and the ark of the covenant. The separation
of men into the two orders of the clergy and of the laity was, indeed,
familiar to many nations of antiquity; and the priests of India, of
Persia, of Assyria, of Judea, of AEthiopia, of Egypt, and of Gaul,
derived from a celestial origin the temporal power and possessions
which they had acquired. These venerable institutions had gradually
assimilated themselves to the manners and government of their respective
countries; but the opposition or contempt of the civil power served to
cement the discipline of the primitive church. The Christians had
been obliged to elect their own magistrates, to raise and distribute a
peculiar revenue, and to regulate the internal policy of their republic
by a code of laws, which were ratified by the consent of the people and
the practice of three hundred years. When Constantine embraced the faith
of the Christians, he seemed to contract a perpetual alliance with
a distinct and independent society; and the privileges granted or
confirmed by that emperor, or by his successors, were accepted, not
as the precarious favors of the court, but as the just and inalienable
rights of the ecclesiastical order.

The Catholic church was administered by the spiritual and legal
jurisdiction of eighteen hundred bishops; of whom one thousand were
seated in the Greek, and eight hundred in the Latin, provinces of the
empire. The extent and boundaries of their respective dioceses had been
variously and accidentally decided by the zeal and success of the first
missionaries, by the wishes of the people, and by the propagation of the
gospel. Episcopal churches were closely planted along the banks of the
Nile, on the sea-coast of Africa, in the proconsular Asia, and through
the southern provinces of Italy. The bishops of Gaul and Spain, of
Thrace and Pontus, reigned over an ample territory, and delegated their
rural suffragans to execute the subordinate duties of the pastoral
office. A Christian diocese might be spread over a province, or reduced
to a village; but all the bishops possessed an equal and indelible
character: they all derived the same powers and privileges from the
apostles, from the people, and from the laws. While the civil and
military professions were separated by the policy of Constantine, a new
and perpetual order of ecclesiastical ministers, always respectable,
sometimes dangerous, was established in the church and state. The
important review of thei