In a word, to unravel all the contradictions in which books on the canon law abound, and to adjust our ideas in respect to the ecclesiastical ministry, let us endeavor, in the midst of a thousand ambiguities, to determine what is the Church.
The Church, then, is all believers, collectively, who are called together on certain days to pray in common, and at all times to perform good actions.
Priests are persons appointed, under the authority of the State, to direct these prayers, and superintend public worship generally.
A numerous Church cannot exist without ecclesiastics; but these ecclesiastics are not the Church.
It is not less evident that if the ecclesiastics, who compose a part of civil society, have acquired rights which tend to trouble or destroy such society, such rights ought to be suppressed.
It is still more obvious that if God has attached prerogatives or rights to the Church, these prerogatives and these rights belong exclusively neither to the head of the Church nor to the ecclesiastics; because these are not the Church itself, any more than the magistrates are the sovereign, either in a republic or a monarchy.
Lastly; it is very evident that it is our souls only which are submitted to the care of the clergy, and that for spiritual objects alone.
The soul acts inwardly; its inward acts are thought, will, inclination, and an acquiescence in certain truths, all which are above restraint; and it is for the ecclesiastical ministry to instruct, but not to command them.
The soul acts also outwardly. Its exterior acts are submission to the civil law; and here constraint may take place, and temporal or corporeal penalties may punish the violations of the law.
Obedience to the ecclesiastical order ought, consequently, to be always free and voluntary; it ought to exact no other. On the contrary, submission to the civil law may be enforced.