litary force silenced the faint and unsupported murmurs of the
Pagans, and there was reason to expect, that the cheerful submission
of the Christian clergy, as well as people, would be the result
of conscience and gratitude. It was long since established, as a
fundamental maxim of the Roman constitution, that every rank of citizens
was alike subject to the laws, and that the care of religion was the
right as well as duty of the civil magistrate. Constantine and his
successors could not easily persuade themselves that they had forfeited,
by their conversion, any branch of the Imperial prerogatives, or
that they were incapable of giving laws to a religion which they had
protected and embraced. The emperors still continued to exercise a
supreme jurisdiction over the ecclesiastical order, and the sixteenth
book of the Theodosian code represents, under a variety of titles, the
authority which they assumed in the government of the Catholic church.
But the distinction of the spiritual and temporal powers, [81] which had
never been imposed on the free spirit of Greece and Rome, was introduced
and confirmed by the legal establishment of Christianity. The office of
supreme pontiff, which, from the time of Numa to that of Augustus, had
always been exercised by one of the most eminent of the senators, was
at length united to the Imperial dignity. The first magistrate of the
state, as often as he was prompted by superstition or policy, performed
with his own hands the sacerdotal functions; [82] nor was there any
order of priests, either at Rome or in the provinces, who claimed a more
sacred character among men, or a more intimate communication with the
gods. But in the Christian church, which instrusts the service of the
altar to a perpetual succession of consecrated ministers, the monarch,
whose spiritual rank is less honorable than that of the meanest deacon,
was seated below the rails of the sanctuary, and confounded with the
rest of the faithful multitude. [83] The emperor might be saluted as
the father of his people, but he owed a filial duty and reverence to the
fathers of the church; and the same marks of respect, which Constantine
had paid to the persons of saints and confessors, were soon exacted by
the pride of the episcopal order. [84] A secret conflict between the
civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions embarrassed the operation of
the Roman government; and a pious emperor was alarmed by the guilt and
danger of touching wit