If, then, we compare the want and nakedness in which the Church began with the state in which she emerged from the period of persecution terminated by Constantine, we find that in spite of spoliations undergone in so many assaults of the heathen empire, she had created funds to support the whole body of her Episcopate, and the clergy subject to them in each diocese, to make ample relief for the poor, for the reception of strangers, for the support of hospitals; to build, maintain, and adorn churches for the celebration of her sacraments and the preaching of her word. In all this she exerted a parallel force with that which shows itself in the construction of her hierarchy, the system of her provincial councils, the constitution of her tribunals, the free election of her bishops and subordinate ministers. In no one of these things did the temporal government give her any aid. That is, indeed, to say much less than the truth. In no one of them did the temporal government do otherwise than thwart her, from the lowest degree of persecution, consisting in a social contempt and disregard, to the highest, of violent confiscation and bloody torture. The extent of favour which she enjoyed was that here and there a politic emperor shut his eyes to her proceedings, or even remarked in the plenitude of his forbearance that a church was better than a cookshop.[136] As the hierarchy proceeded forth by an inward strength derived from our Lord's command, uniting local autonomy with central authority, exercising a rule at once paternal and majestical, the rule of Him who joined the commission to feed His whole flock with the condition to love Him more than all others loved Him, so this same hierarchy, passing from house to house and city to city with the word, "the Kingdom of God is at hand," clothed itself as it passed with such a measure of material goods as was necessary for its maintenance by the offerings of the faithful, which they considered at once a natural and a divine obligation, for throughout they saw in the body they were covering the Body of the Lord, who for their sakes, being rich, had become poor. The five subjects we have just reviewed belong to the Church's external government, in which she manifested from the beginning a complete liberty and independence of all power outside of herself. It is next in order to show the same liberty and independence in the evolution of her teaching.