Their bishops arbitrated and ruled in ecclesiastical matters,[274] and also in civil suits between individuals who were unwilling to go to law before unbelievers, and doubtless they sat in judgment on their own followers before the advent of the regular Ecclesiastical Courts of subsequent ages.[275] From the Apostolic times they had resented resort to external tribunals,[276] and, in a series of Councils,[277] the Church had forbidden appeal to the civil powers against the decisions of Christian Courts; by the eighty-seventh Canon of the Fourth Council of Carthage (A.D. 398) no Catholic was to bring any cause, whether just or unjust, before an heretical judge. The time came when the State accepted Christianity, and when that religion influenced the laws.[278] Under Constantine the civil officers were obliged to carry out the decrees of the Christian bishops, who exercised a wide jurisdiction. In 376 their Courts were given the same status as belonged to those of the imperial magistrates.[279] From the beginning, and under the Theodosian and Justinian Codes, the bishops possessed great disciplinary powers; and after the death of Charlemagne, in the midst of a period of violence and disruption, the Ecclesiastical Courts were firmly established and gained in power as the centuries went by.[280] They had their own rules and codes to determine cases,[281] and came to adjudicate upon many things which do not concern us, such as tithes, breaches of covenant, births, marriages, and wills.[282] It used to be a custom in ancient times for the bishop to go journeying through his diocese. As he entered each parish he would be met by the inhabitants, from amongst whom he would select seven men of mature age and strait character,[287] who were then sworn on holy relics to relate all they knew, or possibly imagined, about their neighbours and their shortcomings. The bishop or his archdeacon[288] would then investigate and summon suspected persons before them for examination and sentence.[289] It would appear that these inquisitions with the _Testes Synodales_ could be extremely punitive when undertaken by a vigilant and censorious Christian moralist. We find that an energetic Bishop of Lincoln so harried his diocese,[290] and with amazing and minutely personal examinations[291] unearthed so many scandals among all ranks of the people,[292] that he was checked by Henry III.[293]