wyclif. 
 
 Yet when all is said (and in studying this subject 
 one is at times inclined to deny that political doctrines 
 ever began at all) there remains a great gulf fixed between 
 medieval and modern thought. We in the twentieth 
 century think of the State as essentially one, irresistible 
 in theory and practice, with a uniform system of law 
 and a certain government. Rights of personal liberty, 
 of the security of property, of general protection, of legal 
 equality, and religious liberty, are so generally recognised 
 that however difficult it may be to agree upon an abstract 
 basis we take them for granted and they have become 
 a part of the furniture of our minds. In our view the 
 world of politics is composed of certain communities ' 
 entirely independent, territorially omnipotent, and to 
 some extent morally responsible. A set of rules founded 
 
14 Introductory [lect. 
 
 upon an insecure basis of custom, convenience, humanity, 
 or natural reason admittedly exists, to which under the 
 name of international law they pay a nominal, reluctant, 
 and none too regular obedience — which is however more 
 regular and less reluctant than was the obedience six 
 centuries ago paid to the common law by any decently 
 placed medieval feudatory. — . 
 
 Again, the theocratic and still more the jural concept 
 tion of political right has gone from the educated world. 
 Providence, doubtless, has to do with politics as with 
 other human affairs, and all Theists must allow that 
 political associations have some divine sanction. But 
 most are now agreed to relegate the part of Providence 
 to that of final cause ; indeed there has been a revolution 
 in political thought, not dissimilar to the substitution of 
 efficient for final causes as an account of natural pheno- 
 mena. I do not of course mean that all hold the same 
 ethical theory, but that institutions and all alleged rights 
 must be able to show some practical utility if their 
 existence is to be maintained. All arguments but those 
 of public policy are to a great extent laughed out of 
 court. Now in the Middle Ages political argument 
 went on the basis of alleged private rights, whether 
 divine or purely human in origin. Of course arguments 
 from convenience are found ; and at no time can institu- 
 tions maintain themselves for which some form of utility 
 cannot be argued. We have passed from the defence of 
 rights to the realisation of right and it is not at all clear 
 that we have gained. Perhaps it would be most accurate 
 to say, that in the Middle Ages human welfare and even 
 religion was conceived under the form of legality, and 
 in the modern world this has given place to utility. 
 
 Again, in the Middle Ages the omnipotent territorial 
 
i] Introductory 1 5 
 
 State, treated as a person and the coequal of other states, 1;- J^i ' 
 was non-existent. It might be a dream, or even a "f f *"" 
 prophecy, it was nowhere a fact. What we call the ^'IT^yJ^ 
 State was a loosely compacted union with " rights of "^ """ 
 property and sovereignty everywhere shading into one 
 another ^^" and the central power struggling for existence. 
 Neither Normandy nor Burgundy, neither the dominions 
 . of Henry the Lion nor those of a Duke of Aquitaine, 
 formed a State in the modern sense, yet how far can their 
 rulers be regarded as in any real sense subjects? At 
 last indeed, with the growth of federalism in idea and 
 fact and in our own possessions beyond the seas, we are 
 going back to a state of things in some ways analogous 
 to the medieval. But the modern post- Reformation 
 State /«r excellence is unitary, omnipotent, and irresistible, 
 and is found in perfection not in England, but in France 
 or the German States of the ancien regime. Joseph II 
 dotted the i's of Luther's handwriting. 
 
 Yet even granting that the King of France or 
 Germany was a true sovereign in his temporal do- 
 minions, the power of the Church and the orders was a 
 vast inroad on governmental authority. It is to be 
 noted that Suarez and others developed a doctrine of 
 extra-territoriality out of rights preserved by the univer- 
 sities and the monastic orders of the Church. There 
 was one really universal order in Western Christendom 
 and its right name was the Church. It was true the 
 Canonists never got quite all that they wanted, yet as has 
 been said " no one dreams that the King can alter the 
 Common Law of the Catholic Church," and that Com- 
 mon Law included a great deal of what is really civil 
 law^. Nowadays it is to be decided on grounds of 
 public policy how far the State shall permit the freedom 
 
1 6 Introductory [lect. 
 
 of religious bodies, although our own views of policy- 
 may be, that interference is inexpedient because it is 
 wrong. But at that time it was the State which existed 
 on sufferance, or rather the secular authority, for the 
 very term State is an anachronism. It would be an 
 interesting point to determine accurately the causes 
 which have led to the substitution in general use of the 
 term State for Commonwealth or republic. I think that 
 Italy and Machiavelli are important factors. The object 
 of the civil power, the wielder of the temporal sword, 
 within the Church-State was not attack, but defence 
 against a claim to universal dominion. The Holy 
 Roman Empire, the most characteristic of all medieval 
 institutions, did indeed attempt to realise the idea of an 
 all powerful State, but that State was the Church. The 
 ideal was realised only very partially and then as a rule 
 only by the undue predominance of the ecclesiastical 
 element. Innocent III was a more truly universal 
 power than most of the successors of Charles the Great. 
 The conflict with the Popes which prevented the 
 Emperors realising this idea was also an assistance to 
 the gradual growth of national States, and the break-up 
 of Christendom. That word is now merely a geo- 
 graphical expression. It was a fact in the Middle Ages. 
 The real State of the Middle Ages in the modern sense 
 — if the words are not a paradox — is the Church. The 
 priest in the Somnium Viridarii (a fourteenth century 
 book) declares that all civil laws are at bottom canon 
 laws^, in other words that there can be no true polity 
 or real law which has not the sanction of the Pope's 
 authority. Another illustration of the purely political 
 theory of ecclesiastical office is to be found in the argument 
 of that most uncompromising of Papalists, Augustinus 
 
i] Introductory 1 7 
 
 Triumphus, about Papal jurisdiction. After arguing 
 that the lordship of the whole world belongs to the 
 Pope, he declares that so far as jurisdiction is concerned 
 a layman might well be Pope : and election would give 
 him all rights except those of order^^ 
 
 It has been said that there is no Austinian sovereign 
 in the medieval State. This is true of the individual 
 kingdoms. It is not true of the Church. For nothing 
 could be more Austinian in spirit than the Bull Sacro- 
 sanctae Ecclesiae which promulgated the Sext in 1298^®. 
 There was no doubt that the canonists meant by the 
 plenitudo potestatis everything that the modern means 
 by sovereignty. Indeed one later writer says plainly 
 that plena potestas means absoluta potestas. The second 
 title of the Sext contains the statement, that law 
 exists in the bosom of the Pope, and goes on to assert 
 the principle that whatever the sovereign permits he 
 commands ^^. There is another point. The medieval 
 state had one basis of unity denied to the modern — 
 religion. Baptism was a necessary element in true 
 citizenship in the Middle Ages and excommunication 
 was its antithesis. No heretic, no schismatic, no excom- 
 municate has the rights of citizenship. This principle, 
 admitted as it was by Catholic princes, and founded on 
 the Code of Justinian, was the ground of the Pope's 
 claim to depose sovereigns, and of all the conflicts that 
 ensued. Few really denied it till the Reformation. 
 Philip of Spain's famous remark, that he would rather 
 not reign at all than reign over heretics, was merely an 
 assertion of medieval principles by a man who really 
 believed in them. 
 
 In regard to infidels there is a slightly different 
 
1 8 Introductory [lect. 
 
 theory. The priest in the Somnium Viridqrii does 
 indeed declare that the dominion of no infidel can ever 
 be really just, and hence war with the Turks is always 
 permissible^. And this is the real principle of the 
 Crusades. It is the view of thorough-going medievalism. 
 Yet all the influences which later on were to develop into 
 the theory of the indirect Papal power went towards 
 admitting a limited right even among infidels. This is 
 the view of Augustinus Triumphus^. This more 
 moderate view is that infidel sovereigns do not hold 
 their titles from the Pope and therefore may not be 
 molested without cause. We may regard this as 
 marking the end of the Crusading era and the be- 
 ginning of modern views. This principle may be used 
 so as to become a basis for agreement with heretic 
 sovereigns, after they have become established, e.g., it 
 might be right to depose Elizabeth, but not Victoria 
 unless she began to persecute. We cannot over- 
 estimate the change in men's minds required to pro- 
 duce the ideal of heterogeneity in religion within one 
 State. 
 
 In these lectures we shall only see the beginning of 
 it. When the change had been completed, it carried 
 with it the entire destruction of theological politics and 
 for a time undoubtedly assisted to spread the purely 
 Machiavellian theory. In the Middle Ages politics 
 was a branch of Theology, with whatever admixture 
 derived from Aristotle and the Civil Law. Its basis 
 was theocratic. Machiavelli represents the antithesis 
 of this view, discarding ethical and jural as well as 
 theological Criteria oi State action. 
 
 The Reformation on some sides of it retarded the 
 
i] Introductory 19 
 
 secularising tendency, and made politics more, not less 
 theological. Finally, owing to the clash of competing 
 religions a theory of the State purely secular was 
 developed. That however was in the future. 
 
 Yet the change to the heterogeneous family of 
 States, from a uniform Christendom with some shadow 
 of deference to the Emperor and a real pre-eminence 
 for the Pope, heralded and assisted that transition still 
 incomplete from a state of a single religion to one of 
 several. The notion that uniformity in religion is 
 necessary to political stability was disproved by facts, 
 and then became discredited in theory. This one 
 change is significant of much else. The imaginative 
 vision of the Middle Ages could see but one state 
 worthy of the name upon earth, the Civitas Dei. 
 Everything else, including the rights of kings, is mere 
 detail and has but a utilitarian basis. The very contempt 
 for the secular power paved the way to make it more 
 secular, more non-moral, and to discredit the notion of 
 right in politics. 
 
 Further, before the modern world of politics could 
 arise, it was needful not merely to deprive the Emperor 
 of any shadowy claim to supremacy, but the Pope must 
 be driven from his international position. The rise of 
 Protestantism was the condition for the founding of 
 International Law, as a body of doctrine governing the 
 relations of States supposed to be free, equal, and in a 
 state of nature. This was not true of the medieval 
 princes, and their wars were, as Stubbs says, "wars 
 for rights." With the (international) state of nature 
 arrived the period of "wars of interest." 
 
 Of course all these statements are merely approxi- 
 mate, we can say no more than that certain tendencies 
 
20 Introductory [lect. 
 
 were dominant at one time rather than another. The 
 theocratic ideal is still discoverable; and there was 
 very little theocracy about the Venetian Constitution 
 in the Middle Ages. In the same way there was some 
 real equality and independence among nations long 
 before Dante wrote the De Monarchia, and if the State 
 is not to be called such because it is loosely knit, 
 what are we to say of the British Empire to-day.? 
 That, however, looks to the future. With all reservations 
 there remains a broad difference between the self-sufficing 
 unit of International Law, and the spoke in the wheel of 
 medieval Christendom. The closer we look the more 
 we see that it is the resemblance which is superficial, 
 and the differences that are profound, between medieval 
 and modern notions. 
 
 It would require an intellectual revolution — quite in- 
 conceivable in magnitude — to induce us to regard it as 
 an argument for the Papal power, that the sun is superior 
 to the moon, or that S. Peter gave two swords to Christ ; 
 that the Pope is like Sinai, the source of the oracles of 
 God, and is superior to all kings and princes, because 
 Mount Sinai is higher than all other hills (which it is 
 not); that when Daniel speaks of beasts, the writer meant 
 that tyranny is the origin of earthly power ; that the 
 command to feed my sheep, and the committal of the 
 Keys to S. Peter gave to the Papacy the absolute political 
 sovereignty of the world; or on the other side that 
 Adam was the first king, and Cain the first priest, that 
 the text forbidding murder proves immediately the Divine 
 origin of secular lordship, that unction is not indelible 
 save in France, but there it is so because the oil is pro- 
 vided by an angel. 
 
 The endless discussions over the exact significance 
 
i] Introductory 2 1 
 
 of irrelevant texts and the sophistry lavished upon those 
 few that are relevant are barely intelligible to our eyes. 
 To take an instance, it is argued that the words " My 
 Kingdom is not of this world" so far from being an 
 objection to the political claims of the Papacy are a 
 support to them, as they prove that Christ's kingdom 
 is of Divine and not of human origin. The same in- 
 ference is drawn from His refusal to allow the multitude 
 to make him King. Had he consented, his title would 
 have been popular like that of an earthly monarch. The 
 whole method rests on the belief that the most perfect 
 polity can be discovered within the pages of the Old and 
 New Testaments, and that the actions of Samuel, or 
 Uzziah, or Jehoiada, or Ehud could be made into a system 
 whereby all future political methods could be judged. 
 All such arguments (and they go into endless detail) not 
 merely illustrate the gulf between our own age, and those 
 in which such considerations seemed serious and service- 
 able, but very often deprive us of all sympathy for the 
 men who lived in them, and are a hindrance to our dis- 
 cerning the kernel beneath the thick husk of inconclusive 
 ingenuity and illegitimate metaphor. 
 
 The best illustration of the changed mental stand- 
 point can be afforded by comparing the Unam Sanctum 
 or the decree Solitae of Innocent HI, or even the De 
 Monarchia, with the following passage dealing with 
 religious bodies from Professor Sidgwick's Elements of > 
 Politics. 
 
 "A stronger means of control without anything like 
 establishment may be exercised in the form of a super- 
 vision of the wealth of Churches derived from private 
 sources. If indeed, the expenses of religious teaching 
 
 
22 
 
 Introductory 
 
 [lect. 
 
 \ and worship are defrayed by contributions from the in- 
 ! comes of its members, it will be difficult for Government 
 I to interfere in the employment of such contributions, 
 \ without measures of violent and invidious repression : 
 \ but if they are paid from funds bequeathed to form 
 a permanent endowment for the association, the case is 
 f different. Here, in the first place. Government may refuse 
 / to admit any religious society to the position of a cor- 
 j poration capable of holding and administering property, 
 "S, unless its organisation fulfils certain conditions, framed 
 »': \ with the view of preventing its ' quasi-government ' from 
 ; being oppressive to individual members of the association 
 or dangerous to the State. Secondly Government may 
 J take advantage of a collision to bring the funds of any 
 \ such society permanently under its control, in pursuance 
 I of its general duty of supervising the management of 
 ] wealth bequeathed to public objects, and revising the 
 rules under which it is administered, in the interest 
 of the community at large. But further, the bequest 
 of funds to be permanently employed in payment of 
 persons teaching particular doctrines, is liable to supply 
 a dangerously strong ■ inducement to the conscious or 
 semi-conscious perpetuation of exploded errors, which, 
 without this support, would gradually disappear : hence 
 it should be the duty of Government to watch such 
 bequests with special care, and to intervene when neces- 
 sary, to obviate the danger just indicated, by modifying 
 the rules under which ancient bequests are administered." 
 It will at once be seen that we are in a different 
 world. Still further illustration might be the (un- 
 conscious) coupling of kings and bishops, as the highest 
 earthly authorities, in the Imitation, or the decretal 
 
i] Introductory 23 
 
 in the Sext^" forbidding the secular Courts to make the 
 clergy pay their debts. The very title of Professor 
 Sidgwick's chapter, "The State and Voluntary Societies," 
 is a proof of the distance the world has travelled since 
 Boniface VIII promulgated the Unam Sanctum. 
 
 Yet we must bear in mind that in political theory 
 many of the medieval arguments and methods subsisted 
 until the eighteenth century. In some form or other 
 the discussion of theories of Divine Right lasted a 
 thousand years ; while, as we have seen, many of the 
 notions we regard as modern can be traced back to the 
 medieval world, or even earlier. 
 
 Mr Carlyle has recently demonstrated the continuity 
 of political thought from Cicero to Rousseau*^. Indeed 
 it seems true that the root idea of equality on the 
 one hand and absolute dominion on the other came 
 from the ancient world through the Stoics, the Roman 
 Law and the Fathers ; while the ideas of liberty and 
 association in government are Teutonic, or in other 
 words Whiggism is German, and Radicalism Latin. 
 Yet if S. Thomas was the first Whig why was Whiggism 
 as we know it so long in making an effective appearance } 
 The answer to this is largely to be found in the unity of 
 the medieval Church. So long as the Holy Roman 
 Empire remained even an ideal, a really modern theory 
 of politics could not be generally effective. Even after 
 it had well developed into the theory of the Holy 
 Roman Church with universal supremacy, no truly 
 modern system of politics was possible, until that theory 
 was shattered. Christendom, the union of the various 
 flocks under one shepherd with divine claims, divine 
 origin, and divine sovereignty, had to be transformed 
 into Europe, the habitat of competing sects and com- 
 
24 Introductory [lect. 
 
 pact nations, before the conditions of modern politics 
 arose. 
 
 This process was of long duration. In Italy it was 
 accomplished earlier, or rather the independence of the 
 cities, and the secularisation of the Papacy in practice 
 made possible a work like Machiavelli's long before 
 trans-Alpine Europe could have produced it. Professor 
 Sidgwick did well to call attention to the fact that the 
 modern world in England, so far as politics are concerned, 
 began at the Restoration^^. From one point of view we 
 might assert that the Middle Ages ended with the visit 
 of Nogaret to Anagni, and from another it might be 
 said to end only when the troops of Victor Emmanuel 
 entered Rome and the Lord of the world became the 
 prisoner of the Vatican, and of course it ended at 
 different times in different places. Hence arises the 
 extreme difficulty of disentangling the conflicting ten- 
 dencies and complex political combinations of our 
 period. 
 
 So far as the Reformation helped to produce the 
 compact, omni-competent, territorial, bureaucratic State, 
 so far as directly or indirectly it tended to individual 
 liberty, it must be regarded as modern in its results. But 
 so far as it tended to revive theocratic ideals, theological 
 politics, and appeals to Scripture in regard to the form 
 of Government, it was a reversion to the ideals of the 
 earlier Middle Ages, which were largely disappearing 
 under the combined influence of Aristotle and the 
 Renaissance. 
 
 All that can be attempted in these lectures is to 
 show how both one and the other tendency came to 
 influence the thoughts and the lives of men ; how for 
 instance the doctrine of natural law became the residuary 
 
i] Introductory 25 
 
 legatee of the theory of Divine Right and assisted in the 
 formation of international rules, popular sovereignty and 
 later on individual rights; how on the other hand the 
 theory cujus regio ejus religio was a stage in the process 
 from " indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to definite, 
 coherent heterogeneity," which marks the evolution 
 of political and religious organisms, no less than of 
 natural. 
 
 Before, however, we directly approach the subject, it 
 may be well to trace some of the earliest steps of the 
 movements, which prepared for the coming catastrophe. 
 With the death of Frederick II in 1250 and the destruc- 
 tion of the Hohenstauffen, the Papacy had to all appear- 
 ance won a final victory in the secular contest ; and its 
 supporters might and indeed did think, that little 
 remained but to make more stringent the bonds that 
 chained temporal rulers to their ecclesiastical superiors. 
 It would bind kings in chains, and nobles in fetters of 
 iron. The praises of God should be in the mouth of 
 the Pope, and a two-edged sword in the hand of his 
 vassals. But the Popes had reckoned without their 
 guest. Owing to a variety of causes, of which not the 
 least important was the success of the Popes in under- 
 mining the Imperial authority, the national States had 
 been left to develop in their own way, and though the 
 most significant example was France, it was an English 
 king who called himself entier empereur dans son 
 royaume. 
 
 The limitation on this regality involved in a recogni- 
 tion, however grudging, of the Papal supremacy is very 
 real ; clerical immunities, and appeals to Rome and the 
 authority of the Canon Law made the power of even 
 Edward I or Philip the Fair far less universal than that 
 
26 Introductory [lect. 
 
 of even a weak modern State. It was true that the king 
 could get out of the theoretic difficulty by saying that 
 the Pope only exercised so much power as he allowed 
 him ; and the Courts Christian were circumscribed by 
 the royal writs. Practically, however, within certain 
 limits the king could not exercise jurisdiction. ' But 
 at any rate he was strong enough to repudiate the 
 claims of the Pope, on any point which touched the 
 national honour. And this was seen when Boniface VIII 
 strained the medieval theory of Papal dominion to 
 breaking point in the Unam Sanctum. As has been 
 well said, " The drama of Anagni must be set against 
 the drama of Canossa^^" France repudiated the Papal 
 claims by the help of that body, assembled for the first 
 time, which was after centuries of neglect to repudiate 
 the claims of absolute monarchy, to cleanse the Augean 
 stable of feudal corruptions and conflicting legal systems 
 and to launch modern France on her career as a central- 
 ised uniform democracy. 
 
 Concurrently with this, Edward I united England 
 more than it ever had been united in the past by the 
 summoning of a parliament which should supersede 
 or absorb feudal "Liberties," municipal privilege, pro- 
 vincial home rule, and ecclesiastical immunity. The 
 praemunientes clause was the herald of the Reformation, 
 the death-knell, though it sounded two centuries before- 
 hand, of the Church, as a^S^national universal State. 
 Popular liberty and national independence for a time 
 went hand in hand. 
 
 From the death of Boniface VIII to the rise of 
 Luther we mark the upgrowth of ideas which were only 
 to find their full fruition as the result of the Reformation. 
 The French king put the Pope in his pocket and 
 
i] Introductory 27 
 
 took him to Avignon. The Papal pretensions, while 
 against the Imperial claims they grew more extravagant 
 than ever, were no longer allowed to disturb the practice 
 of the Gallican Liberties**. William of Ockham in his 
 great anti-papal dialogue uses the admitted indepen- 
 dence of the French king as an argument in favour of 
 German freedom^. 
 
 In this period we note the rise or rather the 
 development of that notion of the secular power which 
 was to conquer at the Reformation ; and at the same 
 time the most notable medieval expressions of anti- 
 autocratic theory. Pierre Dubois' little pamphlet De 
 Recup^ratione Terrae Sanctae is a mine of reforming 
 ideas. Disendowment of the Church, and of monas?- 
 teries, absolute authority for the secular State, women's 
 enfranchisement, mixed education, are all advanced in 
 the one object of increasing the power of the French 
 king, who is to be made Emperor and rule at Constan- 
 tinople. International Arbitration was to decrease the 
 horrors of war, and educated women were to be sent to 
 the Holy Land in order to marry and convert both the 
 Saracens and, the priests of the orthodox Church, and 
 also to become trained nurses and teachers. Studies 
 are to be modernized, the law simplified. For the 
 influence of the old theological and papal universities 
 the writer had no respect. The whole spirit of the 
 book is secular and nwdern. Bishop Stubbs was wont 
 to declare that everything was in it including the new 
 woman ^*. 
 
 Dante in the great Ghibelline pamphlet the De 
 Monarchia set up once more the authority of the 
 Emperor. He saw in Henry of Luxemburg the chance 
 of realising his dream of a Christian world-monarchy. 
 
28 Introductory [lect, 
 
 Mr Bryce says this book is "not a prophecy but an 
 epilogue." Perhaps it is fairer to say that it is both, 
 in its ideal of a universal Empire realising the notion of 
 the Civitas Dei, in its scholastic argumentation, in its 
 reverence for Rome, the De Monarchia is certainly an 
 epilogue, the last and the noblest expression of that 
 conception of the Kingdom of God upon earth, the heir 
 at once of the ancient world and the depositary of 
 Christian tradition, which ever and anon gave to the 
 struggles of the Middle Ages a touch of Romance, and 
 redeemed its squalid brutality from contempt by its 
 sense of the inherent dignity of human affairs. Both 
 the form and the grandeur of this ideal were passing 
 away when Dante wrote. But in so far as Dante sets 
 the temporal above the spiritual Lord and asserts the 
 right of the State to be, uncontrolled by ecclesiastical 
 expediency, his work is a prophecy — a prophecy of the 
 modern State, and of that doctrine of the Divine Right 
 of kings, which formed for long its theoretical justification 
 against clerical pretensions. 
 
 It was in the struggle between John XXII and Louis 
 of Bavaria, the culmination of the long medieval conflict 
 between sacerdotium and imperium, that the ideas of 
 each side received their most complete expression. In 
 this struggle Augustinus Triumphus wrote the book we 
 have already discussed, and thus produced the most 
 complete and uncompromising expression of the Papal 
 claim to be sovereign of the world, which existed before 
 the Reformation sharpened the pen of Bozius*'. 
 
 On the other side we have in the Defensor Pacts 
 of Marsilius of Padua one of the most remarkable books 
 in the history of politics. The contents are too well 
 known to need a lengthy description. Here it will 
 
i] Introductory 29 
 
 suffice to note that the author asserts (i) the complete 
 authority of the civil power, and the purely voluntary 
 nature of religious organisation, thus entirely repudiating 
 every kind of political claim put forward for the ecclesi- 
 astical organisation : (2) the consequent iniquity of perse- 
 cution: (3) the original sovereignty of the people, implying 
 the need of a system of representative government, 
 whereby the action of the State may have the full force 
 of the community at its back and the " general will " be 
 no longer confused with particular interests or individual 
 caprice. v 
 
 The importance of Marsiglio is illustrated by the fact • 
 that from that time forward there is hardly a Papalist 
 pamphleteer who does not take him as the fans et 
 origo of the anti-clerical theory of the State. Wyclif, 
 • for instance, is condemned for sharing his errors, in 
 A the day when Wyclif was a political not a theological/ 
 \ heretic**. 
 
 ' Another work, less interesting, less modern, more 
 scholastic, and perhaps therefore more immediately 
 effective, is the great dialogue of the English nominalist, 
 William of Ockham. In this work the author sets the 
 authority of the civil power very high, denounces the 
 political claims of ecclesiasticism, asserts the supremacy 
 of natural law, and the need of limitations to monarchical 
 authority. 
 
 If we pass to England we find in Wyclif some- 
 thing of the tone and the principles of a French anti- 
 clerical. Scholastic in form, Wyclif's writings are 
 modern in spirit. His De Officio Regis is the 
 absolute assertion of the Divine Right of the king to 
 disendow the Church. Indeed his stated theory is more 
 Erastian than that of Erastus. His writings are a long- 
 
30 Introductory [lect. 
 
 continued polemic against the political idea of the 
 Church or rather the political claims of the clergy ; for 
 his State is really a Church. How far his communism 
 was more than theoretical is very doubtful. In practice, 
 and now and then in theory, he was the supporter of 
 aristocratic privilege**- Yet he asserts the duty of 
 treating all authority as a trust, and there can be little 
 doubt that he recognised the dignity of every individual 
 as a member of the community in a way which we are 
 apt to- regard as exclusively modern. Wyclif indeed 
 was in many respects more modern than Luther, as he 
 was a deeper thinker — except in his entire lack of senti- 
 ment. His world of thought is the exact antithesis of 
 medieval ideals, in regard to politics, ecclesiastical 
 organization, ritual and external religion. 
 
 These then are some illustrations of the fact that the 
 old landmarks were disappearing and a new world was 
 coming into being, at the close of the fourteenth century. 
 It is impossible to do more than sketch them. 
 
 What I have tried to do is to indicate that we must 
 not study political theories apart from political con- 
 ditions. We must never lose sight of the connection 
 between theory and practice. In actual facts we shall 
 find if not always the cause of new doctrines appearing 
 at least the condition of their prevalence and efficacy. 
 The reactions of practice upon theory, and theory 
 upon practice, are abundantly illustrated in the centuries 
 before us. 
 
 The conditions for the growth of our modern politics 
 were not afforded until the Reformation, or to be more 
 accurate the intellectual revolution and practical cata- 
 strophe which destroyed the system of the Middle Ages, 
 
i] Introductory 3 1 
 
 both in the external framework of society and in the 
 inward life of its members. 
 
 It is this which makes it so hard at once to enter 
 into the mind as distinct from learning the outward 
 facts of the medieval world, and still harder to under- 
 stand a period of transition like that before us. We 
 are always in danger of reading our thoughts into 
 their words ; of drawing modern deductions from non- 
 modern premises. On the other hand the mere use 
 of obsolete phrases and worn-out methods of discussion 
 is apt to repel our sympathy. We are too often blinded 
 by our dislike of the form to our agreement with the 
 substance of writers of a long past age. Against all these 
 dangers we must guard ourselves. Perhaps the most 
 valuable of all the lessons which the study of this sub- 
 ject affords is that of the permanence of fundamental 
 notions amid the most varying forms of expression and 
 argument. 
 
 Yet when all reservations have been made, there can / 
 be little doubt that it is right to treat the growth 
 of political ideas, during the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries, as a branch of ecclesiastical history. With 
 a few exceptions religion or the interests of some 
 religious body gave the motive of the political thought 
 of the period; to protect the faith, or to defend the| 
 Church, or to secure the Reform, or to punish idolatry,' 
 or to stop the rebellion against the ancient order of 
 Christendom, or to win at least the right of a religious 
 society to exist ; this was the ground which justified 
 resistance to tyrants and the murder of kings ; or on the 
 other hand exalted the Divinely given authority of the 
 civil rulers. 
 
 Except at the beginning with Machiavelli, and at 
 
32 Introductory [lect. 
 
 the end among the Politiques and in the Netherlands, 
 the religious motive is always in the foreground. 
 Montaigne in an obiter dictum regards it as the supreme 
 question of his day, "Whether religion justified resis- 
 tance," and does not hint at other grounds, though the 
 League put forward a good many political grievances, 
 in addition to the toleration of heresy. 
 
 On the whole, however, the religious motive was at 
 the bottom of political thinking not only during the age 
 of the Reformation, but for a century or more after it, and 
 juristic methods determined its form. In the world 
 of the Italian renaissance this was not the case. There 
 politics were argued on a modern basis much earlier than 
 in the North. In general, however, it was only in the 
 clash of competing religions and the struggle for their 
 existence that political liberty and secular politics as 
 we know them were bom. 
 
 In connection with the movement for a reformation 
 of the Church in head and members we shall find the 
 medieval theory of limited monarchy raised to its 
 highest power by the Conciliar party, and stated in 
 a form which politicians in other ages found serviceable; 
 while the triumphant Papacy framed for itself a theory 
 of monarchy by Divine right, which was afterwards to 
 be at the service of secular princes. This will form the 
 subject of the next lecture. 
 
 In the third we shall see how Luther's whole system 
 rested on ideas of the relation of laymen to clerics, 
 which led him naturally to exalt the State, and assert the 
 Divine and uncontrollable authority of the Prince. 
 
 Machiavelli explicitly represents that anti-clerical 
 ideal of civil autocracy which has not yet reached its 
 final development ; while his conception of the relation 
 
l] Introductory 33 
 
 of the individual conscience to the development of the 
 community owes much to the greatest of all communities, 
 the Church, and found its fullest political outcome in the 
 practice of ecclesiastical organisations. 
 
 In the fourth Lecture I shall deal with the writers. 
 Huguenots, Presbyterians, Ligueurs, who, in order to 
 protect their own communion, formulated theories of 
 natural rights, and derived from feudalism the idea of the 
 original compact. We shall then see how the Jesuits 
 took from the Protestants their theory of government, 
 made it more universal, less aristocratic ; how political 
 convenience led to a doctrine of tyrannicide; how, 
 when their political opportunism turned them for the 
 nonce into revolutionaries, the universal ideas of law 
 which were their peculiar heritage led them to lay the 
 foundations of international jurisprudence. Lastly, in 
 the sixth Lecture we shall see all or nearly all these 
 ideas making themselves practically effective in the 
 resistance to Philip of Spain, and producing in the 
 Netherlands, its thinkers, and its Universities a centre of 
 light whence the political education of the seventeenth 
 century largely proceeded. 
 
 We may guess, if we cannot discern, at something of 
 the strength of the chain that at once unites and 
 separates medieval views, grotesque, visionary and in- 
 effectual as they seem to us, from the modern world 
 and the dignified assurance of the Declaration of 
 Independence or the flaming rhetoric of the Mar- 
 seillaise. 
 
 The change from medieval to modern, though in 
 some respects greater than that from ancient to modern, 
 thought is gradual, unceasing and even yet unended. 
 Our politics are largely due to ecclesiastical differences 
 
 r. 3 
 
34 Introductory [lect. i 
 
 which we are apt to despise, or to theological animosities 
 which we ignore. To the fact that political thought 
 after the end of the seventeenth century was so largely- 
 theological is due our inability to understand its 
 methods, and to discern the kernel beneath the husk. 
 To the fact that ecclesiastical bodies were in their 
 necessity the nursing mothers of our modern political 
 ideas is due their prevalence and indeed their existence. 
 Only because these bodies were able to make good 
 their right not to be exterminated (and after they 
 had done so) could their doctrine shed its swaddling 
 clothes and take shape to influence the modern world. 
 To understand Rousseau you must read Rossaeus, and 
 to appreciate the latter you must go back to Aquinas, 
 to Hildebrand and to Augustine. The sonorous phrases 
 of the Declaration of Independence or the Rights of 
 Man are not an original discovery, they are the heirs 
 of all the ages, the depositary of the emotions and 
 the thoughts of seventy generations of culture. " Forty 
 centuries look down upon you," was a truer picture 
 of the mind of the Revolution than the military 
 rhetorician knew or cared to know. 
 
 In this attempt to trace a very small part of the 
 embryology of modern politics we shall at least be able 
 to discern on the one hand how near the present is to 
 the past, and how slow is the growth from seed to 
 harvest ; and on the other how different is the world of 
 our ideas from that of which it is the child. Mariana 
 planted, Althusius watered, and Robespierre reaped the 
 increase. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE CONCU-IAR MOVEMENT AND THE 
 PAPALIST REACTION. 
 
 Probably the most revolutionary official document \ 
 in the history of the world is the decree of the Council of ^ 
 Constance asserting its superiority to the Pope, an3 i 
 striving to turn into a tepid constitutionalism the Divine ', 
 authority of a thousand years\ The movement is the 
 culmination of medieval constitutionalism. It forms \ 
 the watershed between the medieval and the modern ( 
 world. We see in the history of the movement the 
 herald of that struggle between constitutional principles, 
 and the claims of autocracy in the State which was, save 
 in this country and the Netherlands, to conclude by 
 the triumph of the latter and the riveting of despotism 
 upon the peoples until the upheaval of the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 Eugenius IV is the forerunner of Louis XIV. For 
 the most remarkable of all the facts about this movement 
 is its failure. In this failure and in its causes are to be 
 vdiscerned at once the grounds of the religious revolution, 
 the excuse for ultramoiitane ideals, and the general 
 tendency to autocracy in all States. 
 
 The failure of the Conciliar movement, either to 
 
 3—2 
 
36 The Conciliar Movement and [lect, 
 
 ! restrain the Pope permanently, or to further the growth 
 i of federalism in the Church, forms the justification at 
 I once of the Reformation and of ultramontanism — of 
 1 ultramontanism on one side, for there must apparently 
 have been some grounds for absolute monarchy, either 
 in the nature of political society, or in the condition of 
 ., the Christian Church, for the Papal monarchy to 
 ;■' triumph in so overwhelming a fashion, over a movement 
 so reasonable, and so respectable, supported by men 
 of such learning and zeal as Gerson and Zabarella, 
 secure as they were from all suspicion of heterodoxy by 
 that auto-da-fe which made the reputation of John Hus 
 — of the Reformation, for the fate of the efforts of the 
 Councils of Pisa and Constance and Basel and the 
 triumph of vested interests oyer principle would seem to 
 show, that all hope of constitutional reform of the 
 Church was vain, and that Luther was justified in 
 appealing to the laity to wield, in her spiritual welfare, 
 that temporal sword with which traditional theory en- 
 trusted kings and princes, for her material defence. 
 \/ As Cesarini told the Pope, unless the clergy of 
 Germany were reformed, there would infallibly arise 
 a worse schism, even though the present one should be 
 concluded^. If the methods of 1688 produce no result, 
 corruption of the body politic demands a 1789. Where 
 the conservative liberalism of Gerson or Halifax had 
 proved useless, recourse must be had to the revolution- 
 ary idealism of Calvin or Rousseau. We may condemn 
 ; as we will the violence of the Reformation, but it was 
 a catastrophe rendered inevitable by the failure of 
 , milder methods. Cautery succeeded to physic. True 
 indeed, internal reform eventually took place under the 
 pressure of the new attack. The Counter-Reformation, 
 
 / 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 37 
 
 or whatever it be called, did attempt to save the Church 
 from the scandals of the past, and to a certain extent 
 succeeded. 
 
 But it did so by increased centralisation, and a 
 hardening of temper, alien from earlier movements of 
 reform. The Jesuits made the Papacy efficient, not by 
 developing the variety of national differences, but by 
 concentrating every power at the centre, and compen- 
 sating for the loss of their Church in extension by its 
 rigidity of discipline intensively. This process which 
 had its last result at the Council of the Vatican began 
 before the Reformation. The victory of Eugenius IV 
 over the Council of Basel had its logical issue in the 
 doctrine of Papal infallibility, its political expression 
 in the theory of a community created serva^. The 
 triumph of the Pope over the Council is the beginning 
 of the triumph of centralised bureaucracy throughout 
 the civilised world*; a triumph which was apparent 
 everywhere but in England, up till 1789, and in many 
 countries has only changed its form even as the issue 
 of that Revolution. Even in England it was only the 
 fortunate accident of religious differences, that saved 
 the country from an efficient administrative despotism, 
 inspired by men such as Bacon, Strafford, or Cromwell. 
 
 All this was heralded by the Conciliar movement 
 or rather by its failure'. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini 
 was more than the historian of the Council ; he was the 
 prophet of the Papacy. Pupil of circumstances as he 
 was he discerned which way the tendencies of the future 
 were developing. Deserting the fathers of Basel in the 
 knowledge that fortune, his real deity,'had turned against 
 them, he spent his whole life in making the Papacy 
 a real power. Pius II, cultivated, literary, modern. 
 
38 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 prepared the way for Pius IX, narrow, credulous, and 
 reactionary. Never have two such different men worked 
 for the same ends, for they agreed in nothing but their 
 humour — and even there the later Pope had the 
 distinction of decency. 
 
 The principles of Constance are the last effort of 
 medieval Constitutionalism. 
 
 Their failure marks the beginning of the modern 
 world. It paved the way for Luther and Machiavelli 
 in the State, for Ignatius Loyola and Manning in the 
 Church. It was not unnatural, however, that the Conciliar 
 movement should fail. It was an attempt to borrow 
 from the rising States of Western Europe, and from the 
 schemes of Imperialists like Marsilius and Ockham 
 a theory of limited monarchy, and a plan for some form 
 of representative government in the Church. The cir- 
 cumstances which made it possible to make the attempt 
 were the scandal of the great schism, and the spectacle 
 of a divided Church. 
 
 But the moment the Council had put an end to the 
 
 schism its real hold on public opinion was lost. The 
 
 men who manoeuvred it were perhaps in their theories 
 
 as much in advance of their time as the Whig leaders in 
 
 1688. Just as the work of the latter would certainly 
 
 have collapsed, had the one condition of its success — 
 
 the continued bigotry of the Stuarts — disappeared, so 
 
 ' when the only source of the Council's power, pontifical 
 
 i competition, was removed the Council ceased to have 
 
 , any but an academic importance. 
 
 As I said at the beginning, the most revolutionary 
 
 official document in the history of the world is the 
 
 / decree which asserts its powers. The theory of the 
 
 ; ultimate sovereignty of the community had, it must be 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 39 
 
 remembered, been already proclaimed in regard to the 
 civil State by Marsilius. It remained only for the ) 
 fathers of Constance to apply the idea to the ecclesi- I 
 astical sphere. This is a crude way of putting it. . 
 Marsilius and Wyclif saw in imagination a single society ■ 
 in which all executive power was secular ; a State but 
 also a Church; the conciliar party saw also a single i 
 society of which kings and peoples were members ; | 
 but it was primarily a clerical hierarchy which had the \ 
 power. It was not so much a taking over of principles I 
 from the State to the Church ; it was the application of ; 
 those principles by men who held the traditional views '\ 
 (combated by Marsilius and Wyclif) in regard to the \ 
 authority of the clergy. ] 
 
 This__decree is at once the expression of medieval {^ 
 , Constitutionalism, and its development. That the ideas * 
 'wffi^~lt expresses could never have been applied to ; 
 [the Church isithout there being already in existence \ 
 lasisemblies of estates, exercising the powers of a whole 
 jpeople, is unlikely. Yet the decree asserts the principles 
 (which underlay acts like the deposing of Richard II in ' 
 a far more definite and conscious form than had yet | 
 been done ; and lays down a theory of the sovereignty i 
 of the community which was to pave the way for future \ 
 controversy". For a long time discussions had been ' 
 proceeding as to whether Popes or kings hddimmedi- 
 ately of God. In this decree we find -l^-^uestion 
 definitely put which was eventually to supersede (though 
 not for a long while) that conflict. Is the sovereignty 
 of a community inherently in the ruler or in the 
 representative organ of the people? True there is no 
 reference to politics but only to the special conditions 
 of the Church. But the atmosphere of the day did 
 
40 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 not allow of questions of polity being raised in the 
 Church, without their affecting theories of the civil 
 power. It is easy to connect this decree with docu- 
 ments like Magna Charta, easy also to see how much 
 more self-conscious are the politics of the age which 
 produced it. 
 
 j In the same way the decree Frequens' which directs 
 
 ' the summoning of the Council at stated intervals, helped 
 
 to prepare the way for the claims of the League, and the 
 
 Parliament to a regular assembling of the Estates of 
 
 the Realm. Yet here an earlier law directing annual 
 
 Parliaments formed the precedent. 
 
 . The theorists and pamphleteers,Conrad of Gelnhausen ', 
 
 ■ Henry of Langenstein", Gerson and D'Ailly, who prepared 
 
 j the way for the Council, did not invent new principles, 
 
 \ nor dig them up from a long forgotten past. They 
 
 : were not, like some of the Renaissance writers, driven 
 
 \ back into the early history of Rome and Greece, for 
 
 precedents, and theories. Theirs was no academic 
 
 republicanism, like that of Etienne de la Boe0tie^*. 
 
 Y \ (f)They rest on a historical development of realised 
 
 j fact. They appear to have discerned more clearly than 
 
 their predecessors the meaning of the constitutional 
 
 I experiments, which the^ last two centuries had seen in 
 
 j considerable profusion,- to have thought out the principles 
 
 I that underlay them, and abased th^ upon reasoning 
 
 \ that applied to all political societies!^' to have discerned 
 
 \ that arguments applicable to government in general 
 
 j could not be inapplicable to the Church. In a word 
 
 they raised the constitutionalism of the past three 
 
 ' centuries to a higher power ; expressed it in a more 
 
 ! ^universal f^rm, and justified it on grounds or reason, 
 
 y^;^olicy and'%cripture. This is why it seems truer to 
 
V 
 
 ii] the Papalist Reaction 41 
 
 regard the movement as medieval rather than modern ; 
 in spirit. * 
 
 Yet it helped forward modern constitutional tenden-' 
 cies, because it expressed them in a form in which they 
 could readily be applied to politics, especially by all 
 those whose sympathies were at all ecclesiastical. It 
 was the lament of an English royalist in the seventeenth 
 century that the dangerous theories of the rights of the 
 people first became prevalent with the Conciliar move- 
 ment. And even Huguenot writers like Du PlessisMornay H 
 were not ashamed of using the doctrine of the Council's 
 superiority over the Pope to prove their own doctrine of 
 the supremacy of the estates, over the king. Owen calls 
 them par excellence political divines. The principles of 
 Constance are in fact almost as frequently cited in general 
 politics as the law of Edward the Confessor or Magna 
 Charta in English. In the writings of Barclay the name / 
 of Gerson occurs more than once as a bugbear. 
 
 The movement was an audacious one. Nothing but ( 
 the actual facts of inter-Papal rivalries could have given \ 
 it any hope of success. The origin of the Papal power, \ 
 and its relation to Councils need not be here discussed. \ 
 For centuries however it had been extending its \ 
 theoretical claims. From being the equal and some- / 
 times the second power in the Empire, the Popes had 
 claimed to be the first and had largely made good 
 their claim. They had set up and pulled down kings. 
 From a claim to freedom to pursue their objects they 
 had advanced to an assertion of supremacy over all 
 kings and princes. +- ftvnpe-i'OfS f yw 
 
 Although indeed this claim was never admitted in 
 full by the leaders of the laity, the clergy rarely denied 
 it. However they might grumble, nations did not care 
 
42 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 to set up for themselves in religious matters, although 
 the notion was distinctly put forward. The idea that 
 Christendom was one was still predominant. With 
 a visible unity felt as essential, the doctrines of the Divine 
 right of civil power and the duty of submission as 
 •taught by S. Paul had been easily wrested from the 
 service of kings to that of Popes. The claim of the 
 Popes to exercise illimitable authority had been worked 
 out logically by generations of canonists. Even in 
 regard to such very independent monarchs as Edward I 
 or Philip the Fair it was only after a struggle that it 
 became necessary to permit concessions in practice, yet 
 the claims in theory remained unaltered or even 
 heightened. The principles of Clericis Laicos were never 
 formally withdrawn. The Unam Sanctum was put into 
 the Clementine Extravagants by an Avignonese Pope. 
 
 As we saw last time the Papal theory was developed 
 a little further by the contest between John XXII and 
 Louis of Bavaria, while the practice of reservation and 
 provisions continued to assert his power, any acts of the 
 State to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 Quod principi placuit legis habet vigor em was at least 
 as true of the Popes as of Justinian. Louis of Bavaria 
 had been afraid of these claims, and yielded the real 
 point at the critical moment. Claims so ancient, 
 so intertwined with vested interests all over Europe, 
 were not likely for any length of time to be resisted 
 by a parcel 
 
 " Of Dons and of Doctors, of Provosts and Proctors, 
 Who were paid to monopolise knowledge.'' 
 
 For that is what the Conciliar''^*:^^ly was. It had 
 the weakness of a purely academic movement except in 
 so far as it expressed the general desire to close the schism. 
 
 By doing this the party decreed its own extinction. 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 43 
 
 Any chance of really popular support was removed by 
 its attitude to the Bohemians. 
 
 The European public, just beginning to awaken to 
 the futility of medieval constitutionalism, was not going 1 
 to make sacrifices, only to introduce the same thing into ! 
 the government of the Church. There might be roseate 1 
 dreams of representative government, of ruling byconsent, ; 
 of cabinet control, of a cardinalate formed to express j 
 the federal and nationalist principles inside the Imperial j 
 Church, of a mixed or limited monarchy in the Church, 
 with the dangerous power of dispensation curbed, and \ 
 the Pope obeying his own laws. But they remained \ 
 dreamsJ;^'"'|Even the dreamers in some cases, like 
 Nicolas of Cues, went over to the other side. The 
 fathers of Constance separated with their work but 
 half done. 
 
 The Council of Ferrara, which was afterwards 
 transferred to BaeeJ, proved nearly as impotent as the 
 Barebones' Parliament, and served to give point to a 
 later saying of Bellarmin, that it might be all very well 
 to base an aristocratic constitution, or a limited 
 monarchy, on the Politics of a Greek City, but that 
 Aristotle had not in view the problems of a country, still 
 less those of an Empire State (the Church). By the 
 end of the Council of Basel in 1449 it was abundantly 
 clear, that whenever reform, more needed than ever, was 
 to come it could not come from constitutionally 
 summoned Councils — even though they admitted the 
 laity to vote^\ 
 
 You know the facts of the movement. Catharine of 
 Sienna had preached at Avignon and elsewhere the 
 duty of the Pope once more to make the eternal city 
 
44 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 '^ his home. When however Gregory XII died in 1378 
 
 the French Cardinals, who did not wish to lose their 
 
 influence, refused to recognise the election of Urban VI 
 
 as valid, and chose an anti-Pope (Clement VI). For 
 
 forty years the schism went on, the successor on each 
 
 side refusing to surrender his pretensions. The scandal 
 
 [ of such a situation was manifest. Greater than ever 
 
 i was the need of reform, demands for which had been 
 
 k growing in strength for a long time. 
 
 At Pisa a Council at last assembled with the object 
 of ending the schism. Instead of this it succeeded 
 merely in setting up a third competitor in the person of 
 Alexander V, who was followed by Baldassare Cossa 
 (John XXIII) in 1410. Since the other Popes refused 
 to resign in his favour, and his reputation did not make 
 the refusal strange, something had to be done. 
 
 Just as the existence of States with different religions 
 forced upon men the thought, that there must bea different 
 bond of union of civil society than religious uniformity, 
 I so the spectacle of competing Popes drove men to 
 consider seriously the claims of conciliar authority 
 and to discuss in whom the power of the Christian 
 j community was ultimately inherent. The need of help 
 from the secular power, and the hopes entertained of 
 Sigismund led to a not unnatural development of the 
 \ claims of the laity — though most of the writers are very 
 cautious in this respect. " -, j\i%f~"*^ 
 
 I In 1414 the Council of Constance met. It had three 
 iobjects : (i) to end the Schism, (2) to arrest the Hussite 
 ^movement in Bohemia, (3) to reform the Church "in 
 ihead and members." 
 
 The second seemed easiest, but it did not prove so. 
 Nationalism which in some ways the Council fostered, 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 45 
 
 was in this case too strong for them. There ensued 
 a series of sanguinary wars, ending indeed in a victory 
 over heresy, but not without a terriiic struggle and the 
 offer of important concessions. As to the third point 
 little was done at all; there were some reforming decrees ; ! 
 Martin V made concordats with the different nations ; j 
 annates, unreasonable Provisions and other abuses were ! 
 condemned. A decree ordering the regular assembling! 
 of the Council was promulgated. The net result was j 
 however very small, except in regard to the Gallicah ' 
 liberties. We cannot disassociate the Pragmatic Sanction 
 of Bo urges in 1438 from the extremely independent and* 
 nationalist attitude taken up by Gerson and other ^ 
 members of the University of Paris, which was the real 
 source of the Conciliar movement and its main support, \ 
 certainly in its best days. The true trend of things how- 
 ever was exhibited in the concordat of Bologna, in which 
 the rising authority of the king in that State combined 
 with the increasing power of the Pope to destroy for 
 ever the rights of the laity and clergy in France. 
 
 In regard to the schism the Council achieved its end. 
 John XXIII refused to do as he had promised and 
 abdicate. Eventually he fled from Constance, and after 
 wandering about, and submitting to many humiliations, 
 was deposed by the Council. Afterwards he was forced 
 to sanction this deposition, and make confession of his 
 crimes in a document far more humiliating than that 
 imposed upon Richard II. 
 
 Gregory XII,' the representative of the Italian line 
 of Anti-Popes, also resigned. Eventually Gtemefrt- VII I, \'<'< 
 the successor of what had been the French and had 
 become the Castilian line, did the same. 
 
46 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 But this was not all. The Council of Constance in 
 the decree Frequens had decreed, that it should meet at 
 regular intervals. In 1423 one was summoned at Sienna, 
 but prorogued almost at once. The seven years interval 
 allowed by the decree having elapsed, the need of 
 reform still being pressed, the Hussite struggle by no 
 means ended, the Pope (Martin V) reluctantly sum- 
 moned a Council (at which he was not present) at Basel. 
 Almost at once he strove to transfer it to Ferrara 
 and so bring it to an end ; but on this point he had to 
 give way. Gradually the numbers of the Council grew 
 smaller and smaller until it dwindled into a mere band 
 of irreconcilables. The real strength of the movement 
 was gone-Jigr with the departure of Cardinal Cesarini in 
 1438. The Pope made ingenious use of the request 
 for assistance from Byzantium, and outwitted the 
 Council in negotiations with the Greeks for the union 
 of Eastern and Western Churches. He held a Council 
 at Ferrara in 1438 which was afterwards transferred 
 to Florence. 
 
 The Basel fathers were summoned thither, but 
 
 remained away. Eugenius IV, by apparently bringing 
 
 \ to an end the schism with the East, restored the Papal 
 
 ^ prestige, although it was, as Aeneas Sylvius remarked, 
 
 a strange fact that unity with the East was proclaimed 
 
 at the very moment when the West was bitterly divided. 
 
 The new Emperor, Albert II, accepted the reforming 
 decrees of Basel, and Germany for the nonce remained 
 neutral in the struggle. 
 
 After affording a precedent to the Long Parliament 
 by declaring that it was not to be dissolved without its 
 own consent, the Council deposed Eugenius IV and 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 47 
 
 elected Amadeus of Savoy Pope by the name of 
 Felix V. 
 
