arian nation,
as it accepted the faith, sought to set up beside its own sovereign its
patriarch also. "Imperium," they said, "sine patriarcha non staret,"
an adage which James I. of England inverted when he said, "No bishop,
no king." Though the Bulgarians agreed with the Church of
Constantinople in dogmas, they would not submit to its jurisdiction.
The principle of national Churches, independent of any earthly supreme
head, but united in the same faith and baptism, was established by the
history of the East. Gradually the Church of Constantinople, by the
growth of new Christian states, and by the defections of nations that
had become heretical, became practically isolated, long before the
infidels hedged in the boundaries of the Empire and hounded the
imperial power to its death. Within the boundaries the Church
continued to walk hand-in-hand with the State. Together they acted
within and without. Within, they upheld the Orthodox Faith; without,
they gave Cyprus its religious independence, Illyricum a new
ecclesiastical organisation, the Sinaitic peninsula an autonomous
hierarchy. More and more the history of these centuries shows us the
Greek Church as the Eastern Empire in its religious aspect. And it
shows that the division between East {14} and West, beginning in
politics, was bound to spread to religion. As Rome had won her
ecclesiastical primacy through her political position, so with
Constantinople; and when the politics became divergent so did the
definition of faith. Rome, as a church, clung to the obsolete claims
which the State could no longer enforce: Constantinople witnessed to
the independence which was the heritage of liberty given by the
endowment of Jesus Christ.

Such are the general lines upon which Eastern Church history proceeds.
We must now speak in more detail, though briefly, of the theological
history of the years when Justinian was emperor.

[Sidenote: Early controversy in Justinian's reign.]

Justinian was a trained theologian, but he was also a trained lawyer;
and the combination generally produces a vigorous controversialist. It
was in controversy that his reign was passed. The first controversy,
which began before he was emperor, was that, revived from the end of
the fifth century, which dealt with the question of the addition to the
Trisagion of the words, "Who was crucified for us," and involved the
assertion that One of the Trinity died upon the cross. In 519 there
came