, because such power belonged to God alone.
While he declined all interference in matters of temporal concern, and
rejected all support to his Gospel from magisterial authority, and all
benefit from the resources of wealth, it is clear that such support must
ever be needless and such resources unhallowed.

How does it happen, it is perpetually asked, that while the right to
temporal power is abjured in words by every Church, the State religion
of every country affords an instance of its assumption? It happens, as
many other strange and inconsistent things happen, through the misuse of
terms. What we call temporal power, the advocates of a State religion
call spiritual power; and thus have all ecclesiastical abuses been
justified from the day that ecclesiastical domination was established.
By spiritual authority have kings been enthroned and deposed; by
spiritual authority have tributes been raised, wars been originated and
conducted, properties been confiscated, and lives forfeited! By
spiritual authority were the Crusades begun and carried on; by spiritual
authority have popes divided and distributed kingdoms, have cardinals
negotiated and priests intrigued! By spiritual authority did Wolsey
amass his treasures, and rule his sovereign at home, and the agents of
his sovereign abroad! By spiritual authority does the Church of England
demand tithes, and under the same sanction do her bishops legislate.
What then is temporal power? What are worldly pomp and wealth?

The abuses which have deformed every State religion in turn are evident
to all,--even to those who still help to support them; but the origin of
those abuses is not generally ascertained. We ascribe them to the error
of mixing up the permanent principles of Christianity with its temporary
institutions.

Spiritual principles can only be recognized by means of external
manifestations; but the principles and the manifestation are not the
same thing; nor can they have a lasting connexion, as every thing
external is mutable, while the principles of truth are immutable. As
long as mind is connected with body, as long as the intellect can only
be reached through the senses, and the heart through the intellect,
truth must be invested with a form, and realities be accompanied by
shadows. But that form is changeable, and those shadows are fleeting:
the proximate cause of which is the constitution of all material things;
and the final cause, the ultimate universal recog