rice of the electors.
The authority of the provincial bishops, who were assembled in the
vacant church to consecrate the choice of the people, was interposed to
moderate their passions and to correct their mistakes. The bishops
could refuse to ordain an unworthy candidate, and the rage of contending
factions sometimes accepted their impartial mediation. The submission,
or the resistance, of the clergy and people, on various occasions,
afforded different precedents, which were insensibly converted into
positive laws and provincial customs; [91] but it was every where
admitted, as a fundamental maxim of religious policy, that no bishop
could be imposed on an orthodox church, without the consent of its
members. The emperors, as the guardians of the public peace, and as the
first citizens of Rome and Constantinople, might effectually declare
their wishes in the choice of a primate; but those absolute monarchs
respected the freedom of ecclesiastical elections; and while they
distributed and resumed the honors of the state and army, they allowed
eighteen hundred perpetual magistrates to receive their important
offices from the free suffrages of the people. [92] It was agreeable
to the dictates of justice, that these magistrates should not desert an
honorable station from which they could not be removed; but the wisdom
of councils endeavored, without much success, to enforce the residence,
and to prevent the translation, of bishops. The discipline of the West
was indeed less relaxed than that of the East; but the same passions
which made those regulations necessary, rendered them ineffectual. The
reproaches which angry prelates have so vehemently urged against
each other, serve only to expose their common guilt, and their mutual
indiscretion.

[Footnote 88: Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom, ii. l. ii. c. 1-8,
p. 673-721) has copiously treated of the election of bishops during the
five first centuries, both in the East and in the West; but he shows a
very partial bias in favor of the episcopal aristocracy. Bingham, (l.
iv. c. 2) is moderate; and Chardon (Hist. des Sacremens tom. v. p.
108-128) is very clear and concise. * Note: This freedom was extremely
limited, and soon annihilated; already, from the third century, the
deacons were no longer nominated by the members of the community, but by
the bishops. Although it appears by the letters of Cyprian, that even
in his time, no priest could be elected without the consent o