Results of Church and State Union
By George W. Reaser
Testimony of History to the Degradation That Follows The following summing up of the results of the union of church and state, by Dr. Draper, contains an admonition worthy of serious meditation. In his well-known work, “Intellectual Development of Europe,” he says: “We have now approached the close of a thousand years from the birth of Christ; the evil union of the church and state, their rivalries, their intrigues, their quarrels, had produced an inevitable result, doing the same in the West that they had done in the East: disorganizing the political system, and ending in a universal social demoralization. In these deplorable days, society was dissolving, the human race was disappearing, and with difficulty the melancholy ruins of ancient civilization could be traced. Such was the issue of the second attempt at the union of political and ecclesiastical power. Inaugurated in selfishness, it strengthens itself by violence, is perpetuated by ignorance, and yields, as its inevitable result, social ruin. “And while things were thus going to wreck in the state, it was no better in the church. The ill-omened union between them was bearing its only possible fruit, disgrace to both—a solemn monition to all future ages.”—Pages 279, 280. Discussing Degrees in Heresy
In another connection, he comments thus: “The clergy had abandoned the guidance of the individual life of their flocks; personal virtue or vice were no longer considered; sin was not measured by evil works, but by the degrees of heresy. The ecclesiastical chiefs of Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria were engaged in a desperate struggle for supremacy, carrying out their purposes by weapons and in ways revolting to the conscience of man. What an example when bishops are concerned in assassinations, poisonings, adulteries, blindings, riots, treasons, civil war; when patriarchs and primates are excommunicating and anathematizing one another in their rivalries for earthly power, bribing eunuchs with gold, and courtezans and royal females with concessions of episcopal love, and influencing the decisions of councils asserted to speak with the voice of God by those base intrigues in their packed assemblies! Among legions of monks, who carried terror into the imperial armies and riot into the great cities, arose hideous clamor for theological dogmas, but never a voice for intellectual liberty or the outraged rights of man.”—Page 246. The Limit of Its Authority
A recent writer has well observed that “to protect liberty of conscience is the duty of the state, and this is the limit of its authority in matters of religion.” Gen. U. S. Grant had a true conception of this question, so vital to human liberty and happiness, when he uttered the words, “Keep the church and the state forever separate”; but the principle was laid down nearly nineteen centuries ago by the Saviour of men in His immortal words, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”