Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/710

 694 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

right which the church had fostered, but which the church's aggrandizement now threatened to suppress. This state con- sciousness became concrete in the person of the emperor and the king. In the century of the Reformation two lines of evolution lay open to Europe. Either the church should become wholly sovereign and the state its coercive instrument, or the state should be sovereign and the church one of its sub- ordinate institutions. The former was the path of India, the latter the path of Europe. In the contest of the century the church became the opponent of the very qualities it had fos- tered ; no longer a supporter, but a destroyer of authority ; not a peacemaker, but an inciter of war and insurrections ; not a guardian of security, but a source of universal unrest through persecution of heretics and witches ; not the sup- porter of law, but its violator ; not the defender of the poor, but their oppressor ; and always the disturber of property relations." The decisive steps of the contest by which the church was subordinated were the following : First, the loss of popular faith in transubstantiation, relics, sacred places, and clergy. The supply of relics had been so largely increased through the enterprise of competing monasteries that their value materially depreciated, and ultimately disappeared. Sec- ond, secularization of lands and treasures ; statutes of mortmain. By the foregoing measures the material basis of the organization was drawn from under the feet of the priest proprietors. Third, appointment of clergy by the king. This measure substituted the king for the pope as the head of the church, and later, through cabinet government and responsibility to parliament, the people were taken into partnership within the religious organization, with a voice in determining its will. Fourth, toleration acts ; acts removing disabilities from dissenters. Catholics, Jews ; acts incor- porating dissenting congregations and legalizing their holdings ; acts legalizing affirmations as well as oaths ; and, in the United States, the disestablishment of the church by the exclusion from public taxes. By these acts ethical principles, securing the right

'¥y.U\, Ver Einfluss der Religion auf die Entwicklung des Eigenthums (Leip- zig, 1889), p. 386.