“For indeed, the Church is divinely constituted and lives by her own right, not by privilege. Who ever would have granted her such a privilege had it not belonged to her by nature? The State? So civil society is then superior to religious society and can legitimately take back what it generously bestowed? History - along with Christian common sense - condemns the false conception behind such a way of talking. The Church was not created by the State; on the contrary, it was she who created the State and society; and neither the State nor society bestowed any privileges on the Church; they recognized her mode of existence as prior to their own, as endowed with rights in no way deriving from them and which they can only modify by some abuse of power, against which the public interest is bound to protest.”