being disquieted thereat; rather, wisely appreciating the influence which such rules have on the good order of civil society, these have been themselves, from time to time, the vindicators and defenders of the doctrines defined, and have promoted, by the concurrence of the royal power, their full and respectful observance.
It follows, moreover, that if the Church was instituted by its Divine Founder as a true and perfect society, distinct from the civil power and independent of it, with full authority in the triple order, legislative, judicial, and coercive, no confusion springs therefrom in the march of human society, and in the exercise of the rights of the two powers. The competence of the one and the other is clearly distinct and determined, according to the end to which they are respectively directed. The Church does not, in virtue of her authority, intervene directly and absolutely in the constitutive principles of governments, in the forms of civil regulations, in the political rights of citizens, in the duties of the State, and in the other points indicated in the minister's note, But, whereas no civil society can subsist without a supreme principle regulating the morality of its acts and laws, the Church has received from God this lofty mission, which tends to the happiness of the people, while she in no way embarrasses, by the exercise of this her ministry, the free and prompt action of Governments. She, in fact, by inculcating the principle of rendering to God that which is God's, and to Cæsar that which is Cæsar's, imposes at the same time upon her children the obligation of obeying the authority of princes for conscience sake. But these should also recognize that if anywhere a law is made opposed to the principles of eternal justice, to obey would not be a giving to Cæsar that which is Cæsar's, but a taking from God that which is God's.
I proceed now to say a word on the profound impression which the minister expects will be made throughout the world by the mere enunciation of the principles developed in the draft of constitution which forms the object of his despatch. In truth it is not easy to persuade oneself how the doctrines contained in that draft, and understood in the sense above pointed out, can produce the profound impression of which the minister speaks; unless indeed their spirit and character be wrested, or that he speaks of those who, professing principles different from those professed by the Catholic Church, cannot of course approve of such principles being inculcated and sanctioned afresh. I say afresh; because the doctrines contained in that document, as I have already
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