But by
asserting the divine origin of government, Christianity
consecrates civil authority, clothes it with a religious
character, and makes civil disobedience, sedition, insurrection,
rebellion, revolution, civil turbulence of any sort or degree,
sins against God as well as crimes against the state. For the
same reason she makes usurpation, tyranny, oppression of the
people by civil rulers, offences against God as well as against
society, and cognizable by the spiritual authority.
After the establishment of the Christian church, after its public
recognition, and when conflicting claims arose between the two
powers--the civil and the ecclesiastical--this doctrine of the
divine origin of civil government was abused, and turned against
the church with most disastrous consequences. While the Roman
Empire of the West subsisted, and even after its fall, so long as
the emperor of the East asserted and practically maintained his
authority in the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Duchy of Rome, the
Popes comported themselves, in civil matters, as subjects of the
Roman emperor, and set forth no claim to temporal independence.
But when the emperor had lost Rome, and all his possessions in
Italy, had abandoned them, or been deprived of them by the
barbarians, and ceased to make any efforts to recover them, the
Pope was no longer a subject, even in civil matters, of the
emperor, and owed him no civil allegiance.
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