secret wish that the clergy might be permitted
to manage the wealth of the faithful, for the benefit of the poor. The
most sublime representations of the attributes and laws of the Deity
were sullied by an idle mixture of metaphysical subleties, puerile
rites, and fictitious miracles: and they expatiated, with the most
fervent zeal, on the religious merit of hating the adversaries,
and obeying the ministers of the church. When the public peace was
distracted by heresy and schism, the sacred orators sounded the trumpet
of discord, and, perhaps, of sedition. The understandings of their
congregations were perplexed by mystery, their passions were inflamed
by invectives; and they rushed from the Christian temples of Antioch
or Alexandria, prepared either to suffer or to inflict martyrdom. The
corruption of taste and language is strongly marked in the vehement
declamations of the Latin bishops; but the compositions of Gregory and
Chrysostom have been compared with the most splendid models of Attic, or
at least of Asiatic, eloquence. [124]

[Footnote 122: See Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. ii. l. iii.
c. 83, p. 1761-1770,) and Bingham, (Antiquities, vol. i. l. xiv. c. 4,
p. 688- 717.) Preaching was considered as the most important office of
the bishop but this function was sometimes intrusted to such presbyters
as Chrysoetom and Augustin.]

[Footnote 123: Queen Elizabeth used this expression, and practised this
art whenever she wished to prepossess the minds of her people in favor
of any extraordinary measure of government. The hostile effects of this
music were apprehended by her successor, and severely felt by his son.
"When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic," &c. See Heylin's Life of Archbishop
Laud, p. 153.]

[Footnote 124: Those modest orators acknowledged, that, as they were
destitute of the gift of miracles, they endeavored to acquire the arts
of eloquence.]

VII. The representatives of the Christian republic were regularly
assembled in the spring and autumn of each year; and these synods
diffused the spirit of ecclesiastical discipline and legislation
through the hundred and twenty provinces of the Roman world. [125] The
archbishop or metropolitan was empowered, by the laws, to summon the
suffragan bishops of his province; to revise their conduct, to vindicate
their rights, to declare their faith, and to examine the merits of
the candidates who were elected by the clergy and people to supply the
vacancies of th