Rousseau_contrat-social
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the Arabs, having grown prosperous, lettered, civilised, slack and<br />
cowardly, were conquered by barbarians: the division between the two<br />
powers began again; and, although it is less apparent among the<br />
Mahometans than among the Christians, it none the less exists,<br />
especially in the sect of Ali, and there are States, such as Persia,<br />
where it is continually making itself felt.<br />
Among us, the Kings of England have made themselves heads of the Church,<br />
and the Czars have done the same: but this title has made them less its<br />
masters than its ministers; they have gained not so much the right to<br />
change it, as the power to maintain it: they are not its legislators,<br />
but only its princes. Wherever the clergy is a corporate body,[44] it is<br />
master and legislator in its own country. There are thus two powers, two<br />
Sovereigns, in England and in Russia, as well as elsewhere.<br />
Of all Christian writers, the philosopher Hobbes alone has seen the evil<br />
and how to remedy it, and has dared to propose the reunion of the two<br />
heads of the eagle, and the restoration throughout of political unity,<br />
without which no State or government will ever be rightly constituted.<br />
But he should have seen that the masterful spirit of Christianity is<br />
incompatible with his system, and that the priestly interest would<br />
always be stronger than that of the State. It is not so much what is<br />
false and terrible in his political theory, as what is just and true,<br />
that has drawn down hatred on it.[45]<br />
I believe that if the study of history were developed from this point of<br />
view, it would be easy to refute the contrary opinions of Bayle and<br />
Warburton, one of whom holds that religion can be of no use to the body<br />
politic, while the other, on the contrary, maintains that Christianity<br />
is its strongest support. We should demonstrate to the former that no<br />
State has ever been founded without a religious basis, and to the<br />
latter, that the law of Christianity at bottom does more harm by<br />
weakening than good by strengthening the constitution of the State. To<br />
make myself understood, I have only to make a little more exact the too<br />
vague ideas of religion as relating to this subject.<br />
Religion, considered in relation to society, which is either general or<br />
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