A
spiritual work can, in the nature of things, be effected only by
spiritual means. The church wants freedom in relation to the
state--nothing more; for all her power comes immediately from
God, without any intervention or mediation of the state.
The United States, constituted in accordance with the real order
of things, and founded on principles which have their origin and
ground in the principles on which the church herself is founded,
can never establish any one of the sects as the religion of the
state, for that would violate their political constitution, and
array all the other sects, as well as the church herself, against
the government. They cannot be called upon to establish the
church by law, because she is already in their constitution as
far as the state has in itself any relation with religion, and
because to establish her in any other sense would be to make her
one of the civil institutions of the, land, and to bring her
under the control of the state, which were equally against her
interest and her nature.
The religious mission of the United States is not then to
establish the church by external law, or to protect her by legal
disabilities, pains, and penalties against the sects, however
uncatholic they may be; but to maintain catholic freedom, neither
absorbing the state in the church nor the church in the state,
but leaving each to move freely, according to its own nature, in
the sphere assigned it in the eternal order of things.
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