In this class of cases, the rule of action which governs the civil courts of the United States, as enunciated by the highest legal tribunal, the Supreme Court, is founded upon a broad and sound view of the relations of church and state, and is, that wherever questions of faith or of discipline, or ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law, have been decided by the highest of these church judicatories to which the matter has been carried, the legal tribunals must accept such decisions as final, and as binding on them in their application to the case before them.[3] In delivering the opinion of the court in that case, the learned Mr. Justice Miller said: "In this country the full and free right to entertain any religious belief, to practise any religious principle, and to teach any religious doctrine which does not violate the laws of morality and property, and which does not infringe personal rights, is conceded to all. The law is not committed to the support of any dogma, the establishment of any sect. The right to organize voluntary religious associations, to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted questions of faith within the association, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the individual members, congregations, and officers within the general association, is unquestioned. All who unite themselves to such a body do so with an implied consent to this government, and are bound to submit to it. But it would be a vain consent, and would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular courts and have them reversed. It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject to only such appeals as the organism itself provides for. "Nor do we see that justice would be likely to be promoted by submitting those decisions to review in the ordinary judicial tribunals. "The Catholic Church has constitutional and ecclesiastical laws of its own that task the ablest minds to become familiar with. It cannot be expected that judges of the civil courts can be as competent in the ecclesiastical law as the ablest men in the church. It would therefore be an appeal from the more learned tribunal in the law, which should decide the case, to one which is less so. "These views are supported by the preponderant weight of authority in this country."