SECTION IV.

On Ecclesiastical Penalties.

Since neither the church, which is the body of believers collectively, nor the ecclesiastics, who are rainisters in the church in the name of the sovereign and under his authority, possess any coactive strength, executive power, or terrestrial authority, it is evident that these ministers can inflict only spiritual punishments. To threaten sinners with the anger of heaven, is the sole penalty that a pastor is entitled to inflict. If the name of punishment or penalty is not to be given to those censures or declamations, ministers of religion have none at all to inflict.

May the church eject from its bosom those who diswhich grace or who trouble it?-a grand question, upon the canonists have not hesitated to adopt the affirmative. Let us repeat, in the first place, that ecclesiastics are not the church. The assembled church, which includes the state or sovereign, doubtless possesses the right to exclude from the congregations a scandalous sinner, after repeated charitable and sufficient warnings. The exclusion, even in this case, cannot inflict any civil penalty, any bodily evil, or any merely earthly privation; but whatever right the church may in this way possess, the ecclesiastics belonging to it can only exercise it as far as the sovereign and state allow.

It is therefore still more incumbent on the sovereign in this case to watch over the manner in which this permitted right is exercised, vigilance being the more necessary in consequence of the abuse to which it is liable. It is, consequently, necessary for the sucivil to consult the rules for the regupreme power lation of assistance and charity, to prescribe suitable restrictions, without which every declaration of the clergy, and all excommunication, will be null and without effect, even when only applicable to the spiritual order. It is to confound different eras and circumstances, to regulate the proceedings of present times from the practice of the apostles. The sovereign

in those days was not of the religion of the apostles, nor was the church included in the state, so that the ministers of worship could not have recourse to the magistrates. Moreover, the apostles were ministers extraordinary, of which we now perceive no resemblance. If other examples of excommunication, without the authority of the sovereign, be quoted, I can only say that I cannot hear, without horror, of examples of excommunication insolently fulminated against sovereigns and magistrates; I boldly reply, that these denunciations amount to manifest rebellion, and to an open violation of the most sacred duties of religion, charity, and natural right.

Let us add, in order to afford a complete idea of excommunication, and of the true rules of canonical right or law in this respect, that excommunication, legitimately pronounced by those to whom the sovereign, in the name of the church, expressly leaves the power, includes privation only of spiritual advantages on earth, and can extend to nothing else: all beyond this will be abuse, and more or less tyrannical. The ministers of the church can do no more than declare that such and such a man is no more a member of the church. He may still however enjoy, notwithstanding the excommunication, all his natural, civil, and temporal rights as a man and a citizen. If the magistrate steps in and deprives such a man, in consequence, of an office or employment in society, it then becomes a civil penalty for some fault against civil order.

Let us suppose that which may very likely happen, as ecclesiastics are only men, that the excommunication which they have been led to pronounce has been prompted by some error or some passion; he who is exposed to a censure so precipitate is clearly justified in his conscience before God; the declaration issued against him can produce no effect upon the life to come. Deprived of exterior communion with the true church, he may still enjoy the consolation of the interior communion. Justified by his conscience, he has nothing to fear in a future existence from the judgment of God, his only true judge.

It is then a great question, as to canonical rights, whether the clergy their head, or any ecclesiastical body whatever, can excommunicate the sovereign or the magistracy, under any pretext, or for any abuse of their power? This question is essentially scandalous, and the simple doubt a direct rebellion. In fact, the first duty of man in society is to respect the magistrate, and to advance his respectability, and you pretend to have a right to censure and set him aside Who has given you this absurd and pernicious right? Is it God, who governs the political world by delegated sovereignty, and who ordains that society shall subsist by subordination?

The first ecclesiastics at the rise of christianity—did they conceive themselves authorized to excommunicate Tiberius, Nero, Claudius, or even Constantine, who was a heretic? How then have pretensions thus monstrous, ideas thus atrocious, wicked attempts equally condemned by reason and by natural and religious rights, been suffered to last so long? If a religion exists which teaches the like horrors, society ought to proscribe it, as directly subversive of the repose of mankind. The cry of whole nations is already lifted up against these pretended canonical laws, dictated by ambition and by fanaticism. It is to be hoped that sovereigns, better instructed in their rights, and supported by the fidelity of their people, will terminate abuses so enormous, and which have caused so many misfortunes. The author of the " Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations," has been the first to forcibly expose the atrocity of enterprises of this

nature.

SECTION V.

Of the Superintendance of Doctrine.

The sovereign is not the judge of the truth of doctrine; he may judge for himself, like all other men; but he ought to take cognizance of it in respect to everything which relates to civil order, whether in regard to purport or delivery.

This is the general rule from which magistrates

ought never to depart. Nothing in a doctrine merits the attention of the police except as it interests public order; it is the influence of doctrine upon manners which decides its importance. Doctrines which have a distant connexion only with good conduct, can never be fundamental. Truths which conduce to render mankind gentle, humane, obedient to the laws and to government, interest the state, and proceed evidently from God.

SECTION VI.

Superintendance of the Magistracy over the Administration of the Sacraments.

The administration of the sacraments ought to be submitted to the careful inspection of the magistrates in everything which concerns public order.

It has already been observed, that the magistrate ought to watch over the form of the public registry of marriages, baptisms and deaths, without any regard to the creed of the different inhabitants of the state.

Similar reasons in relation to police and good government,-do they not require an exact registry in the hands of the magistracy of all those who make vows, and enter convents in those countries in which convents are permitted?

In the sacrament of repentance, the minister who refuses or grants absolution, is accountable for his judgment only to God; and in the same manner the penitent is accountable to God alone, whether he consummates it all, or does so well or ill.

No pastor, himself a sinner, ought to have the right of publicly refusing, on his own private authority, the eucharist to another sinner. The sinless Jesus Christ refused not the communion to Judas.

Extreme unction and the viaticum, if demanded or requested by the sick, should be governed by the same rule. The simple right of the minister is to exhort the sick person, and it is the duty of the magistrate to take care that the pastor abuse not circumstances, in order to persecute the invalid.

Formerly, it was the church collectively which called

the pastors, and conferred upon them the right of governing and instructing the flock. At present, ecclesiastics alone consecrate others, and the magistracy ought to be watchful of this privilege.

It is doubtless a great, although ancient abuse, that of conferring orders without functions; it is depriving the state of members, without adding to the church. The magistrate is called upon to reform this abuse.

Marriage, in a civil sense, is the legitimate union of a man with a woman for the procreation of children, to secure their due nurture and education, and in order to assure unto them their rights and properties under the protection of the laws. In order to confirm and establish this union, it is accompanied by a religious ceremony, regarded by some as a sacrament, and by others as a portion of public worship; a genuine logomachy, which changes nothing in the thing. Two points are therefore to be distinguished in marriage, the civil contract, or natural engagement; and the sacrament, or sacred ceremony. Marriage may therefore exist, with all its natural and civil effects, independently of the religious ceremony. The ceremonies of the church are only essential to civil order, because the state has adopted them. A long time elapsed before the ministers of religion had anything to do with marriage. In the time of Justinian, the agreement of the parties, in the presence of witnesses, without any ceremonies of the church, legalised marriages among christians. It was that emperor who, towards the middle of the sixth century, made the first laws by which the presence of priests were required, as simple witnesses, without however prescribing any nuptial benediction. The emperor

Leo, who died in 886, seems to have been the first who placed the religious ceremony in the number of necessary conditions. The terms of the law itself indeed, which ordains it, prove it to have been a novelty.

From the correct idea which we now form of marriage, it results in the first place, that good order, and even piety, render religious forms adopted in all christian countries necessary. But the essence of