or canons inherited by that Church and accepted by the State.

In this way, the ascendancy of the State, in ecclesiastical matters,
increases beyond all measure and remains without any counterpoise.
Instead of one Church, it maintains four, while the principal one, the
Catholic, comprising 33 million followers, and more dependent than
under the old monarchy, loses the privileges which once limited or
compensated it for its subjection. - Formerly the prince was its
temporal head, on condition that he should be its exterior arm, that
it should have the monopoly of education and the censorship of books,
that he should use his strong arm against heretics, schismatics and
free-thinkers. Of all these obligations which kings accepted, the new
sovereign frees himself, and yet, with the Holy See, he holds on to
the same prerogatives and, with the Church, the same rights as his
predecessors. He is just as minutely dictatorial as formerly with
regard to the details of worship. Sometimes he fixes the fees and
perquisites of the priests for administering the sacraments: "This
charge is a purely civil and temporal operation, since it resolves
itself into a levy of so many pence on the citizen. Bishops and
priests should not be allowed to decide here.[52] The government alone
must remain the arbiter between the priest who receives and the person
who pays." Sometimes, he intervenes in the publication of plenary
indulgence: "It is essential[53] that indulgences should not be
awarded for causes which might be contrary to public order or to the
welfare of the country; the political magistrate is equally interested
in knowing what the authority is that grants indulgences; if its title
to act is legal, to what persons indulgences are granted, what persons
are entrusted with their distribution, and what persons are to fix the
term and duration of extraordinary prayers." - Thus bound and held by
the State, the Church is simply one of its appendices, for its own