emperor, were at once raised to the rank of imperial laws. Thus the council of Carthage in 397 had threatened with excommunication any clergyman who should pursue another before the secular tribunals; and this decree, repeated in 451 by the fourth general Council—that of Chalcedon—had received the sanction of Marcianus, and become part of the law of the Roman empire. The jurisdiction of the bishops in the affairs of the clergy was thus rendered legal; but it was at a later period extended so as to include a much wider sphere. Justinian not only commanded all causes in which monks were concerned to be referred to the bishop of the diocese, but made him the only legal channel of proceedings even in cases where laymen had claims against the clergy[880]. ----- Footnote 878: Volume i. page 146. Footnote 879: 1 Corinthians vi. 1-7. Footnote 880: Novel. § 83. ----- Arbitration by the bishop had thus grown up into a custom, at first absolutely necessary, and afterwards always desirable, in a society like the Christian. Accordingly Constantine permitted all contentions to be so settled. But it was a rule of Roman law that there could lie no appeal whatever from a voluntary arbitration; and in pursuance of this rule, in the year 408, Arcadius and Honorius decreed that the sentences of bishops should be without appeal[881]. In this manner was the ecclesiastical jurisdiction founded in the Greek and Roman empires. ----- Footnote 881: Dönniges, Deut. Staatsr. p. 48 _seq._ ----- Happily for ourselves, this could not be admitted without modification in the Germanic states. Had it indeed been so, every trace of independence would long since have perished, and the whole civilized world have found itself subject to the principles and regulations of an effete scheme of jurisprudence. The antagonism of the Germanic customary right it was that saved us from the consequences which must have followed the universal prevalence of maxims elaborated by another race, and sprung out of a different social condition. It was the conflict of the Roman and Ecclesiastical laws with those of the Teutonic victors that produced that modified system of relations, under which, by the blessing of Providence, civilization has been maintained, the general well-being of mankind advanced, and human society firmly established throughout Europe, on a basis susceptible of progressive, perhaps illimitable improvement. Useful as a counter-check to the somewhat disruptive system of the Germans, the Roman and Ecclesiastical laws have yet never been able to destroy the nationality, or abridge the freedom, of our races; while they have tended to give consistency and method to our own customs, and to reduce into form and harmony what, but for them, might have been liable to fall asunder from its own internal vigour. Like the centripetal and centrifugal forces, they have balanced one another, and held our social state together as one majestic and consistent whole.