Three Ideals. 107 



But a process of internal integration has been spoken of 

 as possibly accompanying the external disintegration of 

 that great complex organism, the Church. To make this 

 manifest would require little less than a history of the 

 development of Church doctrine and discipline from the 

 thirteenth century to the present day. It will, however, 

 hardly be contested that the whole course of such develop- 

 ment has tended to give more and more precision and 

 distinctness to the Church's dogmas, and efficiency to the 

 action of its governing power. If the number of regular 

 clergy has relatively diminished, the whole mass of the 

 secular clergy (as it is often reproachfully said) has become 

 more and more approximated to a great body of regu- 

 lars. The perfection of the Church's organisation, the 

 definiteness and clearness of doctrine it has attained, 

 could not well have been made more manifest than by 

 the acquiescence of the whole episcopate, without one 

 solitary dissentient voice, in the recent Vatican Decrees. 

 Thus, it cannot be denied that, pari passu with the dis- 

 integration arising from the increasing disability or dis- 

 inclination of kings (or other and subordinate social 

 authorities) to enforce the decisions and behests of the 

 Church, the Church herself has simultaneously developed, 

 by a process of integration, a vastly increased power of 

 herself, promulgating, applying, and giving effect to them 

 over all those who voluntarily accept her spiritual sway. 

 The downfall of the chief pontiff's spiritual princedom, 



