“The clergy who had in so many ways served the cause of freedom during the prolonged strife against feudalism and slavery, were associated now with the interest of royalty.”

—  John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)
Context: The way was paved for absolute monarchy to triumph over the spirit and institutions of a better age, not by isolated acts of wickedness, but by a studied philosophy of crime, and so thorough a perversion of the moral sense that the like of it had not been since the Stoics reformed the morality of paganism.
The clergy who had in so many ways served the cause of freedom during the prolonged strife against feudalism and slavery, were associated now with the interest of royalty.

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John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton112
British politician and historian 1834–1902

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