The function of the state in this
connection, only includes the negative right of regulating the
influence of these public teachers upon the visible political
commonwealth, that it may not be prejudicial to the public peace and
tranquility. Consequently the state has to take measures, on
occasion of any internal conflict in the church, or on occasion of any
collision of the several churches with each other, that civil
concord is not endangered; and this right falls within the province of
the police. It is beneath the dignity of the supreme power to
interpose in determining what particular faith the church shall
profess, or to decree that a certain faith shall be unalterably
held, and that the church may not reform itself. For in doing so,
the supreme power would be mixing itself up in a scholastic wrangle,
on a footing of equality with its subjects; the monarch would be
making himself a priest; and the churchmen might even reproach the
supreme power with understanding nothing about matters of faith.
Especially would this hold in respect of any prohibition of internal
reform in the church; for what the people as a whole cannot
determine upon for themselves cannot be determined for the people by
the legislator. But no people can ever rationally determine that
they will never advance farther in their insight into matters of
faith, or resolve that they will never reform the institutions of
the church; because this would be opposed to the humanity in their own
persons and to their highest rights.
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