ere such a law
might compel the sovereign to be of the religion of the minority.

At any rate, nobody who thinks it reasonable that any prince abandoning
the Established Church should forfeit the English throne, can complain
of a law which compelled the sovereign to be of the religion, not of a
majority, but of the whole of his subjects. The idea of the Pope
stepping between a State and the allegiance of its subjects is a mere
misapprehension. The instrument of his authority is the law, and the law
resides in the State. The Pope could intervene, therefore, only between
the State and the occupant of the throne; and his intervention
suspended, not the duty of obeying, but the right of governing. The line
on which his sentence ran separated, not the subjects from the State,
but the sovereign from the other authorities. It was addressed to the
nation politically organised against the head of the organism, not to
the mass of individual subjects against the constituted authorities.
That such a power was inconsistent with the modern notion of sovereignty
is true; but it is also true that this notion is as much at variance
with the nature of ecclesiastical authority as with civil liberty. The
Roman maxim, _princeps legibus solutus_, could not be admitted by the
Church; and an absolute prince could not properly be invested in her
eyes with the sanctity of authority, or protected by the duty of
submission. A moral, and _a fortiori_ a spiritual, authority moves and
lives only in an atmosphere of freedom.

There are, however, two things to be considered in explanation of the
error into which our author and so many others have fallen. Law follows
life, but not with an equal pace. There is a time when it ceases to
correspond to the existing order of things, and meets an invincible
obstacle in a new society. The exercise of the mediaeval authority of the
Popes was founded on the religious unity of the State, and had no basis
in a divided community. It was not easy in the period of transition to
tell when the change took place, and at what moment the old power lost
its efficacy; no one could foresee its failure, and it still remained
the legal and recognised means of preventing the change. Accordingly, it
was twice tried during the wars of religion, in France with success, in
England with disastrous effects. It is a universal rule that a right is
not given up until the necessity of its surrender is proved. But the
real difficulty aris