s the outcome of "Free-thought" in
their subsequent evolution through centuries of speculation unbridled by
spiritual authority; nations, again, bisected by pure infidelity, or
struggling with the joint forces of heresy and infidelity which strive to
overthrow constitutions originally Catholic in all their structure. In one
empire alone the attitude of Constantine and Justinian towards the Church
is still maintained. It is that wherein the emperor rules with an amplitude
of authority such as Constantine and Justinian held, whose successor he
claims to be; where, also, an imperial aide-de-camp, booted and spurred,
sits at the council board of a synod called holy, and is by far the most
important member of it, for nothing can pass without his sanction--a synod
which rules the bishops, being itself nothing but a ministry of the State,
drawing, like the council of the empire, its jurisdiction from the emperor.

Justinian was a true successor of the great Theodosius in so far as he
upheld orthodoxy, and endeavoured to unite all his subjects in one belief
and one centre of unity. The greatest of the Roman emperors had for their
first and chief motive, in upholding this first principle of imperial
policy, the conviction that thus only they could hope to maintain the peace
and security of the empire. Schism in the Church betokened rebellion in the
State. In the fourth century heresy had driven the empire to the very brink
of destruction. Besides this, all the populations converted from heathendom
were accustomed to see a complete harmony between religion and the State,
which appeared almost blent into one. Again, we must not forget that at
this time the Christian religion had been lately accepted distinctly as a
divine institution, and that it embraced the whole man with a plenitude of
power which the indifference and division of our own times hardly allow us
to conceive. Those who would realise this grasp of the Christian faith,
transforming and exalting the whole being, may reach a faint perception of
it by reading the great Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries--St.
Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Leo.
They were not in danger of taking the moral corruption of an effete
civilisation for the Christian faith. Again, the emperors, living in the
midst of this immense intellectual and moral power--for instance, Justinian
himself practising in a court the austerities of a monastery--recognise