Four states of things are possible with regard to any given act as to which a person is capable of being restrained by the operation of either power. Both powers may leave him alone, in which case he is free; but in this case he would be equally free if one only existed. Both powers may forbid the act. In this case he is under two penalties instead of one. One only may forbid it. In this case the existence of the other does not affect the question. One may forbid and the other command. In this case he is between the devil and the gallows. If you do it you. shall be damned, if you do not do it you shall be hanged. This is double slavery, instead of freedom.

It may be said that if the two powers turn against each other, instead of turning against each other's subjects, the one which happened to be stronger at the time and place might restrain the other from particular acts of tyranny against their common subjects, and that in this way the existence of the two might favour freedom, for it might prevent the imposition of penalties which, if imposed, would abridge it. Here, however, it is not the separation of the two powers which favours freedom, but the will of the stronger prevailing over that of the weaker. If the stronger existed alone, the result would be just the same.

A robber about to murder me abstains for fear of legal punishment. It is not the division of power between the law and the robber which protects me, but the supremacy of the law over the robber. If

each had a sphere of its own in which they were respectively independent, I should have nothing to hope from the law in the robber's sphere, and nothing to fear from the robber in the law's. In certain states of society the lay power has been able to curb the clerical, to the advantage of the public. In others, the converse has been the case, with the same results; but in each instance the good done has been effected, not by the separation of the two, but by the superiority or supremacy of the one which happened to be most benevolent.

Are we then to conclude that there is no meaning at all in the commonplaces on this subject, and that the spiritual power must always be superior to the temporal power? By no means. The real conclusion is, that the commonplaces are not accurately expressed. They all alike involve a confusion between power and counsel, and, when modified so as to meet that distinction, they are perfectly true, and show the real way to ascertain the true sphere of liberty, and secure it from invasion.

Spiritual power, as above defined, is ability to cause to be damned. This is a totally different thing from ability to announce the fact that such and such conduct does in fact tend to damnation. The physician has no power when he tells you that certain habits will lead to sickness or death; he is merely an adviser, and not a ruler. Where the clergy are recognised as advisers merely who tell people what, as a matter of fact, will be the result of particular courses of con

duct, they possess no power in the true sense of the word; they can inflict no penalty if their advice is not taken, and they do not profess to do so.

If the influence which their special knowledge gives them is called spiritual power, it will then be perfectly true to say that it is of the highest importance that spiritual and temporal power should be distinct; that the advisers of mankind on the one hand, and their rulers on the other, should act independently, the one using their power and the other giving their advice without encroaching on each other's province. But this is true, not of the clergy alone, but of all advisers of men of science, of the members of liberal professions, and of authors and journalists.

This also answers the question as to the relative precedency of temporal and spiritual power. Between the two powers, in the proper sense of the word, there must always be this relation. The spiritual power threatens highest, but the temporal power threatens most surely. As people get to doubtas in process of time they always do—whether their priests can cause them to be damned, they come more and more under the control of the man who beyond all doubt whatever can cause them to be hanged; and so long as the question is one of mere power, the whole history of Europe for eight hundred years, shows that the temporal power rises, and the spiritual falls, and that the attempt to bolster up the latter, is the attempt to bolster up a shadow.

On the other hand, the force of counsel in general, as against power in general, has, during the same period, been gradually rising. Whoever in the present day can show men, not by threats of causing them to be damned, but by appeals to their own consciences and to the general constitution of things, that such and such courses lead to all good or all evil here and hereafter, will assuredly bring mere power round to his side, or will cause men to set it at defiance, in the more civilised parts of the world. And this shows that the true course is not to try to set power against power, and to hope to find freedom in serving two masters, but as far as possible to substitute counsel for power, in all relations of life, to secure the independence of our counsellors, and to adjust power to what appears, on the whole, to be the result of the wisest counsel that can be discovered.

XX

MORAL CONTROVERSIES

TOWARDS the end of Bossuet's final philippic against Protestantism, the Sixième Avertissement aux Protestants, there occurs a passage in which he deals with those 'who say that it is in regard of morals that the way to heaven is to be kept narrow, and that it may be enlarged in regard of dogmas. All, say our Indifferents, turns upon a good life; as to that there is no obscurity in Scripture, and no division amongst Christians. This, under the pretext of piety, is the sliest and most dangerous hypocrisy.'

He then goes on to argue that the teaching of the Church is quite as essential in regard to morality as in regard to dogma. If we begin to reason on the doctrine of morals, on enmities, on usury, on mortification, on lying, on chastity, on marriage, setting out with the principle that the Holy Scripture must be reduced to sound reason' (la droite raison), 'where shall we not go? Will it not be as easy to persuade men that it has not pleased God to carry their obligations beyond the principles of good sense,