NATIONAL REFORMERS persistently contend that their proposed amendment to the Constitution acknowledging God as ruler and his word as law, will not if passed unite Church and State. Dr. H. H. George, one of their leading representatives, and secretary of the American Sabbath Union, said at the hearing in Washington, March 6, before the Judiciary Committees of the House and Senate, that the adoption of the amendment is the only thing that will separate Church and State, and that in its adoption the “Church will have its own sphere, and the State its own sphere.” But this has been the theory of the Papacy from the time of the corrupt bargain between the Romish bishops and Constantine. The same arguments were used there that are now used by National Reformers. This is well set forth in the “Two Republics” (pp. 496–498), by A. T. Jones, which we give below:—
“When the alliance was made between the bishops and Constantine, it was proposed that the jurisdiction of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities should remain separate, as being two arms of the same responsible body. This was shown in the saying of Constantine in which he represented himself as a ‘bishop of externals’ of the church, that which pertained more definitely to its connection with civil society and conduct; while the regular bishops were bishops of the internal, or those things pertaining to the sacraments, ordination, etc. ‘Constantine . . . was the first representative of the imposing idea of a Christian theocracy, or of a system of policy which assumes all subjects to be Christians, connects civil and religious rights, and regards Church and State as the two arms of one and the same divine government on earth. This idea was more fully developed by his successors, it animated the whole Middle Age, and is yet working under various forms in these latest times.’—Schaff”
“To those who conceived it, this theory might have appeared well enough, and simply in theory it might have been imagined that it could be made to work; but when it came to be put into practice, the all-important question was, Where was the line which defined the exact limits between the jurisdiction of the magistrate and that of the bishop? between the authority of the Church and that of the State? The State was not a theocracy. The government was held to be moral, a government of God; the Bible, the supreme code of morals, was the code of the government, there was no such thing as a civil government—all was moral. But the subject of morals is involved in every action, yea, in every thought of man. The State then being allowed to be moral, it was inevitable that the church, being the arbiter of morals and the dispenser and interpreter of the code regulating moral action, would interpose in all questions of human conduct, and spread her dominion over the whole field of human action.
“In ecclesiastical affairs, strictly so called, the supremacy of the Christian magistracy, it has been said, was admitted. They were the legislators of discipline, order, and doctrine. The festivals, the fasts, the usages, and canons of the church, the government of the clergy, were in their exclusive power. The decrees of particular synods and councils possessed undisputed authority, as far as their sphere extended. General councils were held binding on the whole church. But it was far more easy to define that which did belong to the province of the church than that which did not. Religion asserts its authority, and endeavors to extend its influence over the whole sphere of moral action, which is, in fact, over the whole of human life, its habits, manners, conduct.
“Christianity, as the most profound moral religion, exacted the most complete and universal obedience; and, as the acknowledged teachers and guardians of Christianity, the clergy continued to draw within their sphere every part of human life in which man is actuated by moral or religious motives. The moral authority, therefore, of the religion, and consequently of the clergy, might appear legitimately to extend over every transaction of life, from the legislature of the sovereign, which ought, in a Christian king, to be guided by Christian motive, to the domestic duties of the peasant, which ought to be fulfilled on the principle of Christian love.
“But there was another prolific source of difference. The clergy, in one sense, from being the representative body, had begun to consider themselves the church; but, in another and more legitimate sense, the State, when Christian, as comprehending all the Christians of the empire, became the Church. Which was the legislative body,—the whole community of Christians? or the Christian aristocracy, who were in one sense the admitted rulers?—Milman.”
“To overstep every limit and break down every barrier that seemed in theory to be set between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, was the only consequence that could result from such a union. And when it was attempted to put the theory into practice, every step taken in any direction only served to demonstrate that which the history everywhere shows, that the apparent identification of the State and Church by the adoption of Christianity as the religion of the empire, altogether confounded the limits of ecclesiastical and temporal jurisdiction.—Milman.”
“The State, as a body distinct from the Church, was gone. As a distinct system of law and government the State was destroyed, and its machinery existed only as the tool of the Church to accomplish her arbitrary will and to enforce her despotic decrees.”
Now National Reformers doubtless believe all they say. They do not see that the end of their logic means a repetition of the Dark Ages, but it does nevertheless. The logic of the facts of history has demonstrated it, so that he who desires to know may know.