clergy _have_ been narrowing that conception by arrogating to themselves a position and powers which belong to the whole community. While perniciously extending the meaning of the word ‘spiritual’ to cover such essentially secular things as property and political power, they have as falsely contracted it to exclude from all control of the Church’s destinies the mass of the laity. They also, although not in orders, are religious men, members of the Church; numerically they are by far the greater part of the Church. Consequently, in a General Council, which is a representative of the entire Christian communion, and not merely a part—the fact of ordination not making the clergy any the less a fragment—in a General Council resides the ultimate authority of the Church.[131] In these remarkable pronouncements of Marsiglio of Padua are contained the doctrines of democracy and of toleration: so also in the careful allocation of the clergy to purely spiritual functions is contained the suggestion of that precise differentiation between Church and State which perhaps more than anything else marks off modern from mediæval society. The whole conception of the ‘Defensor Pacis’ was revolutionary. No heresy of the Middle Ages had been more dangerously subversive of the whole system of the Catholic Church as it then existed. The perverse absurdities of Catharism and other such half-crazed cults were abhorrent to all sane and healthily-minded men. But the doctrines taught by Marsiglio have commended themselves to many of the most sincere, the most devout and religious of men from his own day to this.[132]