the theory, and in a very large measure the practice, of ecclesiastical unity.  The days of the Landeskirche are numbered:  the days of the Church Universal under the universal primacy of Rome are begun.  But when the universality of the Church has once been established in point of extension, it begins to be also asserted in point of intensity.  Once ubiquitous, the papacy seeks to be omnicompetent.  Depositary of the truth, and only depositary of the truth, by divine revelation, the Church, under the guidance of the papacy, seeks to realize the truth in every reach of life, and to control, in the light of Christian principle, every play of human activity.  Learning and education, trade and commerce, war and peace, are all to be drawn into her orbit.  By the application of Christian principle a great synthesis of human life is to be achieved, and the lex Christi is to be made a lex animata in terris.

This was the greatest ambition that has ever been cherished.  It meant nothing less than the establishment of a civitas Dei on earth.  And this kingdom of God was to be very different from that of which St. Augustine had written.  His city of God was neither the actual Church nor the actual State, nor a fusion of both.  It was a spiritual society of the predestined faithful, and, as such, thoroughly distinct from the State and secular society.  The city of God which the great mediaeval popes were seeking to establish was a city of this world, if not of this world only.  It was a fusion of the actual Church, reformed by papal direction and governed by papal control, with actual lay society, similarly reformed and similarly governed.  Logically this meant a theocracy, and the bull of Boniface VIII, by which he claimed that every human creature was subject to the Roman pontiff, was its necessary outcome.  But a theocracy was only a means, and a means that was never greatly emphasized in the best days of the papacy.  It was the end that mattered; and the end was the moulding of human life into conformity with divine truth.  The end may appear fantastic, unless one remembers the plenitude of means which stood at the command of the mediaeval Church.  The seven sacraments had become the core of her organization.  Central among the seven stood the sacrament of the Mass, in which bread and wine were transubstantiated into the divine body and blood of our Lord.  By that sacrament men could touch God; and by its mediation the believer met the supreme object of his belief.  Only the priest could celebrate the great mystery; and only those who were fit could be admitted by him to participation.  The sacrament of penance, which became the antechamber, as it were, to the Mass, enabled the priest to determine the terms of admission.  Outside the sacraments stood the Church courts, exercising a large measure of ethical and religious discipline over all Christians; and in reserve, most terrible of all weapons, were the powers of excommunication and interdict, which could shut men and cities from the rites of the Church and the presence of the Lord.  Who shall say, remembering these things, that the aims of the mediaeval Church were visionary or impracticable?