nable
gifts of the prince and people. An annual income of six hundred pounds
sterling may be reasonably assigned to the bishops, who were placed at
an equal distance between riches and poverty, [105] but the standard of
their wealth insensibly rose with the dignity and opulence of the
cities which they governed. An authentic but imperfect [106] rent-roll
specifies some houses, shops, gardens, and farms, which belonged to the
three Basilicoe of Rome, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John Lateran, in
the provinces of Italy, Africa, and the East. They produce, besides
a reserved rent of oil, linen, paper, aromatics, &c., a clear annual
revenue of twenty-two thousand pieces of gold, or twelve thousand pounds
sterling. In the age of Constantine and Justinian, the bishops no longer
possessed, perhaps they no longer deserved, the unsuspecting confidence
of their clergy and people. The ecclesiastical revenues of each diocese
were divided into four parts for the respective uses of the bishop
himself, of his inferior clergy, of the poor, and of the public worship;
and the abuse of this sacred trust was strictly and repeatedly checked.
[107] The patrimony of the church was still subject to all the public
compositions of the state. [108] The clergy of Rome, Alexandria,
Chessaionica, &c., might solicit and obtain some partial exemptions; but
the premature attempt of the great council of Rimini, which aspired to
universal freedom, was successfully resisted by the son of Constantine.
[109]

[Footnote 101: The edict of Milan (de M. P. c. 48) acknowledges, by
reciting, that there existed a species of landed property, ad jus
corporis eorum, id est, ecclesiarum non hominum singulorum pertinentia.
Such a solemn declaration of the supreme magistrate must have been
received in all the tribunals as a maxim of civil law.]

[Footnote 102: Habeat unusquisque licentiam sanctissimo Catholicae
(ecclesioe) venerabilique concilio, decedens bonorum quod optavit
relinquere. Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. ii. leg. 4. This law was
published at Rome, A. D. 321, at a time when Constantine might foresee
the probability of a rupture with the emperor of the East.]

[Footnote 103: Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. l. x. 6; in Vit. Constantin. l.
iv. c. 28. He repeatedly expatiates on the liberality of the Christian
hero, which the bishop himself had an opportunity of knowing, and even
of lasting.]

[Footnote 104: Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. l. x. c. 2, 3, 4. The bishop of
Caes