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.

Yes. The clergy believed that idea deeply enough to die for it. St.
Alphege at Canterbury had been, it is said, one of the first advisers of
the ignominious payment of the Danegeld: but there was one thing which he
would not do. He would advise the giving up of the money of the nation:
but the money of his church he would not give up. The Danes might thrust
him into a filthy dungeon: he would not take the children's bread and
cast it unto the dogs. They might drag him out into their husting, and
threaten him with torture: but to the drunken cry of 'Gold! Bishop!
Gold!' his only answer would