The Reformation, it may be said, was a religious movement: and it is the Empire, not the Church, that we have here to consider. The distinction is only apparent. The Holy Empire is but another name for the Visible Church. It has been shewn already how mediæval theory constructed the State on the model of the Church; how the Roman Empire was the shadow of the Popedom--designed to rule men's bodies as the pontiff ruled their souls. Both alike claimed obedience on the ground that Truth is One, and that where there is One faith there must be One government[373]. And, therefore, since it was this very principle of Formal Unity that the Reformation overthrew, it became a revolt against despotism of every kind; it erected the standard of civil as well as of religious liberty, since both of them are needed, though needed in a different measure, for the worthy development of the individual spirit. The Empire had never been conspicuously the antagonist of popular freedom, and was, even under Charles the Fifth, far less formidable to the commonalty than were the petty princes of Germany. But submission, and submission on the ground of indefeasible transmitted right, upon the ground of Catholic traditions and the duty of the Christian magistrate to suffer heresy and schism as little as the parallel sins of treason and rebellion, had been its constant claim and watchword. Since the days of Julius Cæsar it had passed through many phases, but in none of them had it ever been a constitutional monarchy, pledged to the recognition of popular rights. And hence the indirect tendency of the Reformation to narrow the province of government and exalt the privileges of the subject was as plainly adverse to the Empire as the Protestant claim of the right of private judgment was to the pretensions of the Papacy and the priesthood. [Sidenote: Immediate influence of the Reformation on political and religious liberty.] [Sidenote: Conduct of the Protestant States.]