Out of this simple political fact grew up vast consequences. The Teuton king was a heathen or Arian usurper. He was not a king de jure, in the eyes of the clergy, till he was baptized into the Church, and then lawfully anointed king by the clergy. Thus the clergy gradually became the makers of kings; and the power of making involved a corresponding power of unmaking, if the king rebelled against the Church, and so cut himself off from Christendom. At best, he was one of 'the Princes of this world,' from whom the Church was free, absolutely in spiritual matters, and in temporal matters, also de jure, and therefore de facto as far as she could be made free. To keep the possessions of the Church from being touched by profane hands, even that they might contribute to the common needs of the nation, became a sacred duty, a fixed idea, for which the clergy must struggle, anathematize, forge if need be: but also--to do them justice--die if need be as martyrs. The nations of this world were nothing to them. The wars of the nations were nothing. They were the people of God, 'who dwelt alone, and were not reckoned among the nations;' their possessions were the inheritance of God: and from this idea, growing (as I have shewn) out of a political fact, arose the extra- national, and too often anti-national position, which the Roman clergy held for many ages, and of which the instinct, at least, lingers among them in many countries. Out of it arose, too, all after struggles between the temporal and ecclesiastical powers. Becket, fighting to the death against Henry II., was not, as M. Thierry thinks, the Anglo-Saxon defying the Norman. He was the representative of the Christian Roman defying the Teuton, on the ground of rights which he believed to have existed while the Teuton was a heathen in the German forests. Gradually, as the nations of Europe became really nations, within fixed boundaries, and separate Christian organizations, these demands of the Church became intolerable in reason, because unnecessary in fact. But had there not been in them at the first an instinct of right and justice, they would never have become the fixed idea of the clerical mind; the violation of them the one inexpiable sin; and the defence of them (as may be seen by looking through the Romish Calendar) the most potent qualification for saintship.