The champions of the former found a reconciliation of the two spheres to consist in the absorption of the secular by the ecclesiastical. The one community into which, by the admission of all, united mankind was gathered, must needs be the Church of God. Of this Christ is the Head. But in order to realise this unity on earth Christ has appointed a representative, the Pope, who is therefore the head of both spheres in this world. But along with this unity it must be allowed that God has sanctioned the separate existence of the secular no less than that of the ecclesiastical dominion. This separation, however, according to the advocates of papal power, did not affect the deposit of authority, but affected merely the manner of its exercise. Spiritual and temporal power in this world alike belonged to the representative of Christ. [Sidenote: Sinful origin of State.] But the bolder advocates of ecclesiastical power were ready to explain away the divine sanction of temporal authority. Actually existing states have often originated in violence. Thus the State in its earthly origin may be regarded as the work of human nature as affected by the Fall of Man: like sin itself, it is permitted by God. Consequently it needs the sanction of the Church in order to remove the taint. Hence, at best, the temporal power is subject to the ecclesiastical: it is merely a means for working out the higher purpose entrusted to the Church. Pope Gregory VII goes farther still in depreciation of the temporal power. He declares roundly that it is the work of sin and the devil. "Who does not know," he writes, "that kings and dukes have derived their power from those who, ignoring God, in their blind desire and intolerable presumption have aspired to rule over their equals, that is, men, by pride, plunder, perfidy, murder, in short by every kind of wickedness, at the instigation of the prince of this world, namely, the devil?" But in this he is only re-echoing the teaching of St. Augustine; and he is followed, among other representative writers, by John of Salisbury, the secretary and champion of Thomas Becket, and by Pope Innocent III. To all three there is an instructive contrast between a power divinely conferred and one that has at the best been wrested from God by human importunity. [Sidenote: Illustration of relations.]