ECCLESIASTICAL HIERARCHIES. V61 



Steward, monastic bodies, growing common, at the same time 

 acquired definite organizations; and by-and-by, as in the 

 case of the Benedictines, came to have a common rule or 

 mode of government and life. Though in their early days 

 monks were regarded as men more holy than the clergy, they 

 did not exercise clerical functions ; but in the fifth and sixth 

 centuries they acquired some of these, and in so doing became 

 subject to bishops : the result being a long struggle to main 

 tain independence on the one side and to enforce authority 

 on the other, which ended in practical incorporation, with the 

 Church. 



Of course there thus arose a further complication of the 

 ecclesiastical hierarchy, which it will be sufficient just to 

 note without describing in detail 



621. For present purposes, indeed, no further account of 

 ecclesiastical hierarchies is needed. We are here concerned 

 only with the general aspects of their evolution. 



Examination discloses a relation between ecclesiastical and 

 political governments in respect of degree. Where there is 

 but little of the one there is but little of the other ; and in 

 societies which have developed a highly coercive secular rule 

 there habitually exists a highly coercive religious rule. 



It has been shown that growing from a common root, and 

 having their structures slightly differentiated in early societies, 

 the political and ecclesiastical organizations long continue to 

 be distinguished very imperfectly. 



This intimate relationship between the two forms of 

 regulation, alike in their instrumentalities and in their 

 extents, has a moral origin. Extreme submissiveness of 

 nature fosters an extreme development of both the political 

 and religious controls. Contrariwise the growth of the agencies 

 effecting such controls, is kept in check by the sentiment of 

 independence; which while it resists the despotism of living 

 rulers is unfavourable to extreme self-abasement in pro 

 pitiation of deities. 



