the clergy have no right to engross the name of churchman, they have also no right to extend the application of the word spiritual to all they do, as when they use it to cover their property and incomes in order to exempt them from legal burthens or conditions. The clergy have indeed a spiritual office in the church, but their dealings outside these definite functions, their tenure of land, their financial and other temporal engagements, are just as much secular as those of their lay brethren, and are just as much subject to the law of the state. Who would say that a clergyman's crimes, should he commit theft or murder, were to be regarded as spiritual acts? These are evidently to be punished like other men's only with greater strictness, because the culprits have not the same excuse of ignorance. The clergy are in these cases, and equally in all, other civil relations, simply members of society, and as members of society they must be treated; they can claim no sort of exemption in virtue of their religious character. More than this, since the business of government is to maintain peace, it is the duty of the ruler to limit the number of clergymen in any part of the kingdom, should their growth appear likely to disturb the order and tranquillity of the state.
The power of the clergy is thus not only restricted to spiritual affairs; it can only be given effect to by spiritual means. Temporal pains and penalties do not belong to the law of the Gospel, which indeed is not, properly speaking, a law at all but rather an instruction, doctrina; for it is not laid down that any man should be compelled to its observance, and coercive force is part of the definition of law. The priest then may warn and threaten, but beyond this he has no competence. If a heretic become obnoxious to the civil law – if, in other words, his doctrine is dangerous to society – by that law he is to be tried: but of heresy, as such, there is but one judge, Jesus Christ, and his sentence is in the world to come; errors of opinion lie beyond the cognisance of
