556 THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS

Judge; nor do I insist on any special manner of subjection of Clergy to civil officers, or vice versâ; but only on the necessity of their perfect unity and influence upon each other in every Christian kingdom. Those who endeavour to effect the utter separation of ecclesiastical and civil officers, are striving, on the one hand, to expose the Clergy to the most grievous and most subtle of temptations from their own spiritual enthusiasm and spiritual pride; on the other, to deprive the civil officer of all sense of religious responsibility, and to introduce the fearful, godless, conscienceless, and soulless policy of the Radical and the (so-called) Socialist. Whereas, the ideal of all government is the perfect unity of the two bodies of officers, each supporting and correcting the other; the Clergy having due weight in all the national councils; the civil officers having a solemn reverence for God in all their acts; the Clergy hallowing all worldly policy by their influence; and the magistracy repressing all religious enthusiasm by their practical wisdom. To separate the two is to endeavour to separate the daily life of the nation from God, and to map out the dominion of the soul into two provinces-one of Atheism, the other of Enthusiasm. These, then, were the reasons which caused me to speak¹ of the idea of separation of Church and State as Fatuity; for what Fatuity can be so great as the not having God in our thoughts; and, in any act or office of life, saying in our hearts, “There is no God”?²

39. Much more I would fain say of these things, but not now: this only I must emphatically assert, in conclusion:-That the schism between the so-called Evangelical and High Church Parties in Britain, is enough to shake many men’s faith in the truth or existence of Religion at all. It seems to me one of the most disgraceful scenes in Ecclesiastical history, that Protestantism should be paralyzed at its very heart by jealousies, based on little else than

¹ [See Stones of Venice, vol. i. App. 12 (Vol. IX. p. 437).]

² [Psalms xiv. 1, liii. 1.]

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