'_Ibid_. 1. i. tit. lv. _de defensoribus_, § 8.--We will that the defenders of the cities, being well instructed in the holy mysteries of the orthodox faith, be chosen and instituted by the venerable bishops, the clerks, the notables, the proprietors, and the curiales. As to their installation, it shall be referred to the glorious power of the Prefect of the Pretorium, in order that their authority may gather more solidity and vigour from the admissory letters of his Magnificence.' I might cite a great number of other laws illustrative of the fact everywhere displayed, that between the Roman municipal system and the municipal system of the middle ages an ecclesiastical municipal system interposed; that the preponderance of the clergy in city affairs succeeded that of the old municipal magistrates, and preceded the organisation of the modern corporations. {51} Thus, by its own constitution, by its action on the Christian population, and also by the part it bore in civil affairs, the Christian church exercised prodigious means of influence. From that epoch, therefore, it operated powerfully on the character and development of modern civilisation. I will endeavour to sum up the elements it has infused into it. In the first place, an incalculable benefit resulted from the existence of a moral influence and force, of a force which simply rested on moral convictions, persuasions, and opinions, in the midst of that deluge of physical force which poured upon society at that epoch. If the Christian church had not been established, the whole world had been overborne by pure physical force. It alone exercised a moral power. It did more: it sustained and spread the idea of a rule or law which was superior to all human laws; it maintained, for the safety of humanity, that fundamental doctrine that there is above all human laws a law, which, according to the spirit of times and manners, is sometimes called reason, and sometimes Divine will, but which, at all periods, and in all places, is the same law under different designations.