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Peter's successor, was committed by God a sovereign power of church government over all, and responsible to no other tribunal; that to this church theocracy, guided by the Pope, the administration even of the secular power, though independent within its own peculiar sphere, should be subjected, for the service of the kingdom of God; but he also perceived, with the deepest pain, how very far the papacy was from corresponding to this its idea and destination; what prodigious corruption had sprung and continued to spring from the abuse of papal authority; he perceived already, with prophetic eye, that this very abuse of arbitrary will must eventually bring about the destruction of this power.
Two of the syndics who had brought about his expulsion died, as even syndics do, and Calvin returned, informing the populace that the death of the syndics was a punishment upon them for their lack of welcome to a good man and true. From this time Calvin turned Geneva into a theocracy, and the city was sacred to prayer, praise and Bible study.
It was a life-and-death struggle, in which no quarter was given; and the Quakers, aided by popular discontent with the theocracy, even more than by the intervention of the crown, won a decisive victory.
There must be one church the Church of Geneva and Heidelberg if that theocracy which the Gomarites meant to establish was not to vanish as a dream. It was founded on Divine Right, and knew no chief magistrate but the Holy Ghost.
It matters little that there are differences of detail between his and Philo's interpretations: the manner and the general purport are the same, and the manner is not the usual manner of Josephus, and altogether different from the treatment in the Antiquities. He lays down with great clearness the dominant features of the Mosaic constitution. It is a theocracy, i.e. the state depends on God.
The minister imposed himself upon the popular imagination, partly through sheer force of personal ascendency, and partly as a symbol of the theocracy, the actual governing of the Commonwealth by the laws and spirit of the sterner Scriptures. The minister dwelt apart as upon an awful Sinai. It was no mere romantic fancy of Hawthorne that shadowed his countenance with a black veil.
The Government is a pure theocracy, all the Ministers of State and the principal functionaries in every department of control belonging to the priesthood of the dominant church. It is popularly believed in Mogon-Zwair that persecution, even to the extent of taking life, is in the long run beneficial to the cause enduring it.
But if the Holy Ghost, through the assembled clergy, were to dictate an iron formulary to which all must conform, to make laws for church government which every citizen must obey, and to appoint preachers and school-masters from whom alone old and young could receive illumination and instruction religious or lay, a theocracy would be established which no enlightened statesman could tolerate.
There were not only sensible advocates of religious liberty, but theocrats as well who saw flaws in the theocracy of other Puritans. The English world was then in a state of theological fermentation. But the immediate practical result of so much discordance in opinion was the impossibility of founding a strong and well-ordered government.
"Economy" "theocracy" "aristocracy." The Greek came out like a child's lesson. He was not always sure; he corrected himself once or twice; and at the end he threw back his head with a little natural pride. But the ladies avoided looking either at him or each other. Eleanor thought of Father Benecke; of the weight of learning on that silver head.
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