If in these laws we find Church and State greet each other as friends, and offer each other a mutual support, because both aim at one object, and what the holiness of the Church required, advanced no less the peace, the security, and the welfare of the State, so a complete concurrence between them might be shown in all other respects.[159] The State recognised and honoured the whole constitution of the Church as it had been drawn in its first lineaments by the author of the Christian religion, as in perfect sequence it had formed itself out of the Church's inmost life, and that in force and purity, because it had been free from the pressure of external laws. The proper position of the Roman bishop as supreme head of the whole Church, the relation of the patriarchs to each other, their privileges over the metropolitans, the close connection of these with their several bishops, were never for a moment unrecognised, because so clear a consciousness of these showed itself in the whole Catholic world, that no change was possible without a general scandal. Thus the laws of Church and State kept pace with each other, when it could not but happen that the ties between patriarch and metropolitan, between metropolitan and bishop, became more stringent, as external increase was followed by decline in inward life and the fervour of faith. Thus the regular course was that the metropolitan examined the election of the bishop by the clergy and people, consecrated him, introduced him to the direction of his charge, and by the _litterae formatae_ gave him his place in the fabric of the Church. So the metropolitan was consecrated by his patriarch, in whose own election all the bishops of the province, but especially the metropolitans, took part. The metropolitan summoned his bishops, the patriarchs their metropolitans, to the yearly synods. The bishops did not vote without their metropolitan; they took counsel with him, sometimes intrusted him with their votes.[160] General laws of the Church, and also imperial edicts, were transmitted first to the patriarchs, and from them to the metropolitans, and from these to the bishops. Bishops might not leave their diocese without permission of the metropolitan, nor the metropolitan without that of the patriarch.[161]