May the Church eject from its bosom those who disgrace or who trouble it? This is a grand question, upon which the canonists have not hesitated to adopt the affirmative. Let us repeat, in the first place, that ecclesiastics are not the Church. The assembled Church, which includes the State or sovereign, doubtless possesses the right to exclude from the congregations a scandalous sinner, after repeated charitable and sufficient warnings. The exclusion, even in this case, cannot inflict any civil penalty, any bodily evil, or any merely earthly privation; but whatever right the Church may in this way possess, the ecclesiastics belonging to it can only exercise it as far as the sovereign and State allow. It is therefore still more incumbent on the sovereign, in this case, to watch over the manner in which this permitted right is exercised, vigilance being the more necessary in consequence of the abuse to which it is liable. It is, consequently, necessary for the supreme civil power to consult the rules for the regulation of assistance and charity, to prescribe suitable restrictions, without which every declaration of the clergy, and all excommunication, will be null and without effect, even when only applicable to the spiritual order. It is to confound different eras and circumstances, to regulate the proceedings of present times from the practice of the apostles. The sovereign in those days was not of the religion of the apostles, nor was the Church included in the State, so that the ministers of worship could not have recourse to the magistrates. Moreover, the apostles were ministers extraordinary, of which we now perceive no resemblance. If other examples of excommunication, without the authority of the sovereign, be quoted, I can only say that I cannot hear, without horror, of examples of excommunication insolently fulminated against sovereigns and magistrates; I boldly reply, that these denunciations amount to manifest rebellion, and to an open violation of the most sacred duties of religion, charity, and natural right. Let us add, in order to afford a complete idea of excommunication, and of the true rules of canonical right or law in this respect, that excommunication, legitimately pronounced by those to whom the sovereign, in the name of the Church, expressly leaves the power, includes privation only of spiritual advantages on earth, and can extend to nothing else: all beyond this will be abuse, and more or less tyrannical. The ministers of the Church can do no more than declare that such and such a man is no more a member of the Church. He may still, however, enjoy notwithstanding the excommunication, all his natural, civil, and temporal rights as a man and a citizen. If the magistrate steps in and deprives such a man, in consequence, of an office or employment in society, it then becomes a civil penalty for some fault against civil order.