This result has been illustrated by facts notorious to all, as in the disputes concerning investitures, and the struggles between the priesthood and the empire. The distinct positions of the chiefs of the church, and the difficulty of reconciling them, have been the real source of the uncertainty and the contests with regard to these pretensions. Finally, the church had a third relation with the sovereigns, the least favourable, and the most disastrous, for itself: it laid claim to coercion, to the right of repressing and punishing heresy: but it had no means to effect this; it had no physical force at its disposal; so that when it had condemned heresy, it was unable of itself to put its judgment in execution. In this strait it invoked what was called the secular arm; in other words, it borrowed the force of the civil power as a means of coercion. In consequence, it placed itself, with regard to the civil power, in a situation of dependence and inferiority. Such was the deplorable necessity to which the adoption of the evil principle of coercion and persecution reduced the church. There remains to be considered the relations of the church with the people, which I shall enter upon in the next lecture, as well as such other questions as arise out of this branch of our inquiry. {104} Lecture VI. Relations Of The Church With The People. I have preliminarily laid down that the church ought to be considered under three principal aspects: firstly, in itself, in its internal constitution, in its nature, and as a distinct and independent society; secondly, in its relations with sovereigns and the temporal power; and finally, in its relations with the people. We have accomplished the two first divisions of this task, and I now proceed to the last. I shall subsequently endeavour to draw from this triple examination a general appreciation of the influence of the church upon European civilisation from the fifth to the twelfth century. I shall then verify my assertions by an epitome of facts, by the history of the church at that epoch. In speaking of the relations of the church with the people, I am of course obliged to restrict myself to very general terms. I cannot enter into a detail of the usages of the church, or of the every-day relations of the clergy with the faithful. The predominant principles, and the great results of the system, and of the conduct of the church towards the Christian people, are what I concern myself with. The main characteristic, and the radical vice (for so it must be called) of the relations of the church with the people, was the separation of the governing and the governed, the non-influence of the governed over their government, the independence of the Christian clergy, with reference to the body of the faithful.