s heart, and was his guiding star in the permanent
organization of the church which he founded, as well as in his personal
conduct during his life. That principle is the profound distinction
between the religious and the civil community. Distinction we say, and
by no means separation; Calvin, on the contrary, desired alliance between
the two communities and the two powers, but each to be independent in its
own domain, combining their action, showing mutual respect and lending
mutual support. To this alliance he looked for the reformation and moral
discipline of the members of the church placed under the authority of its
own special religious officers and upheld by the indirect influence of
the civil power.

In this principle and this fundamental labor of Calvin's there were two
new and bold reforms attempted in the very heart of the great Reformation
in Europe, and over and above the work of its first promoters. Henry
VIII., on removing the church of England from the domination of the
papacy, had proclaimed himself its head, and the church of England had
accepted this royal supremacy. Zwingle, when he provoked in German
Switzerland the rupture with the church of Rome, had approved of the
arrangement that the sovereign authority in matters of religion should
pass into the hands of the civil powers. Luther himself, at the same
time that he reserved to the new German church a certain measure of
spontaneity and liberty, had placed it under the protection and
preponderance of laic sovereigns. In this great question as to the
relations between church and state Calvin desired and did more than his
predecessors; even before he played any considerable part in the European
Reformation, as soon as he heard of Henry VIII.'s religious supremacy in
England, he had strongly declared against such a regimen; with an
equitable spirit rare in his day, and in spite of his contest with the
church of Rome, he was struck with the strength and dignity conferred
upon that church by its having an existence distinct from the civil
community, and by the independence of its head. When he himself became a
great Reformer, he did not wish the Reformed church to lose this grand
characteristic; whilst proclaiming it evangelical, he demanded for it in
matters of faith and discipline the independence and special authority
which had been possessed by the primitive church; and in spite of the
resistance often shown to him by the civil magistrates, in