irresistibly and submerge the human race.

A society charged with these tremendous duties, the only organ of the
Divine will and affording the only assurance of salvation, must
obviously be superior to all mundane powers. It would be monstrous if
her teaching were modified, if her powers of self-government were
restricted, to suit the ambitions or the so-called common sense of a lay
ruler. The Church stands to the State in the relation of the head to the
members, of the soul to the body, of the sun to the moon. The State
exists to provide the material foundations of the Christian society, to
protect the Church, to extend her sphere and to constrain those who
rebel against her law. In a sense the State is ordained by God, but only
in the sense of being a necessary condition for the existence of a
Christian Commonwealth. Logically the State should be the servant of the
Church, acting with delegated powers under her direction.

But theories, however logical, must come to terms with facts, or vanish
into the limbo of chimeras. The power of the Hildebrandine Church was
subject to serious limitations. On certain questions of importance the
national hierarchies were inclined to side with the State against the
Pope; and thus, for example, the claims of the Curia to tax the clergy,
and to override the rights of ecclesiastical patrons, were restricted at
one time or another by concordats, or by secular legislation such as the
English statutes of Provisors and Praemunire. Where the whole of the
clerical order presented a solid front, it was sometimes possible to
make good a claim against which there was much to be said on grounds of
common sense; as, for instance, benefit of clergy,--the exclusive
jurisdiction of the Church over criminous ecclesiastics,--which was
enforced even against a sovereign so powerful and so astute as Henry II
of England. But, in the last resort, the pretensions of the Church