 It is significant that since his time Europe has never 
 known an anti-Pope. Aeneas Sylvius, who had seen that 
 time was against the fathers, left them to their impotent 
 eloquence, and after pretending to weigh the arguments 
 made his peace with the Pope, and succeeded in 
 restoring the obedience of Germany. The Council of 
 Basel ended in 1449, the anti-Pope retired from business, 
 which he had found less lucrative than he expected. 
 From time to time the threat of a Council was used 
 as a means of diplomatic pressure ; Alexander VI was 
 worried, as well he might be, by the thought of one, 
 and in 1501 a hostile assembly actually met at Pisa. 
 This was rendered impotent by the astuteness of Leo X, 
 who himself summoned a Council at the Lateran where, 
 of course, it was not dangerous. 
 
 Thus the movement went on, or its relics lingered on I 
 until the Reformation. This fact is noteworthy. But for \ 
 practical purposes it may be considered as closed in 1449. | 
 
 So much by way of introduction. 
 
 Let us now seek to examine a little further into the 
 governing ideas of the movement'. 
 
 The writings I wish to treat of begin with Conrad of 
 Gelnhausen', and include many works by Jean Charlier 
 Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris — a man 
 who enjoyed the reputation for sometime of being the 
 author of the De Imitatione. The other chief French 
 writer is Cardinal Pierre Ailly. We have from Germany 
 Dietrich of Niem, Henry of Hesse or Langenstein, 
 Gregory of Heimburg, and Cardinal Nicolas of Cues'- 
 
48 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 There was an Italian Cardinal Francesco Zabarella, 
 who wrote the De Schismate ; and a Spaniard Andrea 
 of Randulf. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II) is 
 also a prime authority for the ideas of the period. 
 
 j/ One point is clea r. Speculation on the possible 
 power of the Council, as the true depositary of sove- 
 reignty within the Church, drove the thinkers to treat 
 the Church definitely as one of a class, political societies. 
 If it cannot be said that the thought was new, that the 
 Church was a political society, it was certainly developed 
 by a situation which compelled men to consider its con- 
 stitution. Moreover since the constitution of the Church, 
 whatever it may be, is undeniably Divine, universal 
 principles of politics could be discovered by a mere ^^^^j A. 
 generalisation from ecclesiastical government.'^ '^Tne " 
 I claim made that since the Church was a perfect society, 
 ; it must have within itself all necessary means of action, 
 and could not suffer its independence to be thwarted by 
 the State, is one associated with later, and (in a different \ 
 
 form) with earlier conflicts ; at this period however the 
 notion is used to justify the deposing power of the 
 i Council as against the Pope. The Church being a 
 perfect society cannot, it is urged, be without the. means 
 of purging itself, and may consequently remove even 
 a Pope, if his administration is merely in destructionem 
 instead of in aedificationem and thus opposed to the <;rii>i< 
 end of the Church, the salvation of souls. 
 
 The habit of arguing about the Church as a political 
 society and drawing inferences from the powers of other 
 political societies and the constitution of the civil States 
 prepared the way for the new form in which all questions 
 between the spiritual and lay authority could be 
 
( 
 
 ii] the Papalist Reaction 49 
 
 discussed ; the form of a transaction between two 
 societies distinct in origin and aim. 
 
 The medieval struggles between Popes and Emperors 
 are wrongly regarded as a conflict between Church and 
 State, if by that is meant the relations between two 
 socie ties. The medieval mind, whether clerical or anti- 
 clerical, envisaged the struggle as one between different! 
 officers of the same society, never between two separate 1 
 bodies ; this is as true of Dante and Marsilius as it is 
 of Boniface and Augustinus, It is this, and only this, 
 that explains the ease with which the transition was 
 made from the Papal, to the princely or municipal 
 system of Church Government, alike by Luther and 
 Musculus or Whitgift and Hooker. It is quite clear 
 from the tone both of Whitgift and Hooker that 
 the notion of Church and Commonwealth as two 
 transacting bodies was novel. This could not have been 
 the case, if the medieval controversies were not regarded 
 as struggles for precedence between different officers of 
 a single society, or at most the ambitions of rival depart- 
 ments in one body. The claim made by Simanca^^ 
 and Bellarmin for the indirect power of the Popes is 
 based partly on a right of international law ; they say 
 that the Pope like any other sovereign may intervene to 
 secure the interests of his subjects ; in this way they 
 perhaps unconsciously placed the Church on an equality 
 with other bodies politic, and prepared the way for the 
 language of the Encyclical Immortale Dei'^, which 
 demands for the Church rights of independence as a 
 societas genere et jure perfecta. 
 
 The way for this was partly prepared by the consti- 
 tutional problem set to the world by the great schism ; 
 while we have evidence of the fact that the old ideas 
 
50 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 were still at work in the intermingling by writers like 
 
 q^^ I (c^icolas of Cues of schemes for the constitution of the 
 
 ^>^t I "Empire with his plans of ecclesiastical reformation. 
 
 ''''"* - A second point o f interest in the Conciliar movement 
 
 r is that, arguing from the precedent of constitutional 
 
 ■j States, it decides upon the best form of government in 
 
 {general, and lays down the lines which controversy 
 
 took until Whiggism succumbed to the influence of 
 
 Rousseau. -^ j^^^vwUj 
 
 It could not be denied ^that 'the most perfect possible 
 [ constitution was that which Christ had left to his Church ; 
 nor was it denied by the Papalist antagonists of the 
 Council. The question with them was one of fact. 
 
 Now the belief of the Conciliar writers, which was 
 i derived really from the facts of the political world of 
 \their day but based in argument on appeals partly to 
 \ IjAristotle and partly to the Mosaic system, was that this 
 ('constitution was a iroXiTeia, a mixed, or as later times 
 /have called it a limited monarchy , in which while the 
 \ monarchical principle is preserved the danger of tyranny 
 • should be removed by the power of a small body of 
 I permanent advisers, a continual council, and ultimately 
 (checked by a large representative assembly. The specu- 
 lations on the nature of government were of more avail 
 owing to the fact that they were not concerned, like most 
 of the political theorising of the Middle Ages, with the 
 controversy between the two great powers, spiritual and 
 temporal, within the Church-State. At the same time 
 )there were discussions as to the rights of the laity in the 
 jCouncil, and the need of Imperial support drove men like 
 iZabarella to a strong assertion of the claims of the 
 (successor of Constantine and Theodosius. ■ This was 
 carried farther at Basel. 
 
 ^ 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 51 
 
 The union of political principles with utilitarian 
 notions, heightened by their religious significance, con- 
 sidered with reference to a body which might be a 
 model for all smaller States, and decided upon universal 
 grounds, was the work of the Conciliar party and their 
 opponents. That that discussion ultimately redounded 
 to the benefit of monarchy in the Church was ominous 
 for the cause of liberty for three centuries and a half ; 
 that such liberty as existed took the form and acquired 
 the influence it did was partly at least due to the fact that 
 Gerson, D'Ailly, and Nicolas placed the constitutional 
 monarchy in such high light that it could not be altogether 
 obscured even in later and more subservient ages. 
 Further than this, the victory of the Papalist reaction 
 meant the victory of the unitary and Roman over 
 the federalist and Teutonic conception of society. 
 Had the Conciliar movement secured lasting success, 
 the principles which were symbolised by the division of 
 the Council into nations and in the Concordats with 
 which it closed might have become fruitful in the future. 
 [As it was, alike in England and abroad, the notion of 
 a single omni-competent social union set over against 
 a mass of individuals became the normal idea of the 
 State. The Communitas Communitatum becomes a mere 
 collection of units ; and modern society is at once more 
 individualistic and more socialistic than medieval. 
 
 Only now, as a result partly of the United States 
 Constitution and partly of other causes, is it beginning 
 to dawn upon men's minds that we cannot fit the facts 
 into the unitary State, as the true source of all power 
 and the only ground of every right except so far as it 
 is controlled by certain claims of the individual. 
 
 That this process of education has yet to be accom- 
 
 4—2 
 
52 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 plished is very largely the result of that failure of 
 t Teutonic before Latin ideals of law and government, 
 1 which is the lasting result of the triumph of the Pap^c^^ ^ 
 Vover the Council in the sixteenth century, ^^f^*^^^^'^'^^ 
 Probably the absorption of feudalism before an^ u 
 all-encroaching governmental omnipotence was necessary r- ^iAi 
 if the modern world was to enter upon its task. That 
 this absorption was so generally accomplished is due 
 partly to the direct influence of the spectacle of Papal 
 monarchy, and partly to the prevalence of the ideas 
 which it expressed. From 1450 onwards it seemed to 
 most practical statesmen, and to all sovereigns, that 
 "the tendency of advancing civilisation is a tendency 
 towards pure monarchy "; and popular movements in 
 every land were deemed by men like Cecil, or Strafford, 
 or Richelieu, or sovereigns like Elizabeth and Charles I, as 
 not merely wrong but stupid — inefficient clogs upon the 
 wheels of government, which would retard the progress 
 of intelligence and enlightenment. Pure monarchy was 
 the only gentlemanly form of government. 
 
 Their attitude was that of Frederick the Great, and 
 Joseph II. Even where pure monarchy was regarded 
 as an ideal, it only gave way to a notion of the unlimited 
 sovereignty of the State, however constituted, which 
 is false to the facts of human life, and creates an 
 unnecessary chasm between the individual and the 
 supreme power, instead of bridging the gulf by the 
 recognition of other and smaller societies, with inherent 
 powers of life, not the result of the fiat of governmental 
 authority. The point however is this. Constance and 
 Basel saw the last, the most splendid, and in the event 
 the most unfortunate of all the many medieval attempts 
 to limit the sovereign power. Since the Church must 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 53 
 
 clearly be Divinely governed, the answers to the questions 
 it put must be final as to the ideal of human society 
 politically organised. 
 
 These questions were old ones. Had the sovereign ' 
 illimitable authority from the first, or did the Church 
 confer his power, and if so on what condition ? Was he 
 really solutus legibus} Is it true that in the Church n 
 Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem ? or was the 
 opposing maxim the real one Quod omnes tangit ab 
 omnibus approbatur} Was the prince (the Pope) lord 
 or minister of the Church ? What in fact is the nature 
 of dominion .' Might he be removed if his tyranny 
 was patent and ruinous to the souls of men? Or is it 
 to be allowed to reverse the very end of the Church's 
 being ? If not, was every private man a judge of his 
 insufficiency, or must we await a public and formal 
 pronouncement ? 
 
 Is not a mixed government the principle of Moses, 
 and the Jewish Church, the theory of Aristotle, the 
 practice of every nation which is not being ruined ? ) 
 Have we not an obvious mixture, our sovereign lord the 
 Pope, our lords the Cardinals his continual council, and 
 the prelates in council "virtually" representing the 
 visible Church ? Are commands such without sanction ? 
 Are those laws which "public approbation hath not 
 made such".' Is not consent and 'user the essence of 
 valid law.-" How far are unjust laws;> to be obeyed? 
 Need they be considered laws at all, if we understand 
 St Thomas aright? Can any government exist or claim 
 rights apart from the consent of the governed ? Is 
 there vested in any governor secular or ecclesiastical the 
 dominion over the property and lives of individuals ? 
 Can any power, however appointed, dispense with the 
 
54 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 precepts of natural law ? These and such like questions 
 were actually asked ; they form the basis of political 
 disunion until the days of Locke. Whatever we may 
 think now, there is no doubt that such words as king, 
 republic, aristocracy, and the maxims of the civil law, 
 were then regarded as perfectly applicable to the 
 concerns and the constitution of the Church. They did 
 not anxiously argue from the State to the Church or vice 
 versd, but from the idea of a society to its consequences. 
 A very slight acquaintance with Locke or Algernon 
 Sidney, to say nothing of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, 
 will enable the reader of Gerson, and the Concordantia 
 Catholica to see how great is the debt of the politicians to 
 the ecclesiastics. The crisis in the Church was thus, 
 I think, responsible for bringing these, 'questions before 
 men in a more universal form than they had hitherto 
 assumed; the arguments for constitutional government 
 were stripped of all elements of that provincialism, 
 which might have clung to them for long, had they been 
 concerned with only the internal arrangements of the 
 national States ; and the theory of a mixed or limited 
 monarchy was set forth in a way which enabled it to 
 become classical. Certainly it was actually so used in 
 later controversies. Whatever be the case with Basel, 
 to the Council of Constance the eyes of Christendom 
 were turned ; it was not for riothing that the greatest 
 University in the world, which was far more influential 
 than any such seminary now, was the main factory 
 of its principles. Emperors might be the fathers of the 
 Council, and kings its nursing mothers^but the child 
 -they nurtured was Constitutionalisiii^ an^ iS^far off 
 legacy to our own day was "the glorious revolution." 
 jThe superiority of the interests of the Community over 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 55 
 
 those of its officers, asserted in 1414 and rendered \ ' 
 nugatory in the Church, received a tardy justification at 
 the hands of history in the State. On the other hand the 
 Papacy took an enduring vengeance on those of its sub- 
 jects who temporarily abased it ; and rising on the ruins 
 of the medieval system more imposing and autocratic than 
 before asserted in oracular tones the Divine irresponsi- 
 bility of the Papal monarchy, and succeeded in making 
 the ideals of autocratic rule the intellectual fashion of 
 an age, which imitated the Pope even when it most 
 opposed him. 
 
 The discussions of Constance were, as we saw, far\ \ 
 more purely political than those of the Middle Ages, I • 
 because they were not concerned with the conflicts y \ 
 between ecclesiastical and spiritual authority, but with( i 
 the depositary, the functions, and the limits, of sovereign \ 
 power, in a perfect society. ~~^ 
 
 Still we must not forget that it was the politics, of j, t 
 a Divine Society that were under discussion^ The' \ 
 end of the Church is the salvation of souls; so the j 
 doctrine of utility is sanctified, and expediency loses ! 
 the touch of vulgarity which far more than his immor- 
 ality repels men from Machiavelli. In one aspect the 
 thought of Gerson and D'Ailly is very utilitarian and ! 
 the main defence of their attitude towards the Popes j 
 was salus populi suprema lex. All this because they were ' 
 idealists and cared little for utility in the narrower sense. "^ 
 For, whatever be thought of the doctrine of either 
 side, it was not as in most topics of ordinary political 
 controversy a question as to the balance of comfort and 
 material well-being, but one between the ruin and the 
 salvation of human nature. If the power of the Pope 
 was really irresponsible, there was nothing to save men 
 
56 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 from eternal misery, should his policy drive that way. 
 If the command "Feed My sheep" may be interpreted as 
 the gift of an authority to starve them, it was not poverty, 
 or disease, that would result, but the eternal destruction 
 of the soul. For if the Pope transformed, into its oppo- 
 site the duty of promoting the edification of the 
 Church, and pulled doWn instead of building up, there 
 was on Papalist principles no surety for the souls of 
 men. 
 
 You remember how just before our own day, what 
 was intended as a purely scientific course of Lectures on 
 "Jurisprudence'' was prefaced by John Austin with 
 some lengthy chapters about the paramountcy of the 
 Law of God and its revelation in the principle of 
 utility. They are generally omitted now, even by the 
 few students who read the living book instead of an ab- 
 stract, from which the impress of the strong personality of 
 the author is removed. They ought not to be forgotten, 
 however, for they serve to show the highly practical 
 character of such theorising, even when it is professedly 
 purely scientific. ~— 
 
 j But to the fathers of Constance, standing as they 
 ! felt in the middle of the road of the Church, and with no 
 mind to traverse Dante's terrific spiral, this principle, 
 quoted by them often in its ancient form salus populi 
 suprema lex, was the necessary bulwark against the ^i>jb<k 
 Canonist theory of sovereignty (substantially the same 
 as Austin's) ; that whatever legal and prescriptive 
 rights could be alleged for the Papal Autocracy, the 
 supreme need of the Church must override them. It 
 was a case of right before rights. There is a point of 
 view from which expediency is the same thing as right, 
 and to men who were seeking for eternal life the short 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 57 
 
 period valuation, which gives to political expediency its 
 ill fame, was impossible. 
 
 For these men righteousness was pitted against rights, | 
 and they were willing to overthrow the latter, in their i 
 desire for ■tfeejfforme^^- Hence we find their governing 
 thought, reiterated in writer after writer, that the Church's 
 necessity knows no law ; that Papal claims can plead no 
 prescriptive title, when the Church needs that they 
 should be disregarded ; that when the legal authority 
 will not perform its functions, we are driven back to the ! 
 pristinumjus inherent in the nature of human society ; that 3 
 Jia-p' we must not forget the end in the means ; and that the I 
 Pope's power itselfand even his existence is the creature of '; 
 the Church and may not abrogate its raison d'etre. For \ 
 no Pope can dispense with natural law ; and natural law i 
 teaches the original equality of man, and the necessity \ 
 of consent to the rightfulness of any government. \ 
 Thus to Nicolas and Zabarella it is certain that the \ 
 Christian community cannot be the mere slave of| 
 the Pope (for this was the theory of their opponents) ; \ 
 he cannot be Lord, but must be the minister of all, , 
 as Christ said ; besides, the Christian Law is a law ! 
 of liberty, and so the Christian cannot be the mere [ 
 chattel of an autocrat. A king in the last resort may 
 be assailed not as a king but as a public enemy ; the 1 
 like is true of the Pope. Originally the whole power ^ 
 of the Church must have been in the community. 
 S. Peter was only given the primacy by the consent of 
 the other Apostles ; neither in the Church nor out of it \ 
 does government exist without consent, and the end for \ 
 which such consent was first given cannot be ignored. I 
 If the Church chose it could make the Archbishop of ! 
 Trier universal head, and take away from Rome a j 
 
i 
 
 1 
 
 58 The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 (prerogative founded on custom, consent and forgery 
 % ^ [(Nicolas of Cues denied the genuineness of the Donation 
 •of Constantine). In brief orbis major urbe. The Pope 
 is a member of the body- politic of the Church, of which 
 Christ is the head ; and a diseased limb may be am- 
 putated. The Church is indefectible; the right of the 
 majority of the Council is secured by an appeal to the 
 word of Christ : — " Lo I am with you always." All 
 the world can be saved without the Pope, but not 
 without the Church. The Church, not the Pope, is 
 f?v^r6 \ '^^ sgo^ess bride of Christ. In the last resort, as a 
 \ Council may contmiie, So it may meet without Papal or 
 ( even imperial authority. If it be asked under whose 
 I authority in such a case the Council is summoned, it is 
 j to be answered, by authority of its head Jesus Christ. 
 \ The Pope is the Vicar of the Church rather than of 
 I Christ. 
 
 The destructive criticism of the autocracy of the 
 Pope, the appeal from purely legal, to general consider- 
 ations of utility and natural law, is one side of the 
 \ movement. Its other aspect is constructive. The party I \ 
 I aimed definitely at establishing a constitution for the I \ 
 \ Church. Treated as a whole it was nationalist, repre- 
 ; sentative, and aristocratic. Election is to make the 
 '\ officers of the Church really represent their subjects, 
 r The Cardinals are no longer to be the Italian entourage 
 I of the Pope, but national leaders.^As a matter of fact 
 , the custom of making national resident cardinals did 
 j not begin till after the Council. 
 
 A brief account of the De Concordantia Catholica of 
 
 K Nicolas of Cues will give the best exposition of the 
 
 ideals of the movement. Like the rest in being a Livre 
 
 de circonstance, it is distinguished from them by its 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 59 
 
 elevation and breadth. As closing the Middle Ages 
 we might compare it with that other Concordantia 
 of Gratian, which expressed their spirit in its prime, 
 and was the most influential political pamphlet ever 
 published. 
 
 Like the De Monarchia of Dante the work of Nicolas 
 is at once a prophecy and an epilogue — an epilogue in 
 respect of its ideal of a rejuvenated Civitas Dei with 
 Pope and Emperor again shining forth as twin though 
 limited rulers ; a prophecy in its conception of society 
 as organic, in its proclamation of the right to consent, 
 in its universality. It is almost the last book which 
 treats Christendom as a single organic system, in which 
 a complete theory of politics, whole and parts, is set 
 forth. 
 
 Its key-note is harmony. The author strives to 
 find the harmony which unites earthly government to 
 heavenly ; secular to spiritual ; he takes the various 
 members of the body politic. The unity of the whole, 
 not in spite of but manifested in and through difference, 
 is the constant thought of the author, and the (indirect) 
 Divine origin of all government, but he strives to har- 
 monise the two notions of the Divine and human origin 
 of authority. For if power is in the ultimate resort from 
 God ; immediately, and apparently it comes from man. 
 The consent and agreement of the Christian community 
 is the origin of Papal authority, which is a delegation 
 from the people, and may be removed at their will. 
 The civil power is to be free from ecclesiastical 
 interference, and unhampered by clericalism. Yet it 
 needs reforming. The Emperor is to be surrounded by 
 a continual Council and to do nothing apart from them. 
 There is also to be an annual representative assembly at 
 
6o The Conciliar Movement and [lect. 
 
 Frankfort. Electors are to give up their evil habits of 
 corruption and the securing of concessions beforehand. 
 Taxation must be reformed. Customs and laws, so far 
 as possible, are to be unified. The book was written 
 nearly sevei\ty years before the " reception '' of Roman 
 law in Germany. 
 
 Like Zabarella, Nicolas would grant to the Emperor 
 large powers in regard to the Church ; while he sets 
 very high the authority of the synods of single nations. 
 Only for strictly universal legislation is a general Council 
 necessary. Like Gregory of Heimburg, Nicolas of 
 Cues appears to have doubted the efficacy of perse- 
 cution, and had at least some leanings towards religious 
 toleration. 
 
 Whether or no this was really the case the Catholic 
 Concord sheds a sunset glory over the medieval world. 
 Its sweet reasonableness of tone, its calmness and 
 serenity of argument, its lofty eloquence, the sanctified 
 common sense which refuses to allow the absolute 
 claims of legal rights upon a society which needs reno- 
 vation, suggest a comparison with Hooker, to whose 
 theory of Law that of Nicolas bears a strong re- 
 semblance. Could indeed the ancient world have been 
 reformed in the way Nicolas suggests, our debt to the 
 Middle Ages might be even greater than it is; nor 
 should we have been divided from them by a revo- 
 lution". 
 
 But it was not. The Papalist reaction, both in theory 
 and practice, drove on with speed ; and helped, though 
 indirectly, to secure the general development of abso- 
 lutism in the next two centuries ^^. Reform when it 
 came took a harder and more self-contained form than 
 the federalist union of Nicolas's dreams. 
 
ii] the Papalist Reaction 6i 
 
 This book however remains a magnificent expression 
 of the ideal of a Christendom ruled by the principle of 
 harmony, rather than that of uniformity, in which one 
 polity shall still embrace both civil and spiritual activities, 
 and brotherhood, the supreme principle of Christianity, 
 shall become the inspiration of a delicately articulated 
 society, the source of a varied and developing activity". 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 LUTHER AND MACHIAVELLI. 
 
 A CYNIC might remark that religion was merely the 
 a"/o)Vi(7iJLa 6? TO irapa,')(prifjLa of the Reformation, its KT^fia 
 6s del was the State,.! It was the function of Luther, of 
 Zwingli, of Anglicans like Whitgift and Hooker, to 
 transfer to the State most of the prerogatives that had 
 \; belonged in the Middle Ages to the Church^ Or rather- 
 what happened was this ; the one society, with civil 
 and ecclesiastical authorities functioning within, was con- 
 ceived as a Church in the Middle Ages, as the Civitas 
 Dei of Christendom, the Holy Roman Empire, an 
 institution which is as much, if not more, a Church than 
 a State ; by Protestantism the limits of society are 
 narrowed to the nation or the territorial estate, while its 
 nature is more that of a State than a Church. Or, to 
 phrase it again differently, the medieval mind conceived 
 of its universal Church-State, with power ultimately fixed 
 in the Spiritual head bounded by no territorial frontier ; 
 the Protestant mind places all ecclesiastical authority 
 below the jurisdiction and subject to the control of the 
 " Godly prince," who is omnipotent in his own dominioi^ 
 It was not until the exigencies of the situation compelled 
 the Presbyterians to claim rights independent of the 
 State, that the theory of two distinct kingdoms is set 
 
LECT. Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 63 
 
 forth ; though it is proved speedily to be of service by 
 all sides, and is adopted by Jesuits as against the civil 
 power, by French royalists like Barclay as against 
 ultramotitane claims, and finds eventually in Warburton 
 the most comolete exponent of the contractual theory of 
 government. Vj^he change is a change from a world- 
 empire to a territorial State, and from ecclesiastical to 
 civil predominance. In the first phase of the Reforma- 
 tion, it was the civil power that reaped all or most of 
 its fruits. By the destruction of the independence of 
 the Church and its hold on an extra-territorial public 
 opinion, the last obstacle to unity within the State was 
 removed.' 'The secularisation of monastic property meant 
 on the one hand an increase of wealth to the prince, 
 on the other restored a large mass of inhabitants to 
 the jurisdiction of the ordinary authority. The true 
 monastery is the State, said Erasmus ; by which he 
 meant that the communal life, supposed to be the 
 distinction of the monastery, ought to inspire all the 
 members of a civil society, which should not con- 
 sist of semi-private cliques. The violence of both 
 Luther and Melanchthon in regard to the monastic ideal 
 is at least partly political. They felt the monastic 
 system to be a constant rebuke to their conception both 
 of a Christian family and a Christian commonwealth. 
 Only recently has the meaning of this denunciation been 
 indicated by M. Combes, some of whose speeches are 
 inspired by exactly the same notion, that loyalty to a 
 small corporate society is incompatible with loyalty to 
 the State, while the vow of obedience when understood 
 completely is opposed to the development of individual 
 conscience^. Further than this, the Refoynation coin- 
 cided either with the destruction of feudal privilege by 
 
64 Luther and Machiavelli [lect, 
 
 the power of the State as in France, or else as in Germany 
 with its elevation into a sovereignty. The authority of 
 the Emperor decayed ; the authority of the Prince from 
 being merely feudal became paramount and ubiquitous, 
 largely through the influence of Luther. We may 
 arrange the influence in this respect of Luther under 
 the following heads. 
 
 It was definitely an influence in favour of the lay 
 authorities. Later on doubtless the Lutheran theologians 
 tended to become hieratic and clerical. But so far as 
 Luther's feelings were concerned, the whole bent of his 
 mind was in favour of the sanctity of the lay power as 
 against the ecclesiastical. Nor had he any means to his 
 hand but the ruling classes of Germany. He therefore 
 appealed to them and by so doing gave an immense 
 increase to their power. It was true that certain phrases 
 in the Liberty of a Christian Man, and his individualist 
 tendency, might be and were interpreted in another way. 
 So far as Luther, however, was concerned, the Anabaptist 
 movement only had the effect of throwing him more 
 strongly than ever on the side of authority. For the rest of 
 the century '' respectable " Protestantism was nervously 
 apprehensive of being regarded as politically revolu- 
 tionary. This is the motive of such books as Tyndale's 
 Obedience of a Christian Man on the one hand, and of 
 Cartwright's bitter resentment at Whitgift's attempt to 
 show that his opinions were Anabaptist in tendency ; and 
 the same note can be found in some of the Huguenot 
 apologies. 
 
 Luther's language and attitude were by no means 
 always consistent ; yet he was quite justified in claiming 
 to have done more than anyone else to promote princely 
 authority*- Even his deviations from this are explicable. 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 65 
 
 In regard to the peasants in 1525 we must bear in 
 mind that Luther never allowed the right of overt 
 resistance. The earlier phase of his attitude, in which he 
 rebuked the nobles for oppression and showed some 
 sympathy with the peasants, never amounted to more 
 than a desire for the redress of their grievances. If his. 
 attitude at this time was not that of the violent instigator 
 of carnage which he afterwards adopted, he never 
 permitted the peasant to suppose that he regarded 
 resistance to the powers that be as lawful. There was 
 no change of theory, only a slight shifting of sympathy. - 
 
 It would indeed be hard to find a more thoroughgoing 
 expression of the doctrine of " Passive Obedience," than 
 that of Luther's first address to the peasants. He scoffs 
 at the idea of standing up for one's x'l^Xs,"- Leiden, Leiden, 
 Kreuz, Kreuz ist der Christenrecht, das undkein anderes^." 
 Not only God's Law (both of the old and the new 
 dispensation) but national law is against the right of the 
 peasants to resist. If they are bent on resistance they had 
 better give up the name of Christians and adopt some 
 other more suitable, for our rights are not to resist, but 
 to pray for our enemies and do good to our persecutors. 
 
 In addition to this he asserts the necessity of 
 inequalities of rank in the civil State, and declares that 
 the third article would make all men equal, and reduce 
 Christ's spiritual kingdom to a merely external earthly 
 realm ^ 
 
 It was not in theory that Luther's attitude underwent 
 a change. It was in the practical question, to what 
 extent the lords were to exercise their right of oppression, 
 and how far they were to make concessions, that he was 
 inconsistent, and from a general assertion 'of the duty 
 
 ^- 5 
 
66 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 of just dealing passed to a support of indiscriminate 
 massacre. 
 
 Luther, in fact, rated both the office and the utiHty 
 of the Christian prince so high, that it was natural that 
 he should be a main supporter of the doctrine of passive 
 obedience in its modern form*. We must not forget 
 that the Middle Ages never denied the common 
 interpretation of such texts as those of Romans xiii. 
 and I Peter ii., which assert the religious duty of 
 obedience to the powers that be, and the wickedness of 
 rebellion. What the ordinary medieval theorist did was to 
 assert that in the last resort the " powers that be " in the 
 Commonwealth of Christendom were the ecclesiastical 
 authorities ; hence it is only to the Pope that Passive 
 Resistance is a possible duty ; as against the King active 
 resistance is allowed, when authorized from Rome. In 
 some cases doubtless this duty was claimed for the lay 
 power, but even then there was a large reservation in 
 favour of the Pope's authority. Now the movement in- 
 augurated by Luther denied all coercive authority to the 
 ecclesiastical officer ; as Melanchthon said, the power of 
 ' making laws did not belong to the spiritual sword. 
 Consequently the limitations of the text must apply to 
 th^ civil power, and obedience was claimed unreservedly 
 for the " godly prince " ; i.e., the ruler of a Christian 
 State. It is the reiterated complaint of Whitgift against 
 Cartwright that he allows to the Christian no more 
 authority than to a Turkish prince. We shall see later 
 on how it is to the ecclesiastical party, whether Jesuit or 
 Presbyterian, that the purely secular theory of the civil 
 State is due. To Luther, however, to the Protestants in 
 Germany, to Zwingli and to the Anglican Divines, and to 
 
.Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 67 
 
 Althusius the civil power is essentially holy ; it is formed 
 for the purpose of fulfilling one great object of Christ's 
 religion, the love of man towards his neighbour, which 
 again is dependent on his love towards God. Hence 
 he is far from the view that regards the civil power as 
 a mere contrivance to secure external tranquillity and 
 peace, and entirely external except so far as it obeys the 
 Church. Luther, in fact, refuses to make that sharp" '^ 
 distinction of sacred and secular so characteristic of the 
 Latin world ; and paves the way for the exalted theory 
 of the State entertained by Hegel and his followers. He 
 is as much the spiritual ancestor of the high theory of 
 the State, as tKe Jesuits and their allies are of the 
 narrower, utilitarian theory. 
 
 Yet in one respect must it not be admitted, that 
 Luther was inconsistent ? Surely no one can assert that 
 his life and his precepts did anything to maintain the 
 tottering authority of the Empire. Was it not on the 
 contrary the effect of his action, if not of his theory, to 
 destroy the last relics of any practicable unity in the 
 Empire, and to leave of it nothing but the corpse which 
 crumbled at the touch of Napoleon ? Exactly. The 
 Holy Roman Empire, of which it must be borne in mind 
 the Pope was an official, as well as the Emperor, the 
 Civitas Dei of the Middle Ages, received its death-blow 
 from Luther. Its impotence was of long standing, and 
 was due to the inability of Popes and Emperors to come 
 to any working agreement. Maximilian, however, had 
 done something to restore efficiency to the constitution. 
 What Charles V might have done but for the religious 
 revolution, we cannot say. But at any rate the religious 
 revolution gave to the territorial magnates the last thing 
 they needed to make their power into an autocracy and 
 
 5—2 
 
68 Luther and Machiavelli [lect, 
 
 to rule out all effective interference from above. It is 
 not of the secular head as universal monarch, not of 
 a president of a federal State, that the Reformation 
 affirmed the god-given authority. It tended to reduce 
 the notion of any Divine superintendence of affairs 
 from the international to the territorial sphere ; and of 
 the Divine origin of the ruler from a federal to a purely 
 unitary power. Both inside and outside the Empire 
 federalism was at a discount from the Reformation 
 onwards. Either the Church became as in Protestant 
 countries a purely national organization, helping at once 
 to maintain and to vivify the principle of territorialism ; 
 or as among the Roman Catholfcs, while remaining extra- 
 territorial and non-national, it became more unitary, more 
 compact, ■ more autocratic than in the Middle Ages. 
 There was far less of the federal spirit at Trent than 
 at Constance, and the letter of Carlo Borromeo 
 declaring that the last thing the Pope would consent to 
 was the votii^ by nations is expressive of the spirit 
 which became dominant in the Roman Church'. Every- 
 where we see the triumph of the unitary system. The 
 ideal of Christendom as a whole, with Pope and Emperor 
 at its head, gave way to the notion of the godly prince ; 
 and potent in some respects as was Luther's nationalist 
 influence, it was not so much the German people as 
 the sovereign territorial prince that reaped the benefit. 
 The prince officially " most religious," within a nation 
 unitary in religion, in finance, in bureaucratic manage- 
 ment, striving to secure morality, and to repress vice 
 as well as crime, is the ideal alike of the Reformation 
 and the Counter-Reformation. Outside that limit, the 
 reign of force proceeds unchecked, and international 
 relations are less than ever subject to the notion of 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 69 
 
 any guidance beyond that of the "law of the beasts." 
 Luther's principles for the internal, and Machiavelli's 
 practice for the external direction of the State were to 
 be the ideal for many generations. 
 
 This is true even of the " Catholic kings," and is of 
 course obvious in the case of Venice and France. The 
 sentiment of all Europe was against Paul V in his 
 attempt to take up the position of a rigid canonist in 
 regard to the Venetian Republic, and he had to give way. 
 No Pope could afford, at any rate for some time, to risk 
 a new investiture controversy. The saying of Maximilian 
 that Luther might be useful some day proved lit.erally 
 true, and true for all Catholic princes until the French 
 Revolution provoked by reaction an increase of the 
 ultramontane spirit. It was only when, as in the case 
 of France under Louis XIV, the King had given 
 hostages to orthodoxy by the revival of the spirit of 
 persecution that the Galilean spirit was beaten. On the 
 whole, however, the supremacy of the common law of 
 the land over everyone within its borders, including 
 the clergy, triumphed universally with the Reformation. 
 Luther's influence tended to give this the widest exten- 
 sion possible. He based the Royal authority upon 
 Divine right with practically no reservation ; and by 
 asserting the duty of the prince to play the part of 
 Josiah made it possible for an Elector Palatine to assert 
 that his subjects' consciences belonged to him. The 
 principle of Cujus regio, ejus religio was the seeming 
 result of the competitive spirit in i-eligion, coupled with 
 the growth of territorial power. It exalted the power 
 whose religion was dominant rather than the particular 
 religion he might adopt. The uniformity of eccle- 
 
70 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 siastical law which had formed a common law for the 
 West gave place to an international system of religion ; 
 only with the modern growth of toleration did religion 
 from a public become a private matter, the concern of 
 the individual. 
 
 Whatever practical limitation to the power of the 
 Sovereign might be recognized by the form of the State, 
 the gain to its pretensions, whether king or republic, and 
 the assurance of its legal omnipotence were lasting, and 
 only to be measured by the destruction of any common 
 extraterritorial authority. The increase of unity within, 
 at the expense of all forms of federalism, and the denial 
 of any kind of unity without, except such as was main- 
 tained by the very shadowy forces of International Law, 
 were at once the consequence and the condition of 
 Luther's success. 
 
 ' We must not exaggerate, and in the remaining 
 lectures we shall be tracing the growth of the influ- 
 enges jihat formed some check upon these tendencies. 
 fihc practical abolition of benefit of clergy, the substi- 
 tution of the ideal of the good householder for that of 
 the saint and the monk, the unification of all powers 
 within the State, the ascription of all coercive authority 
 to the civil ruler, and the inculcation of the duty of 
 absolute non-resistance are not, of course, Luther's sole 
 work, even in politics j/but they are the most salient 
 features of the Wh6le movement, of whose spirit his 
 career is a symbol. The Church had, in fact, been 
 the first and greatest "immunist"; as it was the first 
 so it was the last. If Bluntschli's much canvassed 
 statement that the State is male and the Church 
 female be accepted, we must regard the Middle Ages as 
 
hi] Luther and Machiavelli 71 
 
 the period par excellence of woman's rights, except that 
 we have no right to speak of two societies. Of divided 
 allegiance, of authorized separation of powers in the 
 body politic, the Pope could say as was said of 
 another independence, " I watched by its cradle, I 
 followed its hearse." Richelieu, no less than Cecil 
 or Parker, was a product of the Reforming movement. 
 Had there been no Luther there could never have 
 been a Louis XIV. In fact, the religion of the State 
 superseded the religion of the Church. Its first form , 
 was the Divine Right of Kings. Luther and Machiavelli \ 
 were two of the most important factors in the change. 
 But its results lasted longer. The unified democracy of 
 Rousseau's scheme, and the realization of "the Idea" 
 in Hegel's State-system both owe something of their 
 nature to this movement. Both start from the assump- 
 tion that the State is man's chief good upon earth, that 
 its authority is to be all pervading and irresistible, that 
 its rights are inalienable, and that no individual rights, 
 not even those of religion, can stand against it. Luther's 
 conception of the State and of duty to one's neighbour 
 directly paved the way for that of Hegel. 
 
 The doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings is in its /\ 
 origin, as a rapid reference to Dante will show, an asser- 
 tion of the rights of the lay as against the ecclesiastical 
 power. Its purport is to deny all theories of ecclesias- 
 tical supremacy. Whatever power may be granted to 
 the spiritual authority by believers in this doctrine — and 
 it may be a good deal — this much is denied, that the 
 temporal power exists by its favour, that the State is 
 but a department of the Church. The Divine Right of \ 
 Kings asserts the inherent right of political society to 
 exist ; that the civil sword is God's ordinance no less 
 
72 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 than the ecclesiastical ; or in the " terms of art," the 
 power of the prince comes immediately from God, not 
 mediately through Pope or Kirk. Hence the Prince or 
 the State which he represents is accountable to none but 
 God, and political sovereignty " is at all times so free as 
 to be*in no earthly subjection in all things touching the 
 regality of the said power." 
 
 TThe supporters of Divine Right were thinking first 
 - and foremost of the secular independence of foreign or 
 internal ecclesiastical power, only secondarily of the 
 Rights of the King or the State against the individual. 
 Carried to its completest extent and interpreted without 
 any reservations, the doctrine obviously might and does 
 in some cases lead to the absplute destruction of in- 
 dividual liberty and the- absorption of all rights in the 
 power of an arbitrary monarchy, and certainly of an 
 uncontrollable State. This doctrine, so far as it rests on 
 the notion of secular independence, was not new ; it had 
 been forged in the conflicts of Pope and Emperor. In 
 the 1 6th and 17th centuries, indeed, it became hardened 
 and took up into it certain other elements, such as the 
 -doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right, which after- 
 wards overshadowed the others. But it was the need 
 of a Reformation, or rather the political aspect of the 
 Reformation, which gave the doctrine a new vogue, and 
 for a couple of centuries rendered political speculation 
 rather more than less dependent on theology, or at least 
 on Scripture, than it had been becoming. The influence 
 of Aristotle, and later on of the Renaissance, was all 
 away from the theological conception of politics ; we 
 see the two combined in S. Thomas, while in ^tienne 
 de la Boedtie or in Machiavelli we see political thought 
 entirely non-theological. 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 73 
 
 The tendency, however, was counteracted by the 
 Reformation in Germany. Presbyterianism, both in 
 theory and practice, alike in Germany, Heidelberg and 
 in Scotland, was not less but more ecclesiastical in spirit 
 and in pretensions than the medieval Church. It was 
 not, indeed, quite the same, for the Presbyterian theory, 
 whether in Cartwright or Melville, developed the notion 
 of Church and State as two distinct societies with different 
 aims and officers ; to the medieval mind there was always 
 one society with its temporal and spiritual officers. The 
 same change, however (as we shall see), came over the 
 Roman hierarchical doctrine ; and the Jesuits developed 
 the notion of the Church as a societas perfecta over 
 against the other societas perfecta. This theory is not 
 necessarily one of the tutelage of the lay power by the 
 ecclesiastical, like the ordinary hierarchical doctrine of 
 the Middle Ages. There can, however, be no doubt, that 
 in its earlier phase the Presbyterian doctrine was fully as 
 ecclesiastical and anti-secular, as was the Roman/; that 
 it equally denied all real independence to the civil ruler, 
 and demanded that ecclesiastical interests should domi- 
 nate in politics. 
 
 When the Reformation is spoken of as redounding to 
 the advantage of the civil ruler, and largely an expres- 
 sion of the advent of the secular power to omnipotence, 
 it is not of the Presbyterian or Calvinist side of it that 
 we are thinking, but rather of the Reforming movement 
 as it developed in Germany, England, or Sweden. There\ 
 the movement was at bottom a lay movement. When | 
 Luther burnt the Corpus Juris Canonici, he symbolised j 
 and intended to symbolise the entire abolition of all | 
 claims, not only to superiority, but even to any kind/ 
 of coercive or inherent jurisdiction in the Church. He 
 
74 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 destroyed, in fact, the metaphor of the two swords ; 
 henceforth there should be but one, wielded by a rightly 
 advised and godly prince. It is a curious fact that 
 Luther, whose fundamental motive was a love of liberty 
 and care for the rights of one's neighbours, should have 
 been so powerful a supporter of absolutism. 
 
 With his exalted view of the power of the Civil 
 Governor, and with the very low view Luther took of 
 the value of sacerdotal gifts, it is not surprising that 
 Luther's accession to power resulted in those principles 
 known as Erastian. Even here we must distinguish. 
 Luther and the Zwinglians, who in this respect were 
 very similar, did not really intend to make truth the 
 sport of political exigencies, and to recognize in the civil 
 magistrate the right to define the faith. Luther, at any 
 rate in his earlier stages, makes large reserves in regard 
 to matters of doctrine and order. Erastus himself says 
 distinctly he is only considering the case of a State 
 where but one religion is permitted, and that the true 
 one, and left Heidelberg when in 1580 the new Elector 
 reverted to Lutheranism^- The position of Protestantism,' 
 even of Knox, is that the godly prince, i.e., the lay 
 power within the Church, has power to make the 
 necessary reforms when the Pope will not: the king, 
 in fact, is to do right, when no one else will. The 
 administration and all coercive jurisdiction over the 
 clergy in the last resort springs from the prince ; he 
 is completely to be master in his own house. As 
 Melanchthon said, legislative power does not belong 
 to the Church, for so far as it is a kingdom at all it 
 is one not of this world. The only Civitas Dei in any 
 sense of the word commonwealth which is not purely 
 metaphorical is the State ; to Luther the Anabaptist 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 75 
 
 claim (which was very medieval in spirit) to find it in 
 the Church, like the Peasants' claim that men are all equal, 
 only produced a sharpened sense that the Kingdom of 
 God is a purely inward, spiritual thing ; in fact he was 
 largely instrumental in destroying, not merely the fact, 
 but even the principle of liberty, so far as individuals 
 were concerned, throughout Germany ; while Calvin, 
 whose own motives were essentially those of iron 
 authority and order, largely helped to produce those 
 conditions which kept it alive both in practice ©r 
 theory. The reason of this is that Calvin happened 
 to influence permanently either a minority in a hostile 
 State as in France or England, or a nation struggling 
 to be free like the Dutch. That his principles were 
 in themselves in no way based on any ideal of 
 individual liberty may be illustrated from the history 
 of Geneva, New England, Scotland, the Synod of 
 Dort, and the Puritan Revolution. But just because 
 as in the Netherlands and France Calvinism was in- 
 extricably mingled with a struggle against tyranny and 
 insurrection, which required a theoretical basis, or as in 
 England it became the cachet of a persecuted minority, 
 the determination not to be suppressed which these 
 bodies of men displayed helped to keep alive the fire of 
 liberty for other influences to fan into a flame. Luther, 
 on the other hand, really believed in individual freedom, j 
 a fact which may be proved by a perusal of the Liberty \ 
 of a Christian Man ; but while on the one hand his 
 extreme conservatism and his literal view of the New 
 Testament led him to a strong doctrine of non-resistance, 
 on the other he saw in the existing condition of the 
 Empire, that the person whose freedom at that 
 moment it was most necessary to proclaim was not 
 
76 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 the individual but the prince. As against Pope and 
 Emperor his life and writings equally helped to make the 
 princes realize for themselves the liberty of a Christian 
 man'- So far as Luther really assisted to promote 
 despotism, it is due partly to his being frightened by the 
 Peasants' revolt, and the excesses of the Anabaptists, 
 partly to the fact that, having substituted in his own 
 mind a lay power for an ecclesiastical, to him the State 
 was that which, in the Middle Ages, the Church had 
 been, " a partnership in every art, a partnership in every 
 science, in every virtue and all perfection." That this 
 omnipotence was at the moment in the hands of indi- 
 viduals, was probably only to his mind an accident ; 
 it is as a matter of fact the reforming despots of the 
 Aufkldrung who are the final goal of Luther's efforts". 
 Undoubtedly the real effect of his writings was revo- 
 lutionary. He did more than any other man to shorten 
 what Acton called the " reign of the dead." But in 
 politics, the revolution was one not in favour of liberty 
 but against it, and so far from improving the position of ■ 
 the poor it rendered it more abject, and added contempt 
 to misery. Freedom from a spiritual tyranny which was 
 at bottom also political, was the actual motive vivid and 
 present to his mind" Luther's thought was essentially 
 practical ; and he fell back upon the only power that 
 could effect his ends. Even the Conciliar party fell 
 back, to a large extent, upon the lay power, and that 
 movement was not only nationalist, it was lay in its 
 leaning. It is interesting to compare the Letter to the 
 German nobility with the De Concordantia Catholica, and 
 see how at this early stage Luther's views pointed on the 
 one hand to the carrying forward of the idea of reform- 
 ing the Church by the help of the Imperial power, and 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli Tj 
 
 accompanied by a reformation of the State, which was 
 the main theme of Nicolas of Cues, and on the other hand 
 tended to eviscerate to all intents and purposes the term 
 " Kingdom of God," and apply it either to the state of 
 the believer's soul, righteousness, peace and joy, or to 
 a purely invisible and unorganised collection of beings, 
 both living and dead. The invisibility of the Church 
 is, in fact, to Luther the condition and the counterpart 
 of the visibility of the State — which in its full sense is a 
 new thing. 
 
 Luther's position, and that of other Protestants like 
 Musculus, or Hooker and Whitgift, was only possible 
 because our phrase — the conflicts of Church and State — 
 is a misnomer when applied to the struggle between Popes,, 
 and Emperors in the Middle Ages ; it cannot be too often 
 reiterated that the thinkers of the Middle Ages were not 
 concerned with two separate and distinct societies, but 
 merely with the relations between different officers or at 
 most different departments of the society. Speaking 
 .generally the medieval mind puts the ecclesiastical 
 officer at the head. Luther, following Wyclif and 
 Dante, puts the civil at the head. Only later do we 
 find, first in Presbyterians and afterwards in Jesuits, the 
 distinct recognition of two societies whose relations are 
 to be decided by some form of contract. 
 
 In any case we must not confuse Luther with Hobbes. 
 It is true that the effect of the Protestant movement in 
 Germany was to give the prince an entirely unwarrantable 
 authority over the religion of his subjects, which- he 
 thought he had a right to change at his will. It is also 
 true that Erastianism in its strict sense leads logically 
 and practically to Erastianism in its developed sense, 
 which makes religion the plaything of statesmen who 
 

 yd Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 may or may not profess any themselves. But the actual 
 thought of Luther stops far short of this. All that he and 
 his imitators asserted is the right of the most religious 
 and gracious King " to visit, redress, reform, order, correct 
 and amend all manner of heresies, errors, schisms, abuses, 
 offences, contempts, and enormities whatsoever, which by 
 any manner of spiritual or ecclesiastical power, authority 
 or jurisdiction can or may lawfully be reformed, ordered, 
 &c., &c., to the pleasure of Almighty God, the increase of 
 virtue. ,a ^d the c onservation of the peace and unity of this 
 realm.'vTheir doctrine was that all coercive authority was 
 vestedr in the prince by Divine Right ; that the power of 
 the State was absolutely vested in him ; that no other 
 separate organization could exist except by his fiat, or by 
 his delegatiotijj The hostility of Melanchthon and others 
 to monasticcommunities is largely based on this, that 
 they set up a different bond of society to that of the 
 commonwealth ; and possess a unity which is not of that 
 of the civil State. No real social unities are to exist 
 apart from the State ; the medieval notion of a covt- 
 ■munitas communitatum gives way to the civilian doctrine 
 of the omni-competent State set over against a mass of 
 individuals. That this doctrine was dangerous is true 
 enough ; that it does not tally with the facts of life is 
 also true ; that it took generations to work out and is 
 only now receiving its complete interpretation in the 
 speeches of M. Combes, the Judgments of the House of 
 Lords in the Free Church Case, and in the aims of 
 Dr,CHffordJs also true! But that for the time and at the 
 momen? Luther and his followers only intended to assert 
 that the lay power must be supreme, and that the unitary 
 State was a self-subsistent entity, having therefore a 
 Divine sanction apart from the ecclesiastical, is all that 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 79 
 
 we can say. (The freedom of the lay power from a 
 clerical co"rifft*, and hence the sovereignty of the prince — 
 this is the sum and substance of their contention. This, 
 as we know, worked out to mean the practical destruction 
 of the Imperial authority on the one hand ; and the 
 removal of all checks on princely tyranny on the other. 
 Luther was far more revolutionary than he cared to admit 
 or liked to believe. It is, however, against the unity 
 of the Empire that his doctrines were subversive. In 
 spite of his insistence on the duty of caring for one's 
 neighbours, and of his condemnation of the evils of the 
 newer capitalism, so far as concerned the peasants and 
 the lower classes in general, Luther's supremacy worked 
 for anything but amelioration. Above all, the dislike 
 to the whole monastic ideal which characterised the 
 reforming movement, helped to usher in that vulgar 
 contempt for poverty, and the placing of comfort before 
 character as an ideal, which is so distinctive of the 
 modern as compared with the medieval world. This it 
 is, perhaps, more than anything else that justifies 
 Matthew Arnold's dictum that he was only a " Philistine 
 of Genius." 
 
 Luther is merely taken as typical of the whole 
 movement of which he did not always do more than 
 serve as the expression. The point is that with him the 
 idea of the freedom of the lay powers to be found in 
 Dante, in Marsiglio, in Wyclif, steps upon the stage of 
 practical politics, and connects itself with that general 
 tendency towairds hereditary territorial sovereignty with- 
 out which it could have had no lasting effect. His 
 desire for a really omnipotent and reforming council puts 
 him alongside of those Conciliar writers whom we dis- 
 cussed last week. He did but develop some of their views 
 
8o Luther and Machiavelli [lect, 
 
 about the rights of the laity and also of national 
 independence. We cannot understand the movement 
 which succeeded without reference to those which failed. 
 ' The unity and universality and essential rightness of the 
 sovereign territorial State, and the denial of every extra- 
 territorial or independent communal form of life, are 
 Luther's lasting contribution to politics.* Yet even the. 
 form which he gave to his ideas endured a lon g time.\ 
 His return to the Scripture and the extremely literal 
 interpretations which he favoured, coupled with his 
 disbelief in ecclesiastical power, made that absolute 
 reliance on the literal sense of the texts about non- 
 resistance to temporal authority the cachet of all royalist 
 writing for a couple of centuries. The idea that the 
 " powers that be '' could refer to ecclesiastical authorities 
 (which we saw was the medieval gloss on an awkward 
 passage) naturally appeared ridiculous, if the whole of 
 the Papal authority was the wickedest of all usurpations. 
 Luther's genuine belief in "Liberty" finds expression 
 in the Liberty of a Christian Man, and he uses words 
 about the necessity of consent to justify laws which 
 might have been expanded into a programme of freedom. 
 So far, however, as this was done by Karlstadt, the 
 Peasants or the Anabaptists, Luther repudiated their 
 glosses, and became more and more hostile to any claim 
 to limit princely power. Tltwa§ by transferring the 
 notion of non-resistance/ from the Imperial to the 
 princely, and from the ecclesiastical to the lay power, 
 that Luther gave to the doctrine of the Divine Right of 
 Kings such universal and enduring prevalence. Passive 
 obedience even to the Emperor indeed was pretty nearly 
 all that was wanted to enable Lutheranism to growjfc it 
 was only when Charles was able seriously to undemke 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 8i 
 
 the subjugation of Protestantism, that some theory of 
 princely resistance had to be found. 
 
