174 



ARTHUR GALTON, M.A., ON 



quarrel with Eome and no breach in the traditional fabric of 

 catholic unity ; but the monarchy secured most effectually that 

 the pope should exercise no jurisdiction within the realm of 

 France. The prerogatives of the State and the national autonomy 

 of the church were guarded with the most jealous care. By this 

 achievement, French statesmanship, as I venture to think, showed 

 itself more enlightened and unselfish than some of our English 

 politicians' in the sixteenth century. At any rate, the churcli 

 of France was not isolated in Christendom ; its continuity 

 could not be challenged ; and it was the chief barrier, for the 

 whole of Latin Christianity, against papal centralisation and 

 aggression. As long as gallicanism flourished, the triumph 

 of ultramontanism was impossible. This was a great achieve- 

 ment. It gives us a clue to all that has happened since, and 

 we are not concerned at present with the manifold and internal 

 defects of the old gallican church. Let us rather be grateful 

 to it for this very difficult and important thing which it achieved, 

 by which, as usual, France was a benefactor and a model to all 

 the nations. 



In 1789, all serious and educated laymen and the vast majority 

 of parochial clergy, not only accepted, but welcomed the 

 Revolution. They welcomed it as churchmen, because they 

 saw in it an opportunity for securing those ecclesiastical reforms 

 which the better part of the nation, enligiitened by the philoso- 

 phers, had long and earnestly desired. They recognised as well, 

 with their admirable French logic, that the rights of man, as 

 the Revolution enunciated them, are clearly deducible from the 

 'New Testament, and that the three words, liiberty. Equality, 

 Fraternity, which sum up the whole spirit of the Revolution, 

 are also a summary of the gospel, so far as we are able to infer 

 the conceptions of the Christ Himself. As, in those days, the 

 church undoubtedly was the nation, and tlie nation was the 

 church, it cannot be denied that French Catholicism accepted 

 the Revolution, and adapted it to its ecclesiastical affairs. In 

 questions of doctrine, the French assemblies were rigorously and 

 even scrupulously conservative ; but in all matters of organisa- 

 tion they initiated reforms which made the church more 

 national, more efficient, more equitable in government and 

 patronage. We cannot enter into the details of the Constitution 

 Civile du Clerg4, so I will only say two things about it : first, 

 that if ever we should be disestablished or reformed, and if in 

 the process we do not let ourselves be annexed by an ambitious 

 and aggressive clericalism, there is no ecclesiastical constitution 

 which is more worthy of our serious consideration ; and secondly, 



