thority, that religion cannot spring from God, the author of society.

It is even to be proved, from all evidence, that in a religion of which God is represented as the author, the functions of ministers, their persons, property, pretensions, and manner of inculcating morality, teaching doctrines, celebrating ceremonies, the adjustment of spiritual penalties; in a word, all that relates to civil order, ought to be submitted to the authority of the prince and the inspection of the magistracy.

If this jurisprudence constitutes a science, here will be found the elements.

It is for the magistracy, solely, to authorise the books admissible into the schools, according to the nature and form of the government. It is thus that M. Paul Joseph Rieger, counsellor of the court, judiciously teaches canon law in the university of Vienna; and, in the like manner, the republic of Venice examined and reformed all the rules in the states which have ceased to belong to it. It is desirable that examples so wise should generally prevail.*

SECTION I.

Of the Ecclesiastical Ministry.

Religion is instituted only to preserve order among mankind, and to render them worthy of the bounty of the Deity by virtue. Everything in a religion which tends not to this object, ought to be regarded as foreign or dangerous.

Instruction, exhortation, the fear of punishment to come, the promises of a blessed hereafter, prayer, advice, and spiritual consolation, are the only means which churchmen can properly employ to render men virtuous on earth and happy to all eternity.

Every other means is repugnant to the freedom of reason; to the nature of the soul; to the unalterable

The writer argues here for the state against any separate paramount jurisdiction of the church. Happily, both Great Britain and the United States of America have known how to extend the primary question.-T.

rights of conscience; to the essence of religion; to that of the clerical ministry; and to the just rights of the sovereign.

Virtue infers liberty, as the transport of a burthen implies active force. With constraint there is no virtue, and without virtue no religion. Make me a slave, and I shall be the worse for it.

Even the sovereign has no right to employ force to lead men to religion, which essentially presumes choice and liberty. My opinions are no more dependent on authority than my sickness or my health.

In a word, to unravel all the contradictions in which books on the canon law abound, and to adjust our ideas in respect to the ecclesiastical ministry, let us endeavour, in the midst of a thousand ambiguities, to determine what is the church.

The church then is all believers, collectively, who are called together on certain days to pray in common, and at all times to perform good actions.

Priests are persons appointed, under the authority of the state, to direct these prayers, and superintend public worship generally.

A numerous church cannot exist without ecclesiastics; but these ecclesiastics are not the church.

It is not less evident, that if the ecclesiastics, who compose a part of civil society, have acquired rights which tend to trouble or destroy such society, such rights ought to be suppressed.

It is still more obvious, that if God has attached prerogatives or rights to the church, these prerogatives and these rights belong exclusively neither to the head of the church nor to the ecclesiastics; because these are not the church itself, any more than the magistrates are the sovereign, either in a republic or a monarchy.

Lastly; it is very evident, that it is our souls only which are submitted to the care of the clergy, and that for spiritual objects alone.

The soul acts inwardly; its inward acts are thought, will, inclination, and an acquiescence in certain truths,

all which are above constraint; and it is for the ecclesiastical ministry to instruct, but not to command them.

The soul acts also outwardly. Its exterior acts are submission to the civil law; and here constraint may take place, and temporal or corporeal penalties may punish the violations of the law.

Obedience to the ecclesiastical order ought, consequently, to be always free and voluntary; it ought to exact no other. On the contrary, submission to the civil law may be enforced.

For the same reason, ecclesiastical penalties, always being spiritual, attach in this world to those only who are inwardly convinced of their error. Civil penalties, on the contrary, accompanied by physical evil, produce physical effects, whether the offender acknowledge the justice of them or not.

Hence it manifestly results, that the authority of the clergy can only be spiritual--that it is unacquainted with temporal power, and that any co-operative force belongs not to the administration of the church, which is essentially destroyed by it.

It moreover follows, that a prince intent not to suffer any division of his authority, ought not to permit any enterprise which places the members of the community in an outward or civil dependence on the ecclesiastical corporation.

Such are the incontestable principles of genuine canonical right or law, the rules and the decisions of which ought at all times to be submitted to the test of eternal and immutable truths, founded upon natural rights and the necessary order of society.

SECTION II.

Of the Possessions of Ecclesiastics.

Let us constantly ascend to the principles of society, which, in civil as in religious order, are the foundations of all right.

Society in general is the proprietor of the territory of a country, and the source of national riches. A por

tion of this national revenue is devoted to the sovereign to support the expenses of government. Every individual is possessor of that part of the territory, and of the revenue, which the laws ensure him; and no possession or enjoyment can at any time be sustained, except under the protection of law.

In society we hold not any good, or any possession, as a simple natural right, as we give up our natural rights and submit to the order of civil society, in return for assurance and protection. It is therefore by the law that we hold our possessions.

No one can hold anything on earth through religion, neither lands nor chattels; since all its wealth is spiritual The possessions of the faithful, as veritable members of the church, are in heaven: it is there where their treasures are laid up. The kingdom of Jesus Christ, which he always announced as at hand, was not nor could it be of this world. No property therefore can be held by divine right.

The Levites under the Hebrew law had, it is true, their tithe by a positive law of God; but that was under a theocracy which exists no longer-God himself acting as the sovereign. All those laws have ceased and cannot at present communicate any title to possession.

If any body at present, like that of the priesthood, pretend to possess tithes or any other wealth by positive right divine, it must produce an express and incontestable proof enregistered by divine revelation. This miraculous title would be, I confess, an exception to the civil law, authorised by God, who says-" That all persons ought to submit to the powers that be, because they are ordained of God and established in his

In defect of such a title, no ecclesiastical body whatever can enjoy aught on earth but by consent of the sovereignty and the authority of the civil laws. These form their sole title to possession. If the clergy imprudently renounce this title, they will possess none at all, and might be despoiled by any one who is strong

enough to attempt it. Its essential interest is therefore to support civil society, to which it owes everything.

For the same reason, as all the wealth of a nation is liable without exception to public expenditure for the defence of the sovereign and the nation, no property can be exempt from it but by force of law, which law is always revocable as circumstances vary. Peter cannot be exempt without augmenting the tax of John. Equity therefore is eternally claiming for equality against surcharges; and the state has a right, at all times, to examine into exemptions, in order to replace things in a just, natural, proportionate order, by abolishing previously granted immunities, whether permitted or extorted.

Every law which ordains that the sovereign, at the expense of the public, shall take care of the wealth or possessions of an individual or a body, without this body or individual contributing to the common expenses, amounts to a subversion of law.

I moreover assert that the quota, whether the contribution of a body or an individual, ought to be proportionately regulated, not by him or them, but by the sovereign or magistracy, according to the general form and law. Thus the sovereign or state may demand an account of the wealth and of the possessions of every body as of every individual.

It is therefore, once more, on these immutable principles, that the rules of the canon law should be founded which relate to the possessions and revenue of the clergy.

Ecclesiastics without doubt ought to be allowed sufficient to live honourably, but not as members of or as representing the church, for the church itself claims neither sovereignty nor possession in this world.

But if it be necessary for ministers to preside at the altar, it is proper that society should support them in

The clergy of the Church of England are fully aware of this truth, and form possibly the strongest ecclesiastical body in the world, by cementing their civil and neglecting their spiritual title.-T.