On August 20, 1789, an ecclesiastical committee was formed for the regulation of all affairs pending between Church and State. It was composed of thirty members, chosen with great care from among the most violent sectaries of the Assembly. Out of the thirty only nine were able to approach the discussion of ecclesiastical subjects with any appearance of justice, and this small minority soon found it impossible to advance their views in the face of the twenty-one radicals sworn to enslave and degrade the Church; they were consequently compelled to resign from the commission, leaving the great work of Church affairs in the hands of an impious cabal. The result of the deliberations of this diminished committee is found in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which was voted in the Constituent Assembly, from July 12 to July 24, 1790. The adversaries of religion betray a naive surprise that the Church should refuse to accept a law so worded as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Yet to anyone acquainted with the spirit of Christianity the reasons for such hostility are sufficiently evident. The Abbe Hubert Mailfait in his comprehensive little work upon the subject thus sums up the most objectionable features of the wholly iniquitous law: First. It destroys the religious hierarchy and annihilates the pontifical supremacy when it stipulates: (a) that the new bishops can no longer address the Pope to obtain from him the bulls of confirmation (tit. II., art. 19): (b) that the canonical institution shall no longer be given by the Pope, but by the metropolitan (tit. II., art. 16 and 17): (c) that the old division of France into dioceses and parishes shall be substituted by a new repartition, decreed without the advice of ecclesiastical authority, and without the approbation of the head of Christianity (tit. I.). Second. It destroys ecclesiastical discipline: (a) by attributing the election of bishops and pastors to the laity, by way of the ballot and the absolute plurality of votes (tit. II., art. 2) and in decreeing the conditions of eligibility which should be found in candidates to a bishopric or parish (tit. II.): (b) in determining the number of foundations, prebends, abbeys, priories, etc. (tit. I., art. 20-24 and 25); in restricting to the point of annihilation the power of the bishops in the nomination to ecclesiastical employments (tit. II., art. 22, 24, 25, 43). Third. It sanctions an inadmissible domination of the temporal over the spiritual power, in subordinating the exercise of ecclesiastical functions to the taking of an oath of fidelity to the Constitution decreed by the Assembly (tit. II., art. 21 and 38).