§ 14. EIGHTS AJrt) PSIVILEGFfi OF THE CHURCH. 95
not attach to any one fact or perse aage, be lie Constantino or Gregory I. or Gregory VII. They are rooted in the natural heart of man. They revealed themselves, at least in the germ, even in the apostolic age, and are by no means avoided, as the. condition of America proves, by the separation of the two l^owers. We have among ourselves almost all the errors and abuses of the old world, not collected indeed in any one communion, but distributed among our various denominations and beets. The history of the church presents from the beginning a twofold development of good and of evil, an incessant antagonism of light and darkness, truth and falsehood, the mystery of godliness and the mystery of iniquity, Christianity and Antichrist. According to the Lord's parables of the net and of the tares among the wheat, M-e cannot expect a complete separation before the final judgment, though in a relative sense the history of the church is a progressive judgment of the church, as the history of the world is a judgment of the world.
§ 14. Rights and Privileges of the Church, Secular Advantages.
The conversion of C(5nstantine and the gradual establishment of Christianity as the religion of the state had first of all the important eft'ect of giving the church not only the usual rights of a legal corporation, which she possesses also in America, and here without distinction of confessions, but at the same time the peculiar privileges, which the heathen worship and priesthood had heretofore enjoyed. These rights and privileges she gradually secured either by tacit concession or through special laws of the Christian emperors as laid down in the collections of the Theodosian and Justinian Codes.' These were limited, however, as we must here at the outset observe, exclusively to the catholic or orthodox church." The
' Comp. § 18.
* So early as 326 Constantine promulgated the law (Cod. Theodos. lib. xvi. tit. 6, L 1): "Privilegia, quae contemplatione religionis indulta sunt, cathoUcae tmitnm teffis observatoribus prodesse oportet. Haereticos autem atque schismaticos non tantum ab his piivilegiis alienos esse volumus, sed etiam diversis muneribus consttingi et subjici." Yet he was lenient towards the Novatians, adding in the saiae
96 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
heretical and scliisniatic sects without distinction, excepting the Arians during their brief ascendency under Arian emperors, were now worse off than they had been before, and were forbidden the free exercise of their worship even under Constantine upon pain of fines and confiscation, and from the time of Tlieodosius and Justinian upon pain of death. Equal patronage of all Christian parties was totally foreign to the despotic uniformity system of the Byzantine emperors and the ecclesiastical exclusiveness and absolutism of the popes. Nor can it be at all consistently carried out upon the state-church basis ; for every concession to dissenters loosens the bond between the church and the state.
The immunities and privileges, which were conferred upon the catholic church in the Koman empire from the time of Constantine by imperial legislation, may be specified as follows :
1. The exemption of the clergy from most public burdens.
Among these were obligatory public services,' such as military duty, low manual labor, the bearing of costly dignities, and in a measure taxes for the real estate of the church. The exemption,'' which had been enjoyed, indeed, not by the heathen priests alone, but at least partially by physicians also and rhetoricians, and the Jewish rulers of synagogues, was first granted by Constantine in the year 313 to the catholic clergy in Africa, and afterwards, in 319, extended throughout the empire. But this led n)any to press into the clerical oflicc without inward call, to the prejudice of the state; and in 320 the emperor made a law prohibiting the wealthy' from entering the ministry, and limiting the increase of the clergy, on the sinixular around, that " the rich should bear the burdens of the world, the poor be supported by the property of the church."
year respecting them (C. Thcodos. xvi. 5, 2) : " Novatiaiioa non adeo comperiaiuj praedaranatos, ut iis quae petiverimt, crederemus ininiine largienda. Itaque eoclesiae suae doraos, et loca sepulcris apta sine inquietudine eos firmiter possidere praecipimus." Comp. the 8th canon of tlic Council of Nice, which likewise deal* with them indulgently.
' The inuncra publica, or \(novpyiat, attaching in part to the person as a eubjeof of the empire, in part to the possession of pioperty (munera patrimoiiioriun).
' Immnnitaa, aAftrovfryrfrTLa.
• The decurionca and curialcs.