 For the years immediately succeeding the Diet of 
 Worms, the practice of passive obedience, i.e., the mere 
 non-fulfilment of the edict, was quite sufficient. So that 
 for longer than he realized, Luther w^is able to believe 
 both in the Imperial and the princely authority ; 
 eventually, rather reluctantly he had to give up the 
 former and justify the League of Schmalkalde. 
 
 It is with Luther that the long catena of Protestant 
 divines on the side of non-resistance quoted by Salmasius 
 begins ; and he fixed, in this respect, or rather expressed 
 the attitude of mind, which remained distinctively 
 Protestant in all those countries (except Scotland) where 
 Proteststilfism was national in character. 
 
 Roughly speaking, what Luther did in the world of 
 Politics was to transfer to the tempor al sovereign the 
 halo of sanctity that had hitherto been mainly the privi- 
 lege of the ecclesiastical ; and to change the admiration 
 of men from the saintly to the civic virtues, and their 
 ideals from the monastic life to the domestic, and all this 
 as a part of the Divine ordering of the world. / It was 
 largely an accident that for the next two cefiTJiTies these 
 ideals redounded to the advantage of monarchy, and 
 made the prince an autocrat in his own country. It 
 only needed a change in the depositary of the sovereign 
 power to make the same conceptions of the holiness of 
 the State and the duty of n^iWesistance apply to the 
 citizen of a democracy unified according to the ideas of 
 Rousseau. 
 
 We turn for a little to a teacher anything but religious. 
 It would be impossible to gain any adequate notion of 
 
 F. 6 
 
 \ 
 
82 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 the intellectual forces, that made up the mind of the 
 average European statesman from 1600-1800 if we 
 altogether omitted a consideration of the influence of 
 Machiavelli. This must be the cause for his introduc- 
 tion into this course of lectures; this and one or two 
 other reasons to be noted presently. It is now generally 
 recognised that it was not monarchy but efficiency for 
 which Machiavelli cared, and that it was only as a means 
 to an end that he recommended tyranny. His prefer- 
 ence, as indicated in the Discorsi, was clearly for some 
 form of republic or constitutional monarchy, of which he 
 took the French to be an example". It may, however, be 
 pointed out that the ideal of efficiency, if it be exclusive, 
 will almost invariably tend to become an apology for 
 tyranny, whether that of mob or monarch. The moment 
 a man begins to think of any particular reform as more 
 important than any loss to human character that can 
 accrue through waiting on the task of educating the 
 public conscience to effect it, the moment, that is, he sets 
 this or that object as an end itself irrespective of the 
 men who are to reach it, he is bound to become impatient 
 of average stupidity, contemptuous of all rules, legal, 
 moral or custornary, which delay the accomplishment of 
 his ends. " The true type of Strafford was the revolu- 
 tionary -idealist hewing his way to his end without 
 regard to obstacles." What is true of Strafford or 
 Bacon, as apologists for despotism in their desire for 
 the quick removal of abuses, is true of anarchists like 
 Ravachoff or the Phoenix Park murderers, or terrorists 
 like Robespierre, and many amiable socialists to-day. 
 In all cases, the desire for some particular reform tends 
 to remove that care for the gradual education of charac- 
 ter, which is more important than any given measures, is 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 83 
 
 always so easy to ignore or thrust aside in the enthusiasm 
 of a great cause, and is yet at the basis of all true 
 liberty, whether religious or civil. The cause for which 
 Machiavelli laboured was, outside the religious sphere, as 
 noble as a man could have, and the piercing eloquence 
 of the last chapter of the Prince must find an echo in the 
 hearts of many who denounce his system". Yet, if once 
 the safety of any particular country be set up as an end 
 in itself, it is clear that any and all of the measures which 
 Machiavelli approves may be not only necessary, but 
 praiseworthy^'. Moreover, as we now know, all he did 
 was to express the actual and existing assumptions, on 
 which the scramble of competition was carried out among 
 Italian princes. 
 
 What we are here concerned with is so much of those 
 assumptions as were to influence in the future the politics 
 of Europe. For this purpose we may for the moment 
 rule out as of secondary importance all the means which 
 may be justified from Machiavelli in regard to the 
 internal relations of a ruler and his subjects, presuming 
 that here, as elsewhere, Machiavelli had the future with 
 him, and that efficient extra-legal autocracy was to be 
 the ideal and practice for the government of European 
 States for the next two and a half centuries. 
 
 It is in International Politics, however, that Machia- 
 velli has had his greatest influence. With territorialism 
 dominant, and the unity, however vague, afforded by a 
 single religious system with a recognised code of law, 
 at an end, the relations between States became more 
 definitely those of the " state of nature " than they had 
 been since the early days of the Roman Republic ; the 
 struggle for existence became more keen, and less 
 obviously subject to any rules than it had ever been 
 
 6—2 
 
84 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 before among civilised peoples. Now the remarkable 
 point about Machiavelli (and even of his adversaries) is 
 what he omits ^^. I do not think it quite true to say that 
 he is " inspired by the passionless curiosity of the man 
 of science'^" ; for the question at the back of his mind 
 was never what is the true science of politics ; but what 
 rules of prudence may be garnered from history or con- 
 temporary experience to guide us here and now. But 
 what distinguishes him from his predecessors is his 
 entire discarding of any attempt to found a philosophy 
 of right. To speak generally, all political speculation in 
 the past few centuries might be described as directed 
 to that end ; to Machiavelli, however, the questions which 
 seemed of such importance to S. Thomas and the 
 innumerable other writers on the subject of politics, 
 whatever side they took, were simply beside the mark. 
 He did not, probably, consciously omit them ; it never 
 occurred to him to discuss them. The practical end ruled ' 
 everything, and as has been said " he is the founder of 
 utilitarian ethics." It is remarkable, too, that he ex- 
 presses but the atmosphere of the Italy of his day. 
 Even a writer definitely hostile to him, like Botero, in his 
 work // Ragion (li Stato, yet makes very much the same 
 assumptions, and appeals to the same kind of motives. 
 
 What has vanished from Machiavelli is the conception 
 of natural law. So long as this belief is held, however 
 inadequate may be the conception as a view of the facts 
 of life, it affords some criterion for submitting the acts of 
 statesmen to the rule of justice, and some check on the 
 rule of pure expediency in internal and of force in ex- 
 ternal politics. The more, however, law comes to be 
 seen to be merely positive, the command of a law-giver, 
 the more difficult is it to put any restraints upon the 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 85 
 
 action of the legislator, and in cases of monarchical 
 government to avoid a tyranny. So long as ordinary 
 law is regarded as to some extent merely the explication 
 of law natural, so long there is some general concep- 
 tion remaining by which governments may be judged ; 
 so long, in fact, do they rest on a confessedly moral 
 basis. And this remains true, however little their ordi- 
 nary actions may be justifiable, however much they may 
 in practice overstep their limits. When, however, natural 
 law and its outcome in custom, are discarded, it is clear 
 that the ruler must be consciously sovereign in a way he 
 has not been before, and that his relations to other rulers 
 will also be much freer — especially owing to the confusion 
 of jus naturale with jus gentium which is at the bottom 
 of International Law. The despots of Italy were, in fact, 
 in the Greek sense, tyrants, and Machiavelli did little 
 more than say so. What gives him his importance is 
 that what was true of the small despots of Italy was 
 going to become true of the national monarchs of 
 Europe. To Machiavelli the State, i.e., Italy, is an end l:\/ 
 in itself ; the restraints of natural law seem mere moon- 
 shine to a man of his positif habit ; and he substitutes 
 the practical conceptions of reason of state as a ground 
 of all government action, and the balance of power as 
 the goal of all international efforts, in place of the 
 ancient ideals, inefficient enough but not insignificant, of 
 internal justice and international unity. Now no one 
 can deny that very largely they have been ruling in 
 Europe ever since ; just as it was only three centuries 
 and a half after his day, that Italy herself reached, under 
 the leadership of Cavour, the goal, which Machiavelli had 
 set before her, by methods which his typical man of 
 virtu would scarcely have disdained. v 
 
86 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 We have now to enquire how it was that this notion 
 of natural law, which in some sense ruled speculation 
 from Cicero to Rousseau, has disappeared so entirely 
 before the gaze of Machiavelli. In the first place we 
 must always remember his purpose. He was not writing 
 abstract treatises on government, but looking at facts 
 past or present with the hope of bringing peace to " the 
 distressful country." He did not start from any ideals 
 of government or desire to find them, he did not medi- 
 tate on the philosophy of law. Social justice had to 
 him no meaning apart from the one great end of the 
 salvation of his country. He had the limited hori- 
 zon and unlimited influence which always come of 
 narrowing the problem. There is a sense in which it 
 is quite true that salus populi is suprema lex ; for laws 
 and rules suitable for ordinary times are not always 
 suitable for emergencies, e.g., an interference with per- 
 sonal liberty at other times intolerable, or an executive 
 justice in essence purely administrative, could be endured 
 even by the British Philistine, if there were real and 
 immediate danger of invasion. Every nation would 
 allow that there are emergencies in which it is the right 
 and the duty of a government to proclaim a state of 
 siege and authorize the suppression of the common 
 rules of remedy by the rapid methods of martial law. 
 Now what Machiavelli did, or rather what his followers 
 have been doing ever since, is to elevate this principle 
 into the normal rule for statesmen's actions. When his 
 books are made into a system they must result in a 
 perpetual suspension of the habeas corpus acts of the 
 \j whole human race. It is not the removal of restraints 
 under extraordinary emergencies that is the fallacy of 
 Machiavelli, it is the erection of this removal into an 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 87 
 
 ordinary and every-day rule of action. Machiavelli's 
 maxims are merely the paradoxes of self-defence — just 
 as the mildest householder may adopt a ruse to get rid 
 -V of a burglar, or defend himself with a revolver against 
 violence. It is the transformation of these paradoxes 
 into principles, that has been so dangerous. The net 
 result of his writings has been that, in the long run, 
 Machiavelli's principles have remained, as they ought, 
 as a mere Deus ex machina for internal politics ; but 
 \^ have become a commonplace in International diplomacy. 
 They are of little harm if they are regarded, like justi- 
 fiable homicide, as a necessary breach of the law ; but 
 when they come to be regarded as the law itself the 
 situation alters. Paradoxes only become dangerous 
 when they are transformed into platitudes. Machiavelli 
 actually saw in Italy that the restraints of law and 
 custom had broken down, and he strove to make the best 
 of the existing conditions. The mistake of his followers 
 is that they treat him as though he had been interpreting 
 and laying down rules of universal validity, which it is ■ 
 quixotic even to desire to alter. 
 
 But this is not all. There can, I think, be no doubt 
 that the action of one community in its own real or 
 supposed interests must have had an influence on the 
 Sj'mind of the observer. The autocracy of the Papacy 
 was founded on a theory of sovereignty, which was with 
 Machiavelli beginning to pass over to the secular State. 
 The dispensing power proclaimed more clearly and more 
 universally than any other instrument that laws were 
 but the creature of the ruler and might be disregarded 
 at his will. The lines quoted by Pasquier show us how 
 widespread was the feeling already voiced by Nicolas of 
 Cues, that the crying need of the Church was that laws 
 
88 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 should be regarded as having something more than a 
 merely positive sanction. 
 
 "Je hay ces mots de puissance absolue, 
 De plein pouvoir, de propre mouvement ; 
 Aux saints Decrets ils ont prdmi^rement 
 Puis k nos loix la puissance toUue'^." 
 
 It is true that the Pope was not supposed to 
 have the power to dispense with natural laws, yet 
 the jurisdiction for so long assumed and exercised 
 in the matter of oaths must have largely rendered 
 nugatory this restriction, and he was supposed to 
 be able to dispense with bigamy. For this matter is 
 decisive. It cannot be too often repeated that the funda- 
 mental difiference between Machiavelli and Grotius is 
 concerned with this question. Grotius' contention, which 
 is denied implicitly and explicitly by Machiavelli, is that 
 human life is essentially a society, and that certain laws, 
 of which fidelity to plighted word is the most important, 
 are therefore as immutable as human nature. On this 
 notion he rears the whole of his system. Now it was 
 this system which had been shattered, or largely shat- 
 tered, by the claims of the Popes to " interpret " the 
 obligation of oaths. It is interesting to note that one 
 of the most important instances of it was in direct 
 support of that autocratic power which Machiavelli did 
 so much to advance. Innocent III denied the right 
 of a king to diminish his regality, even though he had 
 sworn to the concession. This was erected by Bartolus 
 into a general principle of the inalienability of sove- 
 reignty^'- It was exactly this notion, that charters 
 and liberties were matters of royal favour, leaving the 
 imperium unimpaired, which was at the bottom of the 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 89 
 
 dealings of James I with his Parliament, which was 
 largely at the basis of those actions of Charles I, that 
 made the Commons distrust all his offers, and which 
 continued down to our own day to disturb the attempts 
 to bind monarchs to constitutional government. It is 
 against this that Talleyrand protested in writing to 
 Louis XVIII, that the rights he guaranteed bythe Charter 
 must be recognised by him as inherent rights, not merely 
 octroyee, and therefore presumably capable of being with- 
 drawn. The dispensing power as a practice, the plenitudo 
 potestatis as a theory, had for some time released the 
 Popes from the restraints of law — which was only what 
 Machiavelli did for the princes. It was, moreover, in the 
 history of the Church more than elsewhere, that the 
 complete subjection of the individual conscience to the 
 interest of the community was demanded and often 
 obtained. The danger of Machiavellianism is that it I 
 demands of the individual in the service of the com- I 
 munity the sacrifice, not merely of his purse or his person, 
 but also of his conscience. This we shall see exempli- ' 
 fied (as indeed is inevitable) more completely in the 
 history of the Church than elsewhere. 
 
 The Council of Constance had decreed in its dealings 
 with Hus that faith was not to be kept with heretics ; if 
 for heretics we read enemies, and for Church read State, 
 we have the whole of Machiavelli's system in this one 
 decree. We must remember that the fundamental 
 conception of a heretic is not a person who is in 
 intellectual error, but a rebel against ecclesiastical 
 authority, and hence the analogy to politics is even closer 
 than might at first appear. Hus was condemned as a 
 religious outlaw to whom human rights no more belonged. 
 If the Church could do this there is nothing that the 
 
90 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 State might not also do in its interests, provided of 
 course the existence of the State is a good thing^*. 
 Moreover it became customary to appeal to this decree 
 in justification of practices generally known as Machiavel- 
 lian. In the Satyre Menippee an instance is afforded. 
 
 Compare the spirit of this famous decree, which 
 practically declares the heretic a "rightless" person, 
 with the extremely grudging condemnation of the 
 principles of Jean Petit, who alleged that he had the 
 support of the greatest canonists in favour of his thesis 
 that a tyrant, i.e., a traitor, may be slain by anyone at 
 any moment i^. We shall see how strongly th^ tide has 
 been running in the Church towards making the Law, 
 whether positive or natural, a thing of nought where the 
 interests of the community itself are concerned. If it is 
 Machiavelli who declares that the end justifies the means, 
 what is most original in him is his naivetd. He says 
 what other people thought, and he regards the civil state 
 as an end in itself^". The hierarchical party regarded no 
 secular State as of such importance that it could dispense 
 with all obligations,, but it tended so to regard the 
 Church although, as we have said, it did not expressly 
 deny that natural law was binding even on the Popes. 
 
 It is, however, undoubted that that complete super- 
 session of the individual by the social conscience which 
 is the cachet of Machiavelli was carried to its highest in 
 an ecclesiastical community^^. The Society of Jesus 
 expressly denies to the individual the duty of acting 
 upon his conscience where it conflicts with the orders of 
 the superiors^^. 
 
 If we take this in conjunction with the famous clause 
 about the individual being quasi cadaver in the hands of 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 91 
 
 the Society, we shall see how complete is the denial of 
 any individual sense of right or wrong or at any rate its 
 absorption in the social. 
 
 The point to notice is that in both cases the error 
 arises from preaching the doctrine of self-sacrifice in an 
 unreal and artificial form. From the point of view of 
 Christian ethics self-sacrifice, which means the spirit of 
 giving, is not at all identical with the self-annihilation 
 which is the last word of the Pessimism of modern times, 
 and of some systems of Oriental ethics. Love does not 
 destroy, it enhances individuality. The gulf between 
 the Christian ideal of Love, and the ideals of Buddha, 
 Schopenhauer and Tolstoi , which mean the destruction 
 of the individual, is at bottom irreconcileable ; yet both 
 by adversaries and believers, the mistake of confounding 
 the one with the other is often made. Ethically what 
 Machiavelli and the Jesuit Institutes alike demand is the 
 complete absorption of the individuality by the social 
 organism. Practically this will mean the tyranny of 
 some one individual or group who can make the Society 
 efficient. It makes no difference whether the community 
 be religious or secular, except that the temptation to 
 make the error is very much greater in the case of a 
 religious body, whose ends are by all adherents recog- 
 nised to be holy. The much abused morality of the 
 Jesuits is only the most thorough-going form of an error, 
 which will probably exist, so long as it is possible for 
 men to conceive great ends, and to be impatient of the 
 hindrances to their accomplishment. Still the fact 
 remains that the principle leads commonly to the 
 idealisation of an individual, who can promote these 
 ends at the cost of ordinary rules of right ; whether 
 it be Cesare Borgia, Bismarck, or Frederic II in the 
 
92 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 civil sphere, or Gregory XIII striking his medal and 
 illuminating Rome in honour of the massacre of 
 S. Bartholomew, or Escobar torturing reason in the 
 effort to make morality smooth to the worldly-minded. 
 The Society of Jesus, perhaps, gives us in the develop- 
 ment of probabilism the truest object-lesson in the 
 inevitable consequences of the acceptance of Machiavelli's 
 principles in regard to communities. These principles 
 are, briefly, that right and wrong are terms that have no 
 meaning in regard to the relations between societies, 
 although in the ordinary view the moral code is to retain 
 unimpaired its authority over private life. / V'^ 
 
 The Society of Jesus, speaking broadly, transfers 
 these principles to a religious body, i.e., it recognises, 
 not that the end justifies the means, a most important 
 point not to be here discussed^, but that the individual 
 conscience is to be as nothing as compared with the 
 \ commands of the community. The life of Parsons, the 
 ' plot of Pius V against Elizabeth, and the actions of 
 Garnet in regard to the conspirators of the Gunpowder 
 Plot form the best commentary on this. This of course 
 does not imply that the individual conscience ought not 
 to be enlightened by the social reason. It is quite 
 possible to think that Luther and Hus must have been 
 wrong in carrying criticism to the point of rebellion. 
 But that would not have made it rightj for either, 
 thinking^ as he didi of his duty, to have acted differently. 
 It may for instance be wrong to become an atheist ; but 
 it is not merely the right, it is the duty of a convinced 
 atheist to act on his belief 
 
 Having thus destroyed, in the interests of the Society 
 (which is of course identified with those of religion), the 
 individual conscience, men were driven on to destroy the 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 93 
 
 sanction of morality even in private life. The obvious 
 rule for conduct is assuredly that while a man is 
 responsible not only for what he does but for what he 
 thinks right to do, he is bound at any moment to carry 
 out the course he deems right, after taking every means 
 to enlighten his conscience. Probabilism directly denies 
 this, it asserts that it is morally justifiable for a man to 
 pursue the course, which he believes to be wrong, if only 
 he can find a siiigle authority' of weight who declares it , 
 to be right, i.e.^\\i Guy Fawkes thinks trea son a sin, he^ 
 is yet justified in committing it and still retaining his 
 opinion, if only he can quote Mariana, say, on the other 
 sidej It is clear that this theory is entirely destructive 
 of all morality in a world where opinion is not unanimous, 
 for it takes away that individual sense of responsibility 
 for action which is its very basis. It does not even make 
 morality social. Yet this theory was so bound up with 
 the interests of the Society, although it was a Dominican 
 (Medina) not a Jesuit who invented it, that it gradually 
 became practically impossible for its members to express 
 any other view. Gonzalez himself made a heroic 
 endeavour in conjunction with Pope Innocent XII to 
 remove the stigma from the Society. It was all in vain, 
 however ; it was with the utmost difficulty and only by 
 the use himself of Machiavellian tactics, that he escaped 
 being compelled to hold a general congregation which 
 would certainly have deposed him, while every possible 
 effort was put forth by the "assistants" and others to 
 prevent the publication of his treatise against Probabilism. 
 The history of the Society of Jesus is not merely in its 
 common fame an exposition of the principles of Machia- 
 velli; it affords in its constitution the very completest 
 exposition of his doctrine ; which is that the individual 
 
94 Luther and Mackiavelli [lect. 
 
 conscience is to be sacrificed to the community ; while 
 its most characteristic moral principle extends into 
 private life the same destruction of moral responsibility, 
 which the ordinary follower of Machiavelli would leave 
 untouched ''^- 
 
 Other evidences can be given, if need be, that it is 
 impossible to remove the very notion of morality from 
 international affairs, without in the long run undermining 
 it in private life. The principles of Machiavelli have not 
 as a matter of fact been confined to the sphere of State 
 actions. Roughly speaking it may be said to have been 
 the belief of ordinary statesmen from Machiavelli's time 
 to the triumph of his principles under Cavour and 
 Bismarck that the code of morals, and of Christian 
 morals, is obligatory on individuals, but that in inter- 
 national matters any ideal of morality at all is not so 
 much superfluous as pernicious, that "the Law of the 
 beast " not only does but ought to reign unchecked with 
 no attempt to interfere with the struggle of existence. 
 
 Now, as a matter of fact, this conception has had 
 to be extended. First of all the obvious distinction 
 between commercial and private life causes a similar 
 assertion to be made in matters of trade. Business is 
 business ; and the " economic man " is held up, not as 
 a mere rough generalisation from experience, but as the 
 ideal of commerce. The evil wrought by the " orthodox " 
 economists is not that they observed facts and deduced 
 sequences of cause and effect, but that by so many of 
 their followers, and still more by the average bourgeois 
 their abstractions were regarded as ideals; and their 
 delineation of what (with certain reserves) commonly 
 is, was regarded as a statement of what ought to be 
 in the best of all possible worlds. It is not the facts 
 
hi] Luther and Machiavelli 95 
 
 observed but their erection into an ideal, which is 
 the cause, rightly or wrongly, of the humanitarian 
 attack on the old economists, led by men like Ruskin 
 and Carlyle. 
 
 The attack was directed against exactly the same 
 notions as those of Machiavelli, only applied to commerce 
 instead of the State. There was the same repulsion at 
 seeing the meaner facts of daily life elevated into a 
 principle; the same horror at the denial that moral 
 obligations could have any meaning in regard to trade 
 relations. In both cases there was the same attempt to 
 assert some fundamental principles of human brotherhood 
 and to claim that they are deeper than the apparently 
 impassable exclusiveness of national or commercial 
 individualism ; and that at any rate the failure of men 
 consistently to carry out the highest ideal is no reason 
 for denying that such ideals ought to be striven for. 
 
 Our generation has seen one further step taken in 
 the extension of the principles of Machiavelli. The 
 doctrines associated with the name of Nietzsche are 
 exactly similar to those of Machiavelli, except that they 
 are now purely limited to individual ends ; and that no 
 sanctifying means in the thought of the community is 
 allowed to interfere with the unchecked pursuit of 
 individual strength. Machiavelli banishes the notion of 
 right from politics. It is found impossible, however, to 
 confine his principles within the limits originally allowed 
 to them ; and the economists or rather some of their 
 followers banish ethics from commerce ; and assert a still 
 sharper distinction between family and business con- 
 cerns than Machiavelli allowed between the State 
 and the individual. Nietzsche goes one better and 
 leaves triumphant, unashamed, the Uebermensch with 
 
96 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 his eagle of pride and his serpent of cunning, rejoicimf 
 pitilessly over the weak and suffering, and scorning the 
 very notion of Love. The attempt of Nietzsche is to get 
 rid of all ethical ideals which recognise the value of the 
 sympathetic virtues. His frank return to the ethics of 
 Paganism minus its better side is but the logical and 
 inevitable outcome of the principles of Machiavelli 
 when allowed unchecked predominance. For many 
 generations of men it has been possible honestly to 
 believe that all the notions of human life in society 
 which underlie any claim to found an international code 
 of ethics might be surrendered, while current ideals 
 could retain their authority over the internal affairs 
 of nations and still direct the conscience of individuals. 
 This was an illusion inevitable perhaps in the general 
 condition of affairs, but none the less an illusion. 
 Nietzsche deserves the gratitude of all friends of 
 humanity for the service he has done in tearing off the 
 mask from human selfishness, and showing that the 
 whole sphere of private life cannot in the long run be 
 different from the ideals accepted in public affairs. 
 Like Machiavelli too Nietzsche has the ill reputation 
 which always attaches to one who removes that veil of 
 respectability with which men love to disguise their real 
 life. Nietzsche sees as Machiavelli saw the glaring and 
 ridiculous contrasts between the high nominal aims and 
 the actual life of most men ; he sees in men like 
 Napoleon a difference from the average man not in the 
 dominating selfishness of his aims, but only in the 
 intellectual force and practical genius with which he 
 strove for their accomplishment. So he bids us once 
 more worship force in the person of Nietzsche and 
 crucify Love in the person of Christ. The principles of 
 
X 
 
 III] Luther and Machiavelli 97 
 
 Nietzsche are only the principles that animate the gods 
 of the modern world, Jay Gould, Whittaker Wright and 
 their numberless imitators ; only they are expressed with 
 a scorn of convention and a savage contempt for the 
 nominal ideas of men which the money worshipper has 
 not enough lucidity of mind to understand. Just as 
 MachiavelK sets up Cesare Borgia, as the ideal " saviour 
 of society," and declares Christian ethics to be dangerous 
 in their political effects, so does Nietzsche scoff at the 
 very idea of a religion of Love, and bid us prepare for 
 a " transvaluation of all values " in a world where selfish 
 distinction is to be the supreme ideal force, and the 
 only vice of conquering heroes will be their occasional 
 magnanimity. 
 
 It is impossible to understand Machiavelli without 
 comparing him with Nietzsche whose Uebermensch is 
 but Machiavelli's man of virtu stripped of those public 
 ends which make even Cesare Borgia less odious. There 
 is indeed a difference. Nietzsche's savage and cruel 
 scorn has still some of the Teutonic barbarism against 
 which the culture of Italy and the Renaissance protested. 
 He has not the level gaze of Machiavelli into the world 
 of fact, and he proclaims his love of iniquity with an 
 ineffectual shriek. Machiavelli was always considering 
 the practical problem, how is Italy to be saved ? The 
 problem of Nietzsche so far as it is practical is simply 
 this, how shall I best exhibit my scorn for the contrast 
 between men's lives and their profession, my distaste 
 for their inconsistencies, my hatred of anything that is 
 meant by religion ? But no less than ' Machiavelli does 
 Nietzsche lay bare some dominant tendencies of our 
 modern world ; no less than Machiavelli does he make 
 it necessary for Christians to see that in the coming 
 
98 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 century they will be combating, not a spirit which like 
 Mill denies the authority of Christ's Person, while 
 accepting that of his character; but der Geist der stets 
 vemeint, the spirit which asserts that they are fools who 
 even admire Jesus, and that the morality, of the Cross is 
 / raving lunacy. 
 
 Having seen the extension of Machiavelli's doctrine 
 both into the highest spheres, religious community, and 
 into the lowest,' private life, let us close by stating one 
 or two of the causes which have rendered him so difficult 
 to refute. Here again a study of Nietzsche will be found 
 to help us. It was not so much against Christianity, as 
 against Schopenhauer, that Nietzsche, originally a disciple, 
 wrote to protest. In other words Nietzsche's attack is 
 effective because it expresses the rights of individuality 
 against those who would deny them. As we have seen, 
 the ethics of Christianity do not and caniiot mean the 
 annihilation of the self, yet the way in which they are 
 sometimes preached would imply this ; the ethics are 
 really (so far as the individual is concerned) described 
 by Creighton " The perfection of character by effort." 
 In other words the end of man is the development of his 
 character, as Humboldt said : only Christianity tells him 
 that it cannot be developed in isolation and that the spirit 
 of giving is the true motive of life as against the spirit 
 of getting — or rather that all getting, whether money 
 or reputation or pleasure, is only a means to the great 
 end of giving. This is the law of sacrifice, applicable 
 I to family life, to commerce and to international relations, 
 e.g., Empire is only justifiable by the effects on the 
 character of nations. If and so far as the English 
 retention of India stands for justice and liberty where 
 otherwise there would be cruelty and wrong, it is 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 99 
 
 justified on this ground, but Empire as mere possession 
 used for its own ends is no more ethically worthy than 
 private wealth selfishly enjoyed. But that there arereal 
 purposes in the life of a nation which it is meant to 
 fulfil is at once the only justification of its continuance, 
 while the aflfirmation of his own existence for high ends 
 is the essential object of the individual. It is the 
 denial of these ends in the interests of an exaggerated 
 altruism by writers like Sdhopenhauer and Tolstoi, which 
 is the excuse if not the justification of Nietzsche and 
 his followers, who assert the right of the individual to 
 be, and are instinct with genuine vitality. Against the 
 travesties of Christian ethics which end logically in the 
 denial of immortality Nietzsche did well to protest. 
 Against a view which would destroy national conscience 
 in a general cosmopolitanism and a sentimental humani- 
 tarianism, Machiavelli had his uses. At the moment 
 when Machiavelli wrote, a thorough-going admission of 
 international right could have been held to mean an 
 affirmation of the only powers in any degree recognised 
 at the head of Europe, the Pope or the Emperor ; and 
 would have produced more evils than it remedied. The 
 fundamental truth in Machiavelli is the Selbstdndigkeit of 
 nations, just as it is, though in a different form, in the 
 teaching of Luther and the Divine Right of Kings. It 
 is, perhaps, partly in the failure to recognise this, that is 
 due the comparative futility of the replies to Machia- 
 velli. 
 
 Further it is to be noted, that it is an error to assert, 
 as some anti-Machiavellians have done, that there is no 
 difference at all between public and private morality. 
 The real value of Machiavelli is in his raising or 
 
 7-2 
 
lOO Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 causing men to raise the question, what is the 
 difference? That there is such a distinction is clear 
 alike from the general practice and common judgment 
 of mankind, as Bishop Creighton says: "There is a 
 
 -»j ^difference between public and private morality." 
 
 It is, however, one thing to assert that there is a 
 difference between the conduct of communities, or the 
 relations of men in business and their private life, and 
 quite another to assert that there is no rule of right at 
 all in international matters. Here again Nietzsche helps 
 us. The recognition of individuality means the definite 
 repudiation of altruism, in the strictest sense, and exclu- 
 sively considered. Moralists like Butler are right, not 
 un-Christian, when they speak of a reasonable self-love 
 in individuals ; and the wholesale melting of Christian 
 ethics into mere sentimental benevolence which in the 
 long run is destructive of everybody's personality is an 
 error. So with the State. A regard for its own existence, 
 safety, and strength is not to be treated, as it may easily 
 be, as a concession to an iniquitous selfishness ; but as 
 the right and duty of statesmen. 
 
 if* This implies the right of self-defence of war, of the 
 ruses which accompany war, and the stratagems of 
 diplomacy in a state of things bordering upon war. In 
 fact, self-defence carries with it among nations the same 
 or similar consequences as it does among schoolboys. 
 ^Unless these things are recognised as legitimate, in any 
 conditions existing or likely for some generations to 
 exist, it will be vain that preachers and moralists will 
 thunder against the immorality of politics or the 
 
 ^ selfishness of nations. The rights of national individu- 
 ality correctly understood, and its corollaries in practice, 
 are the residuum of truth in Machiavelli's system, which 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli loi 
 
 gives it its appeal ; just as the right to personal 
 development and its corollaries is the residuum of truth 
 in the so-called ethics of Nietzsche. 
 
 Also it must be recognised that in a state of things 
 like international politics, where there is no recognised 
 superior, and even International Law is but the voice 
 of public opinion, the condition of affairs is very much 
 more nearly akin to the state of nature as imagined by 
 Hobbes than it is in relation of individuals. 
 
 In the actual world men have the defects of their 
 qualities. In forming moral judgments we commonly 
 and rightly grade men's faults differently according to 
 their circumstances. Cowardice is the supreme fault of 
 a private soldier ; and in return for bravery, other 
 faults are treated as venial in comparison. So it should 
 be in the historical judgments of statesmen. Patriotism, 
 sincerity and devotion to the interests of his country 
 are the sine qud non for a statesman. If in the course of 
 a career like Bismarck's, actions are committed which 
 cannot be condoned, these actions are not to be admired, 
 but are to be treated more leniently than any dereliction 
 of his cardinal duty, devotion to his people. The error 
 of Machiavelli and his followers is, that they assert such 
 actibns to be right; the error of too many moralists 
 is, that in their desire to secure the supremacy of 
 the moral law, they assert that such actions are equally 
 sinful with private vices. Assuredly the judgment of 
 history ought to be that they are deeply blameworthy 
 and not to be commended, but that they are to be 
 regarded as the natural faults of a politician. We 
 should in fact judge the statesman's crimes not as 
 anything else but crimes, but still as crimes for which 
 there is enormous temptation. 
 
I02 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 This consideration, I think, it is which enables us to 
 decide for the author in the attack which Lord Acton 
 directed against the judgment of Bishop Creighton in 
 his history. Acton's theory, as stated there and more 
 completely elsewhere, was definitely that " great men are 
 nearly always bad men," and that ultramontanism was 
 a doctrine of murder and that no one who even defends 
 such a doctrine can be other than ipso jure damned ". 
 
 The length to which he carried this view will be even 
 more apparent when some of his letters to Dollinger are 
 published. In the first place it may be pointed out that 
 the actual doctrine is a peculiar one ; because Newman 
 (for he was included) and others either condoned perse- 
 cution or praised those who did condone it, we are to 
 make the assertion that they could not have been " in a 
 state of grace." Acton is quite clear that what he 
 condemns is Machiavellism in Church matters. But 
 he uses the medieval notion, that we can know the 
 condition of other men's souls in order to condemn these 
 men for their failure to hold the modern notion of the 
 duty of religious toleration. 
 
 Now this appears to be unreasonable; and entirely 
 to lose sight of or rather to repudiate the consideration 
 noticed above. It may well be that persecution is 
 not only an error, but a crime ; it may well be, as 
 Creighton himself pointed out, that those who condoned 
 or approved persecution cannot, except they are intel- 
 lectual underlings, be acquitted of moral blame therefor. 
 But it is one thing to assert that toleration both is and 
 always has been a Christian duty, that the failure to see 
 this is on the part of a thinker not merely an error, but 
 a sin, that so far as history makes moral judgments it is 
 to condemn him; and quite another to declare with 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli 103 
 
 Acton, that it is a sin in a different category from all 
 other sins, that it subjects the doer to the last penalty, 
 and that we know that it does so. 
 
 Now it is the failure to perceive this, that runs 
 through so much of the easily inflicted blame of 
 statesmen's iniquities. Those who assert the inalienable 
 supremacy of the moral law, and repudiate the principles 
 of Machiavelli, are in the opinion of the writer not 
 merely right, but asserting a truth, most eminently 
 needed to-day, and needed especially by historians. 
 For the first and most plausible temptation of the 
 historical student is to accept the code of Machiavelli, 
 and write accordingly; and in the long run such 
 acceptance, if widely followed, must debase the national 
 conscience. In later days when his smaller works are 
 forgotten, it will probably be found that the most endur- 
 ing of all Acton's claims to greatness was his passionate 
 insistence on the need of moral law in the lives of 
 nations and Churches, no less than in those of individuals. 
 The protest which he made both in season and out 
 of season on this subject is his real contribution to his 
 time. But along with this there went an absoluteness 
 of statement which the subject will not bear. He 
 too had the defects of his qualities — and in order to 
 ensure that we should not fall into the common error of 
 average humanity and condone too readily the crimes 
 of statesmen because they were successful, or those of 
 Churchmen because they were sincere ; he sweeps 
 into one net of indiscriminate and unrelieved condem- 
 nation Newman and F^nelon, Rosmini and Dupanloup, ^ 
 and^ prophesies for them with certainty a future, of which 
 he will not even profess to be assured in regard to the 
 vilest and most criminal of mankind. With a deep 
 
I04 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 reverence for the utterer of these condemnations, and 
 for the general principles that guided him, I cannot but 
 think that this extremity of over-statement injures the 
 very causes he desired to promote and has a tendency 
 to make it the ground of the too easy and too lasting 
 victory of Machiavelli over all his adversaries. In 
 human judgment it is, I think, undoubted that the 
 statesman and the ecclesiastic must be allowed to 
 have the defects of their qualities. While we are never 
 to assert that these defects are merits (which is to justify 
 Machiavelli) or that they ought not to have been 
 avoided; or that right ought not to rule in politics as 
 elsewhere ; we are bound to admit that amid the 
 innumerable temptations to which human nature is 
 prone, there are certain more peculiarly dangerous to 
 every condition of life, and that in considering the 
 conduct of our fellows, we should be less rigid to those 
 faults, whatever they may be, which are natural and 
 incident to their position. 
 
 There is, perhaps, one more consideration which 
 needs to be urged. The code of morals considered as a 
 code is in the Christian view not absolute. The rules of 
 conduct are but the rough formulae by which is expressed 
 the fundamental fact of Christian life, devotion to a 
 Person. It may seem strange to seek in the very 
 foundation of Christianity, love to God 'and man, for 
 anything like an excuse for principles so universally 
 execrated as those of Machiavelli or Escoljar. But, we 
 have to consider not merely the obvious fact that from 
 the Christian point of view such principles are odious, 
 but also the other fact that no principles are widely 
 prevalent without their possessing some real ground or 
 appealing, to some truth, however distorted may be the 
 

 in] Luther and Machiavelli 105 
 
 form in which it is represented. Now the cause, if not 
 the excuse, of all systems which casuistically interpret 
 the ordinary rules of morality is that fundamentally 
 morality is not obedience to a code of rules, but a life of 
 loving devotion to a Person. As William of Ockham 
 said, it is only the first commandment which is absolute, 
 all the rest are positive and therefore may on occasion 
 be relaxed. This is the supreme difference between 
 Christian morality, and mere systems of ethics, like that 
 raised on the Categorical Imperative of Kant. So far as I 
 can see, all those systems readily succumb to the destruc- 
 tive dialectics of Mr G. E. Moore in his Prindpia Ethica. 
 But the Christian system is left intact, because it is not 
 ^strictly speaking) a system at all. In his last chapter 
 r-Moore declares that " personal affections and artistic 
 pleasures " are the only " true goods " in our experience. 
 There is nothing in this incompatible with Christian 
 ethics. The only difference between a Christian and 
 Mr Moore is, that the former does, while Mr Moore (on 
 grounds stated elsewhere) does not include among these 
 the personal affection to^ God, and the Living Christ, 
 which are at the basis of Christian living. It cannot be 
 too often repeated that destructive criticism levelled at 
 all the various schemes of ethics as immutable systems 
 has no force against Christian ethics, of which the rules 
 are nothing but inadequate and temporary formulae, 
 expressing, in ordinary cases, the consequences in 
 practical life of the love to God and our neighbour, 
 which is their essence. 
 
 But this is a digression, however important. The 
 point is that the rules of morality are not of the nature 
 of eternal truths, immutable in their authority — but only 
 rough statements of what in ordinary cases is man's duty. 
 
io6 Luther and Machiavelli [lect. 
 
 Hence the need of some consideration of those extra- 
 ordinary cases when they do not hold, and also the 
 extreme danger of making those exceptions into ordinary 
 V rules. As we saw, the real danger of Machiavelli is that 
 he or the system attributed to him makes the exception, 
 i.e., salus populi suprema lex, into a rule of action. In the 
 same way the danger of systems of casuistry, as actually 
 studied, is that they inevitably direct attention to those 
 limiting conditions, in which the ordinary maxim does 
 not hold, or else to those doubtful cases, innumerable in 
 theory, rare in practice, in which it is genuinely difficult 
 to discern the right course of action. Even Probabilism 
 would have no meaning, much less any danger, if there 
 were no cases in which the judgment was in a difficulty ; 
 for under these conditions there could be no differences of 
 opinion among authorities, and there could be no chance 
 for a man to take a course made tenable by some 
 authority, whose reasonings he did not himself echo. 
 Whether we like it or not, we cannot, in regarding 
 human experience as a whole, deny that there are cases 
 both in individual and national life in which circumstances 
 do alter cases, and in such cases for instance as the 
 favourite Jesuit case of a starving man and a loaf of 
 bread, or the public one of a statesman's, ruse to prevent 
 an invasion, or an act of violence like Hodgson's murder 
 of the princes in the Mutiny. In these cases it may be 
 true that there is no ground for relaxing the ordinary 
 code of morals (I am not speaking of law), but other 
 instances could easily be found in which there clearly is 
 such ground. As long as this is the fact — ^^and it always 
 will be the fact — it is idle to blame those who in cases 
 of this sort take a different view from the moralist as to 
 their duty. The excuse of Machiavelli is that he wrote 
 
Ill] Luther and Machiavelli ' 107 
 
 in a time when for his country such a condition was a 
 fact ; the condemnation of Machiavellism is that it 
 raised these maxims of an unquiet time, dangerous 
 enough even then, into a universal system, denied the 
 obligation of right and wrong in toto in regard to 
 international politics and so asserted the truth of the 
 individuality of national life that it entirely denied 
 or ignored the companion truth of the solidarity of 
 humanity. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE POLITIQUES AND RELIGIOUS TOLERATION. 
 
 It would be misleading to pass from the ideas of 
 non-resistance and the Divine authority of the ruler as 
 defined by Luther, and the conception of the State as 
 an end in itself superior to all rules of Law, natural 
 and civil, to which Machiavelli gave currency, without 
 some mention of that party in France, which in the 
 sixteenth century carried these ideas to their fullest 
 extent. It would be incorrect to give to the Politiques 
 the attributes of a religious sect, although for the most 
 part they were Catholics, and expressed what was for 
 the next two centuries to be the dominant theory of 
 Catholic princes in regard to the relation between the 
 ecclesiastical and the civil State. Indeed the theory is 
 undoubtedly still that of the foremost Roman Catholic 
 States^ So much indeed was this the case that a 
 Jesuit writer in the middle of the nineteenth century, 
 seeking to restore the true conception of the relations of 
 Church to State, declared that it had been largely forgotten 
 owing to the prevalence of the ideas of the " regalist " 
 writers I These ideas come first into prominence in 
 the Politiques, and find their next important expres- 
 sion in the writings of Sarpi and other Venetians against 
 
LECT, iv] The Politiques and Toleration 109 
 
 the claims of Paul V to interfere with the "natural 
 liberty given by God unto the State." Although there- 
 |f(^ fore the Politiques do not directly come within the scope 
 Ym^ of these lectures it seems necessary to consider them if 
 l/'^ our treatment is not to lack proportion. Moreover in 
 view of the connection between Anglicanism in the 
 seventeenth century and the doctrines of non-resistance 
 and indefeasible hereditary right, it would be unreason- 
 able to pass over in silence the first party whose very 
 raison d'etre was the assertion of principles associated 
 by Englishmen with the Caroline Divines, with Filmer, 
 and with James I. Besides, the importance of the 
 Politiques in the development of religious toleration 
 alone makes them worthy of notice in any sketch of the 
 growth of liberty, nor would it be possible to discuss 
 the opinions of Jesuits and Ligueurs without saying 
 something of their most notable adversaries. 
 
 The writings of this party may be summarised as 
 follows: — In the war of pamphlets initiated by the 
 League we have the Apologia Catholica of Du Bellay 
 (1586), written to maintain the claims of Henry of 
 Navarre against the Guisian propaganda ; the Brutum 
 Fulmen of Hotman, written to denounce the inter- 
 ference of Pope Sixtus V in French affairs in his Bull 
 of excommunication directed against Henry of Navarre, 
 as a relapsed heretic ; the Vindiciae of Servins, and other 
 pamphlets republished in the third volume of Goldast's 
 great collection. We must also include the De Regno 
 of William Barclay, not a livre de circonstance but a 
 complete treatise directed against all the Monarcho- 
 machi, Buchanan, Brutus, i.e., the author of the Vindiciae 
 contra Tyrannos, and Boucher; the De Republica of 
 Pierre Gregoire of Toulouse ; the Satyre M^nippee, 
 
I lo The Politiques and [lect. 
 
 and more especially the •closing speech which is not 
 burlesque but gives the views of the loyal Catholics ; the 
 Six Livres de la Ripublique of Jean Bodin, a scientific 
 treatise, but none the less the work of a thorough-going 
 Politique. The speeches of Michel de I'Hopital and the 
 letters of the lawyer Pasquier throw valuable light on 
 the growth of ideas, especially in the matter of religious 
 toleration ; the general feeling can be gathered from 
 Quatre Excellents Discours of the Sieur de Fay. 
 
 The rise and influence of the Politiques was indeed 
 the most notable sign of the times at the close of the 
 sixteenth century. The very existence of the party 
 testifies to the fact that for many minds the religion of 
 the State has replaced that of the Church, or, to be 
 more correct, that religion is becoming individual while 
 the civil power is recognised as having the paramount 
 claims of an organized society upon the allegiance of 
 its members. What Luther's eminence as a religious 
 genius partially concealed becomes more apparent in 
 the Politiques; for the essence of their position is to 
 treat the unity_^_the State as the paramount end, to 
 1^ which unity in religion must give way. Luther neither 
 desired nor believed in toleration. It was the very 
 raison cTHre of the Politiques, who for the most part 
 proclaimed the duty of loyalty to a sovereign of a 
 different religion, to proclaim the wisdom if not the 
 duty of toleration, and to assert the notion of inde- 
 feasible hereditary right. Their position in regard to a- 
 Huguenot claimant to the crown was exactly that of the 
 Anglicans in regard to a Roman Catholic claimant in the 
 years 1679-81, when the Exclusion Bill divided parties 
 in England. Had James II followed the example of 
 Henri IV and made his Church a matter of policy, 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 1 1 1 
 
 there is little doubt that he could have established a 
 despotism, not inferior to that which Henri left to his, 
 successors. There is, however, this difference between i 
 the Politiques and the Anglican defenders of Divine^ 
 Right. The former were, as their name implied, far 
 more secular and utilitarian, more modem, more 
 Machiavellian in the strict sense, than their English 
 counterparts. It can hardly be said that there is a 
 single argument that is not common to both sides, 
 except those drawn from the Salic Law. But yet in 
 England the religious duty of obedience, and if neces- 
 sary of suffering, looms largest, while in France it is 
 primarily of the unity of the State, and the actual evils 
 of rebellion that we hear. The difference is one of 
 degree and proportion rather than of theory and state- 
 ment. But even here there is some difference. For the 
 Salic Law, through which alone the Bourbons had a 
 claim to the throne, compelled their supporters to 
 develop the doctrine of legitimism in a far more purely 
 legal spirit than was ever the case in England. It is 
 indeed frequently said that indefeasible hereditary 
 right is a " fundamental law." Acts like 35 Henry VIII. 
 c. I, which gave the King power to alter the succes- 
 sion, or 13 Elizabeth c. i, which made it high treason 
 to deny the power of Parliament to do so, are said to 
 \be ipso facto null. But this shadowy fundamental 
 law is a very different thing from the definite words 
 of the Salic Law, consecrated in its' misinterpreta- 
 tion by the national struggle in the Hundred Years' 
 War, This then is the -first distinction between the 
 Politiques and later and earlier apologists for the Divine 
 Right of Kings. They are more legal in spirit — legiti- \ 
 mism is the lineal descendant of the French monarchists. 
 
112 The Politiques and [lect, 
 
 just as Passive Resistance is the collateral heir of 
 the Anglicans. Legality is the watchword of the one 
 party — patience that of the other. The difference is 
 slight in appearance, but it goes deeper than is at first 
 ' obvious. In the Anglican the Divine Right of Kings is 
 primarily a doctrine of the Church ; it expressed at once 
 the tie that bound the Stuarts to Episcopacy and the 
 differences between England and Rome, between Prelacy 
 and Puritanism. To the Politique the Divine Right of 
 Kings was rather the natural right of the State, it 
 expressed his refusal to ruin the State for the sake of 
 religion, his nationalism as against an " alien invasion," 
 his disgust at the flagrant illegalities perpetrated by the 
 League under the name of religion, the anti-clericalism 
 of lawyers like Pasquet, and the anti-regularism of the 
 secular priests. 
 
 Hence it is that the English believers in Divine 
 Right were the last to give «up the theory of a uniform 
 State, in which religious liberty was forbidden, and 
 branded Hoadly as a heretic, not nearly so much 
 because of his theological heterodoxy as owing to his 
 political liberalism, so that the issue between the famous 
 • rivals in the Bangorian controversy was mainly that 
 f of religious toleration or its opposite ^ The French 
 sticklers for the same doctrine were, however, in this 
 period the main instrument in the movement against 
 persecution. Under the son and grandson of Henri, 
 after the State had won its victory, this phase passed 
 away. But in our period this is not so. The very 
 meaning of the party is the reverse of this. Driven by 
 the deplorable divisions of France to seek some shelter 
 for human life other than that afforded by ecclesiastical 
 sanction, some of the most moderate and far-sighted 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 1 1 3 
 
 minds discerned it in the one institution which both 
 parties could at least in words agree to reverence. 
 Nobody desired civil anarchy, or at any rate professed 
 to desire it, although . Barclay in the De Regno tried to 
 prove that this was the real drift of the Vindiciae contra 
 Tyrannos. But unless religion could be removed from 
 the sphere of public policy, there was no likelihood of 
 anything but a continuance of this anarchy*. The most 
 crying evil in France was the ruin of all the nobler 
 elements of civilisation which followed in the wake of 
 religious animosities. The violent Catholics were hoping 
 for a restoration of peace and order, but only after such 
 a decisive victory as should result in the wholesale 
 extermination or banishment of their opponents. The 
 spirit which animates the writings of Louis d'Orleans 
 meant the destruction of unity in any State. Such a 
 prospect was repugnant alike on grounds of humanity 
 and policy to all those who were not wild partisans of 
 
 ■^ the old ideal of religious unity. The Politiques were 
 driven by the logic of facts to seek for a source of 
 national unity deeper than the ancient religious founda- 
 tion. For this was irretrievably shattered or seemed 
 so, yet it appeared ridiculous to refuse the title of good 
 Frenchmen to some of the most illustrious houses 
 and some of the most industrious elements in the 
 country. Hence, beginning with the efforts of L'HopitaP, 
 enshrined for ever in his speeches, till after the 
 Politiques definitely became a party with S. Bartholo- 
 mew, an event which exhibited in its most lurid form 
 the dangers of the ecclesiastical spirit, we find the 
 gradual development of the view that loyalty must not 
 be identified with orthodoxy, and that the State must, if 
 
 ^ needful, be saved at the cost of toleration. The policy 
 F. ' 8 
 
1 1 4 The Politiques and [lect. 
 
 of Elizabeth was the same principle less completely- 
 carried out ; her statesmen claimed, and with substantial 
 justice, that political, not religious, motives were at 
 rbottom of such persecution as they practised', nor was 
 there ever the same attempt to examine into thoughts 
 as was inherent in the Spanish Inquisition and the old 
 ideal of persecution for the sake of the heretic's soul. 
 We may trace the development of ideas as follows. 
 
