Very early in its career, also, the church encountered a second. When the Roman Empire fell, and the barbarian states were founded, the church was composed of the vanquished race. Its first object was to emerge from this position by converting the conquerors, and thus raising itself to their rank. When this labour was accomplished, and when the church aspired to dominion, it encountered the disdain and resistance of the feudal nobility. This was a prodigious service which lay-feudalism rendered to Europe. In the eleventh century, the people were almost completely subjugated by the church, and the sovereigns were scarcely able to stand up against it. The feudal nobility alone scorned the yoke of the clergy, and refused to bow before them. It is sufficient to recall the general features of the middle age, to be convinced of the singular mixture of pride and submissiveness, of blind belief and freedom of spirit, that prevailed in the relations of the lay lords with the priests. In this we discern some remnants of their relative primitive situation. It will recur to the mind of the reader that I have previously endeavoured to describe the origin of feudalism, its first elements, and the manner in which the earliest feudal society was formed around the abode of the fief-holder. I then remarked upon the fact of the priest being at that period under the lord. Now there always remained in the minds of the feudal nobility a remembrance or fueling of that position, and they always regarded themselves not only as independent of the church, but as superior to it, and as alone entitled to possess and actually govern the country. {171} They were always disposed to live on good terms with the church, but not to abandon their own claims, or give in to those set up by it. Thus, during many ages, it was the lay aristocracy which maintained the independence of society with regard to the church; it proudly defended itself, when monarchs and people were tamely crouching. It was the first to enter an opposition, and it contributed more perhaps than any other force to render the attempt to give society a theocratic organisation abortive. A third obstacle stood equally opposed to it, one upon which, in general, very little stress has been laid, and even its effects erroneously judged. Wherever a body of priests has seized upon society, and subjected it to a theocratical organisation, we find that this empire has devolved upon a married clergy, recruiting itself within its own folds, and rearing children from their infancy in, and for, the same profession. Look at Asia and Egypt: all the great theocracies were the work of a clergy forming of itself a complete society, sufficing for all its own purposes, and dependent for nothing from without.