Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/531

 CHAP. III. CIIKISTIANITY. 525 .people adored its own god, and every god governed his own people ; the same code regulated the relations among men, and their duties towards the gods of the city. Religion then governed the state, and designated its chiels by the voice of the lot, or by that of the auspices. The state, in its turn, interfered with the domain of the conscience, and punished every infraction of the rites and the worship of the city. Instead of this, Christ teaches that liis kingdom is not of this world. He separates religion from government. Religion, being no longer of the earth, now intcri'eres the least ])ossible in terrestrial affairs. Christ adds, "Render to Caesar the things that arc Ca3sar's, and to God the things that are God's." It is the first time that God and the state are so clearly distinguished. For Caesar at that period was still the pontifex maximvs^ the chief and the prin- cipal organ of the Roman religion ; he was the guardian and the interpreter of beliefs. He held the worship and the dogmas in liis liands. Even his person was sacred and divine, for it was a peculiarity of the policy of the emperors that, wishing to recover the attiibutes of ancient royalty, they were careful not to forget the divine character v»'hich antiquity had attached to the king-pontiffs and to the priest-founders. But now Christ breaks the alliance which paganism and the em- pire wislied to renew. He proclaims that religion is no longer the state, and that to obey Caesar is no longer the same thing as to obey God. Christianity completes the overthrow of the local worship ; it extinguishes the prytanea, and complete- ly destroys the city-protecting divinities. It does more; it refuses to assume the empire which these wor- ships had exercised over civil society. It professes that between the state and itself there is nothing in common.