whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as sent by him," etc. (1 Peter 2: 13, 14). Thus the apostles separated between the ecclesiastical function and the civil function, regarding each as an ordinance of God, and forbidding each to trench on the province of the other.

§ 226. The apostolic teachings controlled the churches down to the conversion of Constantine and the union of Church and State under this Cæsar. This was a relapse into Mosaism. Constantine published an edict of toleration in A.D. 313. He also restored the property taken from Christians in the persecutions. He interdicted heathen worship in private, but tolerated it in public. He forbade officers to sacrifice, and finally forbade the erection of images and the performance of religious sacrifices. He invested the church with the power to receive and hold landed property, which led to the slow but sure accumulation of wealth and power. He decreed, A.D. 321, the observance of Sunday. He enforced uniformity in obeying the decrees of the Council of Nice, A.D. 325. He thus introduced the sword of the State to enforce the decrees of the Church. The change from advice to authority in the decrees of synods, or conferences, came not from polity, but from State intervention.5 "Whatever weakness there was in the bond of a common faith was compensated for by the strength of civil coercion." It prevented schism, and therefore reform. The Donatists arose, A.D. 313, and continued long after the death of Constantine. "Their soundness in the faith was unquestionable. They resolved to meet together as a separate confederation, the basis of which should be a greater purity of life; and but for the interference of the State they might have lasted as a separate confederation to the present day."7 "Let all heresies,' says a law of Gratian and Valentinian, 'forever hold their peace if any one entertains an opinion which the Church has condemned, let him keep it to himself and not communicate it to another." " 8 This was, A.D. 381. We see

Hatch's Org. Early Christ. Chhs. 166, 168.

666

here the sad return to Mosaism which led to the Papal tyranny. That Church still holds as an infallible utterance, that the Church ought not to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.9

§ 227. The Great Reformation was but a partial return to the primitive separation of Christian churches from the civil power. The reformers announced and defended the right of private judgment in religious matters, the cornerstone of Protestantism, but past habits of thought and of life, conjoined with the doleful excesses of religious fanatics, prevented the full realization in practice of their fundamental principle. They could not adjust matters so as to "render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Probably an entire separation then between Church and State would have prevented the success. of the Reformation. It was better to gain a foothold for a complete return than to have attempted completeness at first and have failed. Yet Luther 10 apprehended the true idea of the church-kingdom as separated from the State, as did Zwingle 11 and other reformers; 12 but neither he nor they could effect an entire separation.13 Calvin used the temporal power to suppress heresies.14 Had it not been for the aid which the State gave the reformers, the Reformation would probably have perished altogether under the terrible persecutions and wars which the Roman Church instituted and instigated, as it perished in Italy, Spain, France, and Bohemia. A foothold was gained for future conquests; and. soon a nearer approach was made in the Puritan reformation in England and America. The Puritans included two wings,. the Presbyterian and the Congregational, or Independent. The Presbyterians clung tenaciously to the union of Church and State, uniting the two in Scotland, and attempting it in

Syllabus of Errors, No. 55. 12 Augsburg Conf. art. xvi. 14 Fisher's Hist. Ref. 496, seq.;

10 Fisher's Hist. Reformation, 488, 489. 11 Ibid. 495.. 13 Palfrey's Hist. New Eng. ii, 71. D'Aubigne's Hist. Ref. of Calvin, iii, 197.

England.15 They failed in England only through the more rapid growth of the Congregationalists under Cromwell, who gave a larger liberty to that country. After the Restoration the persecutions confirmed them in their love of free churches. separated from the State. From the first, both wings of the Puritans were persecuted, and one reason may be found in the favorite expression of Queen Elizabeth, who, when she had any business to bring about among the people, used, as she said, "to tune the pulpits." 16 For she found it harder to tune free pulpits than those of the Established Church, which, like their organs, were easily tuned by one who held in her hands appointments, promotions, and salaries. Thus dependent, ambitious prelates sung the tune ordered by ambitious politicians or by the crafty queen.

