Mankind by the test of experience, has learned the relative value of these several relationships which may exist between the church and the state, and now, in the light of that experience, let me consider the virtues and vices of each. For the purpose of illustration I need go no further back than the time when Constantine became the patron of the Christian religion and elevated the sect from the condition of a persecuted society to the state religion of the great empire. He invited the Christian ministers to his court, gave them a seat at his table in the palace, loaded them with honors and riches, but was careful himself to draw the line of ecclesiastical policy and pattern the church organization very much after the constitution of the civil government of Rome. As a reward for these favors the ministry of the church stood in humble attitude at the foot of the throne. They overlooked the shortcomings of their great patron, guilty of putting to death without just cause a wife, a son, and in violation of his plighted faith, his brother-in-law. There is another period in church history where the state becomes the patron of the church and dominated it. That occurred during the great "reformation" of the sixteenth century when Henry VIII, displeased because the pope of Rome refused to sever the bond of marriage between himself and the faithful Catherine of Aragon, took affairs ecclesiastical within his own realm into his own hands and founded a state church. In this period of history we find repeated just what was done in the case of Constantine. Notwithstanding the cruelties, the debauchees and the murders of Henry the ministers of Christ still awarded to him the title, "Defender of the Faith." I mention these circumstances because they exhibit the vice of the state dominating a church. That vice consists in this, that such a relationship bridles the tongues of God's ministers, who are commanded to reprove sin in high places and demand the same moral standard of the prince that is demanded of the pauper. Whenever the ministry of a church stands in dread of the temporal power, when by it they may be unfrocked, it will be a rare thing indeed to find men of sufficient moral courage to be true to the divine commandment in preaching and executing the word of God; hence the mischief of state domination of the church.