So much for the corruptions of the Christian religion proceeding from what, in theological language, might be called the indwelling sin of the Church, unstimulated by any strong external seduction. But this seduction came. After three centuries of hardship, manfully endured in the school of adversity, the more severe trial of prosperity had to be gone through. The Church, which had been declared to be not of this world, and had stood face to face with the greatest political power the world ever knew in a position of sublime moral isolation, was now adopted by the State, and formed a bond of the most intimate connection with its hereditary persecutors. The starting-point of the oldest heathen social attitude, the identity of Church and State, seemed to be recalled; and a Justinian on the shores of the Bosphorus seemed as really a head of the Church as a Menes or an Amenophis on the banks of the Nile. But under the outward likeness a radical difference lay concealed. As an essentially ethical society, with its own special credentials, its separate history, and its independent triumph, the Christian Church might form an alliance with a purely secular institution like the State, but it could not be absorbed or identified with it. That alliance might be made beneficially in various ways and on various terms; the civil magistrate might be proud to be called the friend and the brother of the Christian bishop, or he might humble himself to be its servant, but he never could be its master. The alliance therefore was, as it ought to be, all in favour of the spiritual body; the Church gained the civil power to execute its decrees and to patronise its missions; but a Christian State could never gain the right to dictate the creed or perform the functions of the Church. The idea that there is anything absolutely sinful, or necessarily pernicious, in the conception of an alliance between the Church and the State, is one of those hyperconscientious crotchets of modern British sectarianism at which the Muse of history can only smile. There can be no greater sin in an Established Church than in an Established University or an Established Royal Academy. Religion and Science and Art have their separate and well-marked provinces, in the administration of which they may wisely seek for the co-operation, though they will always jealously avoid the dictation, of the State. But, though there could be no sin in the Church receiving the right hand of fellowship from the State, there might be danger, and that of a very serious description. Nothing strikes a man so much in the reading of the New Testament as the little respect which it pays to riches and the pomp and pride of life, and worldly honours and dignities of all kinds. "_How can ye believe who receive honour one from another?_" is a sentence that cuts very deep into the connection between the Church and State, which might readily mean the alliance of a secular institution,