nscience no longer bows down before him
with love and respect; nothing remains to him for support but social
prudence; and again is it with resignation, because the Church commands
obedience to the authorities, and the same Church commands disobedience
to these authorities when, abusing their power, they encroach on its
rights.

Now, ten years ago, the State had done nothing else, and, to the old
Concordat which was not good, it had just substituted a Concordat that
was worse. This new alliance, concluded by it with the Church in 1802,
is not a religious marriage, the solemn sacrament by which, at Rheims,
she and the King promised to live together and in harmony in the same
faith, but a simple civil contract, more precisely the legal regulation
of a lasting and deliberate divorce.--In a paroxysm of despotism the
State has stripped the Church of its possessions and turned it out of
doors, without clothes or bread, to beg on the highways; next, in a fit
of rage, its aim was to kill it outright, and it did partially strangle
it. Recovering its reason, but having ceased to be Catholic, it has
forced the signature of a pact which is repugnant, and which reduces
their moral union to physical cohabitation. Willingly or not, the
two contracting parties are to continue living together in the same
domicile, since that is the only one they possess; but, as there is
incompatibility of humor, they will do well to live apart. To this end,
the State assigns a small, distinct lodging to the Church and allows her
a meager supply of food; this done, it fancies that it may cry quits;
and, worse still, it imagines that she is always its subject, and still
pretends to the same authority over her; the State is determined to
retain all rights conferred upon it by the old marriage, and these
rights it exercises and adds to. Meanwhile, it admits into the same
lodging three other Churches which it subjects to the same regime: that
makes four mess-rooms to be maintained and which it watches, supports
and utilizes the best it can for the temporal advantage of the
household. There is nothing more odious to the Catholic Church than this
advertised, practical polygamy, this subvention granted indifferently
to all cults, this patronage in common, more insulting than abandonment,
this equal treatment[5211] which places the pulpit of truth and the
pulpits of falsehood, the ministry of salvation and the ministries
of perdition, on the same footing. Nothi