the people, was interposed to
moderate their passions and to correct their mistakes. The bishops
could refuse to ordain an unworthy candidate, and the rage of contending
factions sometimes accepted their impartial mediation. The submission,
or the resistance, of the clergy and people, on various occasions,
afforded different precedents, which were insensibly converted into
positive laws and provincial customs; but it was every where admitted,
as a fundamental maxim of religious policy, that no bishop could be
imposed on an orthodox church, without the consent of its members.
The emperors, as the guardians of the public peace, and as the first
citizens of Rome and Constantinople, might effectually declare their
wishes in the choice of a primate; but those absolute monarchs respected
the freedom of ecclesiastical elections; and while they distributed and
resumed the honors of the state and army, they allowed eighteen hundred
perpetual magistrates to receive their important offices from the free
suffrages of the people. It was agreeable to the dictates of justice,
that these magistrates should not desert an honorable station from
which they could not be removed; but the wisdom of councils endeavored,
without much success, to enforce the residence, and to prevent the
translation, of bishops. The discipline of the West was indeed less
relaxed than that of the East; but the same passions which made those
regulations necessary, rendered them ineffectual. The reproaches which
angry prelates have so vehemently urged against each other, serve only
to expose their common guilt, and their mutual indiscretion.

II. The bishops alone possessed the faculty of spiritual generation: and
this extraordinary privilege might compensate, in some degree, for the
painful celibacy which was imposed as a virtue, as a duty, and at length
as a positive obligation. The religions of antiquity, which established
a separate order of priests, dedicated a holy race, a tribe or family,
to the perpetual service of the gods. Such institutions were founded for
possession, rather than conquest. The children of the priests enjoyed,
with proud and indolent security, their sacred inheritance; and the
fiery spirit of enthusiasm was abated by the cares, the pleasures, and
the endearments of domestic life. But the Christian sanctuary was open
to every ambitious candidate, who aspired to its heavenly promises or
temporal possessions. This office of priests, like tha