This is not tolerance or indifference; it only means that the state does not arrogate to itself the right to decide which is the true church, and holds itself bound to respect and protect equally the church or churches acknowledged as such by its citizens. The doctrine that a man is free before God to be of any religion, or of no religion as he pleases, or the liberty of conscience, as understood by the so-called liberals throughout the world, and which was condemned by Gregory XVI. of immortal memory, in his encyclical of August 15th, 1832, receives no countenance from the American state, and is repugnant to its fundamental constitution. Heretical and schismatic sects have, indeed, no rights; for they have no authority from God to represent the spiritual order, and their existence is, no doubt, repugnant to the real interests of society as well as destructive to souls; but in a community where they exist along with the true church, the state must respect and protect in them the rights of the spiritual order, not indeed because they claim to be the church, but because they are held to be such by its citizens, and all its citizens have equal rights in the civil order, and the equal right to have their conscience, if they have a conscience, respected and protected. The church of God exacts nothing more of it in this respect than to be protected in her freedom to combat and vanquish the adherents of false churches or false religions with her own spiritual weapons. More she might exact of the state in perfect Christian society; but this is all that she can exact in an imperfect and divided Christian society, as is the case in nearly all modern nations.