Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/618

606 The new political significance given the church by Constantine and his successors placed the political import of Christianity in an entirely new light. On the one hand the Christians found themselves in unexampled political power, while on the other, especially in the West where the misery of the fifth century began to be felt, pagan writers charge the misfortunes of the time to the new Christian rulers. In meeting this charge, Augustine rightly enough emphasizes the evil political tendencies to be seen under the heathen emperors, but in the De Civitate Dei also defends Christian teaching from the charge of being inimical to the state. "Let them give us," he urges, "such warriors as the Christian doctrines require they should be; . . . such subjects; . . . such kings and judges; such payers and receivers of tribute as they ought to be according to the Christian doctrine; and would they still venture to assert that this doctrine is opposed to the state? Nay, would they not rather confess without hesitation, that, if it were followed, it would prove the salvation of the state." Yet Augustine does not attempt to construct any theory of the state from scriptural data. He distinctly turns away from such an endeavor. The City of God is not an ideal commonwealth, but a heavenly, an eschatological reign of peace which is to be expected, but not enjoyed in this age. Priests and prophets had foretold it, the saints of Israel had prayed to see it; the sacred books were full of its ceaseless conflict with its evil counterpart, that fruit of Adam's fall, the earthly state. And before this glorious millennial age could come, this enemy must forever disappear.

With the revival of the Roman Empire by Charlemagne, and especially with the later attempts at a dual empire during the Middle Ages, the theoretical side of politics became increasingly dependent upon scriptural supports. It was characteristic of the exegetical processes of the time that such support should often be gained by a sort of allegorizing process from expressions utterly lacking in political content. Not to plunge into the mysteries of Daniel and the Apocalypse, nothing is more fundamental in the