Their
mission separates church and state as external governing bodies,
but unites them in the interior principles from which each
derives its vitality and force. Their union is in the intrinsic
unity of principle, and in the fact that, though moving in
different spheres, each obeys one and the same Divine law. With
this the Catholic, who knows what Catholicity means, is of course
satisfied, for it gives the church all the advantage over the
sects of the real over the unreal; and with this the sects have
no right to be dissatisfied, for it subjects them to no
disadvantage not inherent in sectarianism itself in presence of
Catholicity, and without any support from the civil authority.
The effect of this mission of our country fully realized, would
be to harmonize church and state, religion and politics, not by
absorbing either in the other, or by obliterating the natural
distinction between them, but by conforming both to the real or
Divine order, which is supreme and immutable. It places the two
powers in their normal relation, which has hitherto never been
done, because hitherto there never has been a state normally
constituted. The nearest approach made to the realization of the
proper relations of church and state, prior to the birth of the
American Republic, was in the Roman Empire under the Christian
emperors; but the state had been perverted by paganism, and the
emperors, inheriting the old pontifical power, could never be
made to understand their own incompetency in spirituals, and
persisted to the last in treating the church as a civil
institution under their supervision and control, as does the
Emperor of the French in France, even yet.
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