AND 'J'UTOR TO FRKDEKICK THK NOBLE. 



223 



Church are met out of the State funds, which are a compulsory 

 levy upon the civil community. The formula therefore must 

 be : the Church open to all, but defrayed out of the pockets of 

 the willing. 



Godet was led to this conception from the time when Broad 

 Churchmen began to complain that all the resources of the 

 Establishment, to which tlicy contributed as citizens, went to 

 the maintenance of a clergy exclusively evangelical. This was 

 clearly wrong in the sighc of God, since a free assent could not 

 be assumed when its " material " expression was legally 

 enforced. 



When war broke out between France and Germany in 1870 — 

 a war during which Godet naturally pleaded discreetly, but 

 perspicuously, with the Prince Eoyal and Imperial, for the 

 neutralization of Alsace-Lorraine — public attention turned away 

 for a time from Church topics. Godet completed, meanwhile, 

 his Commentary on St. Luke, the first edition of which went out 

 of print in a few weeks. He went to Berlin at the end of 1871 

 on a visit to the Imperial Family ; to Palestine and Jerusalem 

 in 1872. 



In 1873 the Liberal Party in iS[euchatel planned a modifica- 

 tion in the ecclesiastic status of 1818, which, owing to the 

 supremacy of an evangelical Synod over the whole Church, and 

 over the Faculty of Divinity, stood in the way of the formation 

 of any but evangelical ministers. Godet gave vent to his 

 convictions as to the unfairness of the Establishment to the 

 Church as a whole, since there were now two parties within 

 the Church. He advocated a free secession of the evangelicals, 

 should the political electorate ratify the proposed new ecclesi- 

 astic status which would deprive the Synod of its autonomous 

 powers of spiritual church government. The dreaded law was 

 actually promulgated. Then Goilet actually seceded, though 

 no conscientious holder of the principle of separation of Church 

 and State, but anxious to make it clear that he would not 

 be responsible before God for a Church in which the pulpits 

 would be accessible to others than evangelical clergymen. The 

 whole staff of the Faculty of Theology, with all the students, 

 declared for the Free Church, naturally, headed by Godet their 

 principal professor. 



From that time Godet must be viewed as a leading member 

 of a Fi'ee Church, though no Free Churchman, for he looked 

 upon the relations of Church and State as purely historical 

 or constitutional matters in which no principle was involved 

 either way, so long as all consciences concurred in the mode 



