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Rh of emperors, when Innocent III. said that Christ had given to the Church the government of the whole world, when Boniface VIII. said that every human creature was necessarily subject to the Roman pontiff, each expressed authoritatively the inner hope, the ultimate aspiration, the soul of mediævalism.

This claim of the churchmen, however, was founded only in the temporary order of things, and to raise from the ground the broken sceptre of the Cæsars was in excess of their prescribed authority. For civil government is materialism in excelsis, and materialism is in no way the mission of the Church. Accordingly, this claim upon the allegiance of Europe called forth the resistance of the civil powers, and it was in the contest which followed that the second epoch of freedom began. For the civil authorities had to put forth every nerve, and strain every resource to win the favour of humanity against so tremendous an antagonist as the papacy. Thus were born those civil institutions, such as limited monarchy or representative parliaments, which, reputed modern, are originally mediæval. For if antiquity created the idea, the Middle Ages created the institutions, of freedom.

Nevertheless, as the Middle Ages went onward, it became increasingly apparent that the civil power was not equal to the papal. The latter, with its unique record of services accomplished, with its complete political organisation, with its universal language, with its legal system in full