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 least one famous instance in which the process was reversed, and the factions of the State succeeded for the moment in arming the different powers of the Church against one another, when Archbishop Langton incurred the censure of the Pope by joining the barons against that most dutiful and exemplary son of the Church King John. But it is just this very fact that a rivalry did exist, during the period now under review, between Church and State, which makes it difficult to attach any meaning which is other than misleading to the phrase 'National Church.' Contending parties in the State all ages have seen, and all ages have in a greater or less degree understood; but it is not so easy to understand the existence of a party against the State, unless it be one which aims at nothing less than the entire subversion of the State.

The Western Church was and remained until the Reformation one and indivisible, and the very fact that it had, as we have seen, its own laws and its own organisation, and that prior to and independent of the very existence of any nation of modern Europe, was in itself enough to prevent its becoming in any intelligible sense of the word 'national.' It extended into all the nations of Europe, and was national in none of them. Its own laws, its own customs, ceremonies, usages, prevailed throughout its whole extent, and the powers and prerogatives of its officers, and its own claims on the allegiance of mankind, were quite unaffected by the locality in which they chanced at any moment to be exercised. Its ritual, nay, its very language, was the same throughout the world, so that not only a priest in Germany was a priest in Italy, but if a priest travelled from one country to another he could join and officiate in the services of the Church, as Luther did