It is still more obvious that if God has attached prerogatives or rights to the Church, these prerogatives and these rights belong exclusively neither to the head of the Church nor to the ecclesiastics; because these are not the Church itself, any more than the magistrates are the sovereign, either in a republic or a monarchy. Lastly; it is very evident that it is our souls only which are submitted to the care of the clergy, and that for spiritual objects alone. The soul acts inwardly; its inward acts are thought, will, inclination, and an acquiescence in certain truths, all which are above restraint; and it is for the ecclesiastical ministry to instruct, but not to command them. The soul acts also outwardly. Its exterior acts are submission to the civil law; and here constraint may take place, and temporal or corporeal penalties may punish the violations of the law. Obedience to the ecclesiastical order ought, consequently, to be always free and voluntary; it ought to exact no other. On the contrary, submission to the civil law may be enforced. For the same reason ecclesiastical penalties, always being spiritual, attach in this world to those only who are inwardly convinced of their error. Civil penalties, on the contrary, accompanied by physical evil produce physical effects, whether the offender acknowledge the justice of them or not. Hence it manifestly results that the authority of the clergy can only be spiritual--that it is unacquainted with temporal power, and that any co-operative force belongs not to the administration of the Church, which is essentially destroyed by it. It moreover follows that a prince, intent not to suffer any division of his authority, ought not to permit any enterprise which places the members of the community in an outward or civil dependence on the ecclesiastical corporation. Such are the incontestable principles of genuine canonical right or law, the rules and the decisions of which ought at all times to be submitted to the test of eternal and immutable truths, founded upon natural rights and the necessary order of society. SECTION II. _Of the Possessions of Ecclesiastics._ Let us constantly ascend to the principles of society, which, in civil as in religious order, are the foundations of all right. Society in general is the proprietor of the territory of a country, and the source of national riches. A portion of this national revenue is devoted to the sovereign to support the expenses of government. Every individual is possessor of that part of the territory, and of the revenue, which the laws insure him; and no possession or enjoyment can at any time be sustained, except under the protection of law. In society we hold not any good, or any possession as a simple natural right, as we give up our natural rights and submit to the order of civil society, in return for assurance and protection. It is, therefore, by the law that we hold our possessions.