 The state or sovereign necessarily controls all sub-state collectives, including economic, political, and religious associations, especially if they compete with it for citizens’ allegiance (DJN VII.2.21–24). Though piety is a personal matter between the deity and individual believers, its official mediation by ecclesial entities or churches, which also direct and organize human actions, has a worldly impact that may interfere with the state’s functions (which are also divinely enjoined) – as Pufendorf argued by reference to the history of Catholicism and the papacy’s role in European affairs (Einl., ch. 12, 2013; also [1839, 1714, 1691b]). Therefore, sovereigns have the right (and obligation) to regulate religious organizations, to examine beliefs, and even to foster an official religion – though only to insure compatibility with political order (DJN VII.4.11, 9.4). In fact, like public schools (if they do not merely perpetuate scholastic subtleties), religion may also aid the process of civic formation – which is required because states are adventitious moral entities devised by humans for a particular purpose, and because (good) citizens are not born but made (DJN VII.1.3–4). However, since they are disparate institutions regulating different moral personae (citizens, believers), neither state nor church exists primarily to serve the other’s purposes. The state’s general authority regarding religion, and its sovereignty over all religious groups alike, also creates room for the toleration of religious minorities and thus restrains destabilizing confessional conflict (Seidler 2002, Zurbuchen 2013, Lehmann 2013, Palladini 1997b). Though Pufendorf had not yet arrived at Christian Thomasius’ notion of a deconfessionalized state (Hunter 2007), his historical awareness of religion’s impact on government, and its frequent contribution to political factionalism, made him wary of independent religious institutions and inclined to favor state oversight. In any case, since they issue from the same warranting deity, he held that ultimately true politics and true (religious) doctrine cannot conflict (DJN VII.4.8, 4.11).