Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/457

 OF THE ROiMAN EiMPlllE. 44J9 its heavenly promises, or temporal possessions. The CHAP, office of priests, like that of soldiers or magistrates, ' was strenuously exercised by those men, whose temper and abilities had prompted them to embrace the eccle- siastical profession, or who had been selected by a dis- cerning bishop, as the best qualified to promote the glory and interest of the church. The bishops'' (till the abuse was restrained by the prudence of the laws) might constrain the reluctant, and protect the dis- tressed ; and the imposition of hands for ever bestowed some of the most valuable privileges of civil society. The whole body of the catholic clergy, more numerous perhaps than the legions, was exempted by the em- perors from all service, private or public, all municipal offices, and all personal taxes and contributions, which pressed on their fellow citizens with intolerable weight; and the duties of their holy profession were accepted as a full discharge of their obligations to the republic'*. Each bishop acquired an absolute and indefeasible right to the perpetual obedience of the clerk whom he ordained: the clergy of each episcopal church, with its dependent parishes, formed a regular and permanent society; and the cathedrals of Constantinoi)le* and Carthage*^ maintained their peculiar establishment of = The subject of the vocation, ordination, obedience, etc. of the clergy, is laboriously discussed by Thomassin, (Discipline de I'Eglise, torn. ii. p. 1 — 83.) and Bingham, in the fourth book of his Antiquities, more especially the fourth, sixth, and seventh chapters. When the brother of St. Jerome was ordained in Cyprus, the deacons forcibly stopped his mouth, lest he should make a solemn protestation, which might invalidate the holy rites. •^ The charter of immunities, which the clergy obtained from the chris- tian emperors, is contained in the sixteenth book of the Theodosian code; and is illustrated with tolerable candour by the learned Godefroy, whose mind was balanced by the opposite prejudices of a civilian and a pro- testant. e Justinian. Novell, ciii. Sixty presbyters, or priests, one hundred dea- cons, forty deaconesses, ninety sub-deacons, one hundred and ten readers, twenty-five chanters, and one hundred door-keepers ; in all, five hundred and twenty-five. This moderate number was fixed by the emperor, to relieve the distress of the church, which had been involved in debt and usury by the expense of a much higher establishment. f Univtrsus clerus ecclesiae Carthaginiensis fere quingenti« am- plius ; inter quos quamjdurimi erant lectores infautuli. Victor Vitensis de Persecul. Vandal, v. 9. p. 7^. edit. Ruinart. This remnant of a more pros- perous state still subsisted under the oppression of the Vandals.