should belong exclusively either to the chief of the Church or to the
ecclesiastics, because they are not the Church, just as the magistrates
are not the sovereign in either a democratic state or in a monarchy.

Finally, it is quite evident that it is our souls which are under the
clergy's care, solely for spiritual things.

Our soul acts internally; internal acts are thought, volition,
inclinations, acquiescence in certain truths. All these acts are above
all coercion, and are within the ecclesiastical minister's sphere only
in so far as he must instruct and never command.

This soul acts also externally. External actions are under the civil
law. Here coercion may have a place; temporal or corporal pains maintain
the law by punishing those who infringe it.

Obedience to ecclesiastical order must consequently always be free and
voluntary: no other should be possible. Submission, on the other hand,
to civil order may be coerced and compulsory.

For the same reason, ecclesiastical punishments, always spiritual, do
not reach here below any but those who are convinced inwardly of their
fault. Civil pains, on the contrary, accompanied by a physical ill, have
their physical effects, whether or no the guilty recognize their
justice.

From this it results obviously that the authority of the clergy is and
can be spiritual only; that it should not have any temporal power; that
no coercive force is proper to its ministry, which would be destroyed by
it.