 /^ The medieval ideal regards civil and religious authority 
 as but two different aspects of God's grace of rule ; 
 rebellion against ecclesiastical powers or heresy is thus 
 of the nature of treason, excommunication and outlawry 
 are convertible terms, a Church without the State may 
 be conceivable, but a State without a Church is not. 
 Religion must be the business of government which 
 merely wields the temporal sword for God's Church. 
 Persecution, too, is not merely practised on politic 
 grounds, but in order to save the soul of the victim. 
 - This ideal we call medieval. It lingered on, however, 
 in the minds of many ; and found, perhaps, in the 
 reign of King Jan of Leyden at Miinster its completes! 
 embodiment. But it inspired the thought of Calvin and 
 Knox, was rarely absent from the minds of ecclesiastics, 
 and was largely at the bottom of the Puritan revolution 
 and the acts of the New England Colonies ; evidences 
 of this may be found in the words of the Solemn League 
 and Covenant'. The next stage is that forced upon the 
 Empire by the logic of facts and consecrated in the 
 religious peace of Augsburg, expressed in the phrase 
 
 _, — cujus regio ejus religio. In this stage unity in religion 
 is an element in the unity of the State, religious 
 differences must entail banishment ; but an imperial 
 Church and a common religious law are abandoned ; 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 115 
 
 each State goes its own way. This may be called 
 international toleration. The next in order is the 
 practice of Elizabeth, which is really tolerance for a 
 consideration. Recusancy is allowed, but it must be 
 paid for. The State makes a profit on its liberality and 
 gives up the attempt to secure uniformity, except to 
 the extent of forbidding all outward services or Churches 
 which symbolise diversity. It is an attempt to secure 
 the political advantages of religious uniformity, while 
 reducing toleration to a minimum, and in a characteii- 
 istically English fashion refusing to see what cannot 
 be prevented. Dissent is put in the category of 
 unrecognised but permitted vice. 
 
 Lastly we come to the toleration of the Politiques./,- 
 Their theory asserts definitely that the State is in fact 
 indifferent to religious unity and gives up the entire 
 attempt to identify Church with State, never abandoned 
 in England till 1688, and not altogether even then. It 
 does not deny the right of the civil ruler to persecute or 
 even his duty. It is not an assertion that toleration is 
 in theory or in general the right course ; but merely 
 that it is a possible one, if circumstances make it 
 expedient. It does not assert that persecution is always 
 , wrong, but only that toleration is sometimes right. This 
 is the view of Bodin, Pasquier, L'Hdpital^and in general 
 of their party. "Persecute by all means in the early 
 stages of a heresy ; keep it off, if you can, and if the cost 
 in suffering or loss be not too excessive. But it may 
 be excessive. In France at this moment it would be 
 excessive. The new religion may be all its enemies 
 declare it to be. But it is a fact. It is here. We can 
 only get rid of it at the cost of deluging the country 
 with blood, or replenishing the population of our 
 
 8—3 
 
 y 
 
ii6 The Politiques and [lect. 
 
 enemies. Religious uniformity is a blessing ; it is^ of 
 the bene esse of a State. But it is not of the esse, and in 
 case of need, we can live without it. Let us try and 
 combine in the matters in which we have in common, 
 the greatness and dignity of the national life, and 
 allegiance to the sovereign. Let us endure as best 
 we can the evil, real but unavoidable, of religious 
 diversity. There are many evils like poverty and op- 
 pression which exist in a State, but do not destroy it. 
 The Huguenots are of this nature. We do not like them. 
 But we are loath to deny them all part or lot in the 
 land. We must put up with them, and take precautions 
 against any political dangers that religious independence 
 might produce." This is the attitude of the Politiqties, 
 different from other parties in their own day, different 
 from our views to-day. It would have approved the 
 . persecution of Nero, but condemned that of Diocletian. 
 j Toleration to them is not a virtue or duty or religion, as 
 * it has since become ; it is a necessity, an experiment, a 
 pis alter. What does come home to them with sacred 
 {authority, is the worth of the national life and loyalty to 
 ^ the monarchy which symbolises itl 
 
 Only in one or two thinkers such as Brown and 
 Brentz and Castellio, Marnix (partially), and in one or 
 two practical men like William the Silent, does toleration 
 reach to the point of being regarded as a duty, and 
 the tolerant habit of mind become an ideal". Their 
 day, however, had not yet come. And their whole 
 attitude of mind is very different from that of the party 
 we are considering. It may, however, be pointed out that 
 while the Politiques desired toleration for the sake of} 
 the State, Brown demanded it in the name of religion.) 
 In order to preserve the State the Politiques would leave' 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 117 
 
 religion alone. In order to secure reform§i_which were 
 not desired or likely to be desired by the majdritjTor 
 the magistrate, Brown cries " Hands off " to the civil 
 ruler, and preaches absolute independence of magis- 
 terial sanction. Thus when the Politiques had secured ^ 
 their object — order and national unity — their successors 
 were free to -destroy that very toleration on which y 
 it was based ; for the reason that their motive was 
 never higher than expediency and national unity — ^ 
 and their bias in favour of kingly authority made it 
 irritating to find any sphere of national life in which 
 royal wishes were not obeyed. The theory of Brown, 
 however, passed over in some degree to the Indepen- 
 dents, and to Cromwell, and to Milton, and was to 
 become the basis of the modern theory of toleration, 
 as developed by Locke, Hoadly, Warburton and the 
 ordinary Whig writers of the eighteenth century. Its 
 distinctive note is its firm insistence on toleration as 
 a natural right. The title of Hoadly's pamphlet, The 
 Common Rights of Citizens, expresses the idea in -the 
 form it influenced modern life and procured the abolition 
 of Tests. The originality of Brown consists in his 
 recognition of the futility of expecting his own religious 
 system ever to be universally imposed (this separates 1 
 him from the ordinary Puritans), and in his clear \ 
 enunciation of the private and individual nature of 
 belief In both these views he may be paralleled by some 
 of the earlier Anabaptists, but they always showed 
 themselves anxious when they had the power to make 
 their religion as universal and persecuting as the Roman. 
 So, indeed, did the Independents with but slight 
 qualifications. 
 
 However this may be, it behoves us to recognise the 
 
VSl 
 
 1 1 8 The Politiques and [lect. 
 
 / enormous work done by the Politiques in exalting 
 1 / the idea of the State as something which demanded 
 sacrifices for its own sake, including a sacrifice of the 
 ancient ideals of religious unity, and in making dominant 
 the notion of the absolute and binding character of 
 hereditary claims upon allegiance. Their ground for 
 toleration was that same notion of making religion 
 'subservient to civil policy which resulted in Henry's 
 submission to Rome, and perhaps inspired the ecclesi- 
 astical changes of William the Silent, and a good deal 
 of the activity of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 This trait, doubtless, it is which procured for the 
 politiques the nickname of Machiavellists. There were 
 obvious grounds for so dubbing a party which made the 
 monarchy its idol and avowedly put the interests of 
 the State above those of religion, or at any rate religion 
 organically living in a Church, and denied to it the right 
 to determine political problems. Some of them also 
 used language in regard to the assassination of the 
 Duke and Cardinal of Guise at the States of Blois 
 in 1588, which was in the usual sense of the term 
 distinctly Machiavellian. As a general rule, however, 
 the Politiques are scarcely to be charged with that 
 entire supersession of morality by public policy, which 
 is the usual connotation of Machiavellianism^". It is not 
 natural law or the ordinary law which they deb/re to 
 destroy, but the fundamental law of the French mon- 
 i archy which they are determined to maintain. Their 
 J spirit is essentially legalist, which is the very opposite of 
 Machiavelli. •-' 
 
 This it is which makes them after Luther the 
 protagonists of the Divine Right of Kings in its modern 
 as distinct from the medieval phase, which was con- 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 119 
 
 cerned almost entirely with the Emperor and had little 
 to do with hereditary right. Like all those who found 
 politics endangered by ecclesiastical pretensions, they 
 asserted the immediate tenure of the crown from God 
 alone and indefeasible hereditary right. Indeed, the 
 situation of Henri IV made it incumbent upon the 
 Politiques to enunciate all the doctrines and argu- 
 ments associated with this view. The strength of the 
 notion in the public mind is shown by the ridiculous 
 claim set up by the Guisian party, that all the kings 
 of the third race from Hugh Capet downwards were 
 usurpers, and that the Guises alone represented the 
 hereditary principle as being descended on the female 
 side from Charles the Great. This did not last, 
 for the fundamental principle of^''Ligueurs is the 
 sovereignty of the people, but it showed the extent 
 to which hereditary right was believed. Further, the 
 "monitorial bull" of Pope Sixtus V to Henri III, 
 and the assertion on behalf of the Cardinal of Lor- 
 raine of the principle of extra-territoriality, made it 
 necessary for the opposite party to assert the entire 
 Selbstdndigkeit of the civil power. We are treated 
 to all the usual arguments, the Scriptural, the legal, 
 the philosophical, the natural, in the De Regno of 
 Barclay ; " by Me kings reign," and " they that resist 
 shall receive to themselves damnation," give the first, 
 and the civilian maxims of the prince being solutus legi- 
 dus, and his sole pleasure having legis vigorem, the second. 
 The necessity of monarchy to secure the great end .of 
 unity is reiterated, and the usual illustrations from bees, 
 geese and other birds are repeated with unconvincing 
 frequency. The special rights of the Galilean Church 
 as having no earthly superior are emphasized, and 
 
I20 The Politiqwes and [lect. 
 
 recourse is had to the great decretal of Innocent III, 
 Per Venerabilemy^, in which these rights are admitted. 
 Pithou's great collection is a counterblast to sedition, 
 quite as much as it is to Papalism. The claims of the 
 Pope to control monarchs are ridiculed by Hot'man in 
 his Brutunt Fulmen, and Servins in his Vindiciae. 
 Servins, like Pasquier, was a lawyer. We must bear 
 in mind that in England the " professors of that great 
 and ancient mystery the Common Law " were on the 
 side of Parliament, as Clarendon laments. In France, 
 however, this was not the case, partly through the 
 influence of the Civil Law, partly because the law was 
 clearly on the side of Henri IV, and there was not, 
 as in England, the deep feeling against the illegality 
 of the proceedings of Buckingham and Strafford. The 
 lawyers were in the main on the side of Henri IV, and 
 the Parliament of Paris was imbued with a spirit hostile 
 to the Ligue and still more to the Seize, whose most 
 unpopular act was the " execution " of the first president, 
 Brisson ; and became for centuries the stronghold 
 of opposition to ultramontane principles and Jesuit 
 practices. 
 
 We may note that Barclay was a strong Catholic 
 who began his work with an attack on George Buchanan, 
 the tutor of James I, and only later on expanded it 
 into its present form. He writes as definitely convinced 
 that the true origin of the theory of rebellion is to be 
 sought in the religious revolution, and runs back to 
 Wyclif. So entirely one was the conception of European 
 I polity in the Middle Ages, that rebellion against its 
 ■ spiritual head is conceived to be the same thing as 
 rebellion against its temporal authority. Barclay seems 
 ignorant of the fact that Wyclif himself held a strongly 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 121 
 
 Erastian theory of civil government, and that when he 
 talks of the duty of renouncing rulers it was of ecclesiasti- 
 cal rulers that he was almost exclusively thinking. The 
 De Civili Dominio is directed not against temporal rulers 
 or private property, but against ecclesiastical power and 
 the temporalities of the Church, and the theory that gave 
 the Pope the dominion of his "subjects'" property — a 
 theory which the Franciscan doctrine of trusts had 
 sharpened. It cannot be repeated too often that the 
 animus of Wyclif's doctrine of dominion founded on 
 grace is entirely anti-ecclesiastical, that he did not desire 
 to interfere with the ordinary relations between lords 
 and serfs, except so far as by enriching the former with 
 the endowments of the Churches he would render 
 oppression of their inferiors less necessary. The bias of 
 Wyclif in theory and practice is secular and aristpcratic 
 and royalist; it is not really socialistic or politically 
 revolutionary. So it is with Luther, only in a greater 
 degree. Yet the Reformation was in itself so violent 
 a loosening of the bands of authority that its supporters 
 often unjustly were blamed with being adversaries of 
 autocracy, which, as a matter of fact, they were forward 
 to promote. Neither the credit nor the discredit which 
 Barclay gives to Wyclif and Luther is justified by their 
 theory, nor even by the definite and immediate effect of 
 their influence. It has its justification, however, in the 
 general state of mind which they expressed and in- 
 tensified ; for it is that of a critical attitude towards 
 existing institutions, and a spirit which is in essence 
 revolutionary. So much more important in the long 
 run are the real tendencies of personality than their 
 conscious intellectual outcome. No amount of theorizing 
 nor even of action on behalf of the temporal authority 
 
122 The Politiques and [lect. 
 
 could prevent Wyclif or Luther being fundamentally 
 revolutionary in spirit ; and in the long run influencing 
 even political freedom. This alone is Barclay's justifi- 
 cation. Probably, however, his error, due in part to the 
 conception of civil and ecclesiastical rulers as officers in 
 a single society, was due more fully to the Calvinistic 
 nature of the French and Scottish Reformation. Writing 
 as a strong monarchist, Barclay naturally reprehends 
 Calvin's expressed preference for an aristocratic form 
 of government; it is, however, the disciples of Calvin 
 rather than the master himself, who advanced the theory 
 of resistance, and Calvin's own attitude was far more 
 authoritarian than that of Luther. Luther's intolerance 
 was merely that of an enthusiast, Calvin's was that of 
 a strong ruler, who dislikes all obstacles in the way of a 
 uniform system. Calvin's bigotry was that of a lawyer 
 or an inquisitor, Luther's that of a preacher or a 
 schoolboy. 
 
 It may be noted further that Barclay rightly discerns 
 Buchanan's principles to be of universal import, and 
 argues in the main on general principles, only devoting 
 a couple of pages, out of the hundred which he gives to 
 Buchanan, in refuting the special pleading he puts in 
 derived from Scottish law and history. This alone 
 should demonstrate the strange error of Ranke, who 
 says that Buchanan's book is of particular and not 
 general import. 
 
 One more very important characteristic of the De 
 Regno must be mentioned. Despite its array of other 
 weapons, the main argument is utilitarian. It is clear 
 from the frequency with which he returns to the thought 
 that Barclay's own feeling was mainly aroused by a 
 sense of the practical miseries of civil war. Over and 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 123 
 
 over again he asks his opponents what possible advan- 
 tage to the public welfare resistance to the ruler can 
 ever bring ? " Can the suffering caused by the worst of 
 tyrants," he urges, " be equal to that produced by a 
 single year of insurrection ? Rate the evils of mis- 
 government as high as you will, still they are less than 
 those of anarchy ^l" A somewhat similar thought is that 
 "of Luther, when he urges the priceless value of the 
 security afforded by the law and the peace ensured by 
 the civil ruler. 
 
 Now this argument so far as external evils are 
 concerned is based on facts ; and so far as temporary or 
 minor tyranny is concerned has truth to support it. It 
 is always safer to bear " those ills we have than fly to 
 others that we know not of" This is the foundation 
 of political quietism, and always remains the strongest 
 support of any form of oppression. 
 
 The only way effectively to meet it is to transfer the 
 argument for liberty from utilitarian to moral grounds. 
 The evils of oppression and of despotism , are not 
 primarily to be found in the suffering, but in the 
 deterioration of character which they produce. The 
 problem of poverty in our own days is not the lack of 
 bread and cheese, but the diminished opportunity of 
 nobility of life, which the education of children in slums 
 brings with it^*- The eternal argument for liberty, which 
 is also its limitation, is the right of human nature to reach 
 the noblest. This was discerned by Savonarola, and is 
 \/ the reason why political liberty has as a matter of fact 
 ^ followed in the wake of religious animosities. The 
 ^j Monarchotnachi who were the targets of Barclay's scorn 
 would one and all have replied that for political liberty 
 as such they. cared either little or nothing. What they 
 
124 The Politiques and [lect, 
 
 did demand was the right to that religious worship which 
 formed for them the atmosphere of the highest character. 
 Throughout the struggle of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, it was the right of their own Church to exist as 
 a trainer of character which drove Jesuits, Huguenots, 
 L Puritans and Dutchmen to become often in spite of 
 themselves the promoters of liberty ; and found perhaps 
 its completest expression in the volteface of the Anglican 
 clergy which alone made possible the revolution of 1688. 
 For all these men character was bound up with religious 
 system ; many of them did not greatly care and some of 
 them definitely disapproved of religious and political 
 
 \/ liberty. But they were one and all driven to fight for 
 the existence of that society, whatever it was, which was 
 for them the true home of the spirit, and could alone 
 direct it to the highest ends ; this they did in spite of all 
 theories of the risks of rebellion, or the evils of anarchy, 
 and sometimes in astonishing contradiction to the 
 principles which in other spheres they maintained. It is 
 ; perhaps true to say, not that civil liberty is the child 
 
 ^/ of religious liberty, but that liberty, whether civil or 
 
 ; religious, was the work often reluctantly, sometimes 
 
 unconsciously, undertaken by communities of men who 
 
 I had an end higher than political, who refused to submit 
 
 ; religion to politic arguments, who fought for ends never 
 
 entirely utilitarian^*. 
 
 , How feeble is the mere political argument for liberty 
 
 can be seen from a work like the Servitude Volontdire of 
 Etienne de la Boeotie. It is interesting as showing the 
 influence of the classical spirit entirely apart from 
 religion. It is valuable, too, as showing us an early form 
 of the problem set himself by Rousseau in the first words 
 of the Social Contract, that namely of discovering why if 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 125 
 
 man is born free he is everywhere in chains. We note 
 too an entire absence of the historical spirit in the 
 judgment of the Roman Empire. To La Boej^tie, as to 
 others, Julius Caesar was a mere tyrant, and he can 
 discern none of the conditions which made the Empire 
 at that time the only possible form of government. The 
 reason is, that he treats of an anti-monarchical condition 
 as an end in itself, not the means to an end ; and hence 
 cannot see that, under certain conditions, despotism may 
 be the best school of character. Such a thought is the 
 sole real justification for the British rule in India ; for 
 it can surely be maintained that it has exhibited 
 an impartial justice, an avoidance of the evils of 
 Oriental despotism, which no other government in that 
 country has produced. To base liberty upon moral 
 grounds is to lay it on its only enduring foundation, but 
 it makes it also something different from the ideal of a 
 doctrinaire or a Jacobin, and relative to the condition of 
 the human mind at the epoch considered. There is no 
 such thought as this in Le Contr'Un. Liberty, i.e., a 
 republican government, is treated as the ideal, apart from 
 all historical, natural or moral considerations. This 
 pamphlet was a mere exercise, and had no practical 
 influences '^ 
 
 Liberty was the work of enthusiasts but of enthusiasts 
 for a different cause. It has lasted in England and the \ 
 United States because it did not arise from purely 
 political causes ; how far the liberty, equality and 
 fraternity based on no other grounds are likely to be 
 enduring, the future alone can determine. 
 
 To the almost intolerable dulness of the writings of 
 the supporters of Henri IV, save those of Du Plessis 
 Mornay, there is one exception. The Satyre Menippee 
 
126 The Politiques and [lect. 
 
 is a Rabelaisian amalgam of prose and verse, describing 
 in burlesque the meeting of the so-called Estates of the 
 League at Paris in 1593 to elect a King of France. 
 Preceded by an allegorical frontispiece in which the 
 Jesuits, the preachers, the rabble of France, the Papal Le- 
 gate, and the Duchess of Montpensier are all facetiously- 
 delineated, the writer or writers give mock speeches on 
 behalf of the various estates represented. There is much 
 wit and not a little coarseness. The Satyre closes with 
 a speech put into the mouth of D'Aubray, the repre- 
 sentative of the Tiers Etat. It is an eloquent plea on 
 behalf of the ancient laws of France and the rights of the 
 natural prince. The motives real and imaginary of the 
 various actors are ably dramatised. The whole gives a 
 vivid picture of the various party passions and personal 
 interests which were for a time united in the organisation 
 of the League, but by their mutually exclusive pretensions 
 prevented any real agreement except for the purposes 
 of opposition. 
 
 From art we turn to science. Jean Bodin is, next to 
 Machiavelli, the most important political writer of the 
 sixteenth century. So early as 1572 he had defended 
 the cause of toleration ; for a time even he appears to 
 have been a Huguenot, but his great work De la 
 Republique proceeds from the standpoint of a scientific 
 enquirer, and may be said to begin the long series of 
 works written as scientific text-books on politics in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His book is the 
 first treatise on sovereignty in the strict sense and was 
 used very shortly after for le cture s at Cambridga^ All 
 subsequent writers from Hobbes to Sidgwick and 
 Professor Holland go back to him. His conception is 
 derived from the civilian theory of Imperial omni- 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 127 
 
 potence filtered through the Papalist writers; he tells 
 us that the greatest of all the Canonists, Innocent IV, 
 understood the subject profoundly^^. His work has 
 been so much discussed that it needs little more than 
 mention. Suffice it to say that although in many 
 previous works adumbrated and clearly present to the 
 thought df such writers as Bartolus in regard to all States 
 non recognoscentes superiorem, the attributes of legal 
 sovereignty irrespective of forms or constitutions, omni- 
 potent, indivisible, inalienable, are here set forth for the 
 first time with scientific accuracy. But Bodin is not 
 a purely scientific enquirer and has no doubt that 
 monarchy is the best form of government and that 
 France, England, Spain, are all pure monarchies with no 
 real underived powers in Parliament or Castes or 
 Estates. Like Filmer he cannot endure the " anarchy 
 of a mixed monarchy," and asserts the incompetence 
 of representative assemblies in any kingdom to give 
 more than good advice. B«din, however, is more than 
 a theorist ; he gives practical advice to governments. 
 He is strongly opposed to the confiscation of property 
 of persons attainted of treason, and traces the appalling 
 growth of criminals and bandits to this practice, for it 
 suddenly reduces to beggary persons accustomed to 
 luxurious living and incapable of practising or entering 
 a trade ; in days when all trades were " mysteries," to 
 which definite apprenticeship and membership were 
 necessary, it would not merely be want of training which 
 could bar the way. At any rate the world had not 
 discovered cheating at bridge as a refuge fpr the destitute. 
 We also find in Bodin speculations on the origin of 
 national characteristics and the beginnings of that theory 
 of climatic effects which played so great a part in Buckle's 
 
128 The Politiques and [lect. 
 
 notorious work. He was a free trader in an age of 
 bureaucracy, and, as we saw, a strong supporter of 
 toleration as it was understood by the Politiques. Michel 
 de rH6pital in his Traiti de la Reformation de la Justice 
 is chiefly interesting for the evidence which his book 
 aifords of the entire absence of the spirit of legality in 
 the tribunals of the day. The ideal of equality, which 
 always seems to Englishmen a little ridiculous in French 
 revolutionaries, is probably due to the fact that that 
 limited part of it known as equality before the law did 
 not exist in France before 1688. L'Hopital laments 
 with reiteration and emphasis the way in which power is 
 able to hinder the doing of ordinary justice, and mentions 
 it as a special grace of Augustus that he only once 
 interfered to save a favourite from the condemnation of 
 the law. The need in the State, as it had been in the 
 Church, is not for laws but their impartial administration. 
 It was partly this sense that led to the idealisation of 
 monarchy as the only power which was highly placed 
 enough to prevent that oppression of interest and wealth 
 which was a normal feature of the time. It was not 
 merely the scientific theory of the modern State, but its 
 practical tasks with which Bodin and his contemporaries 
 were concerned. This is perhaps most evident of all in 
 the lengthy treatise of Pierre Gregoire of Toulouse, De 
 Republica. The author was a jurist, and it is from a 
 jurist's standpoint that he writes. As a sincere Catholic he 
 avoids awkward questions about the Pope, so far as may 
 be ; but he asserts distinctly the independence of the 
 civil power. The most noteworthy characteristic of the 
 book is the complete envisaging of tbe functions of the 
 modern State. Questions of marriage, the population, 
 education, are all treated ; we observe how the ideals of 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 129 
 
 Luther for the lay control of all civil matters are in 
 substance accepted. For many of the questions here 
 discussed would earlier have been considered merely 
 to concern the spiritual authority. Although Gregory 
 admits the right of the Pope to institute Universities 
 he is clearly against any real ecclesiastical control of 
 educational matters. We also find, as in Bodin? a 
 certain amount of International Law. The dominating 
 thought of Bodin and Gregory as that of Luther is the 
 idea of the State as fulfilling the highest aims of the 
 community ; politics is not for them, as for Jesuits and 
 clericals, a mere secondary machinery, secular, utilitarian 
 and mundane; it might almost be described in Lord 
 Acton's phrase as " the art of doing on the largest scale 
 what is right." But there is no notion of self-government. 
 The task of the State is to be effected by a bureaucracy ; 
 the fundamental notions of James, still more those of 
 Cecil or Bacon, are very similar. Indeed the whole 
 development of governmental activity, the labours of 
 Colbert and Pombal, even those of Frederic II and 
 Joseph II, are a commentary on this work. The advent 
 of the State, the possibility of a strong central power, 
 general obedience to which was a fact or a dream nearly 
 realized (Gregory wrote after the triumph of Henri IV), i 
 rendered it necessary for thinkers to consider what! 
 government ought to do ; whereas the task of the 
 Middle Ages had been the struggle of the State for 
 existence. The situation is somewhat similar to the 
 change in English politics after the final admission to 
 the franchise of practically the whole male portion of the 
 nation in 1884; politics began to turn from political to 
 social and economic questions — from the problem what 
 ought a State to be men turned to the consideration what 
 
 F. 9 
 
130 The Politiques and [lect. 
 
 it ought to do. This to some degree was the case at 
 the end of the sixteenth century. The struggle with 
 clerical interference was or seemed to be at an end. All 
 competing claims, feudal or federal, had disappeared. 
 The inherent power of territorial kingship was assured in 
 many countries and seemed to be in England, for 
 Puritanism appeared a little cloud no bigger than a 
 man's hand. The taking over by government of many 
 tasks hitherto performed by the Church, the organization 
 of industrial life, the development of trade, especially 
 that over seas, the problems of the new capitalism, the 
 promotion of culture, as understood since the Renais- 
 sance, might seem fit to task the energies of all statesmen, 
 and to some extent did so. The age of the grand 
 monarque, its culture and its brilliancy, its glory and 
 shame was the natural goal to which the Politiques were 
 approaching. It was the failure to imitate or carry out 
 in England this ideal of all " gentlemanly " kings, that 
 was the inner tragedy of the Stuart regime. The 
 uprising of the modem idea of public spirit is perhaps 
 the best phrase in which to describe the significance of 
 the party. 
 
 One more related subject must be noticed. In 
 Sully's Economes Royales we have something of an 
 insight into the mind if not of Henri IV at least of 
 his great minister. 
 
 The " great design " of the Economes Royales is in its 
 oft-reiterated outlines, as easy of detailing, as it was 
 visionary. Europe is to be divided into fifteen equal 
 powers, so balanced that none shall find it possible to 
 menace the liberty of the others. These States are to form 
 a sort of Christian Commonwealth, with rules of arbitra- 
 tion so as to prevent war. There is to be a universal 
 
iv] Religious Toleration 131 
 
 freedom of trade, and religious toleration. Now this 
 design at first sight appears so chimerical, that it is hard 
 to see how practical statesmen could have ever entertained 
 it. There appears, however, to be no doubt that Sully- 
 really did think it worth putting forward. Even if 
 we allowed that he had no other object than the 
 desire to humble the House of Austria, we are 
 driven to ask ourselves what it was in the general 
 condition of things which made such means to reach 
 the end conceivable. We notice first how the residuary 
 legatee of the idea of unity of the medieval world is this 
 conception of a body of States independent yet united 
 by certain ties, whose action is to proceed by rules; 
 in other words the idea of law as international ; secondly 
 we notice how the practical principle of the balance of 
 power is definitely put forward. 
 
 Political arrangements are in future to be based 
 on an equilibrium of forces deliberately maintained. 
 Sully may have been a visionary but he struck the 
 key-note of European politics, until the era of force 
 gave way to that of ideas with the Revolution of 1689^^ 
 The notion of the " balance of power " is indeed Italian 
 and arose from the fact that Italy in the fifteenth 
 century realized on a smaller scale those conditions 
 which developed in Europe in the seventeenth. Hinted 
 at by Machiavelli and always in the background of his 
 mind, the principle formed the basis of the action of 
 Wolsey and the inaction of Elizabeth ; was definitely 
 appealed to by Marnix de S. Aldegonde, as a reason for 
 Europe assisting the Dutch against Philip II, and at the 
 close of the century finds its full expression in the 
 design which Sully attributed to Henri IV. 
 
 Further it is to be remarked that the basis of the new 
 
 9—2 
 
132 The Politiques and Toleration [lect. iv 
 
 Europe is to be that of religious diversity but not 
 complete toleration. The "great design" in fact takes the 
 principle of cujus regio ejus religio from Germany and 
 applies it to Europe at large. Here is no laying down 
 of toleration as a principle ; but since three forms of the 
 Christian religion have come to stay, facts must be faced, 
 and no more fuss made about the matter. That is the 
 real position of Sully, and it corresponds to what we 
 have seen to be the attitude of the Politiques towards the 
 religious difficulty in internal politics. 
 
 The "great design" then is noteworthy as illustrating 
 once more the fact that in the sixteenth century there 
 came into definite though not final expression those 
 principles which were to occupy the mind of Europe for 
 two hundred years, and were to be the occasion if not 
 the cause, of the groupings both of domestic and inter- 
 national politics. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE MONARCHOMACHI. 
 
 In the last lecture we saw how the enduring work of 
 the sixteenth century was the modern State. Its legal 
 omnipotence and unity, the destruction of all com- 
 peting powers, separate or privileged, were assured, and a 
 universal all-embracing system of law became possible. 
 We have now to consider another result of the Reforma- 
 tion, popular freedom or rather its theoretical basis — for 
 except in the British Isles and the Netherlands it 
 disappeared in Europe, until 1789. It is not too much 
 ^ to say that political liberty would not now-a-days exist 
 anywhere but for the claim to ecclesiastical independence. 
 It is the transformation of the desire to persecute 
 into the claim to an inherent right to exist on the part 
 of religious bodies that historically produces those 
 limitations upon State action which are the securities 
 of freedom. But this is not all. It was only by adding 
 to political reasons a religious one, that the struggle for 
 freedom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ended 
 in any but one way. As we have already seen, the forces 
 in favour of absolutism and the general acquiescence 
 therein were of immense strength ; the universal desire 
 for efficiency and legislative activity all made the same 
 
 '/ 
 
134 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 way ; and a strong executive not only secured peace 
 but was a necessity. With the decay of feudal and 
 Papal influence there was one and only one motive, the 
 religious, that could withstand the torrent of officialism, 
 or in any way attenuate that orgy of centralisation which 
 succeeded to the anarchy of feudalism. This may be 
 seen first of all in the Church, which with the close 
 of the Middle Ages became more and more a pure 
 monarchy, until the rebellion of Luther deprived it of 
 half its subjects and more than half its influence. It 
 can be seen in every State in Europe, in none more 
 obviously than in the Netherlands and England. The 
 purely utilitarian argument was, for short periods, as we 
 saw in our discussion of Barclay, entirely at the service 
 of the central power and indeed always is^ ; the suffering 
 caused by a day of civil war is always greater than that 
 of a year of tyranny. The dangers of tyranny are, as 
 Savonarola discerned, in their main moral, and it is the 
 narrowing of character which is the most grievous result 
 of oppression. Hence it is only some moral or religious 
 motive that can in an age like the sixteenth century 
 be at all available against the dominant tendencies. At 
 bottom the claim of a religious body, however bigoted 
 or unreasonable or exclusive its tenets or methods, is 
 always the claim to maintain intact a particular type of 
 character ; and to maintain it by a right, which no 
 argument from expediency can disturb. 
 
 In his latest and not least valuable work, Mr Dicey 
 shows how precarious is the plant of freedom when 
 based on purely utilitarian grounds ; he points out how 
 dangerous Benthamite Liberalism has been to the very 
 individualism by which it set such store ; how by 
 ridiculing all notions of inherent right in politics, and 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 135 
 
 seeking to advance liberty under the cover of its utility 
 which was supposed to be self-evident, Benthamism really 
 prepared the way for that extension of the absolutism of 
 the State which it abhorred, and forged those very chains 
 of collectivism which fettered the freedom of its dreams. I 
 Now it was just this danger, or one analogous to it, 
 from which both Rome and Geneva saved the constitu- 
 tionalism of the sixteenth century. By basing the claim 
 to freedom on Divine Right, it sought and on the whole 
 succeeded in finding a refuge, where the assaults of the 
 mere Politique could not touch it ; so much so that 
 monarchists had perforce to do the same. It is the 
 influence of Luther or of Laud, not of Hobbes or 
 Machiavelli, that is the real inspiration of Jacobites. 
 Nelson might write of " The Common Interest of Kings 
 and People" as being on the side of non-resistance, 
 but the strength of royalism was the belief that it was a 
 religious duty to obey " masters though froward." With 
 such an argument, coupled with the general tendency to 
 centralisation, the triumph of autocracy which as a fact 
 was very general, must have been universal but for the 
 claim of religious bodies to limit absolutism by their 
 own existence or even their supremacy. What they 
 desired, was not liberty or tolerance, but domination 
 and independence — happily the power of the State 
 proved everywhere too strong for their desire (except 
 perhaps for a brief period in Scotland) ; but though 
 they did not gain dominion, they secured, what has been 
 better, tolerance. Political liberty is the residuary lega- 
 tee of ecclesiastical animosities. 
 
 The Church was the first and last of immunists and 
 the sects were likewise the first of Libertarians — but 
 only in spite of themselves. The two religious bodies 
 
136 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 which have done the most to secure " the rights of man " 
 
 are those two which really cared least about individual 
 
 \ liberty, and made the largest inroads upon private life 
 
 ' j wherever they obtained the supremacy — the Roman 
 
 I Catholic Church and the Presbyterian. Their regard 
 for their own supremacy or at any rate independence 
 was so great that in countries like Scotland, where the 
 government was either lukewarm or hostile to it, Presby- 
 terianism proved a perpetual check upon the central 
 power ; while in France, where a long struggle between 
 the two took place, each in turn was led by circumstances 
 to put forth a theory of political liberty, which was 
 the direct parent of the doctrines triumphant in 1688, 
 and through Locke the ancestor of those of 1789. 
 Moreover even when absolutism had triumphed in 
 France the very man, who in the interests of uniformity 
 had revoked the Edict of Nantes, when he attempted 
 in those of nationality to set the Pope at defiance found 
 a very real limitation upon the dogma that he was 
 himself the State. Despite the sonorous declarations 
 of 1682, and the solid advocacy of Bossuet, Louis XIV 
 was beaten by the spiritual power, the Galilean liberties 
 succumbed to ultramontane orthodoxy, the eldest son 
 of the Church discovered himself to be subject to 
 the correction of his father, and the most Christian 
 King found that his title was the tacit condition of 
 a contract which he was unable to repudiate. No 
 triumph of the Papacy — except that of Leo XIII over 
 Bismarck — was greater than the comparatively un- 
 
 i regarded one which Innocent XII obtained over the 
 grand monarque. 
 
 It was the struggle for existence of the Reformation 
 sects, that compelled them to put forward a general 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 137 
 
 theory of government which imposes checks upon ! 
 absolutism, and to investigate and revive all ancient 
 institutions which were or might be the means of con- 
 trolling it. Further than this the system of Calvinism 
 was what neither Lutheranism nor Anglicanism nor 
 Romanism was, a republican if not a democratic system. 
 Practically it doubtless meant the oligarchy of the 
 preachers or the tyranny " worse than Papal " of 
 ruling elders ; certainly it did not favour individual 
 liberty ; but it was opposed in theory to secular 
 interference, and by its own methods to monarchical 
 power ; and hence in spite of itself Calvinism in France, 
 in the Netherlands and Scotland became either in 
 the world of thought or in that of practice the basis of 
 modern liberty. That it had of itself any such penchant 
 is of course not the case ; and illustrations of the fact 
 may be found in Geneva under Calvin and Beza, in the 
 Calvinistic principalities of Germany, in New England, 
 in the very idea of the Solemn League and Covenant, 
 and in the treatment of Episcopacy in Scotland after 
 1689. Yet James I was quite right in his dislike to the 
 system as fettering his freedom, for the organisation of 
 Scotch Presbyterianism, borrowed from the French, did 
 undoubtedly prepare the way for popular government. 
 This can easily be illustrated from Scotch history in the 
 years 1637-41, and from France in the years of the 
 religious wars. The point to note is that liberty is the 
 result of religious competition ; otherwise it would have 
 succumbed to the general monarchical tendencies. It is, 
 perhaps, best to avoid profitless discussions by saying 
 that liberty in this chapter is used in no natural or 
 sublimated sense, but according to the usage of 
 Professor Dicey as comprising certain legal rights 
 
138 The Monarchomachi [lect, 
 
 practically secured. These are the rights to free- 
 dom of discussion, worship, and person ; to security 
 against unlawful taxation ; to some means of control 
 over both legislative and executive. These notions were 
 not new, nor, in principle, were the means by which they 
 were secured — what was new in the sixteenth century was 
 the strength of the forces, which everywhere threatened 
 and in most places destroyed them. The destruction of 
 / , the forces that made for anarchy was also a very real 
 ^ : destruction of those that made for liberty, whether feudal 
 1 privileges, or municipal rights. Even the Canon Law and 
 the theory of the Empire made a sovereign, omnipotent, 
 and unitary State impossible in the Middle Ages — except 
 in the dreams of the extremer Canonists. As we have 
 seen, however, all those competing or checking agencies 
 had disappeared, and even in Catholic countries the 
 claims of the clergy had ceased to make to any real extent 
 an imperium in imperio. The civil law was triumphant. 
 The conditions for a full theory of sovereignty existed 
 and were active. There was a very real danger that 
 this discovery — for it was a discovery — of a power that 
 could not be bound by law because it could make law — 
 would produce a more enduring tyranny than any 
 I hitherto known — and it did do this in some places, 
 ' especially as in most States it was no assembly or 
 republic to whose advantage this boon had come at last. 
 In the next three lectures we shall be occupied with 
 ->w various phases of the_ struggle to^ set bounds to the 
 ^a^e/^jt-j^d-, overweening J[enasc«jce7StatE"'" In many 
 cases the struggle was unsuccessful except in the 
 domain of theory — but we shall see forming the theory 
 of limited monarchy and of public law, as it passed 
 through the Whigs and Grotius to the Europe of the 
 
 I 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 139 
 
 eighteenth century. We shall find in general the follow- 
 ing facts to be universal. 
 
 (i) The primum mobile of all this struggle was 
 religious. Civil rights are secondary, a means to an end, 
 never successfully preserved either among Protestants 
 or Catholics except where dangers to religious belief 
 sharpen the determination to resist by a higher than 
 utilitarian motive. 
 
 (2) The argument almost invariably makes a con- 
 tract the basis of the State. 
 
 (3) It rests therefore on the conception of a law 
 natural anterior to law in our sense. On the same 
 conception the further, structure of rules limiting the 
 international irresponsibility of the State is raised. 
 
 (4) The conception of law which makes it the 
 arbitrary command of an irresponsible sovereign, "one 
 or number," is denied in concordance with the theory 
 of law that it is "the voice of reason, the harmony of the 
 worlds" the foundation not the result of State authority. 
 
 Now the nouveau fait, which made it feasible to set 
 up these claims, was the difference between the religion 
 of king and people in an age of persecution. The 
 king's power in the Middle Ages was subject to many 
 limitations, especially to those of the ecclesiastical 
 power. But though he might be admonished and even 
 deposed by the Pope his religion never differed from 
 that of his subjects ; he might be a schismatic or ex- 
 communicate, he was never really a heretic — not even 
 Frederic II was chargeable with this; his ferocious 
 edicts in favour of persecution at a time when he 
 desired to conciliate the Papacy are a proof at least 
 of his public profession. But the Reformation changed 
 all this. It made it possible for a king to be of a 
 
140 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 different confession from that of his people or from 
 some influential section of it ; and this in an age when 
 all religious bodies proclaimed the duty of persecution, 
 as incumbent upon the sovereign of a Christian common- 
 wealth, and indeed as the mark which distinguished it 
 from an atheistic, Machiavellian State. John Knox, 
 Beza, Luther were on this point in agreement with 
 Boucher and Louis d'Orleans, and out of sympathy 
 with the ideals of the Politiques. Now it was only by 
 some claim to a right of insurrection (unless a theory of 
 toleration could be accepted) that there was any chance 
 for a persecuted religion to preserve its existence. Hence 
 the claims to a deposing power were revived by Rome 
 in an age when otherwise they would have fallen into 
 oblivion. The very idea of the Counter- Reformation is 
 a restriction upon the omnipotence of the civil power, 
 and in some sense a denial of international indepen- 
 dence. Its thesis is that (i) Sovereigns may not do 
 what they will with their own in religious matters, 
 (2) States are not mutually independent entities, but parts 
 of a wider order, a commonwealth bound by cert^iin 
 rules with which they are not at liberty to dispense. 
 The struggle for liberty is always conditioned by the 
 presence or absence of this determining circumstance — 
 religious differences. They are the security alike of 
 territorial sovereignty in Germany and (where they 
 last long enough) of constitutional freedom in other 
 countries. 
 
 For instance, in Germany, there was no growth either 
 in theory or practice of liberty within the State ; on the 
 contrary, as we have seen, the whole trend of thought 
 and fact is toward absolutism. The exception is the 
 Anabaptist movement, which served but to bring 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 141 
 
 discredit on the ideas for which it stood, where it did 
 not, as at Miinster, contradict them. The reason is that 
 inside the German States, religious competition was not 
 effective ; the comparative tolerance of the religious 
 peace of Augsburg which substituted banishment for 
 burning as the punishment of heresy, and the fact thatj 
 exile did not mean leaving the Fatherland, rendered| 
 it needless for recalcitrants to have recourse, like' 
 Huguenots, to the theory and practice of rebellion. On 
 the other hand if we take the Empire as a whole, there 
 religious differences were truly effective and rebellion not? 
 only became common, it became normal, and eventually f 
 turned the prince into a sovereign and insurrection into- 
 lawful war. When the peace of Westphalia is spoken of 
 as foundation of the modern public law of Europe, the 
 meaning of the assertion ought to be more closely ap- 
 prehended than it commonly is. What the treaties of 
 Miinster and Osnabriick really did was legally to con- 
 secrate the international liberties of Europe, as they had 
 been secured by the religious revolution. The idea of 
 a united Christendom was abandoned. Internationally 
 religions were made equal. Pope and Emperor lost 
 theoretically what they had long lost practically, their 
 hegemony, and in a few years even the Imperial chancery 
 grants to national monarchs the title of " majesty." The 
 Canon Law ceased in fact to be international, which it 
 most distinctly was in the Middle Ages ; became (subject 
 to concordats) merely the conceded machinery for regu- 
 lating a department of particular States. Further the 
 sovereignty of the States of the Empire was admitted, and 
 struggles for existence between Habsburg and Hohen- 
 zollern would in future be wars not rebellions. In theory 
 the dogma that all States are equal begins to supersede 
 
142 The Monarckomachi [lect. 
 
 the medieval conception of a universal hierarchy of 
 officials. Now all this was the direct and obvious result of 
 religious differences ; it could not have taken place had 
 Emperor and princes all remained of one religious com- 
 munion. Indeed had the Emperors become Lutheran, 
 their power would probably have been consolidated 
 instead of shattered ; although there were, of course, many 
 other than religious motives which contributed to princely 
 preeminence. In this case we see the effects of religious 
 difference in introducing liberty into international 
 politics or rather making them international. We must 
 bear in mind that this movement between States goes on 
 pari passu, and is at least partly successful owing to the 
 same causes, as the struggle between rival religions, 
 inside the States, which emphasized that "division 
 of power" on which liberty always depends. 
 
 In the Middle Ages liberty depended, wherever it 
 existed, on the division of power between overlords 
 and tenants-in-chief, or between secular and ecclesiastical 
 rulers ; in the conciliar era it was, or appeared to be, 
 secured by the division of allegiance obtained by rival 
 Popes ; in the sixteenth century it either existed or was 
 claimed effectively only when and in so far as political 
 unity, always tending to uniformity, was broken by the 
 struggle between Protestant and Catholic, or between 
 Lutheran and Calvinist, or between Anglican and 
 Puritan. Only because neither party could subdue, 
 exterminate, or banish the other was toleration the 
 result of the Revolution of 1688. If there had been no 
 competitor with Anglicanism, James II's removal might 
 have only led to a system as narrowly uniform as 
 that of France under Louis XIV. 
 
 In the sixteenth century the whole course of the 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 143 
 
 Reformation in Scotland effected the liberty of the 
 people and helped to secure popular government, 
 because the king was always unsympathetic and some- 
 times hostile to the movement; but the verj^fact that it 
 was general was unfavourable to true liberty, and the 
 Episcopal Church was treated after 1688 with an 
 intolerance which was nearly a century behind the treat- 
 ment of the Nonconformists in England ^ The Reforma- 
 tion could not have that result in England, but helped 
 to increase the royal power, until a party arose, who 
 disliked the Elizabethan settlement, and were determined 
 to destroy it at the bayonet's point. The case of the 
 Netherlands is yet more important ; those provinces, 
 in which the Catholic religion was dominant, did not 
 find it necessary to carry their protest into proclaiming 
 independence, and returned after a period of Sturm und 
 Drang to the Spanish allegiance. France, however, 
 affords the most striking object of the truth, as it is 
 also the most important treasury of literature embodying 
 it. There, so long as the question was undecided, the 
 right to political liberty was proclaimed, according as cir- 
 cumstances dictated, alternately by the Huguenot and the 
 ultramontane party. Eventually, however, the principle 
 that the king must be of the same religion as the 
 majority of his subjects was established by the sub- 
 mission of Henri IV. The struggle ended with the gift 
 of toleration to the minority, but the apparent gain was 
 more than counteracted by the triumph of the principle 
 of uniformity in the interested Catholicism of Henri IV, 
 to whom religion was a matter of policy ; and eventually 
 this principle ran its course till religious liberty was 
 destroyed by Louis XIV in the interests of the unity 
 
144 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 of the State. In England a somewhat similar result 
 obtained in 1688, but the security for freedom was 
 greater in that, firstly, it was not merely local ; secondly, 
 the differences between the Church and Nonconformists 
 were less far-reaching; and thirdly, the age of confes- 
 sional conflicts was over, and rationalistic latitudinarian- 
 ism was the dominant tendency in all bodies in the 
 eighteenth century ; fourthly, the connection of the party 
 of freedom with aristocratic disaffection was less close 
 than in France. At the same time we must bear in 
 mind that even in England the regime of George III 
 was comparable, if we allow for the difference of century 
 and country, to that of Louis XIV, at least in its 
 relation to already secured rights. George III threat- 
 ened and for a time nearly overthrew those rights to 
 personal liberty, freedom of discussion, and, at least in 
 appearance, consent to taxation, which the settlement 
 had apparently guaranteed ; he was opposed to all those 
 measures for the relief of Dissenters which were the 
 logical outcome of the Revolution, and he succeeded 
 in delaying, until the concession had lost all its grace, 
 the merest justice to Roman Catholics'- In the strictest 
 sense George III and Louis XIV and Philip II were 
 national kings, they all alike represented with fidelity, 
 the more admirable because it was unconscious, the most 
 reactionary prejudices of their countrymen, all alike 
 shared the limitations of I'homme moyen sensuel. But 
 all alike illustrate the danger to liberty in a modern 
 t centralised state that lies in a government which 
 ,has no deep source of division among its governing 
 jclasses. 
 
 Let us now trace this development a little more in 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 145 
 
 detail. Ignoring the international aspects of the religious 
 controversy let us keep to the internal politics of indi- 
 vidual States. It was by the Protestants that the 
 standard of revolt was first raised. Calvin the father 
 of Presbyterianism was indeed very carefully guarded in 
 his language, and avoids giving any countenance either 
 to rebellion or democracy. He speaks with contempt 
 of the mob. His own ideal was for an ecclesiastical 
 oligarchy under the shadow of which he himself could 
 rule. Theologically and politically he disbelieved in 
 freedom. He declares himself abstractly in favour of 
 aristocracy, but is very anxious to show that govern- 
 ments are relative to historical development, and in 
 this he is very modern. He is clear that government of 
 whatever form is to be obeyed as a religious duty, and 
 he will allow no private individual to resist his prince. 
 To estates of the realm, as the protectors of the people, 
 he allows considerable power ; and he makes a remark 
 about those States, where in fact " ephors " exist for a 
 "check on tyranny," which was of great service for future 
 disputants, whose use of the term is alone significant of 
 Calvin's influence. Like others he adduces the instances 
 of Ehud and Judith as cases of special inspiration, and 
 thus leaves a loophole whereby such sanction could be 
 claimed on the one side for the murder of the Duke 
 of Guise, and on the other for that of Henri III. His 
 conclusion, however, in favour of passive obedience is 
 explicit, and he cannot and was not cited as an authority 
 for the theory of rebellion. For Calvin this position 
 was possible*. But to his followers in Scotland and 
 France it was no longer tenable. 
 
 The course of the Scotch Reformation from the 
 beginning to the deposition of Mary Stuart, and right 
 
146 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 on through the Bishops' wars to the Revolution, affords, 
 perhaps, the most complete and consistent expression of 
 the duty of rebellion, alike in theory and practice, which 
 we possess outside ultramontane pamphleteering. In 
 each case there is a similar claim in the background 
 for an ecclesiastical independence which may mean 
 supremacy. John Knox, while he allows his monarchs 
 to play the part of Josiah, did not desire to tolerate any 
 idolaters ; and had he been powerful enough would cer- 
 tainly have made a " right faith " as much a condition of 
 legitimacy as did the Counter-Reformation. So far as 
 we can tell, his view of the office of the Christian 
 propagandist knew no limits either of morality or law ; 
 in other words his sense of the value of the particular 
 religious society was as strong as that of the Jesuits, and 
 like them he employed the means recommended by 
 Machiavelli to attain his ends ; among those means 
 murder and rebellion had a natural home in the 
 Scotland of 1555-80. In Goodman's treatise, the sub- 
 serviency of political to ecclesiastical considerations 
 is yet more violently proclaimed ; he has a theory of 
 rebellion to justify Wyatt's insurrection in favour of 
 " that godly lady and meek lamb, Elizabeth," and would 
 clearly like to control not merely internal but external 
 policy by purely confessional considerations '. The same 
 is also the case with leaders like Melville a little later. 
 ■ What they exhibit in general is first a theory of the 
 i limits of the supreme authority which may, or may 
 S not, become a theory of liberty ; and secondly the 
 purely- religious and even ecclesiastical character of 
 this theory. This was the reason of James's dislike to 
 them. 
 
 The most generally important treatise on the sub- 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 147 
 
 ject is, however, George Buchanan's short dialogue De 
 Jure Regni apud Scotos. Written to justify the depo- 
 sition of Mary Stuart, it contains in a short compass 
 the two main arguments which were to be at the service 
 of the popular party until the French Revolution ; 
 the argument from precedent and the argument from \ 
 principle. There is the historical argument, which might 
 be used in any nation, which had a constitution in the 
 Middle Ages, that checks on the sovereign authority 
 were ancient, customary and by no means merely 
 nominal. It is an appeal to the law of historical 
 development and was used even in the conciliar move- 
 ment. We must not suppose it to be only true of 
 England, because ours is the only country where these 
 ancient checks have survived to become the foundation 
 of modern liberty. It is as true or nearly so of medieval 
 France as of England ; and the favourite formula of 
 pamphleteers is borrowed not from Britain, but Spain. 
 If the historical argument had less place in the German 
 States, at any rate in the Empire it was strong enough ; 
 and eventually successful. The independence of the 
 sovereign prince of Germany is the final result, assisted 
 by the Reformation, of a long historical development, 
 which goes back to the very beginnings of lordship and 
 service. In fact the triumphs of the historical principle 
 are twofold : the territorial sovereignty and legal equality 
 of small States is the crown of it in the one aspect ; the 
 constitutional monarchy of England that of the other. 
 The novelty is the absorption by the State in France or 
 Spain of all competing jurisdictions on the one hand ; 
 and on the other the destruction, even in idea, of any 
 integral conception of Europe, more especially its re- 
 ligious unity. 
 
