Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/523

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HRISTIANITY was responsible for the fuller development of theocracy and for the completion of the union between church and state. Indeed, the very concept of theocracy originated in the Christian notion of religion.

The correct understanding of the problem demands attention to the following points.

1. Love of God and one's neighbour was doubtless represented as constituting the essence of Christianity; but from the first, continually and no less energetically, religion was identified with faith. But faith killed love. For practical purposes, to believe in God signified to believe in the priests represented as mediators between God and the laity. Revealed religion is of necessity a religious and priestly aristocracy; and as such, it is the foundation and the prototype of socio-political aristocracy.

Jesus himself demands blind faith; and indeed, on the solemn occasion of the ascension he is represented as saying that the unbeliever shall be damned (see the textually dubious passage, Mark xvi, 16). This was the basis of Thomas Aquinas' teaching that heretics should be punished with death. On the ground of this text the inquisition becomes comprehensible, and comprehensible too Calvin's death sentence on Servetus. Even Locke proposed that atheists should be put to death.

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