The Christians found themselves in a
position with regard to the Roman Empire precisely similar to that
which the Jews had occupied with regard to the Persian; and so
they also founded, after the Jewish pattern, in the midst of the
state which was foreign and hostile to them, and in which they
could not feel themselves at home, a religious community as
their true fatherland. The state is always the presupposition of
the Church; but it was at first, in the case both of the Jewish
and of the Christian Church, a foreign state. The original meaning
of the Church thus disappeared when it no longer stood over against
the heathen world-power, it having become possible for the
Christians also to possess a natural fatherland in the nation.
In this way it became much more difficult to define accurately the
spheres of the state and the Church respectively, regarding the
Church as an organisation, not as an invisible community of the
faithful. The distinction of religious and secular is a variable
one; every formation of a religious community is a step towards
the secularisation of religion; the religion of the heart alone
remains an inward thing.
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