The throne was chained to the altar, they desired to chain the altar to the throne.

It was only displacing tyranny,--oppressing conscience by law instead of oppressing the law by conscience.
The civil constitution of the clergy was the expression of this reciprocal false position.

The clergy was deprived of these endowments in landed estates, which decimated property and population in France.
They deprived it of its benefices, its abbeys, and its tithes--the altar's feudality.

It received in lieu an endowment in salaries levied on the taxes.

As the condition of this arrangement, which gave to the working clergy an existence, influence, and a powerful body of ministers of worship paid by the state, they required the clergy to take the oath of the constitution.