 10 — 2 
 
148 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 The second aspect of Buchanan's book is the writer's 
 theory of contract. In some form or other the anti- 
 monarchical writers from this time forwards till Rousseau 
 (and we can trace the idea backwards to Manegold of 
 Lauterbach) all base their claim to check and if 
 necessary to resist the monarch on the notion of the 
 original contract. Once the notion can be popularised, 
 that the obligations of government and protection are 
 mutual and not one-sided, it is easy to protest eflfectively 
 against tyranny, whether religious or political. The 
 theory of contract raises to our eyes every possible objec- 
 tion ; it is unhistorical, abstract and self-contradictory. 
 / Not only does history afford no evidence of it, but of 
 even a tacit contract the general consciousness in our 
 own or any other age is unaware. Not only does the 
 conception seem abstract and doctrinaire, but it seems 
 very bad abstraction, and to imply a doctrine false to 
 all our notions of political organisms and public utility. 
 It contradicts the evolutionary theory of politics, and 
 substitutes for a just reliance on the hatred of men 
 to oppression a conception of abstract rights, which is 
 as patient of real tyranny as it is often active against 
 imaginary injuries ; for a prince might easily keep his 
 contract and yet be a tyrant, e.g., Philip II in Spain. 
 Lastly, the conception is self-contradictory. For it 
 assumes, as anterior to law, a purely juristic notion. If 
 government is the result of a contract, what can make the 
 contract binding, when there is ex hypothesi no sovereign 
 authority to do so? These objections are all of them 
 perfectly valid. Yet they must be used mainly as a 
 means to help us to understand the condition of things 
 which made such objections either imperceptible or in- 
 admissible. Until the time of Filmer, and still more of 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 149 
 
 Leslie, the arguments on the other side were not at 
 all of the character above noted, but rather concerned 
 with showing the Divinely given authority of the ruler, 
 and the religious duty of invariable non-resistance*. 
 Leslie's criticism of Hoadly, indeed, has in it much in 
 substance what might be written by a modern, such as 
 Austin ; as in form it is more brilliant and amusing'. 
 But we have to consider the state of things under which 
 such a theory seemed to many quite natural, and could 
 be readily offered as an effective ground for practical 
 action. 
 
 In the first place to that age the theory did not appear 
 unhistorical and hardly was so. For it was the natural 
 outcome of feudalism. Whatever be the defects of feudal- 
 ism, it was a system which recognised the reciprocity of 
 rights and duties in regard alike to political and economic 
 power, in a way which, save in a limited sphere, it has been 
 impossible to do since. We have, it is true, at length 
 secured a recognition of the duties of government, but 
 it is by an almost complete consecration of the rights 
 of property, and an entire disregard of moral obliga- 
 tion of the owner, purchased by the absolute surrender 
 of a portion of his wealth in the form of taxes. Now 
 the feudal tie was essentially contractual ; and it was 
 easy to see in the. coronation oath the recognition of 
 a similar contract on the part of the monarch, and in 
 the Baptismal vow a somewhat similar condition on the 
 part of the Christian. At any rate, the theory of con- 
 tract rested on two conceptions which were as a matter 
 of fact operative in recent history, first, the reciprocity 
 of protection and obedience implied in the corona- 
 tion oath and indeed the whole religious ceremony, 
 second, the nature of the obligations which bound lord 
 
150 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 and vassal. We find writers like Du Plessis Mornay 
 actually appealing to feudal customs as a ground for 
 natural resistance. There is no doubt that as a 
 matter of fact the idea of the contract owes much to 
 the long prevalence of similar notions in all spheres. 
 We must bear in mind that in all complete copies 
 of the corpus juris there was the Liber de Feudis, 
 For the Civil Law was not an ancient code that died 
 with Justinian, but a body of doctrine that developed up 
 to Henry VII. We may find further evidence in the 
 Baptismal vow ; by many this is treated as imposing an 
 obligation, which if the sovereign violates by heresy, he 
 may justly be deposed. 
 
 Secondly, the theory in the eyes of its supporters 
 gained rather than lost by laying stress on the idea of right, 
 beyond that of mere utility. The influence of Machiavelli 
 was very great ; but a purely utilitarian theory of politics 
 was not to be thought of, and perhaps never by itself be- 
 came influential until the days of Bentham. As was said 
 in the first lecture, we have seen the idea of right or 
 public welfare in general gradually supplant the notions 
 of rights in particular ; it has not been proved that the 
 change is beneficial. In some ways it tends to put 
 liberty at the mercy of sentiment and minorities under 
 the heel of majorities. Moreover the argument from 
 this side was, as we have seen, mainly on the side of 
 quiescence ; it is a very long view of public utility that 
 can ever justify insurrection. At any rate in days when 
 the claims of the Pope were based on ideas of Right, 
 when those of his adversaries the kings were equally 
 based on it, when the connection of law with politics 
 was intimate and all action was conceived under legalist 
 forms, and the causes of rebellion were commonly re- 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 151 
 
 ligious, no view which did not make it legally right 
 as well as expedient to rebel would have had any 
 chance of convincing opinion or even of satisfying the 
 consciences of the rebellious. Theories are taken up, as 
 a rule, to quiet doubts that perplex supporters, rather 
 than to answer opponents. The fautors of rebellion in 
 Scotland, France and Holland needed to be assured that, 
 in rising against the sovereign, they were not merely 
 consulting their interests, but doing their duty and 
 acting in defence of a legal right. The same fact is 
 shown by the rather ridiculous attempt in 1688 to quiet 
 the difficulties of non-resisting Tories by the use of the 
 word " abdicate" to describe the deposition of James II. 
 Lastly, and this is the most important point, the 
 possibility of an original contract anterior to the State 
 is significant of a world in which law, so far from being 
 the offspring, was the parent of government. The theory 
 was possible because the whole world was conceived as 
 governed by law,^ijvine,_natural or positive ; while the 
 distinctions between these kinds of law are only of a 
 secondary and subordinate character. Law in its sense 
 of universal rules of action is not confined to the merely 
 private and municipal affairs of a definite kingdom ; but 
 is descriptive of nearly all conceivable activities, human 
 and divine ; the law of nature is literally a law of nature 
 and in some minds is to be identified even with the 
 instincts of the beasts. But in any case law in the sense 
 of a uniformity of action is the dominant and endur- 
 ing notion ; that of a command is special, particular, 
 modern or ancient, not medieval — at least not as de- 
 scriptive of what is law and what is not. The classical 
 passage of Hooker breathes the whole spirit of an age, 
 and serves to enshrine the legacy of our days, of the world 
 
152 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 that was passing away. It is doubtful whether God 
 himself can dispense with natural law ; while the whole 
 development of medieval Catholicism, with its legalist 
 conceptions of penance, and its legal system of the 
 canon law, served to implicate with juristic notions the 
 principles both of politics and ethics. 
 
 In one sense, then, the original contract is a theory 
 unhistdrical, abstract and inconsistent — but these very 
 characteristics give us an insight into the historical 
 antecedents which produced it, the habit of political 
 philosophising on theological grounds which made it 
 palatable to the taste of the day, and above all into that 
 fundamentally juristic conception of the world, in which 
 all kinds of action and every sort of judgment was 
 expressed in legal phrciseology, and in which the con- 
 ception of law as the voice of eternal reason speaking 
 in the ways of God and in the works of man is so 
 general, as to disguise, if not to deny, that notion of it 
 as a mere command, which belongs either to the Roman 
 Church or the Renaissance State. It is noteworthy 
 that Hotman, one of the strong supporters, though on 
 historical grounds, of the popular side, was a violent and 
 convinced " Germanist," strongly suspicious of the Latin 
 element in French civilisation. 
 
 Though Buchanan struck the key-note the tune was 
 largely of other composition. It was the massacre of 
 S. Bartholomew which produced the most noteworthy 
 and valuable works from the Protestant side. That 
 event caused, naturally enough, a violent reaction against 
 Machiavellian and Italian politics, for no one ever forgot 
 that Catharine de' Medici was an Italian. The " liberals " 
 were, indeed, anti-Machiavellian : they were fighting first 
 for that notion of right in politics which Machiavelli 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 153 
 
 ignored, and secondly against that complete supersession 
 of all other interests in that of political unity, which his 
 system implies. We have from henceforward a mass of 
 pamphlets which deal with the relations of governors 
 and governed on very much the same lines as those of 
 Buchanan. It should, however, be mentioned that the 
 latter is alone or almost alone in granting to individuals 
 the right of resistance and even of attacking the royal 
 person. This was not the first time even in this century 
 that attempts were made to limit the royal authority. 
 Claude de Seysell in La grande Monarchic de France and 
 Bud^ in the Institution de Prince had both expressed their 
 sense of the importance of the states-general, and limita- 
 tions upon royal power ; while Etienne de la Bo^tie in 
 the famous Contr'Un had reiterated the attacks upon 
 monarchy of classical antiquity. But these were either 
 academic exercises or futile aspirations, had not the 
 tocsin been sounded by Le Reveille Matin des Franqois of 
 August 24th. The pamphlet indeed of that name is 
 merely a narrative of the facts, and says nothing of 
 general principles like the other famous broadside 
 Le Tigre, which is mere vituperation. The De Jure 
 Magistratum in Subditos, by some attributed to Beza, 
 may have suggested to Du Plessis Mornay the line 
 of argument he adopted later ; for it contains nearly all 
 the arguments of the Vindiciae contra Tyrannos (which 
 first appeared in 1576), although it is far less interesting 
 and has none of the moving eloquence which makes the 
 Vindiciae even now a live book. That work, of which 
 the authorship is clearly to be attributed to Du Plessis 
 Mornay and not to Languet, is the most important book 
 on the subject, previous to Locke's work. It may be 
 inferior in intellectual power to the work of Althusius, 
 
154 The Monarchomachi [lect, 
 
 but it had a deeper contemporary influence, just because 
 it is a livre de circonstance and not a scientific treatise. 
 The character of the argument may be briefly indicated. 
 Unlimited obedience is due to God alone ; to the king as 
 his delegate a limited submission, always bounded by 
 God's law, is due. Between the Almighty on the one 
 hand and king and people on the other there is 
 an original contract, of which the covenant between 
 Jehoiada and the Israelites is the model ; this contract 
 is on God's side one of protection ; on that of the nation, 
 maintenance of the true religion. If the king violates 
 this covenant by persecuting the true religion, the people 
 are absolved from allegiance to their mesne lord by their 
 duties to God the overlord. A prince who persecutes 
 the faith is a rebel against God, no more a lawful sovereign 
 than a Pope deposed for heresy. It is evident how 
 greatly this theory of resistance on the basis of the 
 contract is framed for the express purpose of defending 
 religion ; how the theory might be equally useful to 
 ultramontanes ; how closely it is connected with feudal 
 conceptions. In detail the author shows the great 
 influence of the conciliar movement, for we find him 
 arguing from the rights of councils over Popes to those 
 of peoples over kings. Further, here, but still more in 
 ultramontane arguments on the same side, we note how 
 the medieval view of a Pope ceasing to be such ipso facto 
 in a case of heresy becomes the origin of the claim that 
 no Christian king is lawfully such who is heretical' ; it is 
 not denied that infidel or Mohammedan sovereigns are 
 lawful monarchs, but they have no compact such as is 
 made by all Christians at their Baptism. 
 
 This contract, however, is not the only one which 
 the Vindiciae postulates. The writer goes on to another 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 155 
 
 instrument between king and people, which makes 
 allegiance depend on good government, and places civil 
 rights on a firmer basis than that of the royal grant. 
 Here again we reach what was to be the main ground of 
 struggle for a long time. The claim of kings, who had re- 
 cognised the significance of sovereignty, was not so much 
 to thwart the actual exercise of the national customs, as 
 to claim that they were matters of grace not of right. It 
 is against this claim that the idea of a contract proved 
 so valuable — for it gave to the public the consciousness 
 that their rights were no less rooted in the constitution 
 of the country than were those of the king. The whole 
 tendency of civilian lawyers was to deny this ; to treat 
 as merely customary what hitherto had been regarded 
 as legal, and to regard as readily alterable customs 
 which had been treated as immutable. Some such 
 theory as that of the original contract was needed to 
 express the widespread consciousness that public rights 
 and constitutional machinery were as much a part of the 
 legal system as the admitted prerogatives of the crown. . 
 
 The contract theory starts from the view directly 
 denied by the theorists of Divine Right, that the people 
 is the true source of royal power ; and in this our author 
 and the numerous imitators were more indebted to 
 Roman Law than some of them knew — for, as has been 
 pointed out, the statements about the Lex Regia if 
 treated as they were treated as a universal theory of 
 government (there is a great deal of it in Barclay) imply 
 that political authority springs from below — and to that 
 extent favour the notion of the ultimate sovereignty of 
 the people. 
 
 Both in this and still more in his theory of contract 
 the author adopts and eloquently expounds that view of 
 
156 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 law which is common to him and many other writers, 
 medieval and modern, which was noticed a little earlier, 
 and makes of it something far higher than the positive 
 edict of a transitory ruler. It has its relation to days 
 when the legislative activity was either dormant or in 
 embryo ; and makes much, as it must, of custom as a 
 source of law. It is concerned with the universality of 
 law, its embodiment of principles rather than caprice, and 
 pays scant regard to its sanction. Like the English 
 followers of Coke and the common law, Du Plessis 
 Mornay treats the idea as more venerable and majestic 
 than any kingship. It is the voice of God ; the king is 
 but the creature of the law which is unchanged by time, 
 unbiassed by passion, unmoved by fear; it knows no 
 partiality and expresses no personal idiosyncracy, but 
 is the utterance of universal reason, as against caprice 
 and private interest. The Vindiciae^ is a treatise which 
 is elevated and impressive far beyond the run of political 
 treatises, and breathes of the very spirit of liberty. 
 Yet its author is nowhere so impressive as, nor does his 
 style rise higher than, in those passages which extol 
 the majesty of "Law," and express the ideas which 
 through all vicissitudes were to distinguish the practical 
 constitutionalism of the English people from the revolu- 
 tionary system-mongeriiig of Rousseau or Siey^s. 
 
 It is no anachronism to say that this treatise is very 
 Whig, if by Whig be understood that body of opinion 
 which is expressed in the writings of Locke and reflected 
 in the Revolution settlement. Another evidence of the 
 same character is the author's advice to individuals ; all 
 resistance on their part is rigidly condemned, prayers 
 and tears are to be their weapons. Resistance rnust be 
 orderly, directed by those estates which represent the 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 157 
 
 kingdom rather than the king; or by those persons 
 whose position is of public not private character. In this 
 last provision we see how deeply the aristocratic spirit 
 dominates the writer ; for what he will not allow to the 
 people he allows practically to nobles, even acting apart 
 from any assembly". There was little enough of demo- 
 cracy in theory or in practice among the Huguenots, 
 and it is among the Jesuits and the Ligue that we must 
 seek for thorough-going Jacobinism. 
 
 The historical element, which under various disguises 
 is really at the bottom of the theorizing of the Vindiciae, 
 becomes explicit in the Franco-Gallia of Frangois 
 Hotman. At first sight this work seems of an entirely 
 different character from that of Du Plessis Mornay ; the 
 writer is not occupied with an ideal or universal theory 
 of government but merely with an account of what the 
 actual " law of the constitution " in France has been 
 through the course of its development. He seeks to show 
 that the nation of France is really one of free men. 
 
 But the two writers are alike in their conception of 
 law and their reverence for precedent. And, when we 
 bear in mind how entirely the possibility of such a 
 theory as that of the Vindiciae is relative to the histori- 
 cal development of feudalism, we shall see that the spirit 
 of the two is fundamentally the same, in spite of the 
 deductive character of one work, and the inductive of the 
 other. The contract theory is not really abstract, but a 
 generalisation from the facts of the Middle Ages, just as 
 the theory of sovereignty is an induction from the 
 modern law-making State, and from the activities 
 enshrined in the Canon and the Civil Law. In both 
 the royal and the popular causes we are presented 
 with a theory at first sight purely abstract and scientific. 
 
158 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 and in both cases the theory on inspection is seen to 
 be relative to historical conditions and to owe its 
 prevalence, not to intellectual curiosity, but to practical 
 needs. 
 
 There are many other pamphlets, scattered through 
 the M^moires des affaires cHetat sous Charles IX, and 
 everything that Du Plessis Mornay writes is good reading, 
 but there is little of substantial diflference. Daneau's 
 Politices Christianae may, however, be noted, as crystal- 
 lizing the whole into a scientific treatise. 
 
 The Huguenots, however, were not long in possession 
 of the field ; for they found in the claims of the Bourbon 
 another and a better argument than theories of 
 contract ; and the death of the Duke of Anjou in 
 1584 turned them into thorough-going supporters of 
 legitimism. Hereditary right and the Salic Law became 
 their watchwords henceforth, and we must seek elsewhere 
 for the succession to their older theories of liberty. 
 
 The Ligue inherited a double portion of this spirit. 
 The Seize were the forerunners of the Jacobin Club, and 
 Louis d'Orleans and Boucher were writers compared 
 with whom the Huguenots were mild and moderate men. 
 Both the organization and the doctrines of the Ligue 
 were democratic — by preaching, and pamphleteering, 
 by squibs, satires and poems it strove to appeal to 
 all classes of the people. Its object was to assert 
 either in the Guise or the Spanish interest the main 
 principle of the Counter-Reformation, that a heretic 
 could never be a lawful king. The principle was not 
 really different from that of Knox and Goodman ; but 
 it was laid down more universally, and attracted more 
 attention. Since even the Papalists admitted that a 
 heretic Pope ceased to be such, and that is the view of 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 159 
 
 Gabriel Biel and John of Turrecremata, it is therefore 
 obvious to assert with Reynolds that a Catholic king 
 turning heretic becomes ipso facto a tyrant, and then 
 by means of an .argument analogous to that of the 
 Vindiciae his deposition may be justified. There are 
 many writings which express these views. The most 
 important are the pamphlets of Louis d'Orleans, Jean 
 Boucher's Sermons de la SimuUe Conversion and the De 
 Jtista Abdicatione Henrici Tertii, Rossaeus' (Reynolds') 
 De Justa Republicae Christianae Potestate. They are 
 more violent and less original than the works of 
 Hotman and Mornay, but Louis d'Orleans writes 
 well. Indeed the Banquet de Philar^te is full of 
 imagination and a certain kind of eloquence. The 
 Dialogue du Manant et Maheustre is also worthy of 
 note ; it expresses the more theocratic and less unworthy 
 side of the Ligue ; and is indeed an apology for the 
 democratic Seize against the aristocratic adherents of 
 the Duke de Mayenne. It is distinguished by an 
 evident sincerity, and was written towards the close of 
 the siege of Paris. On the whole, however, the theory 
 laid down is the same as that of the Huguenots. 
 Barclay makes it a reproach to Boucher that he has 
 borrowed almost all his notions from the Vindiciae. 
 It may be worth while giving a brief account of the 
 longest of all these works, that of William Reynolds 
 under the nom de guerre Rossaeus, entitled De Justa 
 Republicae Christianae Potestate. 
 
 The author's argument is as follows : — He begins 
 by showing the necessity and naturalness of civil govern- 
 ment, and shows how men are driven to unite into a 
 sovereign society. Then on a view of the varieties, both 
 contemporary and historical, of the constitutions of 
 
i6o The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 States he argues that no one form of government can 
 have been originally established, but that the nature 
 of the State and any limitations upon it are the 
 result of the deliberate and purely arbitrary choice of 
 the originally sovereign people. We find in Rossaeus 
 what is also discernible in the Vindiciae and is the mark 
 of all or nearly all the followers of this doctrine up 
 to and after the Whig Revolution, the artificiality 
 of the conception of the constitution. As against the 
 theorists of Divine Right the libertarians are nearly 
 all open to the reproach that they postulate a state of 
 nature which is purely individualist and quite unhistori- 
 cal, and that they make political constitutions the result 
 of a conscious and definite choice on the part of a people 
 supposed to have before their mind's eye the various 
 forms of government and to have selected one as the best 
 after due consideration. They prepare the way in fact for 
 the rational savage of the eighteenth century, and have 
 as little as he had to do with the history of social evolu- 
 tion. On the other hand we notice in Rossaeus a very 
 definite adoption of the idea that political society is a 
 Genossenschaft. In this he goes to the root of the matter, 
 for the issue is really between those who take this view 
 and those who derive all political power from above, 
 and made a State primarily a lordship. This is the 
 significance of the patriarchal theory as developed by 
 Filmer. It treats society as purely a Herrschaftsverband. 
 The contrast between the two ideas runs right back to 
 the earliest times". It is in this more than anything 
 else that we are able to discern in the libertarians the 
 strongly Teutonic element, just as in the theorists of 
 Divine Right there is a marked Latin and civilian factor. 
 In the second chapter on the limited right of Christian 
 
v] The Monarchomachi i6i 
 
 kings Rossaeus makes use of this notion to declare (much 
 as the Vindiciae had done) that kingship must be bounded 
 by the end of its existence, /.«., the security and freedom 
 of the subject. The individual could never have re- 
 signed his rights to the State except that he might 
 attain in return security for life and property. Thus a 
 condition is understood in all government whether or 
 no it be expressed: it must not contradict its own end*^. 
 This is the same conception as the conciliar party 
 had employed against the Pope. His power is given 
 in aedificationem, it must not be used in destructionem. 
 There is the statement of the limitations of all govern- 
 mental theory very much as it afterwards appears in 
 Locke. Government is a pooling of individual rights 
 for the common needs of security ; since it starts from 
 these rights its power is never omnipotent. This of 
 course is in direct contradiction to the doctrine of Hobbes 
 and Althusius, and later of Rousseau, who postulated 
 indeed a very similar origin for governmental authority 
 but gave it when formed unlimited, i.e., sovereign 
 authority. All these united in taking their theory of 
 the origin of political power from one side, and its 
 nature and extent from the other of the combatants. 
 But Rossaeus is not content with these merely civic ends, 
 and proceeds, though by a different route, to the same 
 conclusions as those of Du Plessis Mornay. Governors 
 exist not only for life but for the good life ; and the 
 encouragement of virtue is as much a fundamental con- 
 dition of all government as is the security of life and 
 property^^. This is proved by the practice of all nations. 
 Virtue requires religion for its adequate support, and 
 hence no government is legitimate without the admission 
 of the true religion. Even the governments of antiquity 
 
 F. II 
 
1 62 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 allowed this as at once an extension and limitation of 
 their powers ; and Christian peoples cannot be worse 
 off than Pagans or Turks. The inference to readers 
 who did not recognise toleration is obvious. No right- 
 ful prince can tolerate heresy ; and a heretic king is 
 ipso facto a tyrant. The usual arguments from coro- 
 nation oaths are employed. An interesting point is that 
 to the author the Spanish king is an example of a 
 legitimately limited monarch, while Henry VIII and 
 Elizabeth of course on the ground of their treat- 
 ment of Protestantism are regarded as the worst of 
 tyrants ruling by no law but their own caprice^'. Nor 
 was there, if the internal condition of Spain alone 
 be considered, anything particularly laughable in such 
 a view. Otherwise Mariana's famous book dedicated to 
 Philip III would not have been possible. Even two 
 centuries later that work could never have appeared 
 dedicated (except in irony) to George III without sub- 
 jecting its author to very considerable inconvenience. 
 The author then proceeds to an enumeration of the 
 characteristics of tyranny, which enables him to "deal 
 faithfully " with the last Valois. He considers that the 
 notes of tyranny may be reduced to three, (i) rapacious 
 oppression, (2) corruption of morals, public and private, 
 (3) hostility to the true religion. Under all these heads 
 Henri III is clearly a tyrant to be classed with Nero, 
 and Queen Elizabeth" 
 
 After this exhilarating chapter he devotes himself 
 to a candid examination of Protestantism which he 
 decides to be worse than Paganism ; this, however, is 
 nothing to Calvinism, which is longe detestabilior. It is 
 noteworthy how he argues from the needs of human 
 nature as shown in all religious systems, ^is objection 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 163 
 
 to Lutheranism in regard to sacrificial doctrine and 
 prayers for the dead is based almost entirely on the 
 universality of these customs in some form or other". 
 The rest of the book is concerned with proving the 
 right of deposition of heretic kings both by foreign 
 monarchs and their subjects, and the fact that Henri 
 is a relapsed heretic and that no faith is to be attached 
 to his promises'*. There is nothing especially noteworthy 
 except the length — 830 closely printed pages — with 
 which these views are developed. 
 
 It is, however, worthy of remark that, in the argu- 
 ment about the disqualification of heresy, the author 
 incidentally shows how even yet the doctrine of the 
 Selbstdndigkeit of the nation has failed to penetrate. For 
 he clearly considers the rules both of the Civil and Canon 
 Law to be binding on individual States — the kingdom 
 of France is, he makes evident, only a member of 
 the commonwealth of the Church — and there exist to 
 his hand the extremely severe constitutions of Justinian 
 and others about the treatment of heresy*'. We must 
 bear in mind that the Corpus Juris in its complete 
 form was not merely the law of the ancient world. 
 Redacted posterior to S. Augustine, and under an 
 Emperor half medieval, the conception of the place 
 of the Church and the unity of religion, the notion of 
 two powers equally from God, and the terms in which 
 this is expressed, prepared the way for that develop- 
 ment of ecclesiastical authority, which other causes 
 concentrated in the hands of the Papacy and crystal- 
 lised in the Canon Law. The usual examples from 
 the Old Testament are employed by Rossaeus, and 
 those from the Apocrypha ; they are more skilfully 
 used than by some authors. It is also to be noted that 
 
164 The Monarchomachi [lect. 
 
 the writer endeavours to show that Calvinism if allowed 
 to run its course will be as hostile to all secular power 
 as ever was Rome, and will destroy the aristocracy. 
 He makes out, as was easy, the strong case there was 
 for fearing uiider developed Presbyterianism a clerical 
 tyranny, and in this he may be compared to later 
 Anglican writers. He also demonstrates the way in 
 which the organization of " the religion " had been 
 practically worked so as to make a State within the 
 State, a new kingdom. He is eloquent on the revolu- 
 tionary character of heresy, which will require all other 
 institutions to be made new in accordance with its 
 general spirit ; and makes great play with the earlier 
 insurrectionary literature of the Huguenot party^'. 
 
 The book is not interesting nor eloquent nor par- 
 ticularly well argued, and is greatly marred by its 
 absurd exaggeration of style. But it affords as good 
 evidence as any other of the way in which similar ideas 
 of the nature of government were developed by either 
 party ; of their subserviency to religious or ecclesiastical 
 purposes ; of their dependence on views which go back 
 through the Middle Ages to the later days of the 
 ancient Empire ; and on that general conception of 
 a universal Church State which is at least as old as 
 S. Augustine. Orthodoxy is a fundamental law of the 
 State in the real view of all these controversialists^'. 
 Speaking generally it may be said that the Ligue writers 
 are both more democratic and more theocratic and more 
 violent than the Huguenots'"'- They tend to say more of 
 tyrannicide. The murder of Henri HI was received 
 with a chorus of delight. Boucher in the appendix to 
 the De Justa Abdicatione Henrici Tertii can scarcely 
 contain his transports. But the Huguenots never 
 
v] The Monarchomachi 165 
 
 admitted that they were really resisting the king, and 
 are ridiculed by their opponents for their pretence — 
 to be followed in England — of separating the king from 
 his council. The same, however, was the case with the 
 Ligue, until the murder of the Duke of Guise drove 
 them definitely to throw off allegiance to the tyrant and 
 made the act of Jacques Clement in ridding the world of 
 " the worst king of the worse race that was ruled " the 
 consistent outcome of their declared principles. We 
 cannot, however, really separate between the principles 
 of Ligueurs and Huguenots. Both assert the cause 
 of civil liberty ; both do so on the basis of an original 
 contract, and combat the notion of absolute power 
 responsible to God alone ; both develop their argument 
 on religious lines and treat heresy or rather heresy 
 combined with persecution as a proof of tyranny. The 
 Ligueurs treat the national State as but a part of a 
 larger whole, and in this perhaps lies their main differ- 
 ence from the Huguenots, who go no further than to 
 demand foreign princes' help in favour of "the religion" ; 
 they did not and could not talk of a Protestant 
 Christendom. 
 
 The purely religious or at least ecclesiastical motive 
 of both parties is of course obvious ; but with religion 
 intermingled there were political grievances over taxa- 
 tion and denial of justice to the people. Of course the 
 pamphleteers were purer in their reasonings than the 
 political leaders. The Ligue was doubtless largely a 
 mere cover for the ambitious designs of the Guises. 
 But that does not alter the fact of the predominantly 
 religious character of the motive to which it was 
 necessary to appeal. To all parties government is 
 largely a theocracy — it is Politices Christianae which 
 
1 66 The Monarchomachi [lect. v 
 
 all affect to seek. The mere notion of utility is not 
 enough to justify an insurrection. Right must be 
 proved. Hence arises what we remarked, the pre- 
 dominantly legal character of the argument. Every 
 pamphleteer is occupied in proving that his party is 
 de jure resisting somebody who by his own or others' 
 action is usurping authority of which he is no longer 
 legally seised. This is the animus no less of royalists 
 against the Pope than of Huguenots and Ligueurs 
 against an absolute monarch. 
 
 What is clear throughout the discussion is the dread of 
 the new absolutism of the State; the determination to 
 resist the notion of its universal authority ; to assert that 
 there are spheres of life and bonds of association which 
 do not arise from its fiat and cannot be dissolved by it ; 
 and the practical connection of this with some interest, 
 real or supposed, of religion. Eveq the theory of Divine 
 Right was from one point of view, as Whitgift saw, an ad- 
 mission of ends higher than those merely political in civil 
 society ; for the lowest view of the State was taken only 
 by professed Machiavellians, and those who divorced it 
 in idea from all but immediate ends except in so far as 
 it is inspired by the Church with a higher life. The 
 conception of the State as purely secular was, however, 
 more completely realized by that body whose theories 
 we shall consider in the next lecture. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE JESUITS. 
 
 From the Monarchomachi we naturally pass to the 
 Jesuits, the real agents of the Counter-Reformation, 
 and partly also of Spanish aggression. Nearly all the 
 Jesuit writers of importance in the earlier years of their 
 existence are Spaniards, or Philo-Spaniards. We must 
 regard their attitude as partly, at least, determined by 
 national feeling — even in spite of their professed 
 aims. The complete recognition of the sovereignty 
 of the non-Imperial States would perhaps — indeed 
 almost certainly — not have been a feature of Jesuit 
 philosophising, had they sprung from a German origin. 
 In that case there would have been an attempt to 
 reinstate in its ancient prerogatives the Imperial Crown. 
 As it is, however, they criticise Bartolus, and assert the 
 complete equality of sovereign States and, in temporal 
 concerns, the relatively independent character of royal 
 power. They are thinking of their masters. The 
 Spanish character of early Jesuitry is illustrated by 
 the famous book of Juan Mariana, De Rege et Regis 
 Insiitutione. This book was burnt by orders of the 
 Parliament of Paris, and aroused a violent controversy 
 on account of the tone in which it discussed the murder 
 
1 68 The Jesuits [lect. 
 
 of Henri III. It was always declared that the Society 
 was not responsible for the doctrines, and in the second 
 edition slight alterations were made which did not 
 materially affect the passages incriminated^. But 
 Lossen is of opinion that the Society is not really to 
 be identified with this book of a man who by no means 
 approved of the methods of Jesuit government, and 
 wrote a treatise to point out its defects ^ This view, I 
 think, is well founded. The book is sui generis. It is 
 unlike nearly all the treatises, whether occasional or 
 philosophic, which the Jesuits produced in such numbers. 
 Nor is it really of the same order as the books considered 
 in the last lecture. Indeed it is easy to parallel Boucher 
 with Becanus or D'Orleans with Parsons or Cardinal 
 Allen ; and there is a very considerable resemblance 
 between the Jesuit livres de circonstances and those of 
 the Ligueurs. But except in practical conclusions this 
 is not the case with the De Rege. Its whole tone is 
 different ; it is very individual, very Spanish — indeed 
 it is not a Counter-Reformation pamphlet at all. It is 
 far more comparable with the work of Sir John 
 Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliae, or Sir Thomas 
 Smith's Commonwealth of England, or Claude de 
 Seysell on the government of France, than with the 
 pamphlets and treatises produced in such seething haste 
 by the religious wars — although it of course alludes to 
 them. It is of especial interest, for it shows us the 
 way of thinking that was natural to a Spaniard and 
 the kind of atmosphere in which the greater works 
 of Molina and Suarez, Vasquez and Salmeron were 
 reared. It will then be convenient to consider this 
 book which is short and interesting before we proceed 
 to the great mass of writing. 
 
vi] The Jesuits 169 
 
 The book is dedicated to the young prince of 
 Asturias who was afterwards to be Philip III, and is 
 in this respect a work of the same order as Bud6's 
 Institution du Prince or, to go back to the original, the 
 De Regimine Principum of Egidius Romanus. It is 
 tutorial, and contains practical guidance for a good 
 prince and the way to train a man for the metier 
 du roi. 
 
 Mariana opens with a description of the state of 
 nature which in its sentiment heralds the day of 
 Rousseau and the eighteenth century. 
 
 The idea of a golden age, however, gives way not to 
 internal individual greed, but to external danger; and 
 families must coalesce for defence. So arises the State, 
 and by their voluntary surrender the multitude choose 
 a ruler for certain ends. These ends are the measure 
 of his power, and the writer goes on to argue against 
 absolutism. Mariana makes it quite clear that he does 
 not regard the King of Spain as having any rights of 
 arbitrary taxation or legislation, and expresses his regret 
 that some of the powers of constitutional freedom are 
 falling into disuse. He of course denies the competence 
 of the king in ecclesiastical causes, but says little of 
 the Pope (as Lessen remarks), and regrets the wholesale 
 secularisation of Church property that had been proceed- 
 ing in Spain, no less than elsewhere. The chapter De 
 Tyranno is what gave the book its fame and its infamy. 
 Mariana followed nearly all writers since Bartolus in 
 dividing tyrants into the two classes of usurpers, tyrants 
 in the Greek sense, and legitimate sovereigns ruling 
 oppressively ; but he makes less of the difference than 
 most, owing to his taking a stronger view of the rights of 
 
1 70 The Jesuits [lect. 
 
 individuals in regard to' those of the second kind. For 
 nearly all are agreed that a tyrant absque titulo may be 
 slain by anyone. This was a very practical point. For 
 it involved on the Protestant side the justification of the 
 murders of the .Guises and the Cardinal of Lorraine and 
 in theory of Catharine de' Medici — as may be seen from 
 the Vindiciae. In the Papalist view, Elizabeth and William 
 the Silent were tyrants (they had no title to rule), while 
 to the Ligueurs Henri IV was le tyran de Beam. Marian3., 
 however, and Buchanan are almost alone in allowing to 
 the individual the right of tyrannicide against a legal 
 ruler who is an oppressor. Both, in the last resort, 
 permit to dispense with the formalities of a public 
 deposition ; and Mariana's justification of the murder 
 of Henri III treats him as a tyrant of this sort. He 
 decides that a tyrant may be killed both openly and 
 by craft but objects to poison when the victim drinks 
 or eats it because this compels him to become a 
 suicide. There is no harm in poisoning him through 
 clothes or cushions. This distinction goes back to John 
 of Salisbury's Policraticus, the earliest medieval apology 
 for tyrannicide. 
 
 In regard to other matters it is worthy of note that 
 the writer in his chapter on "the Poor" definitely 
 demands a regular poor-law, would like it imposed upon 
 each municipality and recommends a more liberal 
 employment of monastic and other ecclesiastical revenues 
 for this purpose ; he disapproves loudly here and 
 throughout the book of any secularisation of Church 
 property, but he would see with pleasure the ancient 
 fourfold division of tithe or something like it reintroduced, 
 and the mass of indolent and luxurious, clergy dimi- 
 
vi] The Jesuits 1 7 1 
 
 nished. In the chapter on "spectacles" he expresses 
 himself with Puritanical strictness on the. evils of the 
 modern stage, but unlike the Puritans recognises the 
 necessity of having regard to the conditions of the 
 public mind, and recommends that the- stage be regu- 
 lated, and the young, so far as possible, be kept away 
 from it. In regard to the choice of Bishops he is 
 content to leave it practically to the king, so long as 
 he will choose men of light and leading. The most 
 remarkable chapter, however, is the closing one, which 
 is against the toleration of more than one religion in 
 the same province. The argument is hardly theocratic 
 at all, and distinguishes the book as perhaps the least 
 ecclesiastical of all the books on this side in the period. 
 The reasons for prohibiting more than one religion are 
 that heretics cannot be relied on to keep their promises, 
 and without this fundamental good faith societies cannot 
 exist. The argument is the same in a different form 
 as that of Locke, that atheism must not be tolerated, 
 for that destroys the basis of the original contract, and 
 removes the obligation to keep the pact. Mariana goes 
 on to point out the practical impossibility of men of 
 competing religions agreeing, and the extreme danger 
 to the government of favour and even fairness between 
 two bitterly hostile parties. This of course was true 
 in an age when religious parties all believed in the duty 
 of mutual extermination. In regard to the argument 
 so often used that the Turks managed to tolerate other 
 religions than their own and many of them, he declares 
 the Turks no models for Christians, but goes on to point 
 out that they did so only on the basis of denying all 
 civil rights to the subject populations, and that, if that 
 condition were accepted by heretics, toleration might be^ 
 
172 The Jesuits [lect. 
 
 possible. This passage, and indeed the whole tone of the 
 chapter which is eminently political, shows how far the 
 author is from the reckless bigotry of Rose or Boucher, 
 or the colder fanaticism of Beza or Cartwright. Pro- 
 bably deliberately, he avoids any mention of the Roman 
 claims, and any examination of heresies. There is 
 far less of the idea of a universal state of Christendom 
 than in the ordinary Counter- Reformation treatises ; 
 but of imperialism there is a good deal, as was to be 
 expected, and a certain amount of very sound advice 
 anent the treatment of provinces according to their 
 customs and modes of thought and character. The 
 author is clearly not in favour of a merely centralised 
 despotism ; while his knowledge of Spanish history and 
 patriotism is so great that he is never at a loss for 
 an instance. Quite apart from the chapter on the treat- 
 ment of tyrants the work is a very remarkable one to 
 have been published with an imprimatur in the heyday 
 of the Spanish monarchy, and during the reign of 
 Philip II ; it is a political treatise with references 
 to religion, not a pamphlet in favour of a religious com- 
 munity under a political guise like the Vindiciae. There 
 is more of the historian than of the Jesuit iri the book. 
 If it has not the impressiveness and eloquence of Du 
 Plessis Mornay it has a charm and a freshness that 
 are all its own ; and is perhaps even stronger in its 
 recognition of the sovereignty of the people as funda- 
 mental to the State. Perhaps it is this recognition more 
 than any other characteristic that assimilates Mariana's 
 work to the ordinary treatises of the Jesuits on political 
 matters. These treatises are not the least important 
 effect of the renewed scholasticism, which it was the 
 mission of the Jesuits to further. In form more often 
 
vi] The Jesuits 173 
 
 than not they are a commentary, by way of dialectic 
 discussion, on those parts of the Summa of S. Thomas 
 which treat Dejustitia etjure, and embrace the topics of 
 the origin and nature of law and therefore a civil society, 
 the limits and the competence of the law-giver. 
 This is the case with works like those of Vasquez or 
 Salmeron entitled commentaries, or Molina's De Justitia 
 et Jure, and indeed with Suarez' De Legibus, though that 
 starts less directly from S. Thomas. A little later, 
 we have works like those of Petrus de Lugo and 
 Sanctarelli, and even in Jouvency are found similar 
 ideas awakening similar controversies. In addition to 
 these we have controversial works like those of Parsons 
 and Allen in England, or Tanner, Bellarmira and 
 Suarez in reply to Sarpi and the other defenders of 
 Venice against the Pope, besides the whole host of 
 writers led by Bellarmine, who fought against James I 
 and his apologyIoFTKe"'oath of allegiance. In some 
 of the treatises of moral theology it is also possible 
 to find discussions of the right of tyrannicide. All the 
 writings give one an insight into the mind of the Jesuits 
 on political questions so long as the Counter-Reforma- 
 tion was still proceeding. From the close of the 
 religious wars in 1648 we may almost date their tacit 
 surrenjier of the claim to pronounce on these questions, 
 and their enlistment on the side of royalism, of 
 which the most marked example was their support of 
 Louis XIV, although this was conditioned by their 
 controversies with the Jansenists. The views of these 
 writers though similar are not always identical, and 
 they are never official ; not only was the Society no more 
 publicly committed to them than it was to Probabilism, 
 but Aquaviva at the request of the French court issued 
 
174 T^^ Jesuits [lect. 
 
 an order in 1614 that they were not to meddle with 
 politics at all". 
 "--— It remains however true that the Jesuits were every- 
 where regarded as the main supporters of the deposing 
 power and the opponents therefore of the Divine Right 
 of Kings ; that the easiest way of condemning Dissenters 
 
 /in England was to dub them Jesuits on the ground that 
 
 Vthey shared their views as to the rights of subjects to 
 resist their sovereigns, and that this activity only ceased 
 with the practical cessation of the opportunity of 
 destroying heresy by arousing insurrection. The only 
 chance left was that tried in England to reintroduce 
 
 ' Roman Catholicism by despotic power, instead of 
 exterminating Protestantism by an appeal to national 
 traditions allied with religious conservatism. 
 
 Of pure nationalism indeed the Jesuits were not and 
 could not be the promoters — except so far as it meant 
 the Spanish Empire. For they were the upholders of 
 the old idea of the unity of Christendom in a new form. 
 It meant no longer a civil unity : there was to them, as 
 Spaniards, no universal Empire except the Church ; no 
 final authority but the Pope. But their treatises are full 
 of the idea of the law that is more than national ; — in 
 spite of the recognised independence of States men like 
 Suarez clearly regard the Corpus Juris as the common 
 form of law, and though it is sometimes admitted that 
 Roman Law as such does not bind, yet it is clearly 
 a part of the general heritage, no less than is the Canon 
 Law in matters ecclesiastical. The whole force of their 
 
 % appeal rests on the conception of a law that is higher 
 
 J than merely national custom. The Jesuits are far from 
 being the sole, but they are the cardinal instance of that 
 conception of law, as the embodiment of eternal justice. 
 
vi] The Jesuits 175 
 
 which is everywhere struggling against the modern con- 
 ception of it, as absolutely the command of the law-giver. 
 This might not indeed apply to the Pope, a true 
 sovereign, but in their view it did apply to everyone else. 
 The most interesting thing in Suarez' great book is its 
 table of contents ; what should make a man include under 
 the same title so many kinds of law to our thinking 
 nearly as disparate as the laws of cricket and the laws 
 of political economy? It'is because, while differing in 
 every other point, sanction, incidence and origin, they are 
 yet alike in all, expressing in some form the idea of right ; 
 in other words they are concerned with some notion of 
 justice, an ethical conception anterior to the law in the 
 stricteV sense. For this very reason their thought of law 
 is of wider import and more universal than ours ; and 
 enters far more into theological or ethical discussion. 
 It cannot be too often repeated that the only possible 
 intellectual foundation for all the " liberal " conceptions 
 of politics in those days and the form which they took 
 is the prevalent legal atmosphere of discussion of every 
 form of practical activity ; and also a belief in the 
 eternal significance and the universal validity of those , 
 conceptions of right and justice, involved in the/ 
 idea of law, which it was the work of Machiavelli, 
 Hobbes and the royalists to disengage from it. Through- 
 out these pages, long and tedious with dialectic, there 
 runs the claim that law may be nullified because it 
 embodies injustice as against the more modern view, 
 that anything the law-giver bids or forbids is good law 
 merely by his fiat. The confusion between ethics and 
 law may be erroneous from the theoretical, yet from the 
 practical standpoint, their entire separation was equally 
 dangerous. At any rate it was some sense, that law 
 
 t/ 
 
176 The Jesuits [lect, 
 
 was in its nature more than a mere command, that it 
 implied justice and a right recognised but not created 
 by it that gave all these writings their significance and 
 ^their effect. Liberty was preserved where it was 
 preserved, because right and law were identified in 
 language, and not distinguished in thought — or in other 
 words because the moral element in legal obligation 
 was not forgotten. 
 
 It may seem that the last people likely to effect such 
 results would be the Latinist lawyers, with their study of 
 a system so eminently "imperative" as the Civil Law, but 
 it must be pointed out that the content of the system 
 had become so much a part of the organization of life 
 that any other arrangement in many private concerns 
 was and has remained unthinkable, that there are phrases 
 at the very outset which strongly emphasize the ethical 
 aspect of law, that the Canonists had further developed 
 this notion (in spite of their insistence on the Papal 
 sovereignty), and that the Canon Law made a 
 natural bridge to connect legal rights with ethical and 
 theological discussions. Besides this the jus gentium 
 was the common law of nations. Modern " liberal " 
 maxims are the result of an amalgam of law, ethics and 
 theology. Moreover the system must be considered as 
 a whole. On the one hand there is the Pope to whom 
 all the attributes of a sovereign law-giver may be 
 ascribed, and whose despotism by Divine Right framed 
 the model for that of other absolutists, as we have 
 already seen. On the other hand, and this is where the 
 Jesuits impressed the theory of popular liberty even 
 reaching to such men as Algernon Sidney, there is the 
 J ordinary king, whom they conceive as the mere creature 
 of popular choice, the minister not the master of his 
 
vi] The Jesuits 177 
 
 people, the dispensator not the dominus of their 
 goods. 
 
 It is indeed, as we have seen, largely the conception 
 implied in the argument from the lex regia on which 
 Jesuits and others rely for their theory of popular sove- 
 reignty. The king is head. True, but how .' Simply 
 because the multitude transferred their power to him of 
 their own accord. His authority springs from below, from 
 th^ community ; he is its delegate. It is this which the 
 Jesuits emphasize ; they do not indeed omit altogether 
 the notion of a contract, but it is a matter of minor 
 importance compared to the purely popular origin of 
 power. Once this be admitted, all absolute claims are 
 easily refutable, and indefeasible hereditary right becomes 
 an impossibility. With Suarez and Molina political 
 power is the inevitable result of the determination of 
 men to live in a society ^ In fact political authority 
 arises out of the nature of a community as such. 
 It is a contradiction in terms to talk of joining a 
 community and giving it no power. If men live in a 
 community, that community must essentially possess 
 certain powers of organization. In other words a 
 corporate body is something more than the sum of its 
 members ; the greater Jesuits are on their way to the 
 conception of ^t. personality of corporate bodies, if they 
 have not reached it. The nature of their own society 
 would certainly teach them this. Nor must we forget 
 in the development of the contractual theory the influence 
 of monasticism. A "Leviathan" like that of Hobbes 
 formed by the deliberate choice of its members, with 
 absolutely sovereign rights, and no power of renunciation 
 of obedience, was more nearly paralleled in a monastic 
 order than in any " national " State ; when Melanchthon 
 
 F. 12 
 
\ 178 The Jesuits [lect. 
 
 says that the true communal life is that of the State 
 and not that of a religious order, he shows that the 
 analogy of monastic institutions to the State was 
 one that naturally occurred to the mind ; and it is 
 possible, though it can hardly be proved, that the 
 artificial theory of the State may have owed something 
 of its prevalence to those bodies, in some respects 
 states in themselves, which did arise by deliberate 
 choice and contrivance. Anyhow the original sove- 
 reignty of the people is a cardinal doctrine of the 
 I Jesuit thinkers, is more emphasized by them than by 
 Protestant controversialists ; and if not separated in 
 practice from some notion of a contract between the 
 depositary of power and his subjects, is separable from 
 it in thought. They prepared the way for Althusius 
 and therefore for Rousseau. The governing thought of 
 Suarez is that the community has its power immediately 
 from God as a result of the fact of its being a society, in 
 other words of something like Rousseau's social contract. 
 The governing thought of the Vindiciae is that individuals 
 come together to form a State for certain ends, and 
 surrender some powers but not all to the body so 
 formed. The Whig State is in fact a limited, the Jesuit 
 and Jacobin State is an unlimited liability company. 
 
 Molina, though he declares the State to derive its 
 power not from a pact but immediately from God, yet 
 denies to it absolute rights. On the other hand Suarez, 
 while he asserts for the community rights per se, 
 distinctly affirms that the government whatever it be 
 is appointed under conditions. He ends in fact pretty 
 much where the Whigs began ^. 
 
 But their object is nearly always ecclesiastical. 
 They desire to emphasize the difference between ecclesi- 
 
/ 
 
 f7Q 
 
 vi] The Jesuits i^fj 
 
 astical jurisdiction, which comes from above, and civil, )* 
 which springs from below. The Pope has his power 
 from God, he is his immediate vicar ; not so kings and 
 emperors, theirs is from the people, their right is only- 
 Divine so far as all things natural and worthy are 
 Divine ; but to say the same of the Pope is to commit 
 the heresy of conciliar agitators; and the two must be 
 distinguished. This is the meaning of the deeply in- 
 teresting treatise of Lainez on the right of Bishops*. 
 His object is to deny that their powers of any sort 
 have any other origin than the Papal grant; and to 
 this end he distinguishes sharply between secular and 
 
 ecclesiastical governments. ^ 
 
 Lainez brings out what, as Gierke says, is to be fi 1 ^ 
 found in most Jesuit writers, the absolutely secular 1/ ' / 
 character of their conception of the civil power. It is Jy 
 
 a purely human institution for the worldly ends of peace^ jy 
 and riches. It might be said that taking the civil y 
 State as a separate entity, they accepted a purely utili- ^^/ 
 tarian view of its a.ctivity. It is to them^on-mbral^ 
 Its laws have a merely outward sanction ; although 
 it is a duty to obey them, in so far as they do not 
 conflict with higher ends. Their idea of the civil power 
 is, in fact, that of Locke and the individualists who 
 regard the State as necessary for certain indispensable 
 ends, but as in itself dangerous if unchecked, and 
 rather evil than good in its activities. The Jesuit view *^ 
 is that the end of the State being purely external, it 
 cannot be in the last resort worthy of high reverence ; 
 and must be kept under tutelage, if man is to reach his 
 highest. They separate sharply the civic life of man, 
 which is external and partial, from his religious, which is 
 internal and all-?mbracing'. 
 
 12 — 2 
 
i8o The Jesuits [lect. 
 
 Since, however, men are not merely creatures of this 
 world, their unworldly interests need protection and this 
 is the office of the Church. The door is thus opened for 
 the Papal claims, and the deposing power can be 
 justified in the usual way. The point to notice is that 
 they conceive the civil power as purely secular ; and to 
 a certain extent as independent. This is at once similar 
 to the view of Presbyterians like Cartwright or Melville, 
 rebuked by Whitgift for their " Turkish," "Machiavellian " 
 theory of the State ; and opposed to the Protestant doctrine 
 of Luther or the Anglicans who consecrate the activities 
 of the State by treating the Church as its other aspect 
 and entirely repudiate the dichotomy raised by Jesuits 
 and Presbyterians. The one theory descends through 
 Whigs to English individualism. The other is the 
 ancestor of modern socialism, for Luther is the true 
 forerunner of Hegel in his political views. 
 
 The Jesuits were not great originators. Their view 
 of the State was not new ; it is the hierarchical doctrine 
 adapted to new circumstances. We find even in their 
 views about tyrannicide little that is not an expansion of 
 older views. Just as Probabilism was invented by a 
 Dominican, although it became the cachet of seventeenth 
 century Jesuits, so their view of the relation between 
 civil and ecclesiastical powers, like that of the nature of 
 law, can be found in other writers. The conceptions of 
 law entertained by Soto, Navarra, and Covarruvias are 
 fundamentally those of Suarez and Molina, Of the 
 theory we have now to discuss it is the popularisation 
 rather than the invention that is to be ascribed to the 
 Jesuits. 
 
