Bishops and beneficed incumbents (cures) must be regularly tried; and where the Church is established the canonical courts are recognized.
The system of pluralities carried with it, as a necessary consequence, systematic non-residence on the part of many incumbents, and delegation of their spiritual duties in respect of their cures of souls to assistant curates.
Benefices may be exchanged by agreement between incumbents with the consent of the ordinary, and they may, with the consent of the patron and ordinary, be united or dissolved after being united.
The governor and the lieutenant-governor was elected for a term of two years, and the qualifications for both offices require that the incumbents shall be at least thirty years of age and shall have been for two years immediately before their election residents of the state.
These men naturally acquired more and more as time passed the control and leadership of the Church in all its activities, and out of what was in the beginning more or less informal and temporary grew fixed and permanent offices, the incumbents of which were recognized as having a right to rule over the Church, a right which once given could not lawfully be taken away unless they were unfaithful to their trust.
