886 GOVERNMENT ix 



beliefs as well as to their actions, and, consequently, 

 is conterminous with the whole of human life; 

 and that the power of the State ought to be used 

 for the promotion of orthodoxy and the extermina- 

 tion of heterodoxy is, in fact, a necessary corollary 

 of Romanism, which, however disguised by pru- 

 dence when the Papacy is weak, is sure to reappear 

 when it is strong enough to dispense with hypocrisy. 

 In the sixteenth century, the theory and practice 

 of a thousand years had so thoroughly incorporated 

 intolerance with Christianity, that even the great 

 reformers held firmly by this precious heirloom of 

 the ages of faith, whatever other shards of eccle- 

 siastical corruption they might cast aside. Happily, 

 the pretensions to infallibility of sects, who differed 

 only in the higher or lower positions of the points 

 at which they held on to the slope between 

 Romanism and Rationalism, were so absurd, that 

 political Gallios have been able to establish 

 modus vivendi among them. In this country, at 

 / any rate, the State is approaching, if it has not 

 * quite reached, a position of non-intervention (inclin- 

 ing perhaps to malevolent neutrality) in theological 

 quarrels. 



The prolonged intellectual and physical struggles 

 which have thus tended to the more and more 

 complete exclusion of a great group of human 

 interests and activities from the legitimate sphere* 

 of governmental interference, have exerted ;i 

 powerful influence on the general theory of 



