The rights of the state and of the citizen, alike must be derived from God, and have a theological basis, or be no rights at all, but words without meaning. There is then no such separation between politics and theology as European democracy asserts. Such separation is unphilosophical, and against the truth of things. It has been so held in all ages and nations of the world. All the great theologians, philosophers, and moralists of the human race have always held polities to be a branch of ethics, or morals, and that branch which treats of the application of the catholic principles of theology to society, or the social relations of mankind. The permanent, universal, and invariable principles of civil society are all theological principles, for there are no such principles outside of theology, and the office of the state is to apply these principles only to what is local, temporal, and variable. It is evident then that principles, properly so called, lie in the theological order, and come within the province of the theologian, not of the statesman, and are therefore to be determined by the spiritual society, not by the civil. It is, then, the spiritual not the temporal, religion not politics, that asserts and maintains these rights, and religion does it in asserting and maintaining the right of conscience, which is the right of God, and the basis of all rights. The right of conscience is exemption from all merely human authority--a right to be held by all civil society as sacred and inviolable; and is the first and impassable barrier to the power of the state. The state cannot pass it without violence, without the most outrageous tyranny. It is then religion, not the state, that asserts and maintains freedom; for the state when it acts, acts as authority, not as liberty. So, on the other hand, is it religion that asserts and maintains the authority, I say, not the force, of the state. The authority of the state is its right to govern. In respect to civil society itself, it is liberty; in respect to citizens, it is authority. Being a right on the part of the state or society, it, like all other rights, lies in the spiritual order, and is equally sacred and inviolable. {11} Religion, then, while it makes it the duty of the state to recognize and protect the rights of the individual citizen, makes it the duty of the individual citizen to recognize, respect, and defend the rights of the state or society. The duty in both cases is a religious duty, because all right is held from God, and only God can enjoin duty, or bind conscience. Deny God, and you deny religion; deny religion, and you deny all duty and all right;--alike the rights and duties of the state and the rights and duties of the individual citizen, and, therefore, alike both liberty and authority, which being correlatives can never exist the one without the other. There is no denying this conclusion without denying reason itself.