Thus on every side and at every point in the history of the ages of faith the ostensibly best religious influences are found failing to heal society, failing to check the forces of oppression and dissolution and strife. If we would trace the forces which really affected social structure and raised masses of men some way in the scale of manhood, we must turn to the clash of interests and classes, the play of secular knowledge, the undertakings of laymen on normal lines of aspiration and on secular views of right. § 3. Christianity and Feudalism We have seen, in studying the expansion of the Church, how it grew by lending itself to the interests of kings and chiefs as against subjects. On the same grounds, it made for empires as against self-governing States. But inasmuch as the papacy ere long fell out with the emperors of the new line it had itself consecrated, it also contributed to the break-up of feudalism, in the widest sense of the term; and it is possible to claim for the Church, further, a restraining influence on the oppressive action of feudalism, early and late, in various directions. Under this head would fall to be judged, in particular, its action on slavery. As the institution of slavery was taken over by the Christian emperors from the pagan without any hint of disapproval, it is clear, to begin with, that the Church had in its days of struggle made no sign of such condemnation. Nor was there anything in its sacred books to suggest a repudiation of slavery; on the contrary, Jesus is made to accept it as a matter of course (Luke xvii, 7-10; Gr.); and Paul, in a passage which has been garbled in the English translation, expressly urges that a Christian slave should remain so even if he have a chance to become free (1 Cor. vii, 20, 21). He and some of the Fathers certainly urge that slaves should be kindly treated; but many pagans had done as much, and Seneca on that theme had outgone them all. Laws for the protection of slaves, too, had been enacted by many emperors long before Constantine. The only ground, then, on which Christianity could be credited with setting up by religious appeal an aversion to slavery would be a visible increase in manumissions after the time of Constantine. No such increase, however, took place.