all nation;
but when we consider under what varying conditions of climate,
occupation, custom, tradition, and so forth, the general life of
Humanity is carried on, we see clearly that no one Code can even
begin to suffice for the needs of the whole human race. Hence, and
for other reasons which we need not now consider, the West, in
accepting the philosophy of Israel, translated its master idea of
salvation through mechanical obedience into the notation of
ecclesiastical, as distinguished from legal, control.

That obedience to a supernaturally-commissioned Church, or rather to
the One supernaturally-commissioned Church, is the first and last
duty of Man, is the fundamental assumption on which the stately
fabric of Catholic Christianity has been reared. In various ways the
Church has striven to exact implicit obedience from her children.
Through the medium of the Confessional she has secured some measure
of control over their morals. By regulating the worship of God--both
public and private--she has been able to rule off a sphere of human
conduct in which her own authority is necessarily paramount. By
supplying the faithful with rations of "theological information" (to
quote the apt phrase of a pillar of orthodoxy), and requiring them to
accept these on her authority as indisputably true, she has succeeded
in imposing her yoke on thought as well as on conduct. By claiming
to control the outflow of Divine grace, through the channels of
the Sacraments, she has been able to threaten the rebellious with
the dread penalty of being cut off from intercourse with God.
And by telling men, with stern insistence, that the choice between
obedience and disobedience to herself is the choice between eternal
happiness and eternal misery, she has sought to extend her dominion
beyond the limits of time and to raise to an infinite power her
supremacy over the souls of men.

But just because the life of collective Humanity is large, complex,
and full of change and variety, the Church which aspires to be
universal, however strong may be her desire to superintend all the
details of human thought and conduct, and however ready she may be
to adapt herself to local and temporal variations, must needs allow
whole aspects and whole spheres of human life to escape from her
control. The history of Christendom is the history of the gradual
emancipation of the Western world from the despotism of the Church.
The various activities of the human spir