Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/325

278 Church. Hence its care of education; hence the influence it exerted on literature. We read the letters of Ambrose and Augustine and find a spirit all unknown to former times. Tertullian could oppose the whole might of the State with his pen. That fierce African did not hesitate to exhibit the crimes of the nation. The Apologetists assume a tone of spiritual authority surprising in that age.

The Church set apart a speculative class, distinct from all others, including the most cultivated men of their times. It provided a special education for this class, one most admirably adapted, in many points, for the work they were to do. Piety and genius found here an asylum, a school, and a broad arena. Thus it had a troop of superior minds, educated and pious men, who could not absorb the political power, as the sacerdotal class of India, Egypt, and Judea had done; who could not be indifferent to the social and moral condition of mankind, as the priesthood had been in Greece and Rome. Theoretically, they were free from the despotism of one, and the indifference of the other. The public virtue was their peculiar charge.

Ancient Rome was the city of organizations, and practical rules. Nowhere was the Individual so thoroughly subordinated to the State. War, Science, and Lust, of old time, had here incarnated themselves. The same practical spirit organized the Church, with its Dictator, its Senate, and its Legions. The discipline of the clerical class, their union, zeal, and commanding skill, gave them the solidity of the Phalanx, and the celerity of the Legion. The Church prevailed as much by its organization as its doctrine. What could a band of loose-girt apostles, each warring on his own account, avail against the refuge of Lies, where Strength and Sin had intrenched themselves, and sworn never to yield? An organized Church was demanded by the necessities of the time; an association of soldiers called for an army of saints. A sensual people required forms, the Church gave them; superstitious rites, divination, processions, images, the Church-obdurate as steel when occasion demands, but pliant as molten metal