 As regards the second feature, the Cádiz constitution continued the imperial protection of the Catholic religion to the exclusion of all others despite the fact that it also ended some privileges and immunities that the Catholic Church had traditionally enjoyed. It has been argued, however, that religious intolerance was not a feature of Spanish liberalism, but a concession that liberals had to make to traditionalist political forces in the Cádiz Courts (Varela Suanzes1987). Nevertheless, the religious language that pervades the constitutional text reveals the influence of Spanish scholasticism according to which there are exterior limits to sovereignty (natural, divine, historical, and teleological). This influence was even stronger in Spanish America since the intellectual elite around the time of independence had been educated in Spanish scholasticism. Religious toleration was a matter of bitter disputes even among Latin American liberals themselves and the religious language continued to be present in legal documents throughout the nineteenth century.