s authority ultimately from God himself, each is supreme and
independent in its own sphere, while each recognizes the authority of
the other within its proper sphere.

It is, indeed, the freedom of the spiritual life which the mediaeval
Church was endeavouring to defend; it was the apprehension that there
was some ultimate quality in human nature which stands and must stand
outside of the direct or coercive control of society, which lies behind
all the confused clamour of the conflicts of Church and State.

It is true that in this great and generous effort to secure the freedom
of the human soul men in some measure lost their way. They demanded and
in a measure they succeeded in asserting the freedom of the religious
organization, as against the temporal organization, but in doing this
they went perilously near to denying the freedom of the individual
spiritual experience. They went perilously near to denying it, but they
never wholly forgot it. The Church claimed and exercised an immense
authority in religion, so immense an authority that it might easily seem
as though there were no place left for the freedom of the individual
judgement and conscience. And yet that was not the case. The theory of
excommunication that is set out in the canonical literature of the
Middle Ages has generally been carelessly studied and imperfectly
understood. It was the greatest and most masterful of the Popes,
Innocent III, who laid down in memorable phrases which are embodied in
the great collection of the Decretals, that if a Christian man or woman
is convinced in his own mind and conscience that it would be a mortal
sin to do or to leave undone some action, he must follow his own
conscience even against the command of the authorities of the Church,
and must submit patiently to Church censures and even excommunication;
for it may well happen that the Church may condemn him whom God
approves, or approve him whom God condemns.[24] This is no isolated or
exceptional opinion, but is the doctrine which is constantly laid down
in the canonical literature.[25] It is, I think, profoundly true to say
that when men at last revolted against what seemed to them the
exaggerated claims of the Church, when they slowly fought their way
towards toleration and religious freedom, they were only asserting and
carrying out its one most vital principle, the principle of the
independence or autonomy of the spiritual life; the modern world is only
fulfilling