Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/451

 OF THE KOxMAN EMPIRE. 4,33 ful submission of the christian clergy, as well as people, CHAP, 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 were alike subject to the laws, and that the care of religion was the right as well as duty of the civil magi- strate. Constantine and his successoi's could not easily persuade themselves that -they had forfeited, by their conversion, any branch of the imperial prerogatives, or that they were iiicapaljle of giving laws to a religion which they had protected and embraced. The em- perors still continued to exercise a supreme jurisdic- tion over the ecclesiastical order; and the sixteenth book of the Theodosian code represents, under a va- a.D. riety of titles, the authority which they assumed in the <^'2— 438. government of the catholic church. But the distinction of the spiritual and temporal Distinction powers'", which had never been imposed on the free "'^ V'*^ ^f'" '" spirit of Greece and Rome, was introduced and con- temporal firmed by the legal establishment of Christianity. The P""'^''*" 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"; nor was there any order of priests, either at Rome or in the provinces, who claimed a more sa- cred character among men, or a more intimate commu- nication with the gods. But in the christian church, which intrusts the service of the altar to a perpetual succession of consecrated ministers, the monarch, whose spiritual rank is less honourable than that of the niean- "• See the epistle of Osius, ap. Athanasiuni, vol. i. p. 840. The public remonstrance which Osius was forced to address to the son, contained the same principles of ecclesiastical and civil government which he had secretly instilled into the mind of the father. " M. de la Bastie (Memoires de I'Academie des Inscriptions, torn. xv. p. 38 — 61.) lias eidently proved, that Augustus and his successors exer- cised in person all the sacred functions of pontifex maxiiius, or high priest of the Roman empire. VOL. II. F f
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