What was present to Disraeli’s mind was not only that, in such a case, the ancient landmarks of parish life, the ancient trusts of education, the ancient equality of social intercourse between clergy and laity, the ancient duties and intimacies, the ancient openness to the poorest of career in the Church and of residence on the land, would be swept away; but that, as he expressed it when discussing the “Cowper-Temple Amendment” in 1870, “you will not entrust the priest or the presbyter with the privilege of expounding the Holy Scriptures ... _but for that purpose you are inventing and establishing a new sacerdotal class_.” “My idea of sacerdotal despotism,” he said in 1863, “is this, that a minister of the Church of England, who is appointed to expound doctrine, should deem that he has a right to invent doctrine. That ... is the sacerdotal despotism I fear....” The State would suffer; and it would suffer doubly. Not only would religion cease to be an official element of order, but the ministers of religion might be unduly strengthened in civil affairs--might be over-politicised. “Whether that is a result to be desired,” he remarked ten years afterwards, “is a grave question for all men. For my own part, I am bound to say that I doubt whether it would be favourable to the cause of civil and religious liberty.” In his novels he emphasises his belief that society is inconceivable without religion, and that “without a Church there can be no true religion, because otherwise you have no security for the truth,” although he also distinguishes between differing “orthodoxies” and real religion. At the same time, the Church as a polity must have dogmas--“No Church, no creed”--“no dogmas, no deans, Mr. Dean.” The human craving, the passionate instinct for religion, he ever based--from the date of _Contarini Fleming_ and _Alroy_ to that of _Coningsby_ and _Tancred_, and from that of _Tancred_ to that of _Lothair_--on the fact that “_man requires that there shall be direct relations between the created and the Creator, and that in those relations he should find a solution of the perplexities of existence_.”--“The brain that teems with illimitable thought will never recognise as his Creator any power of nature, however irresistible, that is not gifted with consciousness.... The Church comes forward, and without equivocation offers to establish direct relations between God and man. Philosophy denies its title and disputes its power. Why? Because they are founded on the supernatural. What is the supernatural? Can there be anything more miraculous than the existence of man and the world? Anything more literally supernatural than the origin of things? The Church explains what no one else pretends to explain, and which every one agrees it is of first moment should be made clear.”