The feudal regime, which was in full vigor even in Europe
from the tenth to the close of the fourteenth century, had
nothing to do with cities, and really recognized no state proper;
yet who hesitates to speak of it as a civil or political system,
though a very imperfect one?
The civil order, as it now exists, was not fully developed in the
early ages. For a long time the national organizations bore
unmistakable traces of having been developed from the patriarchal,
and modelled from the family or tribe, as they do still in all
the non-Christian world. Religion itself, before the Incarnation,
bore traces of the same organization. Even with the Jews,
religion was transmitted and disused, not as under Christianity
by conversion, but by natural generation or family adoption.
With all the Gentile tribes or nations, it was the same. At
first the father was both priest and king, an when the two
offices were separated, the priests formed a distinct and
hereditary class or caste, rejected by Christianity, which, as we
have seen, admits priests only after the order of Melchisedech.
The Jews had the synagogue, and preserved the primitive
revelation in its purity and integrity; but the Greeks and
Romans, more fully than any other ancient nations, preserved or
developed the political order that best conforms to the Christian
religion; and Christianity, it is worthy of remark, followed in
the track of the Roman armies, and it gains a permanent
establishment only where was planted, or where it is able to
plant, the Graeco-Roman civilization.
Pages:
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154