of Church and State in the newly founded States of America.
In European civilisation, however, there has always been a gradual advance to the separation, real or nominal, of Church and State.[1] This separation was never at all durable before the existence of medieval Europe, when Jews and other aliens were allowed certain rights of citizenship. The ' medieval Pope was an offshoot from the Roman Emperor, who had himself exercised the functions of Pontifex Maximus amongst many others. Up to this time there could be no such separation, for the simple reason that the Church was the State and the State was the Church; for example, the kings in Sparta and in the earlier Jewish
- ↑ I shall trace this process as thoroughly as I can, because it. happens to have coincided with the rise of toleration in the history of the civilisation of Western Europe. But at the outset I would strongly maintain that the complete separation of Church and State is not, in my opinion, a final solution, and that there is no necessary connection between this and the existence of toleration. For instance, in purely religious matters there has been much more toleration in England than in the United States for the last hundred years, and I think this is still the case notwithstanding the relics of a barbarous theology that still deface our statute book. The person who does not attend church is, I believe, regarded with less suspicion in England than in most of the American States. In these matters the general will of the community, whether expressing itself through Church or State, or through Society as opposed to either, is the ultimate test. Thus in eighteenth century Ireland the detestable penalties imposed on Catholics by the British Government were, in most parts of the country, a dead letter, and in reading old statutes one must always recollect that the violence of the enactment is often proportionate to the difficulty of enforcing it.
