They would be so indeed, could they meet and display themselves in the same sphere. But here I find the remedy I sought.
When ages ago the church so loudly and vehemently insisted on the distinction of the spiritual and temporal, she was acting in the interest of her own dignity and founding her own liberty. She was doing more. She thereby maintained the dignity of man, and laid the foundations of liberty of conscience.
The separation of spiritual from temporal, the doctrine of the church; and the separation of the religious and civil state, the doctrine of our constitutional regime; the independence of religious society in matters of faith, conquered by the church in the earlier days of modern Europe; and liberty of conscience, a victory achieved by modern society,--have one and the same principle at the root. The application and form may be different, the origin and moral signification entirely agree.
Hence the means of peace and harmony between Catholicism and our new society.
Suppose that the two principles, the separation of spiritual and temporal, of the religious and civil state, were (and it is possible, since at the root they agree) sincerely and completely allowed, respected and practised by church and state; whence would the conflict spring?
The Catholic church would loudly maintain her infallibility in the religious sphere, that is, as regards the connexion between spiritual power and the faithful. The state would insist upon liberty of conscience and thought in the social sphere, that is, in the relations of the temporal power with the citizens. Each power would advance according to its principles, parallel, and without collision.
It is rather historical than reasonable. It arises from the passed deeds and ancient life of the two powers, rather than from their essential principles and actual relations.
The separation of the spiritual and temporal originates in the chaos of the middle ages. It sprung from thence, as the sun appears through a dark and stormy sky. Principles and powers, ideas and situations, all have been in our Europe wonderfully obscure, confused, incoherent, incomplete. There has long been a depth of temporal affairs mixed with spiritual, spiritual with temporal, in the existence and constitution of the church and state. Hence the temptations and attempts, both frequent and terrible, at reciprocal usurpation. The confusion of facts and violence of passions struggled incessantly against the principle which strove to restrain them.