that race was so peculiarly adapted for the position it has ever
since occupied towards Christianity. They ceased to be barbarians only
in becoming Christians. Their political system was in its infancy, and
was capable of being developed variously, according to the influences it
might undergo. There was no hostile civilisation to break down, no
traditions to oppose which were bound up with the recollections of the
national greatness. The State is so closely linked with religion, that
no nation that has changed its religion has ever survived in its old
political form. In Rome it had proved to be impossible to alter the
system, which for a thousand years had animated every portion of the
State; it was incurably pagan. The conversion of the people and the
outward alliance with the Church could not make up for this
inconsistency.

But the Teutonic race received the Catholic ideas wholly and without
reserve. There was no region into which they failed to penetrate. The
nation was collectively Catholic, as well as individually. The union of
the Church with the political system of the Germans was so complete,
that when Hungary adopted the religion of Rome, it adopted at the same
time, as a natural consequence, the institutions of the empire. The
ideas of Government which the barbarians carried with them into every
land which they conquered were always in substance the same. The
_Respublica Christiana_ of the Middle Ages, consisting of those States
in which the Teutonic element combined with the Catholic system, was
governed by nearly the same laws. The mediaeval institutions had this
also in common, that they grew up everywhere under the protection and
guidance of the Church; and whilst they subsisted in their integrity,
her influence in every nation, and that of the Pope over all the
nations, attained their utmost height. In proportion as they have since
degenerated or disappeared, the political influence of religion has
declined. As we have seen that the Church was baffled in the full
performance of her mission before Europe was flooded by the great
migration, so it may be said that she has never permanently enjoyed her
proper position and authority in any country where it did not penetrate.
No other political system has yet been devised, which was consistent
with the full development and action of Catholic principles, but that
which was constructed by the northern barbarians who destroyed the
Western empire.

From this it