 This theory is generally known as that of the 
 indirect power of the Pope in regard to the civil ruler. 
 
vi] The Jesuits 1 8 1 
 
 The Jesuits and others who hold the view do not claim 
 for the Pope the monarchy of the world ; they do not 
 assert that States are without a real being and some 
 independence of their own; the Pope is no longer 
 universal ruler. The claims of the canonists and writers 
 like Bozius to make him an Emperor are deliberately 
 surrendered ; and the Unam sanctam undergoes careful 
 interpretation. Bellarmine's treatise on the subject was 
 actually put on ffi5*"f7Rfet7 because it only allowed the 
 Pope an indirect powers This is Bellarmine's own 
 account ; even if the reason be not the true one, the 
 fact that he could say so alone proves that from the 
 ecclesiastical point of view he was regarded as an 
 innovator. Now when we consider that his book was 
 condemned by the Parliament of Paris as scandalous and 
 inimical to the independence of kings and the Gallican 
 liberties, it is clear that some explanation is needed. 
 The truth is this. Under the mask of an indirect power, 
 which is to interfere in politics in order to prevent laws 
 being passed contrary to ecclesiastical liberty or against 
 the virtue of the people, and may depose a monarch, if 
 he attacks the immunities of the Church, it is clear that 
 practical activity of the most dangerous kind might be 
 exercised by the Popes ; and that the doctrine if carried 
 to its extremes might be so used, as to mean a 
 temporal sovereignty for the Pope, or at any rate an 
 irritating suzerainty'. That with the Jesuit order 
 triumphant it could have been so used is probable 
 enough ; and all the evils of the Ligue might at any 
 moment be repeated. This was obvious, and is the cause 
 of t he an ger of the Parisian lawyers and later on of 
 James I. 
 
 But there is Another aspect, and this must have struck 
 
1 82 The Jesuits [lect. 
 
 the Pope. If the Pope's power in politics be only 
 indirect, the civil power must have its own existence 
 assured by rights other than Papal ; it is in idea 
 independent. Moreover, the Pope may interfere to 
 protect his own subjects, but so may the ruler of 
 any State in the interests of his subjects who are 
 residing abroad or even if they are not. In other words, 
 while the Pope may interfere, it is as ruler of an 
 independent community, not as head of the whole 
 organization of which the civil State is but a part. And 
 this is actually used as an argument by more than 
 one writer to justify such interference. 
 
 In a word, the relations of Church and State are 
 international ; the Pope is no longer the head of one 
 great community, of which the kingdoms are the 
 provinces". Whether Bellarniine quite saw this is doubt- 
 ful, whether he even meant more than a verbal concession 
 to the other side cannot be proved ; but taken in 
 conjunction with their view of the different origins of 
 civil and religious power, and the facts of the case in 
 regard to Roman Catholics in England or Germany, and 
 the depression of the Holy Roman Empire in favour of 
 national States, there can I think be little doubt that the 
 Jesuit view was really paving the way for a great change. 
 No longer was Christendom a whole. That had dis- 
 appeared absolutely with the religious peace of Augsburg 
 and would be recognised finally in 1648. No longer was 
 the great Church-State with its twin heads even an ideal. 
 But (and this is true even of Catholic States) there are 
 now a multitude of communities possessing within them- 
 selves complete independence ; only " the liberty of each 
 must not hinder the equal liberty of all," and so the Pope 
 as head of one of these communities must interfere where 
 
vi] The Jesuits 183 
 
 necessary for his subjects. It is true that in this case the 
 members are scattered throughout the other communities, 
 and are identified with the same physical persons as the 
 subjects of the civil States. But we have henceforth two 
 communities brought into relation ; no longer, as in the 
 medieval view, one community with separate departments. 
 The Jesuits are not always consistent, and sometimes, as 
 was only natural, hark back to the older view. But the 
 theory of the "indirect power" marks the change from the 
 idea of one commonwealth with different ofificers to the 
 modern conception of Church and State as two distinct 
 social entities. In this sense it is epoch-making. It is true 
 that the Galilean mind attempts but with little success 
 to show that the " medieval " Papalists really meant no 
 more, save in a few instances" ; but the problem has 
 been how to get out of the political dangers aroused by 
 the principles of the Unam sanctam without denying 
 its verbal statements. This process went on until in our 
 own day the theory of the Church as a societas perfecta 
 was worked out again by the Jesuits, Palmieri and | 
 Tarquini'", and in the Encyclical Immortale Dei^^ was \ 
 proclaimed official. What it really does is to substitute 
 for the claim of supremacy a claim to independence,/ 
 which, under a system of toleration, never need mean' 
 any more; and permits as complete a recognition of 
 State power as is seen on the part of Roman Catholics 
 in the United States or Prussia. At this time men were 
 only feeling their way to such a notion, nor could it be 
 realized until an age of toleration. 
 
 But the theory of the Church as a societas perfecta 
 was expressed even at this time by Simancas and is given 
 by a conciliar writer as a ground for deposing the Pop.e — 
 i.e., the Church as a perfect society must.have the power 
 
l/ 
 
 1 84 The Jesuits [lect. 
 
 of purging itself from within, and therefore getting rid 
 of an impossible Pope. On the Jesuit side, what is most 
 remarkable is that they admit, grudgingly and reluctantly 
 it is true, but still they do admit the State to be a societas 
 perfecta ; or rather, confining that expression to the 
 Church, they admit the State to have an existence 
 independent of the Church, with its own origin, end, and 
 limits. It is indeed to be kept in its limits, reminded of 
 its origin, and confined to its end by the Church. But 
 still it has independent rights and powers. 
 
 Barclay makes use of the theory as against Papalist 
 claims and is rebuked by Bellarmine for going too far in 
 developing the independent rights of the State. It is, 
 of course, always the power on the defensive that is most 
 anxious to assert these rights, whether Barclay and Catholic 
 royalists, or in our own day the Jesuits, for the power in 
 possession is clearly a societas perfecta, if there be such a 
 thing in nature; what needs to be proved is that it is 
 not the only one, i.e., that there are one or more other 
 communities complete in themselves, whose powers are 
 not derived from and not dependent on the other societas 
 perfecta but merely recognised by it ; just as one State 
 recognises another. In ecclesiastical matters the differ- 
 ence is that the same person is a member of both bodies. 
 In the Middle Ages, in all controversies, the State, if the 
 term is to be used, means the hierarchy of lay officials, 
 the Church that of ecclesiastical ; the contest is not 
 between Church and State but between sacerdotium and 
 regnum. Later on the State means the whole community, 
 clerical and lay, and the Church the same persons in the 
 religious aspect ; so that whereas in the medieval contro- 
 versies the struggle, if it be ever correct to regard it as 
 between two societies at all, is between two separate 
 
vi] The Jesuits 185 
 
 departments consisting of different persons, but each 
 within the same society, in modern times the controversy 
 is always one between two communities in which it may 
 be that the same persons are members of both. The 
 reason why it was possible to make the Civil Law and 
 the Canon Law in any way harmonise, was that they 
 were each conceived as laws regulating the members of 
 the same society; while further the very decay of Imperial 
 power in practice rendered both laws rather a set of 
 ideal rules than entirely obligatory legal systems of the 
 modern kind. At any rate until the "reception," the 
 acknowledged force of local customs or laws makes the 
 whole Roman system rather a general norm to which" 
 law should try to conform than a purely positive juris- 
 prudence ; all this helped the assimilation of legal, ethical 
 and theological ideas, out of which grew both modern 
 politics and international law. 
 
 The conception of Church and State as two separate 
 communities was not completely carried out among the 
 Jesuits ; so far as the Papal power was concerned they 
 were still under the influence of the ideal of a universal 
 State of which the kingdoms were members ; and it was 
 only gradually that they were forced to that admission 
 of non-Catholic States as individuals, which though not 
 the only, is the surest basis of the claims that both are 
 perfect societies. In England it is only after the 
 Toleration Act that in Churchmen like Warburton the ? 
 idea comes up. But the Jesuits lay definite claim to 
 the Church being a perfect society, they admit the same 
 for the State in general, and they deny any final , 
 authority to the Empire; thus making it a necessity tov 
 formulate in the future a distinct notion of two societies 
 to be mutually recognised by Concordats. 
 
4 
 
 1 86 The Jesuits [lect. 
 
 This idea was at the time carried furthest by English 
 and Scotch Calvinists. In this they borrowed from 
 the French. Not only was the organization of the 
 Huguenot Churches the model for those of Scotland 
 and England — for they had the same problems, i.e., to 
 make the system of Calvin national not merely municipal, 
 and to do so from within, not as in Germany from above 
 by princely authority — but the conditions of the religious 
 wars made it possible and even necessary for the ecclesi- 
 astical organization to be largely used for civil purposes, 
 to communicate with foreign princes, raise armies, levy 
 taxes, and indeed perform much of the business of a 
 government. Hence we find Rossaeus abusing the 
 Huguenots and Coligni for their organization of an 
 imperium in imperio, while of course the Ligue was 
 similar. In both cases it was not even an organized 
 Church in the medieval sense of the official hierarchy, 
 but a community in which lay and clerical elements 
 worked together ; and it cannot be doubted that both 
 Huguenots and Ligue helped forward the notion that 
 Church and State were two distinct kingdoms, which 
 might as corporate persons enter into relations with 
 one another, but which differing in end and meaning 
 were never the same, never merely separate aspects 
 of one society, even though every member of the 
 commonwealth, as was certainly intended in England 
 and to some extent accomplished in Scotland, should 
 be a member of both. 
 
 However they came by it, it is certain that this 
 notion of two distinct commonwealths, both visible, 
 both coercive, both complete and self-sufficient, yet 
 one with an earthly, the other a heavenly end, is to be 
 found in the leaders of the Presbyterian movement in 
 
vi] The Jesuits 187 
 
 England, Cartwright and Travers, and in the second 
 stage of the Scottish Reformation. Mr Lacey has 
 pointed out that this idea which is to be found in 
 Melville is not in Knox, who held the view that Church 
 and State were merely the different aspects of the same 
 society, or, to be more accurate, that the civil and ecclesi- 
 astical powers were each magistracies of that which in one 
 aspect is called the Church, in the other the State. The 
 real recognition . is that of a corporate personality ; the 
 end is the differentiating conception, and we are helped 
 forward towards the idea of a "general will" which in the 
 commonwealth, even if composed of the same persons, is 
 different from that in the Church. In this respect 
 Jesuits and Presbyterians work together, owing to the 
 sharply ecclesiastical character of the theory of both 
 parties, and to the actual fact no longer seriously to be 
 denied of the Selbstandigkeit of the State. In an age of 
 increasing secular power and of competing religions, the 
 Church as an organized community has to formulate 
 afresh the notion of its significance; for it is rapidly 
 ceasing to be even ideally true that kings are its officers, 
 and the dream of a universal State had disappeared with 
 the failure of Charles V to secure the Empire for his son. 
 The danger of the House of Austria to Europe might 
 be greater, but the new Europe was clearly not going to 
 be organized on any rearrangement of the old Imperial 
 theory. 
 
 The Spanish origin of the dominant neo-scholasticism 
 cannot be too greatly estimated as an element in this 
 process of the freeing of the State, and the distinguish- 
 ing of it from the Church. For Spain was a new power, 
 and could not claim, like French Ligueurs, any ancient 
 Papal recognition of temporal independence, i.e., their 
 
1 88 The Jesuits [lect. 
 
 theory must be general, not particular. It was, then, 
 a necessity to formulate for the Pope a theory which 
 should leave him a position as head of the Church, but 
 deny to the Church any claim to be a State including 
 other States ; hence the importance of the recognition of 
 the separate ends of the two, and the indirect nature of 
 Papal authority. For this indirect power might, though 
 it need not, be interpreted to mean no more and 
 no less than that of any official exponent of ethics 
 or theology, who must at times claim to deal with 
 the basis of political authority, even if all he does 
 is to tell people to obey the law on grounds of religious 
 duty. In theory the Pope after this doctrine need be no 
 more than a Professor Green expounding "the principles 
 of political obligation." It has indeed been attempted 
 to show that the medieval claims meant no more than 
 this, but in face both of statements and of actual facts 
 this attempt can only be recognised as ingenious rather 
 than convincing. 
 
 But this is not all. With State and Church recog- 
 nised as independent societies, with the definitely declared 
 
 * recognition of national freedom, with territorialism more 
 and more rampant in Germany, some theory of the 
 relations between these bodies was a necessity. This 
 theory was to take the form of international law in 
 the next century. The Jesuits and the other Spanish 
 philosophers, Navarra, Soto, Covarruvias, prepared the 
 way for this ; they did this by frank recognition of the 
 separateness of States, combined with their belief in the 
 ;law natural as the basis and real authority of all laws, 
 and with their inheritance of the amalgam of Civil and 
 
 I' Canon Law as a body of ideal rules, not merely of positive 
 obligation. The Spanish mind completes the amalgama- 
 
vi] The Jesuits 189 
 
 tion of laws divine, civil and ecclesiastical into a single 
 system ; it contemplates the universe as subject to the reign 
 of jurisprudence, and Suarez' treatise is not only of laws, 
 but of God the legislator ; he knows many kinds of law, 
 eternal, natural, positive, but no distinction between 
 them that is really fundamental ; his ethics is essentially 
 legalist, and hence the danger of casuistry and the 
 possibility of " Probabilism " which is not necessary to a 
 system with no confessors. By easy stages he passes 
 from law in the strictest sense to those portions of the 
 Civil Law not enforced in Spain, but still felt to be law ; 
 to Canon Law which if partly ecclesiastical positive law 
 shades off frequently into practical morality ; and to the 
 law natural, the dictates of reason and conscience, which 
 alone gives to municipal laws their enduring validity, 
 and lifts jurisprudence from being the science of 
 individual litigation into a philosophy of the universe". 
 This was the atmosphere in which International Law 
 grew up, and without which it was impossible that it 
 should have grown up. It means at once the prevalence 
 of Roman Law, yet its ideal character, the lingering 
 conception of Christendom as a unity, coupled with 
 the practical recognition of territorialism and the 
 impossibility of making the Pope or the Emperor 
 international arbiters. We find in Bartolus the begin- 
 ning of this ; he emphasizes the independence of those 
 cities non recognoscentes superiorem, and formulates from 
 both civil law and morals some of those rules which are 
 to regulate this intercourse. But to him Emperors and 
 Popes are true lords of the world ; and it is heresy to 
 doubt it. What he did for Italy had in the seventeenth 
 century to be done for Europe. We have seen what 
 is really a single attempt at a practical scheme in 
 
igo The Jesuits [lect. vi 
 
 the great design of Sully. I forbear to cite the 
 classical passage from Suarez. It is too familiar to need 
 more than mention. The Jesuits laid the foundations of a 
 new system partly because of their modernity and partly 
 I owing to their conservatism. They combined the new 
 ' recognition of political facts with ancient ideals of unity, 
 and the older conception of law, as an eternal verity. 
 These two elements of thought were both to be found 
 and were necessarily found in the system of politics of 
 that day. Without the one the conception of States 
 as juristic and equal persons is impossible, equal not 
 in power any more than are individuals, but in the 
 fact of being able to direct themselves to conscious 
 ends ; without the other the notion of a unity of these 
 persons, and a bond binding them together, and certain 
 limits of activity they may not overpass, would not have 
 been possible, or would have taken longer to discern. 
 The persistence of the notion of law natural, coupled with 
 the actual facts of widespread and increasing prevalence 
 of the Civil Law, its purest outcome, and also of the general 
 reorganization of the Canon Law, formed the only possible 
 atmosphere for that notion of the legal obligation of 
 contracts which as we saw was the necessary condition and 
 the true explanation of the popularity of the doctrine of 
 the original contract, and is also at the very bottom of 
 the whole system of Groti'us in regard to international 
 affairs. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE NETHERLANDS REVOLT. 
 
 The triumphant figure of the latter half of the 
 -•■■•wteenth century is that of William the Silent. The 
 assured independence of the Netherlands is a greater 
 achievement than the defeat of the Armada or the Battle 
 of Ivry or the deposition of Mary Stuart. Henri IV 
 sacrificed half of the principles for which he stood in 
 order to secure success; William the Silent sacrificed 
 nothing but his life. In spite even of the religious 
 intolerance of the Synod of Dort and persecution he 
 would never have approved, the Netherlands were to the 
 seventeenth what the England of the Revolution was to 
 the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a working 
 model of free institutions, and the centre of light for the 
 rest of Europe. Laud complains of the way in which 
 books which he disliked got themselves printed in 
 Amsterdam. In the struggle between liberty and 
 authority the possession of a hostile printing press be- 
 comes of capital importance. It is not in any novelty of 
 ideas, so much as in their practical accomplishment, that 
 the influence of the Netherlands was so important. 
 Hitherto we have spoken of movements like the 
 Conciliar or the Huguenot, which ultimately failed, 
 
192 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 however fertile in ideas ; or the Jesuits whose early excur- 
 sions into popular politics were forgotten by the age which 
 connected them entirely with the ancien rigime. These 
 movements, as we saw, had all their influence on the future, 
 and were not merely heralds but makers of our modern 
 world of thought. But it was the Netherlands that gave 
 them the leverage which rendered them effectual — until 
 that was done even more powerfully by England. The 
 Dutch revolt gathered up the various tendencies against 
 absolutism, and made them effectual as a practical force 
 and operative in the future ; its success enabled them to 
 crystallize and take philosophical shape, just as the 
 success of Henri IV made the same process possible for 
 the theory of royalism, and was the condition sine quA 
 non for such writers as Pierre Gregoire of Toulouse or 
 Barclay. Dr Cunningham has taught us to look to the 
 Dutch as the source of our commercial improvements, in 
 the seventeenth century. That " conscious imitation " of 
 them of which he wrote is no less conspicuous in regard to 
 politics. For they appeared to have solved the problem 
 which others were discussing. They had shown how to 
 combine liberty with order in a modern State, they had 
 secured control over their own government, too much 
 control as was afterwards apparent. During the early 
 years of their revolution, the ideas of toleration had 
 found deliberate expression, and if these were afterwards 
 deserted, the example of William the Silent remained. 
 They had paved the way for federalism ; and their 
 existence rested on the principle of nationality, no less 
 than on that of the right of resistance to tyranny ; the 
 status of their leader was that of a small sovereign 
 prince, and prepared the way for the recognition of the 
 equality "before the Law" of all States, while their 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 193 
 
 position in regard to the Emperor, like that of the Swiss, 
 served still further to emphasize the passing away of the 
 old European order. Their government was rather a 
 limited monarchy than a republic. Idieas, which might 
 otherwise have been buried for all time, could influence 
 future developments because there was now a modern 
 place where they could be seen actually at work — not 
 the relict of two Empires like Venice, nor the cast-off 
 clothes of feudalism like Poland, but a living, growing 
 community consciously occupied with modern problems, 
 and shaping its destinies in accordance with principles 
 destined after long obscuration to become generally 
 recognised. The Dutch succeeded because they 
 represented such different tendencies. On the one 
 hand their success in throwing off the foreign yoke of 
 Philip and organizing themselves as a territorial unity 
 under a prince must be regarded as analogous to the 
 process whereby the other German princes became 
 sovereign and independent of the Empire. A great deal 
 of the feeling against Philip was national. The case was 
 stronger than that of Huguenots or Scotsmen, because 
 the oppressor was always regarded as foreign, and some 
 of the motives which in Germany made for princely 
 absolutism were conjoined with those ideas of the rights 
 of subjects against the prince, which were the watchwords 
 of the Huguenots and the Ligue. In addition to this, 
 there was the motive of European independence as 
 against the overweening influence of the Spanish branch 
 of the Habsburgs, and the danger of a universal monarchy 
 — of which it was believed that not only Spanish generals, 
 whether military or Jesuit, were the herald but the Pope 
 was the servant. The cause was not merely that of local 
 independence or political liberty ; European freedom was 
 
 F. 13 
 
194 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 interested^ Just as in the War of Liberation royal 
 rights, national feeling and constitutional freedom all 
 combined to unite Europe and England against 
 universal monarchy and foreign absolutism in the 
 person of Napoleon, so in the Netherlands revolt there 
 were mingled with the ideas of the rights of individuals 
 and the original contract the motives that inspired 
 England against Spain, the Politiques against the Ligue, 
 and some of the German princes against Charles V. The 
 resistance was successful because it combined European, 
 national, religious, and popular arguments for freedom 
 in a single movement. The result is that, after it had 
 settled down, we find expressed by the Dutch mind all 
 these various tendencies, and reduced to system. Its 
 European side finds expression in the system of 
 International Law devised by Grotius ; its nationalist 
 Protestantism in the attitude of the government towards 
 the Remonstrants, and in the general belief in the rights 
 of the secular prince to control religious ceremonies and 
 suppress heresy, in which Grotius approaches English 
 Protestants like Selden, and generally the low as 
 opposed to the high view of Church power^. The same 
 side is also shown in the territorialism of Grotius and his 
 ^trong views about non-resistance. The popular theory 
 of power becomes crystallized in Althusius. 
 
 We must bear in mind, that if ever there was an 
 instance of the superiority of intellect to force in human 
 concerns, it is to be found in the success of the Dutch. 
 It was not, as the oleographic theory of history teaches, 
 because Philip was a monster of wickedness that he 
 lost the Netherlands, but because like most kings, e.g., 
 Louis XIV and George III, who have been thoroughly re- 
 presentative of their peoples, he was stupid, and typified 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 195 
 
 the Spanish character in its least tactful elements. He was 
 opposed by a man who, whatever his faults, was above all 
 things quick and adroit at using opportunities. The 
 Dutch, indeed, were placed "in the Thermopylae of the | 
 universe"; and but for their resistance it is almost 
 certain that European liberty would have succumbed to 
 the universal aggression of Spain, and even England 
 would have been endangered. In the days of their triumph 
 the Netherlands became the University of Europe ; 
 if we remove from the first half of the seventeenth 
 century the thinkers, publicists, theologians, men of 
 science, artists, and gardeners who were Dutch, and take 
 away their influence upon other nations, the record would 
 be barren instead of fertile, despite the great name of 
 Bacon. They form a natural conclusion to this series 
 of lectures, for they carry on the tradition to the 
 seventeenth century, and further than that exhibit the 
 beginning of the gradual disentanglement of political 
 from theocratic arguments, which was only completed at 
 the close of the age. Stained at times with intolerance, 
 which even the spectacle of their sufferings should not 
 lead us to ignore, with leaders clever but opportunist, of 
 whom it is well said that "only the extravagance of 
 partisanship can make him a hero," exhibiting already 
 some of those faults of obstinacy, avarice, and slowness, 
 which a century later ruined them as a great power at 
 the close of their most victorious war, with a fanaticism 
 equal to the ultramontanes and a "provincialism" in 
 itself as ignoble as that of Castile, they remain the 
 pioneers of liberty in modern as distinct from medieval 
 Europe, the one oasis in the desert of absolutism, the 
 great source of intellectual and moral enlightenment,' in 
 the age of which the typical statesman was Richelieu, with 
 
 13—2 
 
196 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 his view of popular poverty as a source of strength to 
 tyranny, and the typical Churchman Bossuet, le grand 
 gendarme, or our own Laud, who with all his greatness, 
 could not see any way but that of force for the pro- 
 motion of righteousness ; while the typical political 
 philosopher was Thomas Hobbes, in whom the 
 meanest of all ethical theories united with unhistorical 
 contempt for religion to justify the most universal of 
 absolutisms. Again, as in the case of the sects and their 
 influences, we shall see how it was rather in spite of 
 themselves than for any other cause that the Dutch 
 possessed the influence they did. Their supreme object 
 was their own independence of the foreigner, and the 
 preservation of their own religion and of local rights. 
 , The first object had nothing to do with political liberty 
 : proper, for it is secured equally well and often more ef- 
 fectively under a national absolutism. The second in no 
 way meant the toleration of other forms of faith, and even 
 in their hours of direst distress, the Prince of Orange 
 had the utmost difficulty in securing decent treatment 
 for the Catholics. The third, indeed, had a connection 
 with liberty and may have been the main cause which 
 prevented a thorough absolutism. Certainly it helped 
 towards a theory of federalism. But the real importance 
 of the Netherlands lay in their success ; in an age when 
 all the tendencies were the other way, and the Counter- 
 Reformation had at least half conquered even in France, 
 the Dutch were there — a people who had united them- 
 selves, had chosen their own head, had resisted at once 
 their own sovereign, and the cause of universal monarchy, 
 and proclaimed, if not tolerance, at any rate bounds to 
 ttfe progress of the Counter-Reformation. On the one 
 hand this fact helped to inspire the princes in the Thirty 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 197 
 
 Years' War, the last great effort at once of the Counter- ' 
 Reformation, and of Imperial authority — in other words 
 the last attempt to restore the old order temporal as well 
 as spiritual. On the other hand over England their 
 influence was enormous ; there is no doubt that the 
 Puritans feared (doubtless wrongly) that the movement 
 led by Charles I and Laud was merely a part of the 
 Counter- Reformation ; and the mere provision of the 
 Netherlands as a place of refuge for malcontents was| 
 alone important, while the Dutch influence in the' 
 real attempt to produce a Counter- Reformation here is " 
 too obvious to need pointing out. What does need 
 pointing out, is that our Revolution was only the cul- 
 minating triumph of the Dutch mind ; that it was the final 
 achievement of forces that had been at work for a century; 
 that England owed at least a few peerages and pensions to 
 the representatives of the nation, which had by both 
 example and precept prepared her for constitutional 
 liberty. It was not the defeat of the Armada but William 
 of Orange who finally conquered Philip II. The House 
 of Orange may be regarded as the educators of England 
 When she had trained this country to keep alight the torch 
 of liberty and enlightenment, her welthistorische mission 
 was over, and she sank into a second-rate power. To 
 estimate our debt to Holland is hard ; to over-estimate 
 it is harder. The supreme fact is that it was a free 
 State in a world rapidly tending to a uniformity of 
 absolutism, a Calvinist Teutonic federalism, unlike 
 anything else — for Geneva was a Latin city-state, and 
 its influence was over in France, until the days of 
 Voltaire and Rousseau, 
 
 Let us trace for a few moments the way in which the 
 Dutch prepared the way for posterity. This work was 
 
1 98 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 so enduring because it was so slow. Like the English 
 Parliament, the States-general only gradually, and 
 almost in spite of themselves, threw off their allegiance. 
 They began like the English — and so did Huguenots and 
 Ligueurs — by warring against evil counsellors. They 
 never reached the violent republicanism of the Ligue. 
 They endeavoured to reconcile rebellion and loyalty by 
 the assertion that their insurrection was justified by 
 fundamental laws, and that if only he would give them 
 ancient liberty and remove the troops, they would show 
 to the king more loyalty than his own Spaniards. We 
 can trace these ideas throughout the works of Marnix de 
 S. Aldegonde, and the official documents, many of which 
 he drew up — e.g., the famous compromise of 1565, 
 announcing a political resistance against the introduc- 
 tion of the Spanish Inquisition, declaring that in such 
 cases no guilt of rebellion is incurred, for their action is 
 solely due to holy zeal for the glory of God, the majesty 
 of the king, the public peace and the security of property. 
 The terms both here and in the French troubles are 
 remarkably similar to Parliamentary pamphlets in the 
 early stages of the Civil War. Even when the States 
 threw over Don John of Austria, and invited the Arch- 
 Duke Matthias to assume the government, it was rather 
 to secure to the elder branch of the House of Habsburg 
 its ancient rights. The Union of Utrecht in 1579 did 
 not abandon allegiance to Philip but was merely an 
 agreement of the States to protect each other against any 
 force that might be brought against them ; it arranged 
 the government of the provinces, and above all laid down 
 the independence of each province (not individuals) in 
 regard to religion, and thus asserted generally the idea 
 ( of freedom of conscience. The loss of the Walloon 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 199 
 
 provinces was the greatest loss possible to religious 
 toleration, because, had they remained, a general tolera- 
 tion or at least local option in religious matters must 
 have been a permanent principle of the federal State, not 
 a mere temporary expedient. 
 
 In the Apology of William the Silent, rebellion is a 
 little further justified. It is noteworthy that William 
 like others rests a good deal on the deposition of Pedro 
 the Cruel in 1369 in favour of Philip's ancestor Enrique, 
 and demands pertinently, if that resistance were lawful 
 and Philip's title acquired by it is good, how the 
 action of the Netherlands can be impugned. The 
 truth of course is that indefeasible hereditary right was a 
 new doctrine, that royalty having escaped the fetters of 
 feudalism desired also to remove those of popular rights. 
 The Netherlands revolt was indeed, to some extent, 
 feudal in spirit ; it was at least partly due to the dislike 
 of mesne lords to the suzerain becoming direct and 
 absolute sovereign — we may include municipalities in 
 this — and in this way forms another link between the 
 medieval and the modern theory of liberty. 
 
 Not till 1 581 did the States definitely depose Philip^ 
 They alleged that it is notorious that if a Prince who is 
 a Shepherd treats his subjects as though they were 
 slaves, and destroys their privileges, he is no longer to 
 be held their legitimate prince ; and especially after a 
 public resolution of the States of the country they may 
 abandon him. When petition has failed, they have no 
 other means of preserving their ancient liberty, for which 
 they are bound to expose themselves bytheZaze/o/'iV^a/^^r^, 
 especially when the Prince has solemnly undertaken to 
 observe certain customs and on that condition alone 
 obtained their allegiance. It is to be observed that this 
 
200 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 document is at once more emphatic and more general in 
 its tone than is our Declaration of Right a century later. 
 Its publication in several languages is alone proof of its 
 wide influence. We must remember how important the 
 Dutch press was as a means of publishing foreign 
 heterodoxy*. 
 
 This is the general line taken by the Dutch defenders 
 of their liberty. I think, too, it can hardly be doubted 
 that Barclay and perhaps Pierre Gr^goire had them in 
 view, in the one exception which they allow to the 
 universality of the duty of non-resistance. One 
 pamphleteer definitely puts the case on feudal grounds, 
 arguing that the causes for which a vassal may lose his 
 fief apply also to the lord. William argues from Philip's 
 own action in making war against the Pope because he 
 had not kept his contract as overlord of Naples. The 
 joyeuse entree of Brabant was also used as a proof of the 
 original contract, and might almost have suggested the 
 notion. 
 
 By the close of the sixteenth century the independence 
 of the Netherlands was practically assured. It remained 
 for the Dutch to consolidate their victory and to crystallize 
 into systematic treatises the principles of the movement. 
 For our purpose we may confine ourselves to two 
 writers, who on different sides expressed these principles 
 — Althusius and Grotius. The former was not himself 
 a Netherlander, but he came to reside witliin the 
 territory, was clearly influenced by the facts he found 
 before him at Herborn and may be regarded as the 
 representative publicist. His work Politica Methodice 
 Digesta is, with the exception of Bodin's treatise, the 
 most important of all works for the scientific student. 
 Dr Gierke in a work, compared with which everything else 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 201 
 
 on the subject is but prattle, has demonstrated the value 
 of the book and traced its influence backwards and 
 forwards. Perhaps, indeed, Treuman is right in saying 
 that he rather exaggerates the importance of the book. 
 There seems to be no proof forthcoming that it directly 
 influenced Rousseau — although the likeness of ideas is 
 so great as to render that a highly probable conjecture. 
 M. Dreyfus-Brisac, who quotes the relevant passages in 
 his edition of Le Contrat Social, appears to think not 
 proven the charge of plagiarism. Althusius writes as a 
 professor not a pamphleteer. His book is emphatically 
 not a livre de circonstance, and is perhaps for that 
 reason charged (and I think justly) by Dr Gierke with 
 a certain insipidity of tone. It has not the eloquence or 
 the appeal of the Vindiciae contra Tyrannos and is less 
 readable. 
 
 More, however, than any other writer does Althusius 
 sum up the whole thought of the day. Like Albericus 
 Gentilis he both quotes and knows the words of all 
 previous publicists, and he appears to have been 
 considerably influenced in the structure of his work 
 by the dull and flat lucubration of Lambertus Daneus^. 
 He makes considerable use of Gregory of Toulouse, 
 Salamonius and of Patricius of Siena, a renaissance 
 scholar who wrote a book — De Republica — with reference 
 to the Italian city-states. He criticises Bodin, but he 
 is indebted to him ; and in this as in other ways 
 prepared the way for Rousseau, who combined with 
 the royalist conceptions of legal omnipotence popular 
 theories of the origin of power. 
 
 Now this is just what Althusius does. If he does 
 not accept quite ex animo the legal theory of sovereignty 
 he is far nearer to it than are the Huguenots or the 
 
202 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 Whigs, who always — as we have seen — endeavour to 
 deny the existence of any power in the State above the 
 law, whether royal or parliamentary. The reason of this 
 is that for them contract is a bond between governor and 
 governed, which settles the relations of each and is 
 therefore above legal review. 
 
 To Althusius, however, the contract is social, it is the 
 mutual agreement of all to live in an ordered society. 
 His view is not essentially dissimilar from that of Suarez 
 or Molina. There may indeed be another contract 
 between whatever ruler the people, which is now a single 
 power, may agree to set up, and themselves. In this he 
 is different from Rousseau, who allows only a single 
 contract — the social ; but the practical result is very 
 similar. In both cases the rights of sovereignty belong 
 not to the ruler, whether one, many, or few, but to the 
 members of the association. And the sovereignty of the 
 people becomes the foundation of the State. Althusius 
 does not display the profundity of the deeper thinking 
 Jesuits, like Suarez and Molina, who evolve sovereign 
 power from a community by the mere fact of its 
 existence without any deliberate pact ; and thus pre- 
 pare the way for the true theory of corporations, in 
 which authority and self-dependence are inherent essen- 
 tially, and not dependent on any agreement, since they 
 arise from the nature of the case. But his doctrine of 
 a social contract is far less artificial than that of the 
 original contract, as ordinarily propounded ; and it 
 escapes the logical absurdity which made Whigs even as 
 great as Locke or Hoadly the legitimate sport of writers, 
 like Filmer and Leslie, who were never weary of 
 pointing out that law-makers must have existed before 
 laws, and that the conception of Jthe constitution of 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 203 
 
 a State as unalterable was unthinkable. On A1-! 
 thusius' theory it was quite possible, as indeed on ; 
 that of Rousseau, to assert the limited nature of all 
 actual governmental authority, without making the 
 formal error of declaring that laws could not be altered 
 even by the legislature. 
 
 By another conception, however, Althusius' system 
 was preserved from the great practical danger of that of 
 Rousseau, the enunciation of the sovereignty of the 
 people in so violent a form, that there is nothing to check 
 the tyranny of the majority or even a plebiscitary 
 despotism. This defect was inherent in Rousseau's system, 
 and appears in every modification of it, owing to the 
 gibsolutely unitary conception of the State, entertained 
 alike by Rousseau and by royalists, which is a legacy of 
 the Roman Empire through the Papacy. Alike under 
 the theory of Hobbes and that of Rousseau, or (in regard 
 to the Church) under that of the Canonists or the Jesuits 
 all power is ultimately concentrated at a single centre, 
 and every form of right or liberty is of the nature 
 of a privilege, tacitly or explicitly granted by the central 
 authority, which may be king, nobles or people. 
 
 The last three centuries have witnessed the victory 
 of the principle that, so far as individuals are concerned, 
 some rights or liberties shall always be practically, even 
 if not theoretically, recognised by the modern State — , 
 though even here the liberties of the subject are less 
 fully assured than often seems the case. Yet the 
 struggles in England, and still more the declaration of 
 the rights of man, proclaim these liberties as the 
 universal limit upon the practical exercise of the legal 
 omnipotence of the central power. But owing partly to 
 the very sharpness of the idea of a legal sovereign, partly 
 
204 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 to the long struggle to destroy illegitimate immunities, 
 and to the arrogance of the Churches, partly to the 
 influence of theories originally derived from city-states, 
 partly even to the very recognition of those individual 
 rights above mentioned, there is nothing like the same 
 1 recognition of the reality of corporate communities apart 
 \ from the fiat of the State. 
 
 In other words, in spite of all actual Parliantentary 
 institutions, the modern unitary State is still con- 
 ceived as a Herrschaftsverband rather than a Genossen- 
 schaft. The controversy over the right and the nature 
 of Trades Unions, the Associations' Law in France, 
 the ecclesiastical difficulty in Scotland, and even certain 
 aspects of the education question all alike turn at bottom 
 on the question whether the State creates or whether 
 it only recognises the inherent rights of communities; 
 whether in the Jesuit phrase there may not be a societas 
 perfecta besides the more obvious one of the State ; or 
 whether in modern German phrase the corporate union 
 be not real rather than fictitious personality, ?>., possess- 
 ing its own inherent life and powers that may be checked, 
 but cannot in the nature of things be destroyed. This 
 position is rendered the more important by the growth 
 of federalism real in the United States, Switzerland and 
 Germany, and quasi in this country. A conception of 
 law and sovereignty which may fairly fit the facts in a 
 unitary State becomes increasingly difficult of practical 
 application to any developed federal community, and 
 ceases to have any but a paper value. It may indeed be 
 argued that the victory of the North in 1866 was really 
 a victory for that idea, for it decided that the rights of 
 the States were not ultimate, and went a step towards 
 abolishing them except as delegations of the supreme 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 205 
 
 power. But it may be replied that just as individuals 
 may have rights recognised by a State, which yet 
 crushes a rebellion, so may societies. 
 
 But the point to notice here is that this federalistic ^ 
 idea is to be found in Althusius and through him 
 connects itself with the medieval theory of community 
 life. There is not much difference between that idea of 
 the communitas communitatum which the Middle Ages 
 meant by the commons, and Althusius' notion of the 
 State as above all else a consociatio consociationum. He 
 definitely protests against those who refuse to consider 
 the smaller associations such as the family as anything 
 but economic. The novelty in him is his view of the 
 State as entirely built up on the principle of associations*. 
 Indeed the change of the connotation of commons from 
 the view delineated above to the modern one of the 
 mass of common people is significant of the whole 
 development of thought from medieval to modern times, 
 a development which in part will have to be retraced in 
 face of the actual facts. In other words the Selb- 
 stdndigkeit of the individual, as against an omnipotent 
 State, has been the battle-ground of liberty for three 
 centuries ; this has now given place to that of the Selb- \ 
 stdndigkeit of societies. What the issue will be or when ' 
 it will be decided it may not be possible for a historian 
 to say before nineteen hundred has become three 
 thousand. What these lectures have endeavoured to point 
 out is that, as a matter of fact, this achievement of 
 individual liberty was never attained and except for the 
 short period of the Benthamite movement never sought 
 merely for its own sake. Its achievement became 
 feasible only because it was connected with the 
 recognition of the right to exist of some society 
 
2o6 The Netherlands Revolt [lect, 
 
 usually religious, which the civil magistrate did not 
 desire to exist. It is often agreed that religious 
 differences are the ground of modern liberty. It is a 
 mistake to suppose, as we have shown, that this is 
 ' because as a rule any or all religious bodies cared about 
 such liberty. What they desired was the right to be, 
 what they denied was the right of the State to suppress 
 them as societies, and in standing up against State 
 omnipotence they secured individual liberty in spite of 
 themselves. Indeed they secured it so well that we have 
 1 forgotten how it was secured and have to learn once 
 r more the lesson, that the State is something more than 
 a mass of individuals. What is needed now-a-days is 
 that as against an abstract and unreal theory of State 
 omnipotence on the one hand, and an atomistic and 
 artificial view of individual independence on the other, 
 the facts of the world with its innumerable bonds of 
 association and the naturalness of social authority should 
 be generally recognised and become the basis of our 
 laws, as it is of our life. 
 
 Now, if Gierke at all exaggerates the importance of 
 Althusius, the reason is doubtless because he is nearer 
 than anyone else to those ideas of "realism," so dear to the 
 great jurist's heart. Here, as in other matters, Holland 
 led the way. Its government was federal. The rights 
 of each province and even each town were recognised as 
 inalienable. Hence, we find that Althusius starts, not, 
 like some writers on politics, from the top, but from the 
 bottom ; the unit of civil life is for him not the individual 
 but the family, and he rises by a series of concentric 
 circles from the family to the town, to the province, and 
 the State. His State is a true Genossenschaft, a fellowship 
 of all the heads of families, and he takes care to prevent 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 207 
 
 the absorption of local and provincial powers into the 
 central administration. It is not merely that he allows 
 rights to families and provinces ; but he regards these 
 rights as anterior to the State, as the foundation of it, and 
 as subsisting always within it. He would no more deny 
 or absorb them than a hive of bees would squash all . 
 the cells into a pulp. Onlyj be it remembered, it is not 
 separate and equal cells, but differing and organic limbs 
 of the body politic which he contemplates. He admits 
 indeed the need of a central organ. This is to the whole 
 like soul to body. It is significant that the old symbol 
 of the relation of ecclesiastical to civil power is used to 
 signify the relation of government to society. 
 
 Into his doctrine of the influence of ephors, who are 
 to prevent excesses of government, we need hardly go, as 
 there is nothing here but what is paralleled elsewhere. 
 The dependence of the theory on the peculiar facts of 
 the Netherlands and on the nature of the struggle with 
 Spain is fairly evident. The strength of the communal 
 burgher element ; the federalistic tie ; the deliberate 
 agreement to throw off the Spanish yoke ; the choice of 
 the House of Orange — all had their influence in shaping 
 the theory, and in influencing future generations. How 
 far American federalism was developed from these 
 sources it would be hard to say. But the close con- 
 nection of Puritanism with Dutch Calvinism must have 
 prepared the ground. In England a pamphlet of 1642 
 in praise of the Dutch system quotes almost verbatim 
 the words of Boucher in favour of the rights of subjects. 
 
 Even in his theory of contract Althusius, as we have 
 seen, combines elements that are found commonly 
 opposed in the sixteenth century ; with the general 
 conception of the State entertained by the Dutch 
 
2o8 The Netherlands Revolt [lect, 
 
 thinkers, the same is true. But for the Netherlands it 
 might have seemed that there was no via media between 
 the exaltation of royal power, and the general attitude 
 of suspicion of the State and denial of sovereignty which 
 characterised the Huguenot and Ligue and English 
 Presbyterian writers and passed by them through the 
 Whigs to the laisser-faire school of Radicals. 
 
 There was also the controversy between the ideas of 
 / those who, recognising with Luther or the Politiques the 
 sanctity of the civil power, were prepared to go all lengths 
 in establishing the claims of the prince to deal* with 
 religion, and that other view typified by Jesuits, bwt held 
 also by Presbyterians, that the State itself was a mere 
 contrivance, of purely temporal significance, needing for 
 inspiration the guidance of the Church, or at any rate 
 unable to compete with the superior claims of the 
 kingdom which, though not " of this world," was so very 
 much in it, that its behests were paramount on any 
 question involving morals. Now, as we saw, the develop- 
 ment of the theory of two societies was due to the 
 i [ peculiar circumstances of the Huguenots in France, of the 
 ^Presbyterians in England and Scotland, of the Roman 
 , Church as against an encroaching State. It was by no 
 means bound up with what is ordinarily known as 
 Calvinism, or with the practical working of it in Geneva, 
 which was definitely a Church State. So in the Nether- 
 lands. In spite of the toleration originally proclaimed 
 by the Union of Utrecht, the ideal of religious uniformity 
 eventually triumphed. Toleration was undoubtedly the 
 ideal of William the Silent, who was essentially a 
 Politique : and it was appealed to by the Arminians in 
 the controversy of 1614. But they were allied with the 
 party of the burgher oligarchy, and Maurice seized the 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 209 
 
 opportunity of strengthening his power by making use 
 of the Calvinist predilections of the populace. Exile and 
 confiscation were then proclaimed against the Remon- 
 strants; and Calvinism, which had thus become a 
 conservative force, attempted, just as it did in England, 
 to repress by the strong hand the invasion of wider and 
 more rational views. The party of Arminians in both 
 Holland and England was the party of liberty or at 
 least of change as against the authority of Calvinism, 
 which, after it had been first an inspiration in the 
 sixteenth century, and then in the seventeenth became a 
 tradition, in the eighteenth died down into a prejudice. 
 Now in Althusius, despite his federalism, we have no 
 hint of any sort of independence for the Church; it is 
 not envisaged as a separate society. Its officers are 
 merely a part of the general machinery of the State'. 
 The latter, indeed, is conceived as holy ; and the author's 
 view of the State is thus definitely that of Luther, the 
 Anglicans, Zwingli, Erastus, as opposed to that of 
 Jesuits and Presbyterians ; the difference being that 
 in his case the sovereignty over religious matters is 
 inalienably vested in the people, for the original contract 
 of association can only disappear with the State, whereas 
 the others as a rule vest it in " the godly Prince." The 
 point to note is that Althusius holds a high not a 
 low view of the State ; it is something consecrated, 
 the embodiment of justice. His most frequent tag is 
 that from S. Augustine, remota j'ustitia, quid regna nisi 
 ■magna latrociniaf The rights of the State extend over all 
 persons and all causes; there is no conception of a contract 
 between Church and State, or an alliance between them. 
 Grotius, who was imprisoned in the Arminian con- 
 troversy, yet strongly maintained the Erastian view ; and 
 F. 14 
 
2IO The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 in his lengthy treatise, De Jure Regni apud Sacra, he 
 develops it in the ordinary way. But while it is the 
 idea of a Christian commonwealth that rules the 
 thoughts of both writers, it is more of the political than 
 the theocratic side that they are thinking. The notion 
 of a Church-State may be interpreted so as to lay 
 emphasis on either one or the other aspect. It may 
 'become a pure theocracy, like the Anabaptist kingdom 
 at Munster, the Puritan regime in England, and to some 
 ■ extent Laud's system ; or it may be a body politic in 
 ' which uniformity of religious worship and the paramount 
 authority of the secular government are the main 
 elements. It may fulfil the ideas of Calvin or 
 Savonarola ;" it may express the aspirations of a Selden 
 or a Bacon. Now the animus of both Althusius and 
 Grotius is distinctly political. It is not a Church with 
 civil officers that they mean by a Christian common- 
 wealth, but a State with ecclesiastical among other 
 ministers ; and in this respect again they display their 
 kinship to other German princes. It is the ordered life 
 of the community as a whole, consecrated to civil ends, 
 with education, like religion, cared for, with all possible 
 provision for leading the good life, and for correlating 
 "the smaller activities of town and provincial life with that 
 of the State, which Althusius contemplates. Combining 
 elements from both parties, in his conception of govern- 
 mental activity, in his idea of the inalienability of 
 sovereignty, in the whole notion of the wide com- 
 petence of the State, Althusius is really more akin 
 to bureaucratic statesmen of the type of Pierre 
 Gr^goire and Bacon, than he is to the enthusiasts of 
 revolution. It is of the life of the community organized 
 on a recognised basis of popular sovereignty that he is 
 
viij The Netherlands Revolt 211 
 
 thinking far more than of the rights of subjects against 
 their rulers. Hence his treatise had little or no influence 
 on the next revolutionary movement, that of England ; , 
 and the Whig ideal is more individualistic, more sus- 
 picious of government, more akin to the Vindiciae contra 
 Tyrannos, than to anything to be found in Althusius. 
 Only with the development of American independence 
 and the reaction of the ideas it expressed on the 
 Continent had Althusius (or at least his ideas) a chance 
 in Europe. The indebtedness of Rousseau to Althusius 
 may or may not be demonstrable ; that the conceptions 
 of the two writers with the significant exception of 
 federalism are similar and in some respects identical, 
 there can be no doubt. 
 
 If we turn to the final work of Grotius we see at 
 work principles which at first sight are the opposite 
 of what we should expect, but nevertheless are the 
 result of the Netherlands revolt. With the rules of 
 International Law these lectures are not concerned, 
 with its foundations they are. It is indeed astonishing 
 how large a space in the works of both Albericus 
 Gentilis and Grotius' De fure Belli is occupied by the 
 discussion of questions merely political ; nor must we 
 forget that Albericus Gentilis wrote three dissertations 
 on behalf of royal power, as against the theory of 
 resistance. Here we observe how the territorialism, 
 which was an element, though commonly overlooked, in 
 the Dutch revolt, becomes an integral part of the system 
 of International Law. Not only is territorial sovereignty 
 a necessary assumption of International Law, but Grotius 
 goes out of his way to condemn the theory of resistance, 
 to show that by the lex regia popular power is wholly 
 transferred to the prince. He admits indeed a rare 
 
 14 — 2 
 
212 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 exception ; but so did even a royalist like Barclay. His 
 definition of the cases in which resistance is justified 
 is so narrow that it may be doubted whether any case 
 but that of the Netherlands ever fell within it. It 
 is the world of seventeenth and eighteenth century 
 diplomacy which Grotius contemplates, with absolute 
 princes for the most part, territorial sovereignty and the 
 equality of the juristic persons of International Law. 
 This latter doctrine, which we have seen in a more con- 
 crete form in the grand dessein of Sully, was closely 
 connected with Netherland influences ; for William the 
 Silent in his apology appeals against Philip II to the fact 
 of his being a sovereign prince, as good as he was^. The 
 juristic equality of sovereigns was not beginning to be 
 a fact until the close of the sixteenth century. 
 
 With the general assumptions on which the system 
 of Grotius rests, we were concerned in discussing the 
 Jesuits. The fundamental basis of the whole system of 
 Grotius is the claim that men are in a society bound 
 together by a natural law which makes promises binding. 
 This is also, as we saw, at the root of the doctrine of the 
 original contract. It is the same with writers like 
 Vasquez and Suarez and Albericus Gentilis, whose 
 fundamental ideas are similar to those of Grotius. 
 Albericus Gentilis indeed in his treatment of the 
 social nature of men and his citation of authorities lends 
 strong support to the view of Mr A. J. Carlyle, that 
 the most decisive change in political thinking is that 
 which came some time between the days of Aristotle 
 and Cicero, and proclaimed the fundamental equality of 
 men — a doctrine ever since asserted, denied in our own 
 day once more by Nietzsche and by others who are facing 
 the problem of brown and yellow races. All these 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 213 
 
 works are the true anti-Machiavel. They strike at the 
 roots of his assumption ; which is that of the absolute 
 separateness of States, the fundamental badness of human 
 beings, and the universal prominence of self-interest and 
 fear'. 
 
 A study of Albericus Gentilis reveals an interesting 
 link between Vasquez and Suarez and Grotius. In both \ 
 Albericus Gentilis and Grotius we observe that their real 
 originality lies not so much in their acceptance of 
 Roman Law as a basis, as in their selection from it 
 of only such parts as were suitable and really made 
 for a higher morality. In this respect the value of 
 the canonical jurisprudence was incalculable. Albericus 
 Gentilis constantly appeals to general notions of equity, 
 and to principles of the canonists, as against those who 
 would decide by a mere pettifogging sophistry. In both 
 cases we see, as we saw in our discussion of the Jesuits, 
 how the Roman and Canon Law, and the maxims of theo- 
 logians and philosophers were all combined in the system 
 actually set forth. Had the Civil Law stood alone, its 
 system was too hard and sometimes too narrow for a 
 code of international morality to have been founded 
 on it; nor did it, except here and there, contem- 
 plate international relations. But it did not stand 
 alone ; for centuries men had been expounding it in 
 conjunction with another system believed to be of equal 
 or higher authority, and that system led on to the 
 introduction of principles from any other sources'". 
 Moreover, except in Italy, and in Germany only after the 
 "reception" so recent as 149S, Roman Law was not 
 authoritative, it had to make its way; it was every- 
 where, France, Scotland, Spain, half accepted, i.e., its 
 principles were generally regarded as decisive; they 
 
214 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 could be employed when nothing prevented it ; but very 
 often feudal rights and private privil^e or local custom 
 or national habit did prevent it; and so men were 
 familiarised with the notion of a law universal in scope, 
 commanding general reverence and awe, but yet not 
 everywhere and always decisive like a modem statute or 
 the Code Napoleon. All this, while it probably assisted 
 the various nations to employ as much of the Civil 
 Law as they could assimilate and no more, was also in 
 favour of the foundation of a system like modem 
 \ International Law which partly was and partly was not 
 law in the sense of ordinary positive law. 
 
 It is in a world of such conceptions that International 
 Law was bom and alone could be reared. It was not 
 possible to frame it from a purely English system, and 
 there was — unless Selden be an exception — ^no English 
 lawyer of note in the days when men like Puffendorf or 
 Vattel were names to conjure with. 
 
 Into the merits of the controversy raised by the idea 
 of International Law, we need not enter, especially as 
 Professor Westlake has recently said nearly all that 
 needs to be said on the matter" But it may be pointed 
 out that the theoretical question is admirably debated by 
 Albericus Gentilis when he says that there is a sense in 
 which right is claimed for public actions, and in which 
 condemnation of non-omission is not the mere universal 
 hostility to acts of cruelty or ungenerousness — in other 
 words, that in the relations of States there are, by general 
 consent, certain causes of action to which the definitely 
 l^al stigma of a breach of obligation is attached, and 
 vice versa : if this be admitted there must be some sense 
 in which the word law is rightly used". 
 
