tianity in so many countries of Europe, seems to have been principally caused by the feeling of some courts, particularly the imperial court, that they could not afford to forfeit the support of the great Catholic organization, and by the corresponding disposition in Catholicism to ally itself with governments. The principle of saving the Church by the help of governments was avowed—Ranke tells us—by Pope Pius IV., and it was by this means that Catholicism was restored upon a new and strengthened foundation at the Council of Trent. What the Church owed to the state for protection against the Reformation it repaid two centuries later in assistance against the Revolution. A time had come round when the state was threatened as the Church had been, and now kings became faithful churchmen as the churchmen of Pius IV.'s school had before become faithful royalists. For half a century kings had coquetted with free-thought, and free-thought had flattered kings. But when the crisis came, and royalty was in danger, it hurried back to find shelter in the Church. Napoleon, Charles X., and the Emperor Francis, formed the new alliance by which theology was called in to drive out revolution in the state, just as Pius IV. formed the older alliance with royalty against Reformation in the Church. The natural effect of this coalition is to incline the Revolution to attack the Church at the same time that it assails Government. Atheism has become the creed of revolution because theology has been the traditional creed of monarchy and of privilege.
But is it true that theology is necessarily conservative or monarchical, because it happens to be true of the Christian Church, or the most prominent part of it, at this particular time? At particular times and places theology has been revolutionary. The earliest Christians must have seemed the most revolutionary party of the Greek and Roman world. Mohammedanism was so violently revolutionary that it completely transformed the Eastern world, and has caused almost the whole East to look back upon the ages preceding it as upon "times of ignorance." The same may be said of Buddhism in Asia. And certainly one form at least of Protestantism—I mean Puritanism—was revolutionary in spirit, and led either to an abridgment of royal power or to positive republicanism.
Hereditary royalty and aristocratic privilege were the institutions which, in the last century, the Revolution attacked. It was historically in the names of skepticism, and sometimes of atheism, that the attack was conducted. But there was no reason at all in the nature of things why the same attack should not have been made in the name of theology. In France, theology has been on the side of privilege, and equality has been associated with opposition to theology. But, in Turkey the opposite has happened; the equality of mankind has been preached, and successfully, in the name of theology. If a Christian preacher had been inspired to do so, he might with perfect warrant from his religion have proclaimed equality in France. Indeed,
