maintained in it a national as well as particularist spirit, had dried
up; in ceased being a distinct, proprietary and favored body; its
members are no longer leagued together by the community of a temporal
interest, by the need of defending their privileges, by the faculty of
acting in concert, by the right of holding periodical assemblies; they
are no longer, as formerly, attached to the civil power by great
social and legal advantages, by their honorable priority in lay
society, by their immunities from taxation, by the presence and
influence of their bishops in the provincial parliaments, by the noble
origin and magnificent endowments of nearly all their prelates, by the
repressive support which the secular arm lent to the church against
dissenters and free-thinkers, by the immemorial legislation and
customs which, erecting Catholicism into a State religion, imposed the
Catholic faith on the monarch, not alone in his quality of a private
individual and to fix his personal belief, but again in his quality of
public magistrate, to influence his policy and to share in his
government. This last article is capital, and out of its abrogation
the rest follows: at this turn of the road the French clergy is thrown
off the Gallican track, every step it takes after this being on the
way to Rome. For, according to Catholic doctrine, outside of the Roman
Church there is no salvation; to enter it, to rest in it, to be led by
it is the highest interest and first duty of man; it is the unique and
infallible guide; all acts that it condemns are culpable, and not only
private acts, but likewise all public acts; the sovereign who commits
them may, as an individual, be Catholic by profession and even loyal
at heart; but, as a ruler, he is disloyal, he has lost his semi-
ecclesiastic character, he has ceased to be "the exterior bishop," he
is not worthy to command a clerical body. Henceforth, the Christian
conscience no longer bows down before him with love and respect;
nothing remains to him for support but social prudence; and again is