OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

tinued to exercise a supreme jurisdiction overthe ecclesiastical order ; and the sixteenth bookof the Theodosian code represents, under a va-riety of titles, the authority which they assumedin the government of the catholic church.

But the distinction of the spiritual and tem-poral powers, 1 " which had never been imposedon the free spirit of Greece and Rome , was in-troduced and confirmed by the legal establish-ment of Christianity . The office of supremepontiff, which, from the time of Numa to thatof Augustus , had always been exercised by oneof the most eminent of the senators, was atlength united to the imperial dignity. The firstmagistrate of the state, as often as he wasprompted by superstition or policy, performedwith his own hands the sacerdotal functions;"nor was there any order of priests, either atRome or in the provinces, who claimed a moresacred character among men, or a more intimatecommunication with the gods. But in theChristian church, which entrusts the service ofthe altar to a perpetual succession of conse-crated ministers, the monarch, whose spiritualrank is less honourable than that of the meanestdeacon, was seated below the rails of the sanc-tuary, and confounded with the rest of the faith-

nl See the epistle of Osius, ap. Athanasiura, vol. i, p. 840. The pub-lic remonstrance which Osius was forced to address to the son, containedthe same principles of ecclesiastical and civil government which he hadsecretly instilled into the mind of the father.

" M. de la Bastie (Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom.xv, p. 38-61) has evidently proved, that Augustus and his successorsexercised in person all the sacred functions of pontifex maximns, orhigh priest of the Roman empire.

279

CHAP.

XX.

A. D. 312.

438

Distincti-on of thespiritualand tem-poralpowers.