ABSTRACT
Democracy in the strict sense is everywhere foreign to the Calvinistic spirit, and could only develop out of it where, as in the New England States, the old class-system of Europe was absent and political institutions grew directly out of those of the Church. Protestantism retained the old patriarchalism with the complete subordination of the wife and children, and its doctrine of original sin affixed to the sexual relation sin's penalty of concupiscence, and to procreation the stigma of perpetuating original sin, exactly like the old doctrine. Protestantism intervened in the development of the State in the direction of autonomy, and powerfully furthered it. In particular, it invested the expanding civil officialdom with the character of a God-ordained calling, which plays its part in the execution of the Divine will; and it thus gave to the new centralised administration a strong ethical reinforcement.