 Lastly, the practical value of the work of Grotius was 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 215 
 
 very great. The danger of Machiavelli was not that he 
 dissected motive and tore the decent veil of hypocrisy 
 from statesmen, but that he said or implied that these 
 facts were to be the only ideal of action ; the service of 
 Grotius, his forerunners and successors is not that they 
 produced a scientific system under which State action 
 could be classified, but that they succeeded in placing 
 some bounds to the unlimited predominance of "reason of 
 state." Machiavelli's was a rough generalisation from ob- 
 served facts ; and, like all theories based on the universality 
 of low motives, it contained a minimum of truth with 
 a maximum of plausibility and was of great immediate 
 practical utility. For its success it unconsciously assumes 
 the existence of other motives, e.g., the religious, whose 
 existence as a real power the whole system denies. The 
 object of Grotius was not to make men perfect or treat 
 them as such, but to see whether there were not certain 
 common duties generally felt as binding, if not always 
 practised, and to set forth an ideal. As Albericus 
 Gentilis points out, he is concerned not only with what 
 men do, but what they ought to do, and the jurist has 
 ever to remember thaty?<J is ars aequi et boni. 
 
 The founders of International Law did not stop, 
 they regulated the struggle of existence. That famous 
 pamphlet The fight in Dame Europds school rests for its 
 verisimilitude on a conception of Grotius and implies a 
 contradiction of those of Hobbes and Machiavelli. 
 International Law is like schoolboy honour or good 
 form, it does not destroy selfishness or quarrelling or 
 cheating ; but it proclaims that certain things are to be 
 avoided and others are obligatory, and it unites even 
 those most sharply divided as members in a single 
 society. It does not solve the problem of man in 
 
2i6 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 society, but it recognises it. Now the theory of 
 Machiavelli and Hobbes at bottom is the reverse of 
 this ; it teaches that men are not in society at all except 
 by accident and artifice; and with all its superficial 
 attractions it fails to reach the true facts ; that even 
 hatred implies a relation, and that neither States nor 
 individuals can have differences unless there be some 
 atmosphere which unites them^'. 
 
 At any rate, I hope that enough has been said to 
 point out how the intellectual no less than . the 
 practical conditions which made the work of Grotius 
 possible and necessary were the result partly of age- 
 long influences, partly of the peculiar effects of the 
 religious revolution. The former explain the continued 
 and ever-growing influence of the Civil Law, the 
 ideal of the Holy Roman Empire, its connection 
 with the Canon Law, which makes International 
 Law a sort of legacy of the Middle Ages". The 
 foundations both of International Law and modern 
 politics are the residuum which the medieval world 
 passed on to its successor ; and the same may largely be 
 said of the connection between feudalism and the 
 contractual theory of government. But it was the 
 religious revolution alone which produced the actual 
 conditions to which all this was applied. On the one 
 hand it helped in Germany and England towards that 
 development of national unity, royal omnipotence, and 
 ., administrative universality, which was to be the common 
 form of the continental State till 1789 and the ideal of 
 English statesmen for a long time. On the other hand, 
 by the division it produced {a) between Emperor and 
 princes, (b) between princes and subjects, and {c) between 
 State and State, it shattered for ever the ancient 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 217 
 
 conditions even as an ideal, and prevented the notion of 
 international justice taking the form of a reconstituted 
 Empire. This process was further assisted by the 
 division between the two branches of the Habsburgs 
 and the predominance of Spain, the conditions under 
 which the early Jesuits imbibed their ideals. These 
 general conditions assured the predominance of ter- 
 ritorial sovereignty, the recognition of the non-religious 
 basis of the State or at least of the multi-religious 
 nature of the European State-system", while the unity 
 of humanity, which had been taught in some way from 
 the time of the Stoics and impressed as an ideal on 
 every generation from the time of Augustine to the 
 Renaissance, prevented the final and deliberate outward 
 recognition of the view that States have no duties to one 
 another and that the international polity is a fortuitous 
 concourse of atoms. It was these conditions compacted 
 of the ancient ideas of human society and the immutable 
 authority of the law natural, coupled with the modern facts 
 of State independence and self-sufficiency and religious 
 differences, that made International Law in the form 
 which it took possible, i.e., it made it truly international 
 and in the form of its expression really law. It made it 
 a system fundamentally secular although it was in origin 
 ethical and even theological. Of both the international 
 and the municipal commonwealth the basis was becom- 
 ing though it had not become frankly secular — and the 
 most remarkable advance towards this end was made in 
 the theories of the Politiques. But religious divisions 
 everywhere and the establishment of the Dutch Republic 
 helped towards this end, while the latter, more than 
 anything else, contributed towards the change of the idea 
 of political authority from a lordship into an association ; 
 
2i8 The Netherlands Revolt [lect. 
 
 this again was assisted both by Jesuit speculations on 
 society in general and the actual nature and constitution 
 of their own community. 
 
 One final truth may be noticed. The doctrine of the 
 unity of history is more impressively realized in a study 
 of political thought than of any actual constitution. Lord 
 Acton was of opinion that here more than anywhere else 
 a continuous development could be demonstrated. If 
 the pages of a writer like Grotius, or still more Albericus 
 Gentilis, be studied carefully, it will be seen how to him 
 the world was always one ; that true principles in 
 politics are to be found partly by reasoning, but still 
 more by the distilled essence of thought ancient and 
 modern, by something akin at least to the comparative 
 study of institutions and by the wise selection of 
 historical instances which as in Machiavelli are valued 
 always for their significance as parts of a system. 
 International Law is indeed a philosophy of history in 
 the idea of its early exponents — ^just as the " law of the 
 beasts" is in that of Machiavelli, only while the latter 
 like modern " naturalism " gives to its system the super- 
 ficial clearness of an induction from a narrowed basis and 
 an assumption of low motives, the former recognises that 
 however imperfect its realization in fact some notion of 
 righteousness had always regulated mien's judgments of 
 value, even if it had been belied by their action. Alike in 
 international relations, in popular theory, and in absolutist 
 apology, the idea of law and right is upheld in some form, 
 and utility merely and purely as such is repudiated by all 
 except avowed followers of Machiavelli and Hobbes. In 
 this indeed lies the connection of all these doctrines 
 both with theocratic assumptions and with medieval life ; 
 the gradual supersession of these notions by that of 
 
vii] The Netherlands Revolt 219 
 
 immediate and perceptible utility took two centuries to 
 develop, and was largely helped by the general secular- 
 isation of life which followed the destruction of religious 
 unity and the Aufkldrung of the eighteenth century. 
 What is to be noted is that only through this revolution 
 did ideas no less than facts take the shape in which they 
 influenced the modern world. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 (i) The claim was set out by Innocent III in regard to the 
 dispute between King John and Philip Augustus. His words are 
 worth quoting, for they put in a nutshell the whole argument for 
 Papal supremacy, and show how, on a purely legal theory of 
 Christianity, the moral teacher was bound to elevate himself into 
 a supreme judge in both private and public matters. They show 
 also how foreign to the ideas of the time are modem notions of 
 International Law. As the greater part of the letter was embodied 
 in the Decretale, its principles became a part of the Statute Law 
 of the Church. They are to be found in Decretale n. i, 13. I quote 
 the most important part : 
 
 " Qui scrutator cordium est, ac conscius secretorum, quod charis- 
 simum in Christo filium nostrum Philippum Regem Francorum 
 illustrem, de corde pure at conscientia bona, et fide non ficti 
 diligimus, et ad honorem et profectum et incrementum ipsius 
 efficaciter aspiramus, exaltationem regni Francorum, sublimationem 
 Apostolicae sedis reputantes, cum hoc regnum benedictum a Deo 
 semper in ipsius devotione permanserit, et ab ejus devotione 
 nuUo unquam, sicut credimus, tempore sit discessurum : quia licet 
 interdum hinc inde fiant immissiones per Angelos malos, nos 
 tamen qui Satanae non ignoramus astutias, circumventiones ipsius 
 studebimus evitare, credentes quod idem Rex illius seduci fallaciis 
 non se permittet. Non putet ahquis, quod jurisdictionem illustris 
 Regis Francorum perturbare aut minuere intendamus, cum ipse 
 jurisdictionem nostram nee velit, nee debeat impedire. Sed cum 
 Dominus dicat in Evangelio : ' si peccaverit in te frater tuus, vade 
 et corripe eum inter te et ipsum solum : si te audierit, lucratus eris 
 fratrem tuum : si te non audierit, adhibe tecum unum vel duos, ut 
 
Introductory 221 
 
 in ore duorum vel trium testium stet omne verbum : quod si non 
 audierit, die Ecclesiae : si autem Ecclesiam non audierit, sit tibi 
 sicut ethnicus et publicanus.' 
 
 Et Rex Angliae sit paratus sufficienter ostendere, quod Rex 
 Francorum peccat in ipsum, et ipse circa eum in correptione 
 processit secundum regulam Evangelicam, et tandem quia nullo 
 modo profecit, dixit Ecclesiae : quomodo nos qui sumus ad regi- 
 men universalis Ecclesiae superni dispositione vocati, mandatum 
 divinum possumus non exaudire; ut non procedamus secundum 
 formam ipsius; nisi forsitan ipse coram nobis vel Legato nostro 
 sufScientem in contrarium rationem ostendat ? Non enim inten- 
 dimus judicare de feudo, cujus ad ipsum spectat judicium,, nisi 
 forte juri communi per speciale privilegium, vel contrariam 
 consuetudinem aliquid sit detr actum : sed decemere depeccato cujus 
 ad nos pertinet sine dubitatione censura, guam in quemlibet exercere 
 possumus et debemus. Non igitur injuriosum sibi debet Regia 
 dignitas reputare, si super hoc Apostolico judicio se committat, cum 
 Valentinianus, inclytus Imperator, sufiTraganeis Mediolanensis 
 Ecclesiae dixisse legatur: 'Talem in pontificali sede constituere 
 procuretis, cui et nos, qui gubernamus imperium, sincere nostra 
 capita submittamus, et ejus monita (cum tanquam homines deli- 
 querimus) suscipiamus necessario velut medicamenta curantis.' 
 Nee sic illud humillimum omittamus, quod Theodosius statuit 
 Imperator, et Carolus innovavit, de cujus genere Rex ipse noscitur 
 descendisse : ' quicunque videlicet litem habens, sive petitor fuerit, 
 sive reus, sive in initio litis, vel decursis temporum eurriculis, sive 
 cum negotium peroratur sive cum jam coeperit promi sententia, si 
 judicium eligerit sacrosanctae sedis Antistitis, illico sine aliqua 
 dubitatione (etiamsi pars alia refragetur) ad Episcoporum 
 judicium cum sermone litigantium dirigatur.' Cum enim non 
 humanae constitutioni, sed divinae potius innitamur, quia potestas 
 nostra non est ex homine, sed ex Deo, nuUus qui sit sanae mentis 
 ignorat quin ad officium nostrum spectet de quocunque mortali 
 peceato corripere quemlibet Christianum: et si correctionem 
 contempserit, per districtionem Eeelesiasticam coercere. 
 
 Quod enim debeamus corripere et possimus ex utriusque patet 
 paginaTestamenti. CumclametDominusperprophetam: 'Clama, 
 ne cesses, quasi tuba exalta vocem tuam, et annuncia populo meo 
 scelera eorum': et subjungat ibidem; 'Nisi annunciaveris impio 
 impietatem suam, ipse in iniquitate, quam operatus est, morietur : 
 sanguinem autem ejus de manu tua requiram.' Apostolus quoque 
 
2 2 2 Notes 
 
 nos monet compere inquietos : et alibi dicit idem : ' Argue, ob- 
 secra, increpa in omni patientia et doctrina.' Quod autem possimus, 
 et debeamus coercere, patet ex eo, quod dicit Dominus ad prophe- 
 tam, qui fuit de sacerdotibus Anathoth : ' Ecce constituo te super 
 gentes et regna, ut evellas et destruas et dissipes et aedifices et 
 plantes.' Constat vero quod evellendum, destruendum et dissi- 
 pandum est omne mortale peccatum. Praeterea cum Dominus 
 claves regni coelorum Beato Petro Apostolo tradidit, dixit ei : 
 ' Quodcunque ligaveris super terram, erit ligatum et in coelis, et 
 quodcunque solveris super terram, erit solutum et in coelis.' 
 Verum nuUus dubitat, quin omnis mortaliter peccans apud Deum 
 sit ligatus. Ut ergo Petrus divinum judicium imitetur, ligare debet 
 in terris quos ligatos constat in coelis. Sed forsan dicetur, quod 
 aliter cum Regibus aliter cum aliis est agendum. Caeterum scriptum 
 novimus in lege divina, ' Ita magnum judicabis, ut parvum, nee erit 
 apud te acceptio personarum.' Quam Beatus Jacobus intervenire 
 testatur : Si dixeris ei qui indutus est veste praeclara : Tu sede 
 hie bene: pauperi vero, Sta tu illic, aut sede sub scabello pedum 
 meorum. 
 
 Ideoque universis vobis per Apostolicam sedem mandamus, et 
 in virtute obedientiae praecipimus, quatenus postquam idem Abbas 
 super hoc mandatum fuerit Apostolicum executus, sententiam ejus, 
 imo nostram verius, recipiatis humiliter et facialis ab aliis observari ; 
 pro certo scituri quod si secus egeritis, inobedientiam vestram 
 graviter puniemus. Licet autem hoc modo procedere valeamus 
 super quolibet criminali peccato, ut peccatorem revocemus a vitio 
 ad virtutem, ab errore ad veritatem, praecipue cum contra 
 pacem peccatur, quae est vinculum charitatis ; postremo cum inter 
 Reges ipsos reformata fuerint pacis foedera, et utrinque praestito 
 proprio juramento firmata, quae tamen usque ad tempus prae- 
 taxatum servata non fuerint ; nunquid non poterimus de juramenti 
 religione cognoscere, quod ad judicium Ecclesiae non est dubium 
 pertinere, ut rupta pacis foedera reformentur? Ne ergo tantam 
 discordiam videamur sub dissimulatione fovere, praedicto Legato 
 dedimus in praeceptis, ut (nisi Rex ipse vel solidam pacem cum 
 praedicto Rege reformet, vel saltem humiliter patiatur, ut idem 
 Abbas et Archiepiscopus Bituricensis de piano cognoscant, utrum 
 justa sit querimonia, quam contra eum proponit coram Ecclesia 
 Rex Anglorum, vel ejus exceptio sit legitima, quam contra eum per 
 suas nobis literas duxit exprimendam) juxta formam sibi datara \ 
 nobis procedere non omittat." 
 
Introductory 223 
 
 (2) A recent and most significant instance is the Scotch 
 Church case, which, whatever its practical difficuhies, is of the ut- 
 most theoretical interest. The official edition of the Appeal shows 
 how the House of Lords, in spite of itself and under the conception 
 of merely interpreting the terms of a trust, was forced into a 
 discussion of the doctrinal questions and the meaning of self- 
 identity when predicated of societies. Hegel in the Law Courts is 
 no inadequate description of Mr Haldane's speech. The following 
 altercation with Lord James is irresistibly comic : 
 
 Mr Haldane : — " Your Lordship is assuming, if I may respect- 
 fully say so, an anthropomorphic conception of the Supreme Being. 
 It is very difficult to discuss these things, but I must say your 
 Lordship is really assuming that the Supreme Being stands to a 
 particular man in the relation of another man— a cause external to 
 him in space and time acting on space and time and separate from 
 him as one thing is separate from another. The whole point of 
 the speculative teaching has been that that is not so; the whole 
 point of the Church has been that that is a totally inadequate 
 conception, and that, at any rate without resorting to any 
 explanation, they have to hold the two things as in harmony and 
 reconcilable." 
 
 Lord James of Hereford: — "Mr Haldane, till you told me so 
 I had not the slightest idea that I was conceiving that." 
 
 Mr Haldane : — " I am afraid, my Lord, theologians would deal 
 severely with your Lordship's statement " (p. 504). 
 
 Lord James of Hereford: — " I am much obliged to you." 
 
 Further on we have an illustration of the way in which the 
 whole case turns on the idea of the inherent life of a community 
 which is not the State and does not arise from its fiat. 
 
 "The Church is like an organism; to use a metaphor I used 
 before, the organism parts with every part of its material every few 
 years, but its identity consists in this that it assimilates and parts 
 during the period of its life with the old material and takes in fresh 
 material; so the Church doesnot consist in the identity of its members. 
 It is not A., B., and C. coming together and entering into a contract 
 with each other which is to bind them and their estates ; on the 
 contrary, it is the formation of an organisation which is to remain, 
 like the life of the organism, notwithstanding the change which 
 takes place in the constituent members. Now that that was the 
 scheme or doctrine of the government of the Presbyterian Church 
 is perfectly plain. You begin with the congregation, which is a set 
 
2 24 Notes 
 
 of people who worship in a Church in a particular building, that is 
 to say, under a certain kirk government. That kirk government is 
 the government of the kirk session, which consists of the minister 
 and elders; there is also a deacon's court, which deals with 
 secular matters, but the minister and elders are the ruling body " 
 (p. 514). 
 
 Mr Haldane : — " Well, my Lord, my argument at your Lord- 
 ship's bar is this, that if you ask what is the test of identity, the 
 test of the personal identity of this Church lies, not in doctrine, but 
 in its life, in the continuity of its life as ascertained by the fact that 
 the majority have continuously kept on doing these things which 
 are within their competence, according to our opinion" (p. 518, 
 Orr's Free Church of Scotland Appeals). 
 
 Observe, that the House of Lords did not deny this power of 
 development to a society, if such power appeared in the terms of 
 the trust, only it refused to consider the Society except under the 
 form of a trust, while Mr Haldane's argument is for the inherent 
 life of a society. It is in fact, that idea of Suarez and Molina which 
 he stands for, as against a notion which contemplates only the 
 State and a mass of individuals. The meaning of the judgment 
 is the refusal to consider a Church as anything but a mass of 
 individuals. Individual rights are untouched; but the life of 
 non-State Societies is to be denied. 
 
 (3) Treumann, Die Monarchomachen, 23. 
 
 (4) M.G.H. De Lite, I. 365. 
 
 Nonne clarum est, merito ilium a concessa dignitate cadere, 
 populum ab ejus dominio et subjectione Uberum existere, cum 
 pactum pro quo constitutus est constat ilium prius irrupisse ? Nee 
 illos quisquam poterit juste ac rationabiliter perlidie arguere, cum 
 nihilominus constet ilium fidem prius deseruisse. Ut enim de rebus 
 vilioribus exemplum trahamus, si quis alicui digna mercede 
 porcos suos pascendos committeret, ipsumque postmodo eos non 
 pascere, sed furari, mactare et perdere cognosceret, nonne 
 promissa a mercede etiam sibi retenta a porcis pascendis cum 
 contumelia ilium amoveret? 
 
 There is an account of Manegold in Mr R. L. Poole's Illus- 
 trations of the History of Mediaeval Thought. 
 
 (5) Augustinus Triumphus in Summa de Ecclesiastica Potestate 
 ed. 1473, Quaestio xxvi. 5. Mr Poole gives an admirable account 
 of the views of this author in his chapter on "the hierarchical theory 
 of the State." Op. cii. 
 
Introductory 225 
 
 It is only, however, by perusal of a treatise like this or that of 
 Bozius, asserting the world-monarchy of the Popes, that the real 
 difference between this theory and that of " indirect " power can be 
 seen. To Augustinus kingdoms are merely the stipendia of princes 
 for wielding the temporal sword of the Church. This illustrates 
 the notion of the Church-State as a single society; it is only 
 inside a part of it, i.e., the nation, that State and Church properly 
 ■ speaking compete. The State in fact is a specialised term, the 
 secular organisation of the Commonwealth. 
 
 (6) De Ecclesiastica Potestate, Qu. XXIII. 
 
 (7) S. Thomas deals with the subject of politics in the Summa 
 II. I. 90 sqq. and also in the De Regimine Principum, of which 
 only the first book and the first six chapters of the second are by 
 him ; the rest was added by Ptolemy of Lucca. 
 
 On the influence of the Aristotelian spirit and the addition of 
 " naturrechtliche " ideas to those purely theocratic, see Gierke, in 
 Professor Maitland's translation, Cambridge, 1900. 
 
 (8) Cf. Lossen, Die Lehre von Tyrannicide in der Christlichen 
 Zeit. He argues that, except Mariana, the Jesuits did not really 
 do more than develop the views of S. Thomas, although in regard 
 to tyrants they laid too much stress on an isolated and early 
 passage. 
 
 (9) Even Augustinus Triumphus makes this reservation, xxii. 
 It is very general. 
 
 (10) See on this point, Carlyle, History of Political Thought in 
 the West. 
 
 (11) This oath of Aragon is to be found in Du Hamel, Histoire 
 ConstituHonnelle de la Monarchie Espagnole, I. 215. It runs thus : 
 " Nos qui valemos tanto come vos, os hazemos nuestro rey y seiior, 
 con tal que nos guardeis nuestros fueros y libertades : y sino, no." 
 
 (12) The actual text in the Code is as follows ; 
 
 Cum enim Lege antiqua, quae regia nuncupabatur, omne jus 
 omnisque potestas populi Romani imperatori translata sunt 
 potestatem. C. i. 17. i. 
 
 It is well to have the terms of this before us, as it is at the 
 bottom of a great deal of discussion on the origin and limits of 
 sovereign authority. 
 
 In Salamonius we have the definite statement of the univer- 
 sality of politics : — Phil. : Principatus ipse est a natura sine hominum 
 constitutione, et ideo ubique sibi ipsi similis tarn apud Romanos 
 quam Parthos, Scythas, Medos et alias nationes omnes. Jur, : 
 
 F. IS 
 
2 26 Notes 
 
 Talis est qualis suo cuique placet populo....Phil. : Jure ergo 
 principatus ilia competere dicendum quaepopulo placuerunt. Jur.: 
 Convenit. Phil. : Ex his, si diligenter consideraris, palam sit Jus 
 principatus nihil aliud esse quam jus quoddam populi, et per hoc 
 jure populi et auctoritate, quisque principatum agere ac leges 
 constituere nee plus posse et valere quam ejus potest populus. 16. 
 He goes on to declare that "Princeps se subjiciat non sibi, sed 
 personae se subjicit Civiiatis." He goes on to argue that laws are 
 of the nature of compacts, and that civil society is founded on a 
 voluntary pact. 
 
 (13) C. I. 17. I. 
 
 Nos vero sanctionem omnem non dividimus in alias et ahas 
 conditorum partes, sed totam nostram esse volumus ; quid possit 
 antiquitas nostris legibus abrogare ? 
 
 Here is a very frank expression of the truth, that it is only by the 
 recognition of the sovereign power of the legislator that the danger 
 of a reign of the dead can be obviated. 
 
 (14) C. I. 14. 4. 
 
 Digna vox est majestate regnantis legibus alligatum se 
 principem profiteri; adeo de auctoritate juris nostra pendet 
 auctoritas. 
 
 (is) D.I. 3. 31. 
 
 (i6) D. I. 4. I. 
 
 (17) Q\cxxo, De Legibus. 
 
 (18) C. V. 59. 5. 
 
 There is an error in Stubbs' admirable note on the subject, 
 Const. Hist. II. 132; the title is not 56 as there stated but 59. 
 What Stubbs says in the text of Edward transmuting a "mere 
 legal maxim into a great political and constitutional principle " is 
 capable of a much wider extension, for it is typical of the whole 
 way in which the medieval and Renaissance mind envisaged the 
 Civil Law. It became, as we shall see, right down to the beginning 
 of modern politics, not so much a jurist's code, as a compendium 
 of political philosophy, and could be appealed to at any moment as 
 an argument. The very first condition for understanding the rise 
 of modern politics is that of realising how Scripture, Aristotle and 
 the Corpus Juris, and above all this last, united to form the seed- 
 plot of all political ideas. 
 
 (19) See the use Bracton makes of this De Legibus Angliae. 
 The point is further developed in my Divine Right of Kings, 
 p. 24. To take a further illustration, it was because private and 
 
Introductory ii^ 
 
 public rights were still partly undistinguished, that International 
 Law was able to arise in the way it did. Grotius argues for War 
 from the right of justifiable homicide, and the same is true of the 
 application of many other principles, such as usucapion to the 
 action of States. 
 
 (20) Cf. Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, I. 512. 
 
 (21) In M. G. H., Libelli De Lite, III. 663 : 
 
 "Auctoritate divina simulque sanctorum patrum institutione 
 rages in ecclesia Dei ordinantur, ut habeant potestatem regendi 
 populum Domini, genus electum, gentem sanctam, qui est ecclesia 
 sancta Dei. Ecclesia quippe Dei quid aliud est quam congregatio 
 fidelium Christianorum in una fide spe et charitate in domo Dei 
 cohabitantium .''... Quem quidem principatum ita nonnuUi distri- 
 bruunt, ut dicant sacerdotem habere principatum regendi animas, 
 regem vero regendi corpora, quasi animae possunt regi sine 
 corporibus et corpora sine animabus. Quod nulla potest fieri 
 ratione. Necesse est enim si bene regantur corpora, bene regantur 
 et animae et e converso, quoniam utraque ideo reguntur, ut in 
 resurrectione simul utraque salventur....Quae cum ita sint 
 manifestum est quod rex habet principatum regendi eos qui sacer- 
 dotal! dignitate potiuntur. Non ergo debet excludi rex a regimine 
 sanctae ecclesiae, id est populi Christiani, quia ita divideretur 
 regnum ecclesiae et fieret desolatio."...He goes on to anticipate 
 Wyclif : " Sacerdos quippe aliam praefigurabat in Christo naturam, 
 id est hominis, rex aliam id est Dei. lUe superiorem qua equalis 
 est Deo patri, iste inferiorem qua minor est patre." Ibid. 666. 
 
 Rex principaliter sequitur Christum ex ejus vice et imitatione, 
 episcopi vero interposita vice et imitatione apostolorum. 670. 
 
 (22) This growth of utilitarian argument though it first became 
 prominent in Machiavelli gained greatly in extension owing to 
 the Benthamite movement. The appeal to the notion of right, 
 when there is apparent chance of lessening suffering by disregarding 
 it, is treated as almost immoral by many 'advanced' thinkers. Cf. 
 Hicey, Law and Public Opinion, for the way in which Benthamism 
 brought this habit into prominence, and left it as a legacy to the 
 Collectivism of our day. Perhaps it is truer to say that it is the legal 
 idea of right which has given way to one of the general welfare ; 
 this is in accordance with the general change of political thought 
 from the ideas of the Whigs, symbolised by Burke, to those of the 
 Jacobins, expressed by Rousseau. From the modern reformer 
 back to Machiavelli and even the Conciliar party "rights" are 
 regarded with suspicion, as the enemies of Right or National 
 
 15—2 
 
2 28 Notes 
 
 Welfare, and whereas the Whig movement was an attempt to 
 secure legal consecration for limitations on the sovereign power, the 
 great tendency of all thorough-going reformers is to sweep away 
 the vested interests, which masquerade under the name of legal 
 rights, and to magnify the one power, whether King or Parliament, 
 that can promote true justice. 
 
 (23) Pollock and Maitland, I. 68. 
 
 (24) Op. cit. 
 
 (25) See Augustinus Triumphus. 
 
 (26) It may be worth while quoting the first few lines : 
 Bonifacius...dilectis filiis Doctoribus et Scholaribus universis 
 
 Bononiae commorantibus...salutem. Sacrosanctae Romanae Ec- 
 clesiae (quam imperscrutabilis divinae providentiae altitudo uni- 
 versis dispositione incommutabili praetulit Ecclesiis, et totius orbis 
 praecipuum obtinere voluit magistratum) regimini praesidentes, 
 assidua meditatione urgemur; ut juxta creditae nobis dispensationis 
 officium, subditorum commodis jugi, quantum nobis ex alto con- 
 cessum fuerit, et sollicitudinis studio intendamus. 
 
 Amplectimur voluntarios labores ut scandala removeamus ab 
 ipsis, et quas humana natura lites cotidie invenire conatur, nunc 
 antiquorum declaratione, prout nobis est possibile reprimamus... 
 Universitati vestrae igitur per Apostolica scripta mandamus, 
 quatenus librum hujusmodi...quem sub bulla nostra transmittimus, 
 prompto suscipientes aflfectu, eo utamini de caetero in judiciis et 
 scholis; nuUas alias, praeter illas quae inferuntur aut specialiter 
 reservantur in eo, Decretales aut Constitutiones k quibuscunque 
 nostris praedecessoribus Romanis Pontificibus post editionem 
 dicti voluminis promulgatas, recepturi ulterius, aut pro Decretalibus 
 habituri. 
 
 (27) II. I : Licet Romanus Pontifex (qui jura omnia in 
 scrinio pectoris sui censetur habere) constitutionem condendo 
 posteriorem, priorem, quamvis de ipsa mentionem non facial, 
 revocare noscatur ; quia tamen locorum specialium et personarum 
 singularium consuetudines et statuta (cum sint facti et in facto 
 consistant) potest probabiliter ignorare; ipsis, dum tamen sint 
 rationabilia, per constitutionem k se noviter editam (nisi expresse 
 caveatur in ipsa) non intelligitur in aliquo derogare. 
 
 With regard to local customs being mere matters of fact, 
 Bartolus used exactly the same principle in respect of the Emperor. 
 
 (28) Goldast. This dialogue is in I. 58 — 229. In a relatively 
 brief space most of the arguments for and against regal and Papal 
 sovereignty are therein set forth. 
 
Introductory 229 
 
 (29) The matter is discussed in Maitland, CanonLawinEngland. 
 
 (30) Seculares judices qui....personas Ecclesiasticas ad 
 solvendum debita....danipnabili praesumptione compellant a 
 temeritate hujusmodi per locorum ordinaries censura Ecclesi- 
 astica decernimus compescendos. 11. 2. 2. 
 
 (31) History of Political Theory in the West, Chap. i. 
 
 (32) Development of European Polity, Chap. 22. 
 
 (33) Creighton, Papacy I. 32. 
 
 (34) Clement V in his decision about the " Unam Sanctam " 
 only goes so far as to say that it made no difference ; the French 
 king and people are no more subject than they were before to the 
 Roman See. Thus an ample loophole was left for the development 
 of future ultra-montane pretensions ; for it was easy enough to 
 allege that the principles of the " Unam Sanctam " dated from at 
 least the eleventh century. 
 
 Extrav. Comm. v. 7. 2. 
 
 (35) This dialogue is in Goldast, Vol. 11. 396 — 957. 
 
 (36) The book is edited by M. Langlois, Picard 1891. 
 
 I may refer to a brief account I wrote of Pierre Dubois, entitled 
 A forgotten Radical, in the Cambridge Review, 1899. Renan 
 has a long study of him in his Etudes sur la politique religieuse du 
 rlgne de Philippe le Bel, and there is an article in the Victoria 
 University Studies. 
 
 (37) Bozius was an Oratorian. His treatise De Temporali 
 Ecclesiae Monorchia appeared in 1602. 
 
 (38) See the Bull of Condemnation in Shirley's edition of the 
 Fasciculi Zizaniorum. 
 
 (39) ^-S- ^'5 defence of the outrageous act of John of Gaunt 
 in regard to the Sanctuary at Westminster. It forms a good part 
 of the De Ecclesia. 
 
 NOTES TO THE CONCILIAR MOVEMENT. 
 
 (i) The wording is as follows : 
 
 Concilium generate faciens et ecclesiam catholicam reprae- 
 sentans, potestatem a Christo immediate habet, cui quilibet 
 cuiuscunque status vel dignitatis, etiamsi papalis existat, obedire 
 tenetur in his quae pertinent ad fidem. Mirbt 155. 
 
 The decree only refers in terms to the Council of Constance and 
 the affairs of the moment. It is only by inference that it can be 
 extended into a general assertion of conciliar omnipotence. 
 
230 Notes 
 
 (2) In John of Segovia. 
 
 (3) Cf. the phrase of Cajetan in his argument for Papal 
 autocracy, printed in Rocaberti. 
 
 (4) A very recent work brings out this fact with great ability. 
 M. Gabriel P^rouse in his Le Cardinal Louis Aleman shews how 
 among the main causes of the failure of the Council of Basle two 
 were most prominent, (i) The Council, ignorant of the distinction 
 between control and administration, attempted without training, 
 knowledge or cohesion to grasp the whole governing activity of the 
 Church, judicial, executive and legislative. It failed in the same 
 way as the English Parliament failed in the seventeenth century ; 
 owing to the extreme democratic tendency of some of its members, 
 anything like leadership was distrusted, and even small committees 
 were attacked and hampered. (2) Aleman was working for the 
 medieval system as against the Roman Curia which was organising 
 the modern Papacy. The book is so new that a phrase or two may 
 be worth quoting. 
 
 " Escort^ de th^ologiens scholastiques at de moines errants, 
 lui-mSme et jusqu'au fond homme du moyen ige dans sa foi 
 passionnde, dans sa croyance k I'unitd chrdtienne...il combattit 
 vainement I'^closion de cette fere modeme, ou les papes italiens 
 entour^s de leurs humanistes diserts et de diplomates habiles aux 
 compromis, allaient rdorganiser I'Eglise au moyen d'ingenieux 
 concordats, au profit de leur pouvoir propre et des princes 
 s^culaires, aux ddpens des vieilles institutions mddidvales les 
 chapitres, le lien m^tropolitain, le principe 61ectif des monastferes " 
 (pp. 498, 9). Cf. also, " Tandis en efifet que le nonce et la cour de 
 Rome cherchaient k hater la modeme organisation de I'Eglise, la 
 majority des Pferes s'inspirait des principes de l'4ge pr^c^dent... 
 Pouvoirs judiciaire et administratif, l^gislatif et mSme ex^cutif, 
 tout 6tait revendiqu^ par les Pferes, comme le droit exclusive de 
 convoquer le concile suivant." (196.) 
 
 On page 169 the author shews that the real purpose was 
 "d'ajourner inddfiniment aussi la dissolution du Concile, et de 
 s'driger en jurisdiction permanente, but inavoud des vrais disciples 
 de Constance." 
 
 The parallel to the Long Parliament is obvious. 
 
 (5) If the deposition of Richard II be studied, it will be seen 
 how far Parliament was from asserting any such definite theory of 
 popular sovereignty as that proclaimed by the Council. The 
 articles are in the Rolls of Parliament, vol. v. 
 
Conciliar Movement 231 
 
 (6) See the decree in Mirbt 155. It should be read in 
 connection with the later refusal of the Council of Basel to be 
 dissolved without its own consent. In theory this was preserved 
 even at the surrender in 1449. 
 
 (7) For the literature of this and the other chapters, my 
 BibUography to the last chapter of Vol. III. of the Cambridge 
 Modern History may be cited. 
 
 (8) Conrad is one of the earliest writers. His letter is in 
 Martfene and Durand's Thesaurus, vol. 11. 1200 — 1226. It contains 
 some interesting expressions. 
 
 (9) Henry of Hesse and most of the writers will be found in 
 Dupin's Gerson, vol. 11. 
 
 (10) Hubler has pointed out, how the Conciliar writers start 
 partly from the notion of precedent, developing their consti- 
 tutionalism in the same way as Hotman in France, as Coke and 
 the common lawyers in England ; and partly from universal 
 principles of political reasoning applicable to all societies, and 
 more perfectly to the Church. The antithesis of this attitude is that 
 of Etienne de la Boe(Jtie. He is mainly interesting as shewing the 
 way in which pure renaissance sentiment, unmixed with any flavour 
 of medievalism or notions of historical development, might produce 
 an abstract republicanism. To him, as to Machiavelli, the only 
 history worth quoting is Roman, while he is of course without 
 the Florentine's extraordinary keen insight into facts and existing 
 tendencies. His general attitude is not unlike that of Shelley. 
 Government to him is simply an American trust exploiting the 
 masses in its own selfish lust. The one thing needful is to awaken 
 the consciousness of the masses whose numbers will alone secure 
 victory. He might almost have written the lines : — 
 
 Rise like lions after slumber 
 
 In unvanquishable number ! 
 
 * * * 
 
 Ye are many< they are few. 
 
 (11) It is, I think, remarkable that in the recent discussion 
 about the position of the laity in the representative Church Council 
 more attention has not been paid to the very strong assertions 
 of the rights of laymen made by the Conciliar leaders both in 
 Constance and Basel. We find these persons, who were un- 
 deniably both orthodox and nationalist, with sympathies not 
 dissimilar to English Churchmen, asserting very strongly the right 
 of the lay power to be presented in the person of Emperor, Kings 
 
232 Notes 
 
 and their ambassadors. It must be remembered, that in a 
 democratic government like the English, elected members would 
 naturally take the place of the ambassadors. High Papalists, like 
 John of Torquemada, complain of the powers claimed for laymen. 
 
 The documents quoted as Chapters XVI and XVII in the 
 Consultationes printed by von der Hardt are among the most 
 important bearing on this point. The first is attributed to the 
 Cardinal of Cambrai, the second to the Cardinal of S. Marco. 
 I quote the most important passages, interesting for the appeal 
 they make to early Church history. 
 
 "Sicut patet in Actibus Apostolorum et in historia Eusebii quae 
 Actibus Apostolorum immediate subnectitur, quandoque in 
 Conciliis congregabatur tota communitas Chrisiianorum, quando- 
 que Episcopi Presbyteri Diaconi, quandoque soli Episcopi sine 
 Abbatibus, quandoque cum Episcopis Abbates, quandoque Im- 
 perator convocabat et congregabat Concilium. Sicut haec varietas 
 potest probari jure naturali et divino et ex historiis praedictis. 
 ...Item, eadem ratione, qua supra, non sunt excludendi a voce 
 definitiva Sacrae Theologiae Doctores, ac juris Canonici et 
 Civilis. Quibus et maxime Theologis, datur auctoritas praedicandi 
 aut docendi ubique terrarum, quae non est parva auctoritas in 
 populo Christiano, sad multo majus quam unius Episcopi vel 
 Abbatis, ignorantis et solum titulati....Item quantum ad materiam 
 terminandi praesens schisma et dandi pacem Ecclesiae, velle 
 excludere Reges, Principes aut Ambasiatores eorum...a voce seu 
 determinatione etiam conclusiva non videtur justum ac pium aut 
 ration! consonum." von der Hardt, 11. 224. 
 
 Perhaps the most moderate attitude is that of the Cardinal 
 of S. Marco : 
 
 De ambasiata autem Regum et Principum clarum est, quod in 
 lis quae conveniunt universalem Ecclesiam, utpote unionem 
 Ecclesiae et fidem, admittendi sunt. Sed stare debent determina- 
 tioni peritorum et doctorum in his quae sunt fidei. Ibid. 230 — I. 
 
 Zabarella's views in the De Schismate are very similar. 
 
 (12) It is hardly necessary to say that in the eyes and the 
 phraseology of the canonists the flock whether of Pope or Bishops 
 are " subditi," even more completely than a nation is the subject of 
 its King in common speech. 
 
 • (13) Simancas, De Papa (Rocaberti xiii. 277) : 
 
 Cum respublica spiritualis perfecta sit, et sibi sufficiens, ut se 
 ipsam indemnem servet, potest ea omnia facere, quae necessaria 
 
Conciliar Movement 233 
 
 fuerint adsuum finem consequendum exercendo etiam jurisdlctionem 
 in eos, qui in rebus temporalibus alioqui sibi subject! non essent. 
 Quod quidem naturali jure cuicumque Prindpi facere contra 
 aliorum rempubltcam licet. 
 
 A similar view is in Bellarniine, De Rom. Pont. v. 7. 
 
 This passage is alone proof of the error made by the Bishop 
 of Exeter in his Regnum Dei, wherein it is asserted that the 
 notion of the Church as a " societas perfecta " is only modern and 
 Jesuit. 
 
 See the document in Denziger, Enchiridion, pp. 405 — 422. 
 
 (14) A few of the more notable phrases of Nicolas may be here 
 cited. 
 
 " Pulchra est haec speculatio, quomodo in populo omnes 
 potestates tam spirituales in potentia latent, quam etiam tempo- 
 rales et corporales." 11. 19. 
 
 It is nonsense to say "omne id jus esset quod Romanus 
 Pontifex vellet,"— for the Pope is subject to the canons, and 
 these are under natural law, contra quod etiam princep,s potestatem 
 non habet, 11. 14. Even the decretals owe their authority as much 
 to long acceptance, as to Papal institution. We may compare 
 with this a Galilean argument, that the French Church does not 
 accept all decretals of the Pope ipso facto, but merely those 
 consecrated by time in the corpus juris. 11. 3. 
 
 " Multa concilia etiam rite convocata errasse legimus." 
 
 These passages serve to shew how the idea of natural law, 
 partly embodied in the more general maxims of the Roman juris- 
 prudence, partly in the intellectual atmosphere, was the real milieu, 
 in which the constitutionahsm of the day could alone thrive. This 
 remained true right on to Rousseau. 
 
 " Omnis constitutio radicatur in jure naturali ; et si ei contra- 
 dicit, constitutio valida esse nequit." II. 14, and again 
 
 "Cum natura omnes sint liberi, turn omnis principatus...^/ a 
 sola concordantia et consensu subjectio. Nam si natura aeque 
 potentes et aeque liberi homines sunt, vera et ordinata potestas 
 nonnisi electione et consensu aliorum constitui potest, sicut etiam 
 lex a consensu constituitur " ; going on to quote the phrase of 
 S. Augustine used in the Decretum, "generale pactum societatis 
 regibus obedire" as a proof of the contractual. 
 
 " Papa non est universalis Eplscopus sed super alios primus, fet 
 sacrorum Conciliorum non in Papa sed in consensu omnium 
 vigorem fundamus." 11. 13. 
 
234 Notes 
 
 " Considerari enim primo legem Christianam liberriraam, ad 
 quam nuUus nisi sponte absque coactione accedit....Coactio propria 
 non est in ipsa Ecclesia descensione a Christo ; sed gratia est, quae 
 ab ipsa plenitudine fontis capitis in ipsum Corpus Christi mysti- 
 cum fluit. Unitas fidelium est ilia ad cujus servitium et obser- 
 vantiam praesidentia est super singulos. Hinc unitas fidelium sive 
 universale concilium Catholicae ecclesiae ipsam repraesentans est 
 supra suum ministerium et praesidem." ll. 28. 
 
 (15) After the victory of the Pope over the Council it became 
 impossible to deny that pure monarchy is the best form of 
 government. In arguing in favour of a republic in Florence 
 all that Savonarola is able to say is, that though the Papacy clearly 
 proves absolutism to be the best form in general, yet circumstances 
 alter cases, and for Florence in its then situation a republic is more 
 fitted. He does not embrace the doctrine of the relativity of 
 politics to the extent that Bartolus did. Cf remarks on this 
 subject in a paper in Royal Hist. Soc. Transactions, vol. Xix. 
 
 John of Torquemada, whose chief treatise is in Rocaberti, 
 is in reality the first modern exponent of the Divine Right of 
 Kings : his book, with that of Lainez at the Council of Trent, would 
 give a reader who knew nothing else a very good idea of the whole 
 controversy. Even John of Torquemada, though he allows a Pope 
 to dispense in cases of bigamy or homicide, admits that a Pope 
 may be a heretic, and so ipso facto cease to be Pope. He can 
 err in opinion, while in judgment he remains infallible. 
 
 (16) The following form a very small selection of the passages 
 which might be cited in illustration of the views of the Conciliar 
 reformers. For citations from Gerson the reader is referred to 
 Appendix B in my Divine Right of Kings. 
 
 Conrad of Gelnhausen (1378) in Mart^ne, Thesaurus II. 
 1216 : 
 
 Si ergo necessitas personae privatae imminens et forsitan 
 peccatrici solvit vincula legis, quis ambigit, quod in tali et tanta 
 necessitate Sanctae Ecclesiae... nulla lex humana edita super 
 congregatione concilii generalis nonnisi auctoritate papae fienda 
 possit obsistere quominus languor curetur in capite nee morbus 
 inficiat totum corpus. 
 
 ibid. 1225 : Convocatio concilii generalis sit summe necessaiia 
 pro bono communi, in quo etiam salus et utilitas omnium et 
 singulorum Christi fidelium includitur et per consequens est omni 
 privato commodo vel utilitati praeferenda. 
 
Conciliar Movement 235 
 
 Henry of Hesse or Langenstein. Consilium Pads. 
 
 Item quam periculosae sint bono communi et quam studiose 
 sedandae sint, potentium et praesidentium dissensiones, tanquam 
 civitatis et totius civilis amicitiae corruptione, nos docet etiam 
 ille gentilis Aristoteles. 
 
 Item casus novi et periculosi emergentes in Diocesi aliqua 
 per Concilium particulare sive Provinciale emendantur. Igitur 
 casus novi et ardui totum mundum concernentes per generale 
 Concilium discuti debent. Quod enim omnes tangit, ab omnibus 
 vel vice omnium tractari debet et convenit.... 
 
 Quis enim nescit quod fuit impossibile regulariter Leges et Jura 
 positiva institui, quae in nuUo casu deficerent vel exceptionem 
 paterentur....Et ergo est quaedam virtus, quam Aristoteles 5 Ethic, 
 vocat iwieUeiav, quae est directiva justi legalis. Et ea melior et 
 nobilior, quia per eam, modo excellentiori et perfectiori, obeditur 
 menti et intention! Legislatoris. Dupin's Gerson II. 823, 831. 
 
 Andreas Majorensis (Hardt II. 157) : 
 
 " Si Rex convocat Regnum, scilicet majores et principales regni 
 sui, et tamen non habet ipse majorem potestatem quam totum 
 Regnum." This is a fair example of the frequent use of the 
 constitution of monarchy of the day, which is always iaien for 
 granted to create a precedent for the Church. Papa executor 
 concilii, minister Christi. 
 
 De Modis Uniendi: 
 
 Omnes ergo constitutiones Apostolicae, sive leges factae in 
 favorem Papae, cardinalium sive praelatorum intelliguntur et 
 intelligi debent, ubi respublica Ecclesiastica directe vel indirecte 
 publice vel occulte in parte vel in toto detrimento aut divisioni non 
 videtur subesse. Et sic de legibus imperalibus et regalibus 
 possumus intelligere. 
 
 D'Ailly, De Jurisdictione Ecclesiastica (Hardt vi. 44, 6) : 
 
 " Communitas ipsa sola habet immediatum et verum dominium 
 et non praelatus aliquis, aut quaevis persona singularis." Hence 
 the Pope is not lord, but " universalis dispensator. Papa non potest 
 ad libitum detrahere bona Ecclesiarum ita quod quidquid ordinet 
 de ipsis teneat. Hoc enim verum appareret si esset Dominus, sed 
 cum sit minister et dispensator bonorum communitatis, in quo 
 requiritur bona fides, non habet sibi coUatam potestatem 
 super bonis ipsis, nisi ad necessitatem vel communem Ecclesiae 
 utilitatem." 
 
 Zabarella definitely asserts that the sovereignty of the people is 
 
236 Notes 
 
 inalienable, so that it is judge, whether Pope governs well or ill. 
 " Neque unquam ita potuit transferre potestatem in papam, ut 
 desinerit esse penes ipsam " (708) ; and the same is true of the lex 
 regia and the Emperor. " Major est potestas populi quam magis- 
 tratus ipsius." Schardius, 709. 
 
 Zabarella : 
 
 Papa non potest immutare statum ecclesiae, vel impedire quae 
 ad perpetuam utilitatem ordinata sunt. Ibid. 694. 
 
 In eo quod dixi aliud papam, aliud sedem Apostolicam, videtur 
 intelligenda sedes Apostolica pro ecdesia Romana, quae non 
 censetur esse solus Papa sed ipse Papa cum cardinalibus, qui sunt 
 partes corporis Papae. 701. In defectu magistratus revertimur 
 ad jus pristinum ante constitutos magistratus, quo tempore cuique 
 licebat jus sibi dicere. 691. 
 
 The Pope cannot do everything, for even God can only do 
 all xKxDZ^, praeter ea sola per quae dignitas ejus laederetur. 701. 
 
 The treatises of Zabarella and- Nicolas are in Schardius' 
 Syntagma. 
 
 NOTES TO LUTHER. 
 
 (i) This is of course a very rough description. All through 
 the Middle Ages tjip nivil pnwpr was constantly asserting its claims ; 
 but throughout society is conceived rather as a Church than a 
 State, throughout it is recognised that "the common law of the 
 Catholic Church" is not for princes to upset, while dreams like 
 those of Wyclif and Marsiglio and the Conciliar adherents of 
 Imperial and secular power must be regarded as anticipations 
 of the tendencies, which triumphed in all states, Protestant and 
 Catholic, in the sixteenth century. 
 
 The claim, that either the Church or the State is a perfecta 
 societas sibi suffidens, is really remarkable for its admission that 
 these other societies are also perfect. It is not because he stated 
 that the Church was a perfect society, that Bellarmine made 
 a change ; so much would have been admitted by any medieval 
 papalist, indeed it was the essence of his claim. What is new 
 is the tacit recognition that the State is also a perfect society. 
 This was not always perceived by controversialists and they 
 fall into inconsistencies in consequence. Barclay, De Potestaie 
 Papae, c. 17, Goldast ill. 651 sqq., ridicules Bellarmine for 
 
Luther 237 
 
 arguing first that there are two societies, and then that the 
 Pope, as head of the whole single society, can depose kings. 
 In this he is within his rights, for Bellarmine is not quite con- 
 sistent, and the conception is clearly not quite plain, as yet ; 
 for Barclay will not rise to the notion of Warburton, that there 
 can be two quite distinct societies although composed each 
 of the same persons, differentiated as social persons by their 
 separate ends. Indeed Barclay in one place denies, that if the 
 Church is a separate society, it contains anyone but the Clergy ; in 
 another, however, he seems to admit it. At any rate the argument 
 of Barclay, of the absolute distinctness of the two powers, owing 
 to their nature and purpose, is essentially an argument for the State 
 being a perfect society, no less than the Church. Indeed he 
 admits that the Church may use its own means of coercion, but 
 that by their nature these are spiritual and not material and hence 
 do not reach to the deposing power ; this concedes to the Church 
 its reality and independence. Further Bellarmine's argument, that 
 the Church may act in its own interests, i.e. deposing a persecuting 
 heretic, is based on the notion of the Church, as one of the persons 
 of international law, employing what is really war to maintain 
 its rights. This is the true significance of the indirect Papal 
 power, marks the real gulf between Jesuits and Canonists, and 
 prepares the way for the doctrine of a "free Church in a free 
 state." As we know that Bellarmine was rather less than more 
 of a Papalist than his writings (see DoUinger-Reusch, Selbst- 
 biographie), I think it right to say that he really gave up the 
 extremer theory of Augustinus Triumphus and Bozius ; that the 
 distinction is not merely, as Barclay tried to prove, one of words 
 and sophistry. The whole argument as conducted by Barclay, and 
 still more by his son John Barclay in his Vindicatio, is well worthy 
 of study, arid though it seems ; a very cursory glance will shew how 
 different is the atmosphere from that of the Somnium Viridarii. 
 
 For the same purpose the Venetian advocates against Paul V, 
 and James I's defence of his oath of allegiance are important. 
 In all these cases, there is an attempt to reconcile the existence 
 of two distinct authorities, incarnate in two separate societies, and 
 to maintain that allegiance to one need not impair loyalty to 
 the other. The effort of James I was really an attempt to do 
 for the Papists, what Newman afterwards essayed in his letter 
 to the Duke of Norfolk in reply to Mr Gladstone's Vaticanism. 
 It may well be, that James would never have thought of the oath of 
 
238 Notes 
 
 allegiance, but for the fact that he had been brought up under that 
 system, which asserted so emphatically the doctrine of the two 
 kingdoms. 
 
 The real crux of the question is surrendered, when it is admitted 
 that infidel or heretic sovereigns have genuine rights to their 
 crown. Barclay of course entirely denies the right of the Pope to 
 depose a heretic like Queen Elizabeth, and also the divine right 
 of all clerical minorities. 
 
