The Christian society commenced, as I before explained when speaking of the church, by being a perfectly free society, formed solely by virtue of a common creed, without institutions, without government, properly so called, regulated merely by moral and fluctuating powers, according to the wants of the moment. Civil society also commenced in Europe, partially at least, by bands of barbarians; a society perfectly free, in which each remained because he wished it, without laws or instituted powers. Upon the termination of that state, which could not be reconciled with any great social development, the religious society placed itself under a government essentially aristocratical; it was governed by the clergy, the bishops, councils, and ecclesiastical aristocracy. A fact of the same nature occurred in the civil society, upon issuing out of barbarism, it falling equally under the domination of an aristocracy or lay-feudalism. The religious society left the aristocratic form to enter that of pure monarchy; for such was the purport of the triumph of the court of Rome over the councils and over the European ecclesiastical aristocracy. The same revolution was accomplished in civil society; it was also by the destruction of the aristocratical power that royalty prevailed and took possession of the European world. In the sixteenth century, an insurrection broke out in the bosom of the religious society against the system of pure monarchy, against absolute power in spiritual things. This revolution drew in its train, established and consecrated, the spirit of free inquiry in Europe. In our own days, we have witnessed a similar event in the civil order. The temporal absolute power has been equally attacked and vanquished. Thus we see that the two societies have gone through the same vicissitudes, and suffered the same revolutions; but the religious society has always been in the van in this career. {211} We are now in possession of one of the great facts of modern society--the spirit of free inquiry, or the liberty of the human understanding. We have also seen that, at the same time, political centralisation prevailed almost everywhere. In my next lecture I shall treat of the English Revolution--that is to say, of the event in which the spirit of free examination and pure monarchy, both the results of the progress of civilisation, found themselves for the first time in array. {212} Lecture XIII. Effects Of The English Revolution. We have seen that, in the course of the sixteenth century, all the elements and facts of the ancient European society had gathered into two essential facts--the spirit of free inquiry, and the centralisation of power. The one prevailed in the religious society, and the other in the civil. Thus the emancipation of the human mind and pure monarchy achieved their triumphs at the same time.