Protestantism is usually complimented on having brought the mundane into repute again, _e. g._ marriage, the State, etc. But the mundane itself as mundane, the secular, is even more indifferent to it than to Catholicism, which lets the profane world stand, yes, and relishes its pleasures, while the rational, consistent Protestant sets about annihilating the mundane altogether, and that simply by _hallowing_ it. So marriage has been deprived of its naturalness by becoming sacred, not in the sense of the Catholic sacrament, where it only receives its consecration from the church and so is unholy at bottom, but in the sense of being something sacred in itself to begin with, a sacred relation. Just so the State, etc. Formerly the pope gave consecration and his blessing to it and its princes; now the State is intrinsically sacred, majesty is sacred without needing the priest's blessing. The order of nature, or natural law, was altogether hallowed as "God's ordinance." Hence it is said _e. g._ in the Augsburg Confession, Art. 11: "So now we reasonably abide by the saying, as the jurisconsults have wisely and rightly said: that man and woman should be with each other is a natural law. Now, if it is a _natural law, then it is God's ordinance_, therefore implanted in nature, and therefore a _divine_ law also." And is it anything more than Protestantism brought up to date, when Feuerbach pronounces moral relations sacred, not as God's ordinance indeed, but, instead, for the sake of the _spirit_ that dwells in them? "But marriage--as a free alliance of love, of course--is _sacred of itself_, by the _nature_ of the union that is formed here. _That_ marriage alone is a _religious_ one that is a _true_ one, that corresponds to the _essence_ of marriage, love. And so it is with all moral relations. They are _ethical_, are cultivated with a moral mind, only where they rank as _religious of themselves_. True friendship is only where the _limits_ of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with the same conscientiousness with which the believer guards the dignity of his God. Friendship is and must be _sacred_ for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred _in and of itself_."[63]