XXIV.5 That the Catholic religion is better suited to a monarchy, and the Protestant religion is better adapted to a republic
When a religion is born and develops in a state, it usually follows the plan of the government where it is established ; for the men who receive it and those who introduce it have essentially no other notions of political organization than those of the state in which they were born.
When the Christian religion suffered that unfortunate rift two centuries ago that divided it into Catholic and Protestant, the peoples of the north embraced Protestantism and those of the south kept Catholicism.
This was because the peoples of the north have and always will have a spirit of independence and liberty which the peoples of the south do not have, and because a religion which has no visible head goes better with the independence of the climate than a religion that has one.
In the very countries where the Protestant religion took hold, revolutions occurred on the pattern of the political state. Luther, having some great princes on his side, would never have been able to get them to accept an ecclesiastical authority that had no exterior pre-eminence ; and Calvin, having on his side the peoples who lived in republics or the diminished bourgeoisie in monarchies, could very well do without establishing pre-eminences and dignities.
Each of these two religions could think itself the most perfect, Calvinism considering itself more consistent with what Jesus Christ had said, and Lutheranism with what the Apostles had done.