s the sects have no right to be dissatisfied, for it
subjects them to no disadvantage not inherent in sectarianism itself in
presence of Catholicity, and without any support from the civil
authority.

The effect of this mission of our country fully realized, would be to
harmonize church and state, religion and politics, not by absorbing
either in the other, or by obliterating the natural distinction between
them, but by conforming both to the real or Divine order, which is
supreme and immutable. It places the two powers in their normal
relation, which has hitherto never been done, because hitherto there
never has been a state normally constituted. The nearest approach made
to the realization of the proper relations of church and state, prior
to the birth of the American Republic, was in the Roman Empire under
the Christian emperors; but the state had been perverted by paganism,
and the emperors, inheriting the old pontifical power, could never be
made to understand their own incompetency in spirituals, and persisted
to the last in treating the church as a civil institution under their
supervision and control, as does the Emperor of the French in France,
even yet. In the Middle Ages the state was so barbarously constituted
that the church was obliged to supervise its administration, to mix
herself up with the civil government, in order to infuse some
intelligence into civil matters, and to preserve her own rightful
freedom and independence. When the states broke away from feudalism,
they revived the Roman constitution, and claimed the authority in
ecclesiastical matters that had been exercised by the Roman Caesars,
and the states that adopted a sectarian religion gave the sect adopted
a civil establishment, and subjected it to the civil government, to
which the sect not unwillingly consented, on condition that the civil
authority excluded the church and all other sects, and made it the
exclusive religion of the state, as in England, Scotland, Sweden,
Denmark, Russia, and the states of Northern Germany. Even yet the
normal relations of church and state are nowhere practicable in the Old
World; for everywhere either the state is more or less barbaric in its
constitution, or the religion is sectarian, and the church as well as
civilization is obliged, to struggle with antagonistic forces, for
self-preservation.

There are formidable parties all over Europe at work to introduce what
they take to be the American system