analogy of her own forms that the Church has
influenced those of the State; for in reality there is none subsisting
between them, and Gerson's adoption of a theory of Grecian origin proves
that he scarcely understood the spirit of that mediaeval polity which, in
his own country especially, was already in its decay. For not only is
the whole system of government, whether we consider its origin, its end,
or its means absolutely and essentially different, but the temporal
notion of power is altogether unknown in the Church. "Ecclesia subjectos
non habet ut servos, sed ut filios."[303] Our Lord Himself drew the
distinction: "Reges gentium dominantur eorum; et qui potestatem habent
super eos, benefici vocantur. Vos autem non sic: sed qui major est in
vobis, fiat sicut minor; et qui praedecessor, sicut minor" (Luc. xxii.
25, 26). The supreme authority is not the will of the rulers, but the
law of the Church, which binds those who are its administrators as
strictly as those who have only to obey it. No human laws were ever
devised which could so thoroughly succeed in making the arbitrary
exercise of power impossible, as that prodigious system of canon law
which is the ripe fruit of the experience and the inspiration of
eighteen hundred years. Nothing can be more remote from the political
notions of monarchy than the authority of the Pope. With even less
justice can it be said that there is in the Church an element of
aristocracy, the essence of which is the possession of hereditary
personal privileges. An aristocracy of merit and of office cannot, in a
political sense, legitimately bear the name. By baptism all men are
equal before the Church. Yet least of all can anything be detected
corresponding to the democratic principle, by which all authority
resides in the mass of individuals, and which gives to each one equal
rights. All authority in the Church is delegated, and recognises no such
thing as natural rights.

This confusion of the ideas belonging to different orders has been
productive of serious and dangerous errors. Whilst heretics have raised
the episcopate to a level with the papacy, the priesthood with the
episcopate, the laity with the clergy, impugning successively the
primacy, the episcopal authority, and the sacramental character of
orders, the application of ideas derived from politics to the system of
the Church led to the exaggeration of the papal power in the period
immediately preceding the Reformation, to