bound to apply to the bishop to join the judge in examining the matter, and to bring it to a strict legal issue. In the face of such honourable confidence which was placed in the bishops, and which was also justified in general by a happy result, we ought not to be surprised if either the emperor himself or inferior magistrates committed to them the termination of entangled processes, in which they exercised just such a jurisdiction as may either in general be exercised by delegates, or was committed to them for the special occasion. The emperor[168] in his legislation left no part of the Church's discipline unregarded. His purpose was in all respects to make the State Christian; and he considered no part of divine and human things, whether it were dogma or conduct,--which, together, made up the Church's life,--withdrawn from his care and guardianship. Observances which had begun in custom, and gradually been drawn out definitely and enacted in canons, he took into his _Digest_, not with the intention of giving them greater inward force or stronger grounds as duties, but to show the unity of his own effort with that of the Church. He willingly put the imperial stamp on her salutary regulations. He showed his readiness to help her with external force wherever the inviolable sanctity of her laws seemed to be threatened by the opposition of individuals. In this he recognised the unchangeable order which is so deeply rooted in the nature both of Church and State, that order which is the greatest security for the wellbeing and prosperity of both. And the Church in the course of her long life had hitherto almost universally maintained this order; always, at least, in principle. If it was anywhere transgressed, it was either because the secular power was acting under special commission and approval of the Church, or, if that power acted without such approval, it met with open contradiction whereby not only the illegality of the particular action was marked, but the principle of the Church's freedom and independence was preserved. There is a passage in the address of the eastern bishops to Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, quoted in the Second Nicene Council of 789,[169] the Seventh General, which cites the words of Justinian given above in one of his laws. The bishops say in their own character--and they are bishops who describe themselves "as sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, that is, of the Arabian impiety"--"It is the priesthood which sanctifies the empire and forms its basis; it is the empire which strengthens and supports the priesthood. Concerning these, a wise king, most blessed among holy princes, said: The greatest gift of God to men is the priestly and the imperial power, the one ordering and administering divine things, the other ruling human things by upright laws."