It is even to be proved, from all evidence, that in a religion of which God is represented as the author, the functions of ministers, their persons, property, pretensions, and manner of inculcating morality, teaching doctrines, celebrating ceremonies, the adjustment of spiritual penalties; in a word, all that relates to civil order, ought to be submitted to the authority of the prince and the inspection of the magistracy. If this jurisprudence constitutes a science, here will be found the elements. It is for the magistracy, solely, to authorize the books admissible into the schools, according to the nature and form of the government. It is thus that M. Paul Joseph Rieger, counsellor of the court, judiciously teaches canon law in the University of Vienna; and, in the like manner, the republic of Venice examined and reformed all the rules in the states which have ceased to belong to it. It is desirable that examples so wise should generally prevail. SECTION I. _Of the Ecclesiastical Ministry._ Religion is instituted only to preserve order among mankind, and to render them worthy of the bounty of the Deity by virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend to this object ought to be regarded as foreign or dangerous. Instruction, exhortation, the fear of punishment to come, the promises of a blessed hereafter, prayer, advice, and spiritual consolation are the only means which churchmen can properly employ to render men virtuous on earth and happy to all eternity. Every other means is repugnant to the freedom of reason; to the nature of the soul; to the unalterable rights of conscience; to the essence of religion; to that of the clerical ministry; and to the just rights of the sovereign. Virtue infers liberty, as the transport of a burden implies active force. With constraint there is no virtue, and without virtue no religion. Make me a slave and I shall be the worse for it. Even the sovereign has no right to employ force to lead men to religion, which essentially presumes choice and liberty. My opinions are no more dependent on authority than my sickness or my health. In a word, to unravel all the contradictions in which books on the canon law abound, and to adjust our ideas in respect to the ecclesiastical ministry, let us endeavor, in the midst of a thousand ambiguities, to determine what is the Church. The Church, then, is all believers, collectively, who are called together on certain days to pray in common, and at all times to perform good actions. Priests are persons appointed, under the authority of the State, to direct these prayers, and superintend public worship generally. A numerous Church cannot exist without ecclesiastics; but these ecclesiastics are not the Church. It is not less evident that if the ecclesiastics, who compose a part of civil society, have acquired rights which tend to trouble or destroy such society, such rights ought to be suppressed.