God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself, but there can be no reconciliation without submission. God cannot change, and the world must. No humiliating conditions are imposed on it, but it must acknowledge that it has been wrong, and that the law it has resisted is just and right, and, above all, obligatory. This is the hardship the world complains of. But what reason has it to complain? What is demanded of it not for its good, or that is not demanded by the very law of life itself? The world demands liberty, but what avails a false and impracticable liberty? True liberty is founded in justice, is a right, and supported by law. We have shown, time and again, that the church suppresses no real liberty, and asserts and maintains for all men all the liberty that can fall to the lot of any created being. It demands the free exercise of human reason. In what respect does the church restrain freedom of thought? Can reason operate freely without principles, without data, without light, without any support, or anything on which to rest? What is the mind without truth, or intelligence in which nothing real is grasped? We know only so far as we know truth, and our opinions and convictions are worth nothing in so far as they are false, or not in accordance with the truth that we neither make nor can unmake, which is independent of us, independent of all men, and of all created intellects. What harm, then, does the church do us when she presents us infallibly that truth which the mind needs for its support? {16} Society needs law, and how does the church harm it by teaching the law of God, without which it cannot subsist? Men need government. What harm does the church do in declaring the supreme law of God, from which all human laws derive their force as laws, and which defines and guarantees both authority and liberty, protects the prince from the turbulence of the mob, and the people from the tyranny of the prince?