But the Emperor, neither a Christian nor a catechumen for many long years to come, writes to the Fathers of the Council: "They (the Donatists) ask for my judgment, who am myself awaiting the judgment of Christ. For I say, as the truth is, the judgment of bishops ought to be considered as if the Lord Himself were present and judging. For these may have no other mind and no other judgment but what they have been taught by the teaching of Christ.[180] What, then, do those malignant men want, instruments, us I truly call them, of the devil? They desert heavenly in their search for earthly things. Oh, the rabid audacity of maniacs! they interpose an appeal, as is customary in secular matters."[181] The Council recognised the authority of the Apostles Peter and Paul ruling for ever in the See of Rome, as the Pope at the present day attests in solemn documents that same rule when he uses the words, "By the authority of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul," adding to them, "and by our own;" and the Emperor clearly understands the distinction between secular and ecclesiastical judgments. In the former he knows himself to be the judge of ultimate appeal. In the latter he recognises the bishops as holding the magisterium of Christ Himself, and that their judgments are His, as if He were present among them. What stronger attestation of the Church's freedom in her ecclesiastical and dogmatic judgments from the State's control could be given than this spontaneous declaration by the head of the Roman empire? And it is to be noted that he places the ground of that freedom and the force of its authority in the magisterium of Christ transmitted to the rulers of the Church. How did the successor of Nero, Domitian, Trajan, and Decius come to this knowledge? That is a subject which requires special consideration. FOOTNOTES: [145] Corpus Christianorum: τὸ ἔθνος Χριστιανὸν. [146] παρέδοσαν, in which is signified that the whole was a παράδοσις, _traditio_, delivery. On the two meanings of the word _tradition_, the one the unwritten word of God, the other the whole doctrine of salvation as handed down by the Fathers, see Kleutgen's Theologie der Vorzeit, tom. i. p. 73, and v. p. 405. [147] ὑπήρεται τοῦ λόγου. [148] Origen was followed by his pupil Heraclas; then the great Dionysius, afterwards bishop; Pierius, Achillas, Theognostus, Serapion, Peter the Martyr (Reischl in Möhler, i. 377). [149] τέλειοι; ἀκροώμενοι, or _audientes_; γονυκλίνοντες or εὐχόμενοι; _competentes_, _electi_, or φωτιζόμενοι. Bingham, Antiq., B. x.; Suicer, Thes. in verb. κατηχέω. [150] Newman's Arians, pp. 45, 46. [151] See upon this use of the Creed, Möhler, Kirchengeschichte, i. 343-347. [152] Sermon 212. [153] On this subject see Newman's Arians, pp. 137-142. [154] As St. Irenæus says, 3, 24, and Origen, Contr. Celsus, 6, 48. [155] See Kleutgen's Theologie der Vorzeit, v. 404-409. [156] Ibid., pp. 395-404. [157] For which see Franzelin, De Traditione, pp. 228-237.