hange either the church or the dogmas of faith, for they
are founded in the highest reality, which is above him, over him, and
independent of him. Religion is above and independent of the state,
and the state has nothing to do with the church or her dogmas, but to
accept and conform to them as it does to any of the facts or principles
of science, to a mathematical truth, or to a physical law.

But while the church, with her essential constitution, and her dogmas
are founded in the Divine order, and are catholic and unalterable, the
relations between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities may be
changed or modified by the changes of time and place. These relations
have not been always the same, but have differed in different ages and
countries. During the first three centuries of our era the church had
no legal status, and was either connived at or persecuted by the state.
Under the Christian emperors she was recognized by the civil law; her
prelates had exclusive jurisdiction in mixed civil and ecclesiastical
questions, and were made, in some sense, civil magistrates, and paid as
such by the empire. Under feudalism, the prelates received investiture
as princes and barons, and formed alone, or in connection with the
temporal lords, an estate in the kingdom. The Pope became a temporal
prince and suzerain, at one time, of a large part of Europe, and
exercised the arbitratorship in all grave questions between Christian
sovereigns themselves, and between them and their subjects. Since the
downfall of feudalism and the establishment of modern centralized
monarchy, the church has been robbed of the greater part of her
temporal possessions, and deprived, in most countries, of all civil
functions, and treated by the state either as an enemy or as a slave.

In all the sectarian and schismatic states of the Old World, the
national church is held in strict subjection to the civil authority, as
in Great Britain and Russia, and is the slave of the state; in the
other states of Europe, as France, Austria, Spain, and Italy, she is
treated with distrust by the civil government, and allowed hardly a
shadow of freedom and independence. In France, which has the proud
title of eldest daughter of the church, Catholics, as such, are not
freer than they are in Turkey. All religious are said to be free, and
all are free, except the religion of the majority of Frenchmen. The
emperor, because nominally a Catholic, takes it upon himself