§ 228. The return in America to the Scriptural relation between the Church and the State requires notice. At first the Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Colony attempted a church-state, in which none but church members could vote and hold office, the Church thus ruling the State. The same was true of the New Haven Colony. The Plymouth and Connecticut Colonies were a little more liberal, though there the suffrage was put under special limitations. The general courts were the annual assemblies of the churches in the respective colonies, enacting ecclesiastical and civil laws. The churches ruled through the civil power. "After all that may be said," wrote Hutchinson, "of the constitution [of the churches in Massachusetts], the strength of it lay in the union . . . with the civil authority. The usual way of deciding differences and controversies in churches, it is true, was by a council consisting of the elders and other messengers of neighboring churches; and where there was a general agreement in such councils, the contending parties. generally acquiesced; but if the council happened to differ in apprehensions among themselves, or if either of the contending parties were contumacious, it was a common thing

15 Palfrey's Hist. New Eng. 11, 79, 101.

10 Hanbury's Memorials, 1, 478.

for the civil magistrate to interpose and put an end to the dispute." 17 The churches gave them their warrant to interpose; 18 and the frequency and nature of their interposition have been noted (§ 193: 3, note).19

66

But while "there was a real union between Church and State," there was "a radical difference in the form of the connection between the State and the churches here, and between the Church and State in the mother country. Here there were many churches, nearly independent of each other; there the Church was one body. Here the churches elected their own pastors; there ministers were imposed by the civil government or by patrons. Here the civil government never assumed or exercised the power of deciding on matters of doctrine and discipline, but always called together representatives of the churches freely chosen to determine such matters; there they were determined and established ultimately by the civil power. Here, if the proceedings of the magistrates were supposed to bear hard on the liberties of the churches, they could be, and sometimes were, displaced at the next annual election; there, there was, in such cases, no redress."

"20

These elements of liberty finally worked a complete separation between Church and State in New England, as in the rest of the United States. But the union entailed upon the Congregational churches that established it evils from which they have not yet cleared themselves. The chief of these evils we must dwell upon.

§ 229. The town church was changed into the parish system of church and society. A town meeting in any town in Massachusetts and New Haven was also at first a church meeting. In it the members of the church assembled to transact both ecclesiastical and civil business, to build a meeting-house and to build a bridge, to elect a deacon and to choose a member of the General Court, to call a pastor

17 Hist. Mass. 1, 383. 18 Camb. Plat. chap. xvii. 20 Wisner's Hist. Old South Church, Boston, 2, 70.

19 New Englander, 1873, 468–473.

and to tax the inhabitants. But under the liberty they had introduced, the few church members in a town found it difficult to govern and tax for church purposes the many who were not members; so in 1664 the law passed in 1631, limiting the suffrage to church members, was repealed. Thereafter persons who were Englishmen could become freemen by presenting a certificate from their minister that they were orthodox; a certificate from the selectmen that they were freeholders, ratable "to the full value of ten shillings, or that they are in full communion with some church amongst us;" by presenting "themselves and their desires" to the court for admittance to the freedom of the Commonwealth; by being voted in by the General Court; and by being twenty-four years old.21

It was then that the parish became wider than the church; for it included all the voters in the town, whether church members or not. From 1631 to 1664 the church and the town in the Bay Colony were one in membership, though dual in function. After 1664 they were dual in form and function, though closely united. The church admitted its own members and elected its own deacons, but not its pastor, except in concurrent action with the town. For the town still claimed and exercised the same right it had before of calling a minister, since it taxed the whole township to pay him, as also to build and repair the meeting-house. There arose at once questions about the limitations of the church in choosing and ordaining its pastor, which the General Court, in 1668, imperfectly answered; 22 for from 1664 to the present time the relation of church and parish has caused untold trouble and loss.23

21 Col. Records, iv, part ii, 118.

22 Ibid. 396.

23 The troubles referred to in § 193: 3, and note 8, were partly of this nature. But more: "The committee of New Haven for settling the town of Wallingford, which was settled in 1669, for the safety of the church obliged the undertakers and all the successive planters to subscribe the following engagement, namely: 'He or they shall not by any means disturb the church, when settled there, in their choice of minister or ministers or other church officers, or in any other church rights, liberties, or adminis. trations; nor shall withdraw due maintenance from such ministry.' This shows how