In the fifth century this society was almost completely organised. Of course it has undergone since that era many and important changes, but it may be asserted that the church, considered as a corporation and government for the Christian people, had attained a complete and independent existence. It requires but a single glance to recognise a prodigious difference between the state of the church in the fifth century, and that of the other elements of European civilisation. I have particularised, as the fundamental elements of our civilisation, the municipal and feudal systems, royalty, and the church. In that age the municipal system was a mere relic of the Roman Empire, a lifeless and formless shadow. The feudal system had not emerged from chaos. Royalty existed but in name. All the civil elements of modern society were in decay or struggling infancy. The church alone was at once young and constituted; it alone had acquired a definitive form, and preserved all the vigour of its first ages; it alone possessed the principle of movement and of order, energy and system, the two great instruments of influence. Is it not, I ask, by the moral action, the internal movement on the one hand, and by order and discipline on the other, that institutions are ingrafted upon societies? Besides, the church had stirred up all the great questions which interest men; all the problems concerning human nature, and all the chances of human destiny, were its matters of discussion. Thus its influence upon modern civilisation has been very great, much greater, perhaps, than its hottest adversaries or its most zealous defenders made it. They, occupied in serving or opposing it, considered it only in a polemical point of view, and were unable, as I conceive, to judge it with impartiality, or to measure it in all its extent. {89} The church of the fifth century presents itself as an independent and constituted society, standing between the masters and sovereigns of the world, the possessors of temporal power on the one hand, and the people on the other, serving as a link between them, and acting upon all. Therefore, to ascertain and perfectly understand its action, we must consider it under three aspects. We must first of all survey it in itself, and take account of what it was, its internal constitution, the principles which predominated in it, its nature; then examine it in its relations with temporal sovereigns, kings, lords, or others; and finally, in its relations with the people. And when, from this triple examination, we have deduced a complete idea of the church, of its principles, situation, and the influence it was destined to exercise, we will verify our reasonings by history, or, in other words, we will inquire whether facts, properly so called, are in accordance with the results which the study of the church and of its various relations led us to draw. First, then, of the church in itself, of its internal state, its nature.