SEPARATION OF CHUKCH AND STATE. 71 



of tlieir ancestry : at first as recollected, and afterwards as 

 ascertained by professed interviews with them. This union 

 — which still existed -practically durmg the middle ages, 

 when the authority of kings was mixed up with the author- 

 ity of the pope, when there were bishop-rulers having all 

 the powers of feudal lords, and when priests punished by 

 penances — has been, step by step, becoming less close. 

 Though monarchs are still " defenders of the iaith," 

 and ecclesiastical chiefs, they are but nominally such. 

 Though bishops still have civil power, it is not what they 

 once had. Protestantism shook loose the bonds of union ; 

 Dissent has long been busy in organizing a mechanism for 

 the exercise of religious control, wholly independent of 

 law ; in America, a separate organization for that purpose 

 already exists ; and if anything is to be hoped from the 

 Anti State-Church Association — or, as it has been newly 

 named, " The Society for the Liberation of Religion from 

 State Patronage and Control " — w^e shall presently have a 

 separate organization here also. 



Thus alike in authority, in essence, and in form, politi- 

 cal and spiritual rule have been ever more widely diverging 

 from the same root. That increasing division of labour 

 which marks the progress of society in other things, marks 

 it also in this separation of government into civil and reli- 

 gious; and if we observe how the morality which forms the 

 substance of religions in general, is beginning to be puri- 

 fied from the associated creeds, we may anticipate that this 

 division will be ultimately carried much further. 



Passing now to the third sj^ecies of control — ^that of 

 Manners — we shall find that this, too, while it had a com- 

 mon genesis with the others, has gradually come to have a 

 distinct sphere and a special embodiment. Among early 

 aggregations of men before yet social observances existed, 

 the sole forms of courtesy know^n were the signs of sub- 

 mis.sion to the strong man ; as the sole law was his will. 



