Thus really the episcopal and the imperial vestments are cousins: and just as the rites, outwardly similar, of the consecration of a bishop and the consecration of a king, tended to be assimilated, so the vestures, in their very origin derived ultimately from the same source, shewed a natural tendency to influence each other: and it is doubtless this similarity of rite and vesture that is the chief reason for the theory that has been held by some, that the anointed monarch is a quasi-ecclesiastical personage, or to use technical language, a Mixta Persona. CHAPTER XVI THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RITE There remains to be considered the meaning of the rite of the consecration or coronation of a king. We have seen that an exalted idea of kingship was more or less universal before the times of Christianity. In pre-Christian times the king was regarded as far above ordinary men by virtue of his office, which embraced priestly functions, and was looked upon as being the vice-gerent of God. In the Roman Empire from the time of Julius and Augustus the Emperor was also Pontifex Maximus, the spiritual as well as the civil head of the Empire; his effigy was sacred; temples were erected to him or to his Genius; during his lifetime he received semi-divine honours, and on his death he was solemnly enrolled among the company of the gods. The autocrat of the world was the representative of God on earth. The Roman Empire itself was mysterious, sacred, and eternal. The Christians also accepted this theory and followed St Paul’s teaching that ‘the powers that be are ordained by God,’ equally with their non-Christian fellow-citizens regarding Caesar in some sense at least as the representative of divine law and order in the natural world, and as being therefore the vice-gerent of God[170]. When the Emperors became Christian the Church naturally found herself able to accept this doctrine with enthusiasm and without restriction, and the Emperor was acknowledged as spiritual as well as civil ruler. Thus we find that the Council of Nicea had no hesitation in admitting the right of the Emperor to control the Church, and Constantine claiming to be a sort of _Episcopus episcoporum_ appointed by God[171]. This conception of the Emperor has never been lost by the Eastern Church.