have the same
subject matter: but the priest says, 'Do this or be damned'; the lawyer,
'Do this or be hanged.' Hence the complete separation is a mere dream.
Since both bodies deal with the same facts, there must be an ultimate
authority. The only question is which? Will you obey the Pope or the
Emperor, the power which claims the keys of another life or the power
which wields the sword in this. So far he agrees with the Ultramontanes
as against the liberal Catholics. But, though the Ultramontanes put the
issue rightly, his answer is diametrically opposite. He follows Hobbes
and is a thorough-going Erastian. He sympathised to some degree with the
doctrine of Coleridge and Dr. Arnold. They regarded the Church and the
State as in a sense identical; as the same body viewed under different
aspects. Fitzjames held also that State and Church should be identical;
but rather in the form that State and Church were to be one and that one
the State. For this there were two good reasons. In the first place, the
claims of the Church to supernatural authority were altogether baseless.
To bow to those claims was to become slaves of priests and to accept
superstitions. And, in the next place, this is no mere accident. The
division between the priest and layman corresponds to his division
between his 'sentimentalist' and his 'stern, cold man of common sense.'
Now the priest may very well supply the enthusiasm, but the task of
legislation is one which demands the cool, solid judgment of the layman.
He insists upon this, for example, in noticing Professor Seeley's
description of the 'Enthusiasm of Humanity' in 'Ecce Homo.' Such a
spirit, he urges, may supply the motive power, but the essence of the
legislative power is to restrict and constrain, and that is the work not
of the enthusiast, but of the man of business. During this period he
seems to have had some hopes that his principles might be applied. The
lawyers had prevented the clergy from expelling each section of the
Church in turn: and the decision in the 'Essays and Reviews' cases had
settled that free-thinking should have its representatives among
ecclesiastical authorities. At one period he even suggests that, if an
article or two were added to the thirty-nine, some change made in the
ordination service, and a relaxation granted in the terms of
subscription, the Church might be protected from sacerdotalism; and,
though some of the clergy might secede to Rome, the Church of Engla