In so vast a system of interlaced and concurrent powers as the Church of Christ presented, differences would continually arise; and in so profound a subject-matter as the Christian revelation, heresies would be continually starting up: to arrange the former, and to expel or subjugate the latter, the Bishops, says Thomassin, having already more than once appealed to the Christian Emperors for the calling of great Councils, saw the danger of suffering the Imperial authority to intervene in ecclesiastical causes, and sought to establish a new jurisprudence on this head.[31] "The Council of Antioch (A.D. 341), and that of Sardica (A.D. 347), which were held almost at the same time,--the one in the East, the other in the West,--set about this in a very different manner, aiming, however, at the same end. The Council of Antioch ordered that Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, who should have been condemned by a provincial Council, might recur to a larger Council of Bishops; but that if they carried their complaints before the Emperor they could never be reestablished in their dignity." "One must in good faith admit, that this regulation had much conformity with what had been practised in the first ages of obscurity and persecution, for it was in the same way that extraordinary Councils had been held, such as were those of Antioch against Paul of Samosata, Bishop of that great city. It was the Metropolitans and Bishops of the neighbourhood who assembled with those of the Province where the flame of a great dissension had been kindled. The Council of Sardica, urged by the same desire to break through the custom which was introducing itself, of having recourse to the Emperor for judgment of spiritual causes of the Church, bethought itself of another means, which was not less conformable to the practice of the preceding centuries, and which had, beside that, much foundation in the Holy Scriptures. For Jesus Christ, having given the Primacy, and the rank of Head, to St. Peter, above the other Apostles, and having given successors as well to the Apostles, to wit, all the Bishops, as to St. Peter, to wit, the Roman Pontiffs; moreover, having willed that His Church should remain for ever one by the union of all Bishops with their Head, it is manifest, that if the Bishops of a province could not agree in their Provincial Council, and if the Bishops of several provinces had disputes between each other, the most natural way to finish these differences was to introduce the authority of the Head, and of him whom Jesus Christ has established as the centre of unity of His universal Church."