 I quote the more important passages : 
 
 Potest et Ecclesia seu Respublica Christiana appellari 
 Christianorum tarn dericorum, quam Laicorum coUectio qui in 
 unum corpus adunati, Ecclesiasticis legibus sese subjiciunt, non 
 quidem quatenus homines civilem Rempublicam componentes, sed 
 quatenus in spiritualem coetum admissi. Eadem distinguendi 
 ratione civilis temporalis et politica Respublica dici potest, vel quae 
 ex infidelibus Principibus et rebus publicis constat, vel quae ex 
 Christianis quidem, sed nuUo ad Religionem respectu habito, 
 componitur. Sed et ob charitatis sanctos nexus, et fidei commu- 
 nionem, dicimus Rempublicam politicam accedentem ad Christum, 
 ita jungi spiritual! et Ecclesiasticae Reipublicae ut jam utraque 
 dici possit unam Rempublicam Christianam componere, in qua sint 
 duo Praefecti praecipui, quorum ille omnino omnibus in spiritua- 
 libus ; hie omnino omnibus in temporalibus praesit. 
 
 Vin. c. xin. p. 901. 
 
 Ex his patet, Bellarmine, Rempublicam Ecclesiasticam per- 
 fectam et sibi sufficientem in ordine ad finem suum esse ; sed ad 
 ilium finem non necessarium posse uti et disponere de temporalibus 
 rebus. Ibid. c. xvn. 926. 
 
 Scribit Barclaius te iniuria potestatis Ecclesiasticam et civilem, 
 quas antea duas unius Reipublicae potestates esse volueras, jam 
 duas Respublicas appellare. Sed ne inutili lite certemus, sint sane 
 duae Respublicae partiales, sint duae Potestates in una RepubUca 
 utrum vis. Nihil moron Satis quod illae duae Potestates, sive 
 Respublicae sunt sibi sufficientes ad suum finem, absque quod 
 alterutra possit de rebus disponere ad alteram spectantibus. 
 Utriusque potestatis conditor Deus non discrevit illarum mode 
 fines, sed etiam actus etiam dignitates. Ibid. 929. 
 
 Num potestas politica vim habet a Pontifice? Certe negas. 
 Num Pontificis potestas in eodem genere sublimior est potestate 
 Principum? Negas quoque. Vis enim nuUam temporalem 
 potestatem sublimiorem esse regia. Ibid. c. XXI. 946. 
 
Luther 239 
 
 C. XXIV. p. 96 1 sqq. John Barclay makes great game with Bellar- 
 mine for asserting that, though the Pope had no such power of his 
 own, kings in accepting the Christian faith gave him tacitly a pact. 
 This argument is remarkable, as founding the original compact on 
 the Baptismal vow and also as a means whereby authority might be 
 claimed for Pope as head of a single state against Catholic princes, 
 but not against infidels or heretic princes when established, not 
 persecutors. 
 
 Chap. XXXV. p. 1 1 12 he again asserts definitely, that both 
 republics are perfect. 
 
 Non igitur subordinata est Ecclesiasticae potestas Politica, 
 cum non propter Ecclesiasticam constituta sit, sed ad civilem con- 
 cordiam et adipisci suum finem absque illius ope possit, quod ut ipse 
 fateris in Ethnicis saepe factum ; cum Ecclesiastica jam absque 
 ilia esse queat, ut primis revera post Christum annis fuit cum 
 denique neque ad finem, neque ad essentiam una ad aliam ordinem 
 dicat, sed sint a sinu Dei, dignitatibus, officiis actibusque 
 distinctae. cap. ill. 8io. 
 
 It can readily be seen, how similar the admissions here made on 
 both sides are to the position of Cartwright and other Presbyterians, 
 so strongly condemned by Whitgift and Hooker. The Presby- 
 terians, however, had thought out their doctrine more completely 
 than either Royalists or Jesuits, and were under no danger of 
 confusing the Church with the Clergy. The position claimed 
 for the State by Barclay, the Venetians, and implied by James I, 
 is, however, entirely different from that asserted by Luther and the 
 English Erastians. That position really arose from the denial 
 of the Church, as a visible society by Luther, and the belief 
 that all law was the same. Even in his more theological treatises, 
 where Luther discovers the difference between law and faith, 
 there is no sign that he regards civil law as distinct from moral, or 
 as anything but a repubUcation of the essential parts of the Sinaitic 
 Code. Law is for Luther, whether natural, moral, or civil, all 
 embodied in the ten commandments, and anything else is mere 
 administrative regulation, whether in State or Church. Melanchthon 
 does attach more importance to natural law ; but the notion of 
 two republics, essentially distinct, is foreign, both to Luther and 
 Anglican Divines, until the eighteenth century. 
 
 Ostendi, supra, has potestates, spiritualem et temporalem ita 
 esse distinctas ut neutra alteri quatenus talis est aut dominetur, 
 aut pareat. W. Barclay, De Potestate Papae, c. xxx. 669. 
 
240 Notes 
 
 It is to be noted that Barclay, while in theDeJiegno he is opposed 
 to Gerson's views of constitutional rights, is very well able to make 
 use of the strong assertions of lay authority and national in- 
 dependence, which formed another part of the Conciliar armoury. 
 
 The two powers are liberae et sui juris et mutuo amore coirent ; 
 there is in fact, as Warburton said later, an alliance between 
 Church and State, only Barclay leaves to the Church a great 
 deal more freedom than Warburton was able to do, writing when 
 the Whig regime was flourishing, although Warburton desired 
 the revival of Convocation, and was by no means the mere 
 Erastian he is sometimes represented. We observe further: 
 
 {a) The Venetian treatises are less interesting than those of 
 Barclay and his son, but they establish some points. They are more 
 definitely written from the standpoint of absolute territorialism ; 
 the republic ever since 420 was omnino libera nata (299) in Fra 
 Paolo's words. The notion of a State-paid clergy appears in the 
 tract of the theologians, p. 338. 
 
 {b) The author argues much in the manner of the Vindiciae, 
 that the acceptance of a Christianity involves a contract with God, 
 so that anyone violating it may be resisted, after the example of the 
 Maccabean princes. He then goes on to argue, that the Clergy 
 have no right to obey the Papal interdict, because if they do they 
 will become false to their bargain. 
 
 Dum Christiana religio recipitur, stabilitur quasi contractus per 
 authoritatem divinam inter populum ilium fidelem et Ecclesiae 
 ministros ; ut nimirum ministri populo verbum Dei concionentur 
 &c. et populus vicissim iisdem vicium et alia necessaria sub- 
 ministret. 
 
 (it) It is to be noted that the writer of one answer, in order to 
 prove the right of the republic to control the formation of colleges 
 and societies goes right back to early Imperial law, Trajan and 
 Ulpian, and quotes the example of Julius Caesar, as related by 
 Suetonius. The question of right is the same as that involved 
 in the " Associations " law in France, and the idea of a corporate 
 body existing only by the fiat or the concession of the State 
 is at the bottom of some recent difficulties both in England and 
 Scotland. 
 
 {d) The Venetian controversialists were acute enough to see 
 the use that might be made of the Jesuit admissions, and frequendy 
 cite Molina and Bellarmine, as on their side. (Of course the 
 inference would not have been admitted.) 
 
Luther 241 
 
 (e) Lastly, the constant use of status for republic can be 
 discerned in these treatises. There can, I think, be little doubt 
 that it was largely the influence of Italy and especially Machiavelli 
 which caused the term State to become everywhere predominant 
 instead of commonwealth. The use of it in these tractates, as 
 compared for instance with those of the French or Spanish 
 writers, is evidence, though not conclusive, of this. Like the 
 balance of power, reason of State, both name and thing, came 
 from Italy — whence nearly all modern politics can be derived. 
 
 (2) Cf. Une Campagne Laique passim, with introduction by 
 M. Anatole France. 
 
 (3) Weiss nun fast alle Welt, dass Niemand so herrlich vom 
 Kaiser und Gehorsam geschrieben, als ich. 
 
 Mundt IV. 92. 
 Luther, Wider den Meuchler zu Dresden. 
 Cf. also Erlangen edition. Vol. XXXI. 83. 
 
 (4) Greift ein Kind wohl, dass christlich Recht sei, nicht, sich 
 strauben wider Unrecht ; nicht, zum Schwert greifen ; nicht, 
 sich wehren ; nicht, sich rachen, sondem dahingeben Leib und Gut, 
 dass er raube, wer da raubet ; wir haben doch genug an unserem 
 Herrn, der uns nicht lassen wird, wie er verheissen hat. Leiden, 
 Leiden, Kreuz, Kreuz ist der Christenrecht, das und kein 
 anderes. Mundt 11. 93. 
 
 (5) Auf den Dritten Artikel. 
 
 Es will dieser Artikel alle Menschen gleich machen und aus 
 dem geistlichen Reich Christi ein weltUch ausserlich Reich 
 machen ; welches unmoglich ist. Denn weltlich Reich kann nicht 
 bestehen, wo nicht Ungleichheit ist in Personen, das etliche 
 frei sind, etliche gefangen, etliche Herren, etliche Unterthanen. 
 
 Mundt II. 103. 
 
 (6) Die Bauem wussten nicht, wie kostlich Ding es sei um 
 Frieden und Sicherheit, dass einer mag seinem Bissen und Trunk 
 frohlich und sicher geniessen, und dankten Gott nicht darum ; 
 dass musste er jetzt auf diese Weise lehren, dass ihnen der Kutzel 
 verginge. 
 
 Sendbriefan Caspar Mii Her. Mundt II. 132. 
 
 Luther's view of the serfs position is here indicated : 
 Der Esel wird Schlage haben und der Pobel mit Gewalt regieret 
 sein ; dass wusste Gott wohl. Darum gab er der Obrigkeit nicht 
 ein Fuchsschwanz, sondem ein Schwert in die Hand. 
 
 Mundt II. 132. 
 
 F. 16 
 
242 Notes 
 
 (7) See the Letter in Grisar I., Appendix. 
 
 (8) The whole question of Erastus' views is discussed by me 
 in a paper in the Journal of Theological Studies, 1900. I think 
 that the distinction there made between the views of Erastus 
 and those of Hobbes or Machiavelli is just. But I should not now 
 write so largely of the power of the State as in the concluding 
 paragraphs, nor deny the need of excommunication. 
 
 (9) Cf. Luther v. Turks. 
 
 Die Welt ist aus Ende kommen, das Romisch Reich ist fast 
 dahin und zerrissen. Erlangen edition, XXXI. 74. 
 
 It is significant that one of Luther's grounds for attacking the 
 Turks is "sie trunken nicht Wein." What could be more 
 cogent ? 
 
 Luther knew very well that the office of the teacher is 
 persuasion, and that all spiritual changes must first affect men's 
 minds, and then outward institutions will tumble of themselves. 
 
 Ich habe dem Papst ohne alle Faust mehr Schaden gethan, 
 denn ein machtiger Konig thun mochte. 
 
 Mundt II. 76. 
 
 (10) In Luther's reply to Henry VIII we see something of his 
 true position : 
 
 " Consuetude, inquit, habet vim legis. Respondeo habeat vim 
 legis in civilibus causis, sed nos in libertatem vocati sumus, quae 
 nee legem nee consuetudinem ferre potest aut debet cum agamus 
 in spiritualibus causis." Jena edition, 11. 339. 
 
 This should be compared with the view of a modern Lutheran, 
 that the idea of law is unknown to the early Church, of which the 
 organisation is purely "charismatic," and that the change to 
 any system of law marks the beginning of Catholicism. 
 
 Sohm, Kirchenrecht. 
 
 Again Luther says : 
 
 " Pro libertate ergo pugno. Rex pro captivitate pugnat." 
 
 The captivity is to the dead hand of the past. 
 
 (11) Cf I, chaps. 10 and 58, also Discorso sulla Riforma v., 
 and perhaps most strongly in Belt Arte della Guerra, v. 169. 
 
 (12) The same is true of the passages at the close of the 
 Discorsi, and still more of that in the third book of the Arte della 
 Guerra : Non abbiamo noi vinto una giornata feUcissamente? 
 Ma con maggior felicitk si vincerebbe, se ni fusseiconcesso il 
 metterla in atto. 191. 
 
Luther 243 
 
 (13) The most important passage on this point : 
 
 Dove si delibera al tutto della salute della patria, non vi 
 debbe cadere alcuna considerazione n& di giusto, n& d' ingiusto, 
 nfe di pietoso, nfe di crudele, n^ di laudabile, nfe d' ignominioso, 
 anzi posposto ogni altro rispetto seguire al tutto quel partito che gli 
 salvi la vita e mantengale la libertk. III. 41. 
 
 Yet in one of the few moral passages in his writings he declares 
 in the previous chapter that territory acquired by fraud or breach 
 of treaties can never be a source of glory, 
 
 (14) His attitude to religion is simply that of a man who 
 regards it as a force to be reckoned with. It is not his words, but 
 the naiveU of his tone that is really so remaikable — e.g. this is all 
 that it occurs to him to say about Joan of Arc. He speaks of the 
 use of the military oath. 
 
 La quale cosa, mescolata con altri modi religiosi, fece molte 
 volte facile ai capitani antichi ogni impresa, e farebbe sempre 
 dove la Religione si temesse ed osservasse....Ne' tempi de' padri 
 nostri, Carlo VII re di Francia nella guerra che fece con gl' Inglesi, 
 diceva consigliarsi con una fanciuUa mandata da Iddio, la quale si 
 chiamo per tutto la Pulzella di Francia : il che gli fu cagione della 
 vittoria. 
 
 Dell' Arte della Guerra, v. 227. 
 
 (15) Sir Frederick Pollock, History of the Science of 
 Politics. The statement is true of the way in which Machiavelli 
 regards the facts of human life, religious, moral, and political. 
 They are phenomena to be accounted for and made use of in 
 his scheme. Every motive by which men are or appear to be 
 moved is a force, and if rightly manipulated an asset, for the 
 statesman. But the direct and practical aim of Machiavelli, 
 breathing in all his writings, is love of Italy and her rescue from 
 slavery, by any and every means. It is for this reason, for the sake 
 of the community not the individual, that he prefers free govern- 
 ment to tyranny in the Discorsi. 
 
 (16) Pibrac quoted by Pasquier in his Letters, VI. 2, p. 155. 
 
 (17) See my paper on Bartolus in Transactions of Royal Hist. 
 Society, Vol. XIX. 1905. 
 
 (18) I quote the most important words : 
 
 " Cum tamen dictus Johannes Huss fidem orthodoxam perti- 
 naciter impugnans, se ab omni conductu et privilegio reddiderit 
 alienum, nee aliqua sibi fides aut promissio de jure naturaU divino 
 et humano fuerit in praejudicium catholicae fidei observanda," 
 
 16 — 2 
 
244 Notes 
 
 The authenticity of this decree has been impugned, but without 
 good reason, see Wylie, Council of Constance. Moreover, whether 
 or no the decree be authentic, there is plenty of evidence that the 
 views therein expressed represent the mind of the Council ; see 
 some quoted by Creighton II. 30, 31. Acton's essay on "Paolo 
 Sarpi " brings out more completely than anything else the way in 
 which Machiavelli's doctrine was used in Italy indiscriminately by 
 Church and State. 
 
 (19) See in Dupin's Gerson, vol. V. 
 
 (20) The nearest approach to this statement is in the Discorsi. 
 It is to be wished that somebody would make a catena of the 
 
 authorities who state the maxim definitely. Personally I have 
 never actually found it in any Jesuit writer, though it perhaps 
 may be inferred from the passages quoted below. 
 
 (21) Cf. Constitutiones Societatis Jesu VI. i. Chapters goes 
 further and admits that the vow of obedience may be allowed to 
 induce to mortal sin in cases in which the superior commands 
 in the name of Jesus Christ. It should, however, be stated that 
 in Acton's opinion the real offence of the Order against ethics is 
 not to be traced to either of these sources, but to later develop- 
 ments. Doubtless the passages are "patient" of an orthodox 
 interpretation. 
 
 (22) Mr G. E. Moore declares the doctrine of ends to be far 
 superior to that of means in Principia Ethica § 89 etc. From the 
 Christian standpoint the truth in this view is that indicated below ; 
 while for ordinary practical ethics the statement is simply made to 
 warn the actor against the great danger of imagining exceptions 
 to be more frequent than the rules of morality — which may not 
 be absolute, but are certainly general. 
 
 (23) See the long account of Probabilism and Gonzalez' struggles 
 in DoUinger-Reusch, Geschichte der moralen Streitigkeiten. 
 
 (24) See the matter discussed and letters quoted in Life of 
 Bishop Creighton, Chapter xill. The crucial statement is that of 
 Creighton : " I am hopelessly tempted to admit degrees of criminality" 
 (page 375). See also a Lecture by Creighton in The Quarterly 
 Review, 1905, on "Historical Ethics." 
 
Politique s 245 
 
 NOTES TO THE POLITIQUES. 
 
 (i) The notes affixed to the vast collection known as the 
 Mdmoires de la Ligue in the edition published in the middle of the 
 eighteenth century afford the strongest evidence of the complete 
 triumph of regalist principles over ultramontane. The editor has 
 little sympathy with the Huguenots, yet even less with the seditious 
 spirit of the Ligueurs and the Jesuits. 
 
 (2) Tarquini va. Juris Ecdesiastici Publici Institutiones. 
 
 (3) See a paper of mine on " Hoadly and the Bangorian 
 Controversy" in The Guardian, Oct. 1905. A very cursory glance 
 at Sherlock's pamphlets against Hoadly will shew that what 
 the former really opposed was the idea of religious toleration. 
 The same is not, I think, the case with Law, nor indeed could this 
 very well be the case with a non-juror. 
 
 (4) L'intemp^rie de toute la Chr6tientd est aujourd'hui telle 
 qu'il n'y a Royaume ni Etat, qui s'y puisse maintenir en paix sans 
 la liberty des deux Religions, voire qui ni se ruine si on s'opiniitre 
 contre Tune. M^moires de la Ligue, 11. 133. 
 
 (5) See Dufey's Oeuvres Computes de Michel L'Hopital, vol. i. 
 441—458 and 468 — 79. 
 
 (6) See the famous pamphlet of Cecil On the Execution of 
 Justice in England. 
 
 (7) See clause II of that document in Gardiner, p. 269 : 
 That we shall in like manner... endeavour the extirpation of 
 
 Popery, prelacy, superstition, heresy... lest we partake in other 
 men's sins, and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues ; 
 and that the Lord may be one and His name one in the three 
 kingdoms. 
 
 (8) The following passage in Bodin is an illustration of the 
 view, which can, however, be best studied passim in the Letters of 
 Pasquier : 
 
 Si tantus fuerit principum ac populorum in nova religione 
 consensus, ut sine Reipublicae exitio prohiberi non possit ; sapien- 
 tissimi quique Rerumpublicarum moderatores in eo genere guber- 
 natorem imitantur, qui cum eo, quo cupiat, pergere non possit, eo 
 quo potest cursum dirigit, ac saepe velificatione mutata, procellis 
 ac tempestatibus obtemperat ne si portum tenere velit naufragium 
 patiatur. Ferenda igitur ea religio est quam sine Reipublicae 
 interitu conferre non possis. Salus enim Reipublicae extrema lex 
 esset. Ill- 8. 
 
246 Notes 
 
 (9) The crucial arguments are put by Brentz : 
 
 "Multo satius est et praestabilius, ut quater aut decies falsa 
 fides tolleretur, quam quod semel vera fides insectationem patiatur." 
 
 See a discussion of these writings in my chapter on " Political 
 Thought " in Cambridge Modern History. 
 
 (10) There is an interesting passage in rH6pital's Traiti de la 
 Reformation de la Justice, in which he denies that nature teaches 
 a mere struggle for existence and asserts that it is in essence 
 social. 
 
 He says that those who claim to rule without law assert that 
 "Par la loy de nature les gros poissons mangent les petits, les loups 
 et aultres bestes ravissantes, les aigles, les faulcons, les vautours, 
 et autres oyseaux de proie mangent les oyseaux qui ont peu de 
 force et de resistance.. ..Mais ces beaulx diseurs ont mal dtudid 
 en la loy de nature laquelle est toute autre que celle qu'ils y 
 se figurent, et qu'ils prennent des bestes brutes.... La verity est 
 que entre les bestes brutes, il ne se veoit jamais guferes que celles 
 d'une m€me espfece s'entred^vorent et se fassent la guerre. Canis 
 caninam non est, corvus corvi oculum non emit. Au contraire 
 les bestes se mettent en troupe pour se garantir contre celles qui 
 leur sont naturellement ennemyes et qui sent d'aultre espfece... 
 C'est done principallement aux grands du monde k garder bien 
 religieusement ceste loy de nature!' 11. 47. 
 
 (11) Decretale W . IT , ly 
 
 (12) Nunquam enim Regis aUcujus tanta saevitia vel 
 rapacitas exstitit, quae cum civilis discordiae miseriis ex rebellio 
 natae comparata non multis partibus minor sit. 
 
 De Regno, 119. 
 
 (13) By poverty I mean serious poverty, below Mr Seebohm's 
 border-line, not of course the mere absence of many useless 
 luxuries. 
 
 (14) By utiUtarian I mean the word in its popular sense, of 
 placing convenience before character. 
 
 (15) The Renaissance was of course opposed to the historical 
 spirit. The idea of development, or of the relativity of constitutions 
 or systems, was entirely alien to it. Machiavelli uses the facts 
 
 I of history as so many instances on which to form an inductive 
 ! science of politics ; but of the conception of politics as the result 
 
 of national development or characteristics there is no trace. 
 
 The arguments of Hotman drawn from the nature of early 
 
 French institutions were ridiculed by this school. Barclay scoffs at 
 
Politiques 247 
 
 Boucher's attempt to draw from the Liber De Feudis a right of 
 deposition from the barbaric institutions of the Lombard kings. 
 He makes however very good use of the originally insecure tenure 
 of the feudal lord. 
 
 Quasi vero jus monarchiae, quod fere cum ipso genere humano 
 ortum traxit, ad incertas Longobardorum feudales consuetudines 
 a Jurisconsultis quibusdam Mediolanensibus coUectas, quae apud 
 alias gentes partim incognitae at partim ahter atque aliter 
 observatae sunt, exigatur, contrahaturque. Quis nescit Feudorum 
 jus et consuetudinem non valde antiquam esse et omnia primum 
 feuda precaria concedi solita, ut ubi domino visum esset, revoca- 
 rentur. Deinde usu obtinuisse, ut ea domini non intra annum 
 ex quo concesserant rapere possent. Post vero ut beneficia ejus- 
 modi ad totum vitae tempus clientis beneficiarii protenderentur. 
 Mox etiam unus ex beneficiariis filius, quem dominus nominasset, 
 fratri in beneficio succederet. Tandem denique moribus inolevit 
 ut feuda essent perpetua. De Regno, 401. 
 
 (16) De Republica, I. 8, p. 135 : Inter Pontifices is qui jura 
 majestatis omnium optime norat, et qui fere omnium imperatorum 
 aut principum Christianorum potestatem sibi subjecerat, summum 
 imperium ejus esse dixit, qui ordinario juri derogare potest. 
 
 (17) See Stubbs, Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, 
 239- 
 
 NOTES TO THE MONARCHOMACHI. 
 
 (1) I am of course using the word utilitarian with its ordinary 
 meaning, and in no way begging any philosophical or religious 
 question. Now from the highest point of view it is doubtless true, 
 that in the long run the right course is the most useful. But as 
 I pointed out in my last lecture, the moment convenience is put 
 forward as a motive instead of character, the arguments against all 
 forms of disturbance are conclusive, almost universally. 
 
 (2) See on this point Overton and Relton, The English Church 
 in the XVIIIth century, 349 — 52. 
 
 (3) See Dicey's Law and Public Opinion in England for 
 a description of the uniformity enforced by convention and social 
 pressure in the days of George HI. 
 
248 Notes 
 
 (4) Calvin's Institutes, Book IV. c. 20, more especially §§ 8, 29 
 — 32. Even in the last case it is only " Passive Resistance" that 
 he allows, nowhere rebellion. 
 
 (5) Goodman, How to obey. 
 
 (6) See Filmer's Anarchy of a Mixed Monarchy. 
 
 (7) Leslie's most important writings on this score are various 
 pamphlets in reply to Hoadly and The Rehearsal, 
 
 (8) Even Turrecremata admits, that a Pope though infaUible 
 may become a heretic ; if so, he ipso jure ceases to be a Pope. 
 There is no danger of any ex cathedra false doctrine. 
 
 (9) Quotations from this .treatise will be found in notes to 
 my Divine Right of Kings. The following however may be added 
 here : 
 
 Sequitur ergo tyrannum in populum tanquam feudi dominum, 
 feloniam committere regni imperiique sacram majestatem laedere, 
 rebellem esse, ac propterea in easdem leges incidere et longe 
 graviores poenas mereri. I. 187. 
 
 (10) The writer has a great contempt for mob rule : 
 
 An vero universam multitudinem, belluam, inquam, illam 
 innumerorum capitum tumultuari et concurrere in eam rem, quasi 
 agmine facto oportebit ? Quis vero in ea turba ordo esse queat ? 
 Quae consilii, quae rerum gerendorum species ? Cum de universo 
 populo loquimur, intelligimus eos, qui a populo authoritatem 
 acceperunt, magistratus nempe rege inferiores a populo delectos, 
 aut alia ratione constitutos, quasi imperii Consortes et Regum 
 Ephoros, qui uniyersum populi coetum representant. Intelligamus 
 etiam Comitia quae nil aliud sunt, quam Regni cujusque Epitome, 
 ad quae publica omnia negotia referantur. 11. 46. 
 
 (11) Gierke's great work is really a comment on this contrast, 
 and an illustration of the workings of the two notions — throughout 
 history. 
 
 (12) As the book is not much read, I may cite one or two 
 passages of Rossaeus' : 
 
 Neque enim respublicae creatae sunt propter reges, sed reges 
 electi sunt propter respublicam. Neque populi primo in unum 
 coetum confluxerunt, ut regum bonum procurarent ; sed multitudo 
 consociata reges elegit, qui multitudinis bono praeessent, et 
 commodum adjuvarent. Ergo primae sunt reipiiblicae partes, 
 secundae regum. c. I. p. 33. 
 
 (13) P. 40, c. 2. 
 
 (14) Henry III is perfidiosissima apostata, impurissimus hypo- 
 
Monarchomachi 249 
 
 crita, alter Mezentius Dei contemptor, millies ipso Mahomete vel 
 Theomacho Graeco nequior et sceleratior (p. 170). 
 
 (15) P. 1 59 sqq. The argument might almost be compared with 
 Westcott or any modern writer arguing about the conception of the 
 Atonement from the universal practice of religions. 
 
 (16) He declares salus animarum suprema lex to be the rule 
 of a Christian state ; and in the same way (613), answering to the 
 digna vox of the State, there is another : digna et necessaria est vox 
 ut princeps Christianus legibus Ecclesiae se devinctum profiteatur. 
 
 (17) P. 129. 
 
 (18) Pp. 342, 377, 381—3. 
 
 (19) He makes very good use of Beza's argument against 
 toleration and its consequences in Poland and Transylvania. 
 
 569. Heretici regem Catholicum optimo jure in regno praesi- 
 dentem, regem suum ferre nolunt. i. 63. 
 
 (20) Einer der wesentlichsten Unterschiede der katholischen 
 und der reformierten Monarchomachen besteht in dem grosseren 
 Radicalismus und in dem grosseren Mangel an Klarheit und 
 Pracision der ersteren. Landmann 11. 
 
 I think this is true about the first point ; there is all the difference 
 between Whigs and Radicals, between Boucher and Du Plessis 
 Mornay. But I do not think Suarez or Molina lacking in clearness 
 or precision. 
 
 NOTES TO THE JESUITS. 
 
 (i) See especially the discussion in Reusch, Beiirage zur 
 Geschichte des Jesuitenordens, also the crucial words in the two 
 editions are compared in a note to my " Political Theories of the 
 early Jesuits," Royal Hist. Soc. Trans. Vol. xi. 
 
 (2) Die Lehre von Tyrannenmord. 
 
 (3) Mariana De Rege. 
 
 (4) See Du Prat, Le Plre Coton. 
 
 (5) De Legibus in. i, 2, 3. He dismisses in § 3 of Chap. 2 
 the views of f^k, like Filmer, who derive all power from original 
 parental authority, asserting that Adam's power was domestic 
 not economic, and that a "perfect community" is owing to the 
 voluntary coalescence of several families. 
 
 16-5 
 
250 Notes 
 
 De Legibus III. 9. 4 : Sequitur secundo, etiam in principe 
 supremo esse hanc potestatem eo modo et sub ea conditione 
 sub qua data est et translata per communitatem. Further cap. 35 
 he decides that princes, including the Pope, are bound by their own 
 laws, and that not from any express or tacit contract, because that 
 would mean a compact might release them, which is impossible. 
 See the evils of the contrary view urged by Contarini in his 
 Letter to Paul III. 
 
 (6) Dispiitationes Tridentinae, edited by H. Grisar. It is 
 notable, that in arguing against the Pope having received his power 
 from the Church, Lainez takes it for granted that a lex regia 
 can never be an entire abdication on the part of the people in 
 favour of the monarch. 
 
 (7) See Suarez' excellent chapter on the separation of 
 powers, III. II. His position is totally different from the medieval, 
 that omnia jura civilia were at bottom canonica. The whole point 
 of his view is, that the civil power as such is no more and no less 
 than it was among the heathen before Christianity ; but that the 
 Church has its own rights. An infidel prince may not be disturbed, 
 unless he treats Christians ill, when war is of course justifiable ; but 
 he will not say that infidels as such are without a just title, as 
 the medievals do {e.g. Somnium Viridarit). Heretics are different, 
 for the baptismal vow makes them a part of the Christian republic 
 (ill. 10. § 6). Cf Bellarmine, De Rom. Pon. V. 7 : Quando Reges 
 et Principes ad Ecclesiam veniunt, ut Christiani fiant, recipiuntur 
 cum pacto tacito vel expresso, ut sceptra sua subjiciant Christo, 
 et poUiceantur se Christi fidem servaturos et defensuros etiam sub 
 poena regni perdendi. Cf. De Trans. Imp. \. 11 (p. 1193). 
 
 (8) See Reusch, Die Selbstbiographie des Cardinals Bellar- 
 mine. 
 
 (9) On the other hand Molina definitely declares the civil 
 State to be imperfect without the guidance of the Church. This 
 confirms our view that the doctrine of the Church as a " societas 
 perfecta " is only of importance when and in so far as it makes an 
 admission, that the State is also in the same category. 
 
 (10) Suarez, De hmnunitate Ecclesiae, written against the 
 Venetian claims is the strongest evidence of this. What he claims 
 is really an extra-territorial position for clergy and monasteries ; 
 while, since the rights of property exist jure naturae to a private 
 man, d, fortiori they must to any congregation of men, and 
 especially to the Church. What he is clearly striving for is for the 
 
,y 
 
 Jesuits .251 
 
 recognition of the natural rights of a community other than the 
 State. What he really asks is, whether " reason of State" is always 
 to be decisive ? Or, as Molina put it, the Respublica Ecclesiae non 
 minus sibi debet esse sufficiens, quam quaecunque Respublica 
 secularis (547). 
 
 (i i) Gosselin, Pouvoir du Pape au Moyen Age (2 vols., 1845), 
 is an elaborate but unsuccessful attempt in this direction. 
 
 (12) The arguments are to be found in Palmiri, De Romano 
 Pontifice, and Tarquini, Juris Ecdesiastici Publid InsHtutiones. 
 
 (13) Cf. the document printed in Denziger's Encliiridion, 
 405 sqq. It must be observed, that even Fapalists like Bellarmine 
 and Suarez admit limits to the Pope's power. Bellarmine says 
 distinctly the enquiry is only whether the Pope has power to make 
 just laws, nam injustae leges non sunt proprie dicendae leges {JOe 
 Rom. Pont, in Disputationes, I. 1025). Suarez appears to deny 
 that even God has power to alter natural law ; and has the same 
 view as Bellarmine about the need of justice for a true law. 
 
 (14) The following obiter dictum of Bellarmine illustrates 
 the way of regarding law. The statements of Jesuits and 
 Conciliar writers about secular government are very often the more 
 remarkable as being purely occasional. Both Gerson and 
 Bellarmine take for granted that in the civil State absolutism is 
 inadmissible. 
 
 Quemadmodum in Republica civili necessarie sunt leges civiles 
 quae sunt quaedam quasi conclusiones deductae ex jure naturae, vel 
 determinationes juris naturae, sic etiam in Ecclesia praeter legem 
 Evangelicam necessarie sunt leges Ecclesiasticae, quae sunt etiam 
 veluti deductae ex principiis Evangelii, vel determinatitines. Ibid. 
 1039. 
 
 Suarez' arguments, iv. i, about the necessity of legislative 
 power in the Church are based on its being a " societas perfecta," 
 and have no special relation to the Papacy. Indeed, as one writer 
 Vasquez saw, the power ecclesiastical was inherent in the nature of 
 things and might have existed even were there no revelation. 
 Cf. also Suarez, iv. 2 § 3 and c. 8, where he says, " potestates hae in 
 suo esse plus quam genere distinguuntur." 
 
252 Notes 
 
 NOTES TO THE NETHERLANDS REVOLT. 
 
 (1) Marnix, CEuvres, Vol. Correspondance et Mdlanges 369, 
 appeals to the idea of balance of power in his address to the 
 princes of Europe to induce them to help the Netherlands. 
 
 (2) De Imperio Summarum Potestaium circa Sacra. 
 
 (3) See the document in Marnix, Ecrits Politigues, App. 
 
 (4) Another early pamphlet De Jure Belli Belgici makes 
 use of the ordinary feudal argument, that the same offences which 
 justify the eviction of a vassal from his fief, give a right to exclude 
 the lord from his ownership. 
 
 (5) The only interesting things in Daneau are his insistence on 
 the need of free education (including creches) for all, and of a 
 "ladder of learning," and also on the need of provincial assemblies. 
 He definitely denies, like others of this school, that there is 
 a " sovereign " in the strict sense ; this is a fiction of the Bartolistae, 
 VI. 3. 
 
 (6) Doctrinam de consociatione privata conjugum et consan- 
 guineorum, male meo judicio, quidam politici ex agro politico 
 exterminant, et oeconomico ut propriam attribuunt. Nam hae 
 consociationes omnis symbioticae privatae et publicae seminarium. 
 Adempta igitur hac conjugum et consanguineorum doctrina, 
 reliquarum consociationum cognitio imperfecta et manca erit, 
 atque sine ea recte intelligi non poterit. c. III. 33. 
 
 (7) On the question of toleration Althusius wavers ; he will 
 tolerate for the sake of peace, if the State cannot subsist otherwise, 
 but he will not allow Papists to have Churches, or heretics to 
 hold office. His position is somewhat similar to that of Warburton, 
 pp. 424 — 430. Marnix towards the end of his life refused toleration 
 to Anabaptists {CEuvres). 
 
 (8) Cf. Apology. 
 
 (9) An quid magis ridiculum quam quod dicunt aliqui, tamen 
 non ridiculi interpretes juris, posse etiamnum imperatorem Romanum 
 agere ad regnum Hispaniae, quod captum et possessum Saracenis 
 diutissime fuit, et perdiu etiam tenetur ab Hispanis hominibus? 
 
 Albericus Gentilis, De Jure Belli I. 22. 
 That the author- should still find it necessary to write like 
 this is a proof how slowly the Imperial and universal conception of 
 politics vanished from men's ideals. The importance of- Spain 
 in the matter is again worth noticing. 
 
Netherlands Revolt 253 
 
 Cf. also this passage : 
 
 Sunt vero interpretes juris, qui sic exponunt de rege Francorum, 
 eum praescriptione saltern esse exemptum ab imperatoris sub- 
 jectione. Contra quos non apte affert Alciatus, quod nulla 
 temporis praescriptio obtineat contra imperium. Ibid. 
 
 (10) Cf. the argument of Albericus Gentilis that in England 
 civilian lawyers were really the same as canonists. 
 
 Anglus ut dixi nomine civilis indigitat etiam canonicum. 
 
 Regales Dispufaiiones I. 7. 
 
 (11) In Public International Law. 
 
 (12) Latet itaque jus istud. Sed et si sit omnino, revocabitur 
 in controversiam ab aliis, quiy«j non natura sed opinione constare 
 omne pertinaciter contendunt, atque adeo contendunt adversus nos, 
 quibus hoc positum, et qukm est, quaestiones bellicas jure definire 
 gentium oportere, quod est naturae. ..habeo pro explorato jus 
 aliquid naturae esse, quo et argumentum hoc tractetur bellicum. 
 
 Albericus Gentilis, De Jure Belli I. i. 
 Grotius also sharply distinguishes between rights which being 
 unnatural have a legal character, and rights which are purely 
 moral. 
 
 (13) As Grotius puts liFidesublataferis erunt similes (in. 2, 52), 
 the doctrine of Machiavelli accepts this, and likens men to the 
 anti-social animals. The conception alike of Grotius and the 
 Monarchomachi are of a law anterior to all positive laws ; and this 
 conception was erroneously assisted by the universal acceptance of 
 the idesil perfection of the civil law, and its concomitant the canon 
 law. Fidei enim non tantum respublica qualibet continetur, sed et 
 magis ilia gentium societas (in. 25, i). For this purpose there must 
 be two conditions, the recognition {a) of a natural law, {b) of the 
 duty of keeping promises. Thus, alike in the civil State of Locke 
 and the international State of Grotius, the atheist is ruled out, 
 because he is without the belief in God which would lead him 
 to keep his oath. The importance of this condition is very great, 
 not in itself, but as shewing how the ground on which international 
 law arose is exactly the same as that which reared modern theories 
 of the rights of States as against absolutism. The enemy in both 
 cases is the same, the " Machiavellistica ac . Turcica " theory of 
 government, which subjects all rights private and public to the 
 ruler's conception of immediate expediency. The French pamphlets 
 in the wars of religion form perhaps the clearest evidence of this, 
 but it is scattered through the literature of the time. 
 
254 Notes 
 
 At neque nos loquimur nunc de his qui, ferarum modo tnagis 
 quam hominum viventes, sine uUa omnino religione sunt, hos enim 
 quasi piratas, communes hostes omnium, bello persequendos et 
 cogendos in mores hominum arbitrarer. Hi enim vero videntur 
 injurii omnibus hominibus, qui in specie hominum agunt vitam 
 brutorum brutissimorum.... Juris naturae est religio. Et itaque nee 
 patrocinabitur jus istud expertibus ipsius. 
 
 A. G., DeJ. B. I. 9. 39. 
 
 Grotius held a similar view {De J. ®. 11. 20. 46). 
 
 Moreover Grotius gives a hint, that international law arises like 
 the State by a sort of pact. In the one case, on the popular theory, 
 individuals surrender a portion of their liberty in order to secure 
 peace and order ; in the other. States, as the persons of international 
 law, surrender a portion of their " natural freedom," so as to secure 
 the advantage of those mitigations of the struggle for existence 
 which the rules of war and peace offer to them. 
 
 (14) Cf. Albericus Gentilis, De Jure Belli I. 3 : 
 
 Jus etiam, illis perscriptum libris Justiniani non civitatis est 
 tantum, sed et gentium, et naturae. Et aptatum sic est ad naturam 
 universam, ut imperio extincto, et ipsum jus diu sepultum surrexerit 
 tamen, et in omnes se effuderit gentes humanas. Ergo et Princi- 
 pibus Stat, etsi est privatis conditum a Justiniano.... 
 
 Quid? non apta Principibus ilia librorum Justiniani, Honeste 
 vivere, Alteram non laedere, Suum cuique tribuere, Liberos tueri, 
 Iniuriam propulsare. Cum omnibus hominibus cognationem 
 agnoscere, Commercia retinere, id genus reliqua, et quae ex his 
 quaeque in illis sunt libris fere totum? Isthaec juris gentium sunt, 
 et juris bellici. 
 
 Grotius too treats civil law in the strict sense, as only a small 
 part of the law of any State. Much the larger is law natural. The 
 fact that nearly all continental States looked largely to Rome 
 for the source of their common law is a further illustration of this 
 view. Suarez is quite definite in his statements, that there is 
 no common Imperial authority, and that the common law of each 
 nation is what that nation obeys without any interference from out- 
 side ; but the notion of a Roman Law as a " source-book " 
 undoubtedly helped to make possible the system of International 
 Law in the form it actually took. 
 
 (15) It is of vital importance, that Grotius admits the Turkish 
 government to share on an equality in the mass of rights and 
 privileges. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Absolutism, tendency towards, Lec- 
 tures III. and IX. passim ; 
 dreaded, i66 ; in modem State, 
 191, 203 sqq. 
 
 Acton, Lord, and Whigs, 7 ; criti- 
 cised, 102, 129 ; on continuity of 
 political thought, 218 
 
 Albericus Gentilis, 211 ; Wsde Jure 
 Belli, 213 sqq. 
 
 Althusius, 34, 154, 161, 194; his 
 Politica Methodice Digesta, icxi 
 sqq. ; Federalism, 205 
 
 Altruism, exaggerated by Schopen- 
 hauer and Tolstoi, Lect. III. 
 
 Anabaptists, eflFect on Protestantism, 
 
 64. 75. "7. 141 
 Aquinas, S. Thomas, 7, 173 
 Aristotle, 7 
 Augustinus Triumphus, 7, 16, 18 
 
 Balance of Power, 131 
 
 Barclay, 63, 109, 113, 120, 155, 
 
 184, 192, 200 
 Bartolus, 88, 167, 169, 189 
 Basel, Council of, 43, 4^sqq. 
 Bellarmine, 43, 494 11^ 181 
 Bodin and modern State, 12; his 
 
 Six Livres De la RipMique, 126 
 
 sqq. 
 Boucher, 104 
 
 Brown, Robert, on Toleration, 117 
 Bryce, cited, 28 
 Buchanan, his De Jure Regni apud 
 
 Scotos, 122, 147 sqq. 
 
 Calvin, views on political authority, 
 
 122, 145 
 Calvinism and liberty, 137; idea of 
 
 Church, 186 
 
 Carlyle, A. J., cited, 23, 212 
 
 Casuistry, its justification and risks, 
 106 
 
 Church in Middle Ages, 4, 15; in 
 14th century, Lecture \1. passim; 
 claims. Lectures V. and VI. ; as 
 societas perfecta, 48 ; conflicts 
 with State in Middle Ages, 49 ; 
 in relation to modem State, 
 185, 186; Free of Scotland, case, 
 4, 223 
 
 Combes, M. Emile, 63 
 
 Concordantia Catholica, sum- 
 marised, 58 sqq. 
 
 Constance, Council of, 44 sqq. 
 
 Constitutionalism of Middle Ages, 
 culminates at Constance, 39 
 
 Creighton, M., 98, 100; defended 
 against Acton, 102 
 
 Cunningham, W., on conscious 
 imitation of the Dutch, 192 
 
 Dante, his De Monarchia, 11 
 Dialogue du Manant et Maheustre, 
 
 159 
 Dicey, 134 
 Digna Vox, 9 
 Dispensing Power, 88 
 Divine Right of Kings, 69 sqq. ; 
 
 comparison between English and 
 
 French supporters of, in 
 D'Orleans, Louis, 113, 159 
 Dubois Pierre, his De Recuperaiione 
 
 Terrae Sanctae, analysed, 27 
 
 Economists, orthodox and ethics, 94 
 Ehud, 145 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, and toleration, 
 114 
 
256 
 
 Index 
 
 Erasmus, 63 
 
 Erastianism, under Henry II in 
 
 Wyclif, 30; theory, 74 
 Etienne de la Boeotie, 124 ; Le 
 
 Contr'Un, 231 
 Eugenius IV, 46 
 
 Federalism, 15, 68, 192 
 Ferrara, Council at, 43 
 Feudalism, its influence, 10; and 
 
 original contract, 11, 149 5qq. ; 
 
 in the Dutch revolt, 199 
 Filmer, 160, 202 
 
 Gallicanism, 45, 119, 136 
 
 George III, a danger to liberty, 
 
 144 
 Gierke, Otto, 179, 200, 206 
 Gregoire, Pierre, his De Republica, 
 
 128, 192, 200 
 Grotius, natural law, 8, 190, 194, 
 
 209 sqq, 
 
 Hegel, his view of the State traced 
 
 to Luther, 67, 71, 180 
 Henri III, 162, 164, 165, 168 
 Henri IV, Lecture Vf .passim, 170, 
 
 Heretics, attitude of Council of 
 Constance towards, 90 ; kings, 
 140 
 
 Hobbes, denies natural law^.S ; on 
 modem State, 12 ; not to be con- 
 fused with Luther, 77, 203 
 
 Hoadly, 112, 117, 202 
 
 Hooker, 49, 62, 77 
 
 Hotman,his/>-a«f»-(?a//8a analysed, 
 
 Huguenots, 152 sqq., 186 
 Infidels, as Kings, rights of, 18 
 
 John XXIII, 65 
 
 John of Salisbury on tyrannicide, 
 170 
 
 Justinian, his system partly medi- 
 eval, 10; view of religion, 17, 
 150. 163 
 
 Knox, John, intolerance of, 146 
 
 L'Hdpital and Toleration, no, 113 
 
 Lainez, 179 
 
 Laity, at the Council, 45, 50, 231 ; 
 
 favoured by Luther, 64 
 Law, Canon, 16; limits absolutism of 
 State, 138 ; its diminished im- 
 portance in modern times, 141, 
 185 ; its effect on politics and 
 international law, 213 
 Law, International, basis, 8 ; 
 modem, 14; relation to Protestant- 
 ism, 19 ; to medieval ideals, 131 ; 
 in Jesuits, 188 ; development of 
 by Grotius and Albericus Gentilis, 
 211 sqq. 
 
 Law of Nature, 8 ; not in Machia- 
 velli, 84 sqq. ; and original 
 contract, 151; in Jesuits, 175; 
 atmosphere of political discus- 
 sions, 176, 199; its use by 
 Grotius, 211 sqq. 
 
 Law, Roman, and modem indi- 
 vidualism, 8 ; source of political 
 maxims, 9 sqq. ; in Jesuits, 174 
 sqq., 185 ; in Albericus Gentilis, 
 213 
 
 Legitimism, in 
 
 Leslie, 203 
 
 Lex Regia, 8 sqq., 155, 165, 211 
 
 Liberty, civil, due to religious 
 quarrels, 6 ; depends on division 
 of power, 142 ; legal atmo- 
 sphere, 176 
 
 Ligue, 158 sqq., 186 
 
 Locke, his forerunners, 54, 156, 
 161 ; Mariana, 171, 179 
 
 Louis XIV, defeated in contest 
 with the Pope, 136 ; revokes 
 edict of Nantes, 143 
 
 Maitland, F. W., n 
 
 Manegold of Lautenbach, 7, 148 
 
 Mariana, Juan de, 34, 162 ; his 
 
 De Rege discussed, 168 sqq. 
 Marnix de S. Aldegonde, 198 
 Marsilius of Padua, his Defensor 
 
 Pans, 28 
 Melanchthon, hostility to monastic 
 
 ideal, 63 ; against legislative 
 
 power of Church, 66, 178 
 Molina, 178 
 Monarchy, absolute, triumphs with 
 
 victory of Popes, 37 ; limited, as 
 
Index 
 
 257 
 
 proclaimed by Council, 38 ; 
 
 theory of modem, Lectures III. 
 
 and IV. ; limitations on, Lectures 
 
 V. and Vl./orjww 
 Moore, Mr G. E., his PHncipia 
 
 Ethica discussed, 105 
 Momay, Du Plessis, 8 ; author of 
 
 Vindiciae contra tyrannos, 153 ; 
 
 summary of, 154 sqq. 
 
 Nietzsche, 95 sqq., 212 
 
 Ockham, William of, cited, 27, 29, 
 
 105 
 Original Contract, 7 ; its basis, 8 ; 
 sources, 11 ; discussed, 148 sqq., 
 199, 202 
 
 Papacy, and Roman Empire, 4 ; and 
 Hohenstauffen, 7, 25 ; and mon- 
 archy, 26 ; paves the way for 
 universal absolutism, 37 ; its 
 claims, 41 ; meaning of its 
 triumph, 51 ; its results, 60 
 Passive Obedience in Luther, 65 
 Philip II, worked with Luther, 5, 
 
 17, 197. 1.99 
 Pisa, Council of, 44 
 Pius II and Pius IX, 38 
 Plenitudo Potestatis, ascribed to 
 
 Popes, 4 ; its meaning, 1 7 
 Politics and theology, in Middle 
 
 Ages, 18 ; continuity, 23 
 Pope, may be deposed for heresy, 
 
 7 ; may not dispense with natural 
 
 law, 8 ; may have jurisdiction 
 
 though a layman, 17 ; source of 
 
 law, Hid. ; limitations on his 
 
 power, 57 ; indirect power, 180 
 
 sqq. 
 Presbyterians, their theory of State 
 
 and Church as separate kingdoms, 
 
 62, 73, 136, 157 
 Private rights and public law m 
 
 Middle Ages, 12 ; in modem 
 
 times, 14 
 Probabilism, its connection with 
 
 Machiavelli, 92 
 
 Reformation, 5 ; retards secularising 
 of politics, 18 ; revives theocratic 
 
 ideals, 24; justified by failure of 
 
 Councils, 30 
 Religion, secret of modern liberty, 
 
 6, 31, 124, 133, 144, 206 
 Revolution between medieval and 
 
 modem thought, 4, 13 
 Rossaeus, De Jusia ReipublUae 
 
 Christianae Potestate, 159 sqq. 
 Rousseau, his intellectual ancestry, 
 
 34, 124, 148, 156, 161, 169; 
 
 relation to Althusius, 200 ; uni- 
 tary State, 203 
 
 Salamonius, De Principatu, 9 
 
 Salic Law, in 
 
 Satyre Menippk, 90, 1 26 
 
 Schopenhauer, his pessimism op- 
 posed to individuality, 91 
 
 Sidgwick, cited, 21 
 
 Simanca, 49 
 
 Social Contract, compared with 
 original contract, 201, 202 
 
 Societas Perfecta, 73, 183 ; expresses 
 trae notion of corporations in 
 relation to State, 203 
 
 Somnium Viridarii, 16, 18 
 
 Sovereignty in Middle Ages, 1 1 ; in 
 Church, 13; mingled with pro- 
 perty, 15 ; inalienable, 88, 138 ; 
 of the people, 1 72 ; in Althusius, 
 202 
 
 Spain, influence on Jesuit theories, 
 167 ; seen in Mariana, 168, 187 
 
 State, the modern, 5 ; limitations 
 on, 8 ; no theory of in Middle 
 Ages, 1 1 ; origin of term, ibid. ; 
 abstract theory, 12 ; attributes of, 
 13 ; post-Reformation, 15 ; medi- 
 eval, 16; in relation to Church, 
 16 ; secular 19 ; in Dante, 28 ; 
 influence of Reformation upon, 
 64, 70 ; in the writings of the 
 Politigttes, 1 10 sqq. ; limited by 
 religious forces, 134; novelty of 
 its absolute power, 147 ; differing 
 views of, 106; secular theory of 
 held by Jesuits, 179; unitary, 
 203 ; in relation to religious 
 societies and federalism, 206 
 sqq.. 
 
 Suarez,Z?d Legibus, 189 sqq., 202 
 
258 
 
 Index 
 
 Sully, his &conomes Roy ales, 130 ; 
 the great design, 190 
 
 Territorialism in Geimany, Lecture 
 III. passim ; in the Netherlands, 
 
 193 
 
 Theology and politics in the Middle 
 Ages, 18 
 
 Tyndale, The Obedience of a Chris- 
 tian Man, 64 
 
 Tyrannicide, 164 ; in Mariana, 170 
 
 Ultramontanism, justified by failure 
 of Conciliar movement, 36 sqq. 
 
 Unam Sanctam, 181 
 
 Utility, theories of, 55, 123, 150, 
 161 
 
 Venice, quarrel with Paul V, 69 
 Vindiciae contra Tyrannos, 153 sqq. 
 
 Warburton, 63 ; on Church as o, 
 
 community, 185 
 Westphalia, peace of, its meaning, 
 
 141 
 Whigs, 178, 180, 211 
 Whitgift, his Erastianism, 49, 62, 
 
 64, 66, 77 
 William the Silent, 191, 192, 212 
 Wyclif, similarity to Marsilius, 29 ; 
 
 his De Officio Regis, ibid. ; his 
 
 De Civili Dominio, 121 
 
 Zabarella, De Schismate, go 
 Zwingli, 209 
 
 Cambridge: printkd by John clay, m.a. at the university press. 
 

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