When a large fraction of the community has ceased to believe in Christianity and the Church, the demands of justice and reason are different. It may well be allowed that, to determine the exact relation of the Catholic Church and Christian State, and the law of their organization into one complex society, is a problem for whose perfect solution we must wait the further development of the ideas of ecclesiastical and civil society. But to wait for growth of subjective truth was just what De Lamennais could not do. He saw that past solutions of the problem had been unsuccessful; that in most cases the Church was eventually drawn into bondage under the State as its creature and instrument in the cause of tyranny and oppression; that it was insensibly permeated with the local and national spirit, differentiated from Catholic Christendom, and severed from the full influence of its head, the Vicar of Christ. The independence of the Church he rightly judged to be the great safeguard of the people against the tyranny of their temporal rulers. In the face of that world-wide spiritual society, whose voice was at once the voice of humanity and the voice of God, he felt that "iniquity would stop its mouth," and injustice be put to shame. Yet all this seemed to him impossible so long as the Church depended on the State for temporalities, and because he could devise no form of association that would be guarantee against all abuses, he therefore insisted on total, severance, not merely as expedient for the present pressure, but as a divine and eternal principle.