Now, religion is this law, and includes all that it commands to be done, all that it forbids to be done, and all the means and conditions of its fulfilment. The church, as all Catholics hold, is the embodiment of this law, and is therefore in her very nature and constitution teleological. She speaks always and everywhere with the authority of God, as the final cause of creation, and therefore her words are law, her commands are the commands of God. Christ, who is God as well as man, is her personality, and therefore she lives, teaches, and governs in him, and he in her. This being so, it is clear that religious liberty must consist in the unrestrained freedom and independence of the church to teach and govern all men and nations, princes and people, rulers and ruled, in all things enjoined by the teleological law of man's existence, and therefore in the recognition and maintenance for the church of that very supreme authority which the popes have always claimed, and against which the Reformation protested, and which secular princes are generally disposed to resist when it crosses their pride, their policy, their ambition, or their love of power. Manifestly, then, religious liberty and Protestantism are mutually antagonistic, each warring against the other. The church asserts and vindicates the rights of God in the government of men, and hence is she called the kingdom of God on earth. The rights of God are the foundation of all human rights; for man cannot create or originate rights, since he is a creature, not his own, and belongs, all he is and all he has, to his Creator. God's rights being perfect and absolute, extend to all his creatures; and he has therefore the right that no one of his creatures oppress or wrong another, and that justice be done alike by all men to all men. We can wrong no man, deprive no man of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, without violating the rights of God and offending our Maker. "Inasmuch as ye did it to the least of my brethren, ye did it unto me." Hence, the church in asserting and vindicating the rights of God, asserts and protects in the fullest manner possible the so-called inalienable rights of man, opposes with divine authority all tyranny, all despotism, all arbitrary power, all wrong, all oppression, every species of slavery, and asserts the fullest liberty, political, civil, social, and individual, that is possible without confounding liberty with license. The liberty she sustains is true liberty; for it is that of which our Lord speaks when he says, "If the Son makes you free, ye shall be free indeed." The church keeps, guards, declares, and applies the divine law, of which human laws must be transcripts in order to have the force or vigor of laws. Man has in his own right no power to legislate for man, and the state can rightfully govern only by virtue of authority from God. Hence, St. Paul says, _Non est potestas nisi a Deo_. "There is no power except from God."