This means, secondly, that the Church is recognized as having the right to denounce and morally instruct her children and the state itself, and the denunciation of the sins of the state can only come from the church hierarchy and be limited by the state only to the extent of extreme political necessity and not otherwise than according to the exact meaning of the laws.

This means, thirdly, that the state has no right to demand from the Church the blessing of him and his acts, although the Church herself can grant such blessings in her own free understanding.

This means, fourthly, that the state recognizes as a competent legal entity a church society headed by the church hierarchy.

In order for the independence of the Church not to remain an empty word, the state must:

1) to recognize the right of church society to acquire property and to possess it, although certain norms, the right of self-taxation and self-government may be established here;

2) to renounce all material support for the Church, for example, in the form of donations of property, the granting of possessions on preferential terms, salaries to the clergy, military chaplains, teachers of religion in schools, officials of church society, awards, etc.

3) to refuse to support the acts of the Church by the power of the state, for example, to persecute heretics and schismatics at the behest of the "Church", to help the church society in collecting the fees established by it.

Finally, the state, recognizing the right of the hierarchy, clergy and monasticism to be exempted from a number of state duties, for example, from military service, may, to the extent established by law, take certain restrictive measures against malicious attempts to evade the fulfillment of civic duty by moving to a privileged part of church society.

However, the Orthodox state within this framework can set itself the goal of defending Orthodoxy according to its own understanding; And it should even do so. It must take certain measures to set certain limits to the aggressive propaganda of non-Orthodoxy or non-Orthodoxy, for example, atheistic liberalism, communism and Catholicism. On the other hand, the state, in the matter of public education, must see to it that it is combined with Orthodox religious education. It cannot do this without the assistance of the Church, and it is necessary to turn to its assistance, reserving for itself the right of general supervision and control, but by no means paying for the teachers of religion provided to it by the Church. They can and must be paid for by the church community from its own funds.

Under these conditions, the Church will be able to become an active and effective participant in the entire cultural life. Real independence from the state and the Orthodoxy of the state itself will provide it with real authority and bring their relationship closer to a symphony. Then the Church will be able to reveal her ideals incomparably more and more clearly and with her advice to have a beneficial effect on all life. Then the voice of the Church, calling, as in the time of Hermogenes, to the defense of the homeland, will not be interpreted by anyone as forced by the state, and prayers for the Christ-loving army will not be subject to misinterpretations. After all, one must realize the greatest misfortune of the entire Russian Revolution, which consisted in the fact that the long oppression of the Church shattered faith in her, and "revolutions" suddenly began to take place in church society itself.

18. There can be no ideal, perfect solution to the question of the relationship of the state to the church organization, i.e., one that would be suitable for all times, conditions and peoples and could not be improved. Otherwise, all empirical being would not only become the Church, but would already be it, and it would only become and will only become, until times and seasons are fulfilled, until the heavens are folded into a scroll, i.e., until it ceases to be only empirical and temporal. Of course, the becoming of the whole world as the fullness of the Church or the Kingdom of God enters into this fullness or this Kingdom, and even enters into such a way that without it, without becoming and, consequently, imperfection, there is no perfection itself, there is no perfect Church; for the perfection of the Church lies in the fact that Christ fills up what is "unfinished," and there can be no perfection without the earthly life of the Son of God, without His sufferings and death. Therefore, all earthly labor is necessary and in its essence ecclesiastical, and we all work on earth not only for our "future," but for eternity and even in eternity. Our every thought and every action we do is in eternity, though not "only imperfect," as on earth. This is the greatest responsibility of our earthly life, the horror of sin and the joy of redemption and goodness (paragraph 1 ff.).

