refore just and right.

Again, the clergy were the only organic remnants of the Roman Empire.
They claimed their privileges and lands as granted to them by past Roman
Emperors, under the Roman law. This fact made it their interest, of
course, to perpetuate that Roman law, and to introduce it as far as they
could among their conquerors, to the expulsion of the old Teutonic laws;
and they succeeded on the whole. Of that more hereafter. Observe now,
that as their rights dated from times which to the Teutons were
pre-historic, their statements could not be checked by conquerors who
could not even read. Thence rose the temptation to forge; to forge
legends, charters, dotations, ecclesiastical history of all kinds--an
ugly and world-famous instance of which you will hear of hereafter. To
that temptation they yielded more and more as the years rolled on, till
their statements on ecclesiastical history became such as no historian
can trust, without the most plentiful corroboration.

There were great excuses for them, in this matter, as in others. They
could not but look on the Teuton as--what in fact and law he was--an
unjust and intrusive usurper. They could not but look on their Roman
congregations, and on themselves, as what in fact and law they were, the
rightful owners of the soil. They were but defending or recovering their
original rights. Would not the end justify the means?

But more. Out of this singular position grew a doctrine, which looks to
us irrational now, but was by no means so then. If the Church derived
her rights from the extinct Roman Caesars, how could the Teuton
conquerors interfere with those rights? If she had owed allegiance to
Constantine or Theodosius, she certainly owed none to Dietrich, Alboin,
or Clovis. She did not hold their lands of them; and would pay them, if
she could avoid it, neither tax nor toll. She did not recognize the
sovereignty of these Teutons as 'ordained by God.'

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,'