impose certain restrictions.1 Jerome allowed that there was adequate occasion for the restrictive legislation.2 The bishops of the principal cities, were they so disposed, easily found the means of living in princely estate. The historian Ammianus speaks, for example, of the costly equipage of the Roman bishops, and of their feasts surpassing kings' tables.3 Not unfrequently the attractions of the chief ecclesiastical positions excited the desires of men of a thoroughly worldly temper, and many were more than content to receive such as their spiritual overseers. "The people," said Gregory Nazianzen in his farewell address to the council at Constantinople, "seek now not priests, but rhetoricians; not pastors of souls, but managers of money; not those who offer with pure hearts, but powerful champions." 4 It is not to be inferred, however, that the whole Church was swamped in this worldliness. There was a host of Christians in these centuries who stood nobly above the plane of avarice and ostentation. The same Ammianus who condemns the episcopal pomp of Rome praises the example afforded by some of the provincial bishops, "whose slender diet, humble apparel, and downcast eyes commend them, as pure and modest persons, to the eternal God and his true servants."5 There were men in the foremost positions, like Athanasius, Basil, Augustine, and Chrysostom, who lived after a very abstinent mode, and gave their income to charitable purposes. Augustine even protested against hasty and imprudent donations to the Church. Being complained of for not enriching the Church more, he re 1 Codex Theod., Lib. XVI., Tit. ii. 20. 2 Epist., lii. 3 Lib. XXVII. 4 Orat., xlii. 24. 6 Lib. XXVII. plied: "He who will disinherit his son to make the Church his heir may seek another, not Augustine, to receive the inheritance: nay, God grant rather that he may find no one." The whole phenomenon of monasticism, also, though a one-sided protest against worldliness, shows that it was only a part of the Church that became enthralled with secular ambitions. 3. A mixture of hierarchical pride and subserviency. Apart from any connection between Church and State, the leading prelates would have experienced temptations to pride and ambition, incentives to magnify their office, and to pursue with vigor the race for episcopal pre-eminence. The new relations increased the tendencies in this direction only as increased resources and lessened spirituality were adapted to intensify an unsanctified thirst after distinction and power. The very same temper, however, which inclined ambitious prelates to strive after a pre-eminence over their associates in the Church, could move them to assume a very subservient attitude toward the sovereign. Few bishops had, as yet, the boldness to rebuke an emperor, and to discipline him ecclesiastically, to say nothing about an endeavor to domineer over him in his own sphere. There were, indeed, many instances in which they refused, for conscience' sake, to obey his mandates. But, even while disobeying, they recognized their inability to cope with so powerful a rival, and contented themselves, for the most part, with a passive resistance to obnoxious decrees. The tendency, on the whole, was not so much to strive after superiority to the secular power, as to seek for support and advancement through imperial favor and patronage. This was especially the case in the East; the development here was toward an emphatic subordination of Church to State. In the West, a higher degree of executive ability in Church officials, the early dissolution of the State, the remoteness of Rome from the Byzantine court, and the final abolition of all connection between the two, : favored ecclesiastical independence, and prepard the way for a successful rivalry of the civil power. The more positive developments, however, in this direction, were subsequent to the present period. 4. Limitation of religious freedom, both in theory and in practice. Excommunication is the extreme penalty which the Church, by itself and as a purely religious organization, is competent to inflict. The co-operation or connivance of the State is needed for the visiting of any severer penalty. The presence of a Christian emperor upon the throne gave to the Church, for the first time, the opportunity to have force employed as a motive power in religion. Unhappily there was not enough of deep and enlightened conviction on the subject of tolerance thoroughly to discard the opportunity. We find, it is true, very positive maxims concerning liberty of conscience. The strong utterances of eminent Fathers of the preceding period have their parallels in this. "It belongs to true piety," says Athanasius, “not to compel, but to convince, since the Lord Himself compelled no one, but left the decision to the free will of each, in that He said to all, ‘If any man will come after me;' to His disciples, however, "Will ye also go 1 away?'" "It is not permitted Christians," urged Chrysostom, "to overthrow error by constraint and violence: they are to work the salvation of men by persuasion, by reasoning, by gentleness."2 From Hilary we have this earnest plea for religious liberty, addressed to the persecuting Constantius: "Watch," therefore, “and be intent that all your subjects may enjoy sweet freedom. In no way can disturbances be composed, and divisions healed, unless every one, free from all servile constraint, has full liberty to follow his own convictions. God is Lord of the universe, and does not need an enforced obedience, does not require an enforced confession." 3 Augustine, likewise, in his earlier utterances, advocated very distinctly the principles of tolerance. He urged that, in respect of the heathen, the great concern of Christians should be to destroy the idols in their hearts, since then of their own accord they would banish the outward abominations. this compact statement of the means in concerns of the soul: victoria veritatis est caritas ("Nothing conquers but truth; the victory of truth is love"). 994 We have also from him sole efficiency of moral "Non vincit nisi veritas; It may, perhaps, be suggested, as a qualifying fact, that some of these statements came from a persecuted party. This is true. But some of them, on the other hand, came from men who had at the time no interest in tolerance, on personal grounds; and, as respects Athanasius and Hilary, it would be contrary to charity, perhaps also to reason, not to credit them with a gen. 1 Hist. Arian., § 67. 2 In Sanct. Babylam. 8 Ad Constant., Lib. I., §§ 2, 6. uine and unselfish regard for religious liberty, at least to the extent of discountenancing force. Still, it is plain that the principle of religious tolerance had no such settled basis in the consciousness of the Church of that age as it finds to-day in the consciousness of Protestant Christendom. The same Chrysostom who so clearly urged the duty of loving heathen and heretics thought it allowable and incumbent upon himself to confiscate the churches of the Novatians and Quartodecimans.1 Augustine in his later years, instigated by his failure to convert the Donatists by logic, as well as by the violent and miserable excesses of a fanatical wing of that party, virtually recalled his theory of freedom of conscience. His change of view is thus recorded by himself: "Originally my opinion was, that no one should be coerced into the unity of Christ, that we must act only by words, fight only by arguments, and prevail by force of reason, lest we should have those whom we knew as avowed heretics feigning themselves to be Catholics. But this opinion of mine was overcome, not by the words of those who controverted it, but by the conclusive instances to which they could point."2 The "conclusive instances" referred to were instances of the practical efficiency of the imperial edicts in making Catholics of those who were previously Donatists. This revised theory was supported by Augustine with unhesitating zeal. Persecution, he argued, gains its character from its source and aim. For the good to persecute the wicked in order to make them good, serves a beneficent end. In the former age, Christianity suffered persecution from the ungodly; now it is her prerogative 2 Epist., xciii., § 17. 1 Socrates, Hist. Eccl., vi. 11. |