The paths of earthly life, the "callings" of a Christian are different (paragraph 6), but all of them are necessary in the Kingdom of God and are valuable, although not of equal value, but among them there are better and worse, more and less perfect. Thus, the righteous man, the one "who wants to be perfect," denies himself and the whole world for the sake of Christ, Who saves the world, and therefore for the sake of his brethren and for the sake of the world. He conforms himself to Jesus Christ and becomes a partaker of the Son of God in the active and self-sacrificing transfiguration of the world up to the crucifixion of Christ and to the point of co-dying with Him. In what and how death in Christ is expressed depends on external conditions, and physical death is only the completion of this death, and murder is one of its types: but he "who wants to be perfect" must know that the price of perfection is sacrificial death. But even he who does not want perfection nevertheless in his calling does God's work and works in eternity. He is inferior to the one who desires the perfect, but no one, not even this one who strives for perfection, can fulfill his work, for everyone has his own task.

There is no need to ask idle and stupid questions. "What would happen to the world if everyone wanted to become perfect?" In this case, could there be culture, earthly life itself? Wouldn't many needs and professions then be superfluous? "First you need to want perfection, and only then ask such questions: and only in this case can you get an answer to them, for God always answers questions that are not idle. But in fact, not everyone wants perfection, and even very few want it, and in reality no one really wants it, since "all are sinners, every single one." Any fleeting desire should not be considered a will, or a distinction should be made between essential will and superficial wills, which man often takes for essential, but which do not express or touch the depths and essence of man. The essential will determines the whole life of a person and is expressed in all his actions and desires, although in some more, in others less, and in others almost imperceptibly. Essential volition cannot be considered empirical, since, being empirically manifested, it embraces and determines the whole empiricism. This can be explained, and quite accurately, by some similarity. It is as if God asks every person before the beginning of his earthly life in what calling a person wants to live and whether he wants to strive for perfection, and according to the will of man, He grants him His grace. Therefore, in his earthly life man is not subject to anything and is not predestined, for he fulfills his essential will, but nevertheless everything is accomplished only by the power of God's grace. Thus God, "whom He foreordained, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son..., and whom He predestined, He also called, and whom He called, He also justified, and whom He justified, He also glorified" (Romans 8:29ff.); but God chose us in Christ Jesus "before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4). This means that I have no reason to envy one who follows the highest path on earth and before God, or to be offended by God because I do not feel a call to monasticism in myself, for I myself have chosen and am choosing what is less perfect. And, therefore, before renouncing the world, a person must consider whether his desire is not self-deception, whether it is pride, i.e. whether it corresponds to his essential desire, or whether he himself, in his sinfulness, wants to live less perfectly. After all, in the latter case, he must first overcome his sinful weakness, and only then outwardly change his life. This is the meaning of the solemn vow of monasticism.

19. If all the becoming of the world by the Church, all earthly life and all earthly work, is included in the fullness of the Church, this becoming in the very fullness of the Church is also perfected and perfect, no matter how incompatible the concepts of perfection and becoming are for us. Who, indeed, can conceive of "eternal life," i.e., perpetual motion, as "eternal rest"? And according to the word of the Church, "eternal rest" is "eternal life." Here, on earth, the becoming of the world (and of all of us) is not perfect: "only becoming." Here our perfection is limited by a certain limit, as if delineated by a certain circle, in which we spin like a squirrel in a wheel, helplessly and painfully. But this circle is drawn by ourselves, this limit to our perfection is set by us ourselves — by sinfully wanting only a little, "wanting imperfection." By our free and essential (paragraph 18) will, we create an insurmountable obstacle to our perfection, an enslaving necessity. This necessity, freely created by our freedom, is the original sin, which is committed by all people, although each in his own way, a sin in which everyone is guilty. As an essential will, it permeates all our thoughts, feelings, and actions; and there is not a single thought, even the slightest one, in which it would not be realized in one way or another. True, not everything is imbued with sin in the same measure, and with the development of man, his sinfulness can both increase and decrease. However, complete sinlessness on earth is not attainable, even for the greatest righteous man. Only the Lord Jesus Christ and His most pure, immaculate Body, the Mother of God and the Church are sinless on earth.