"The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever excised any influence upon the form of a religious service. It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the Confessions. In the National Socialist State anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion. It is however true that if priests, instead of being servants of God, prefer to regard as their mission the abuse of our present Reich, its institutions or its leaders, then the National Socialist State will relentlessly force them to realize that no one will be suffered to destroy this State, and that priests so soon as they set themselves beyond the law will by the law be brought to account precisely in the same way as any other German citizen. But it must be at this point established that there are ten thousands and ten thousands of priests of all Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as of probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State. To protect these the State regards as its task; the destruction of the enemies of the State it regards as its duty."