This exaltation of the clergy was the direct result of the transference of the imperial power to the Church. The long reign of despotism in the empire had unfitted the people of it for any approach to freedom. Just as formerly they had submitted to the material power which had had its centre in Rome, so now they submitted to the spiritual power which had its centre in Rome. Only by the slow training of many centuries was part of the population of Europe prepared for resistance to clerical tyranny. The Reformation rested on the political development of the peoples among whom it was successful. The clergy were the guardians, for good or for evil, of the childhood of the modern world. The complicated system of sacraments which now arose in Christianity was largely the expression of priestly power. The distinction made between clergy and laity in the celebration of the Eucharist showed this in its clearest form. But most of all the power of absolution gave the priest an unlimited supremacy. Holding the keys of heaven and of hell, he was the master of the Christian’s soul. The foundation of this doctrine, as well as that of the general recognition of an authority peculiar to the clergy, was laid in the willing reverence felt by the early Church for the apostles, for the men who had actually seen its founder. Clerical despotism cannot be ascribed to the spirit of Paganism as distinguished from the spirit of Judaism. But still, in its extreme development under the pressure of changes in the Pagan world, it was a Pagan feature of Christianity.