in the apostolic age, and are by no means avoided, as the condition of America proves, by the separation of the two powers. We have among ourselves almost all the errors and abuses of the old world, not collected indeed in any one com- munion, but distributed among our various denominations and sects.' The history of the church presents from the beginning a twofold development of good and of evil, an incessant antag- onism of light and darkness, truth and falsehood, the mys- tery of godliness and the mystery of iniquity, Christianity and Antichrist. According to the Lord's parables of the net and of the tares among the wheat, we cannot expect a com- plete separation before the final judgment, though in a relative sense the history of the church is a progressive judgment of the church, as the history of the world is a judgment of the world. § 14. Rights and Privileges of the Chiirch. Secular Ad- vantages. ^ The conversion of Constantine and the gradual establish- ment of Christianity as the religion of the state had first of all the important efi"ect of giving the church not only the usual rights of a legal corporation, which she possesses also in Amer- ica, and here without distinction of confessions, but at the same time the peculiar privileges, which the heathen worship and priesthood had heretofore enjoyed. These rights and privileges she gradually secured either by tacit concession or through special laws of the Christian emperors as laid down in the collections of the Theodosian and Justinian Codes.' These were limited, however, as we must here at the outset observe, exclusively to the catholic or orthodox church.^ The ' Comp. § 18. "^ So early as 326 Constantine promulgated the law (Cod. Theodos. lib. xvi. tit. 5, /,/ 1. 1): "Priviiegia, quae contemplatione religionis indulta sunt, catholicae tantum ^ ^ Mjis oh&ervatorihus prodesse oportet. Haereticos autem atque schismaticos nou ^^ -" tantum ab his privilegiis alienos esse volumus, sed etiam diversis muneribus con- «.• string! et subjici." Yet he was lenient towards the Novatians, adding in the same 96 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590. heretical and schismatic sects without distinction, excepting the Arians during their brief ascendency nnder Arian em- perors, were now worse off than they had been before, and were forbidden the free exercise of their worship even nnder Constantine upon pain of fines and confiscation, and from the time of Tiieodosius and Justinian upon pain of death. Equal patronage of all Christian parties was totally foreign to the despotic uniformity system of the Byzantine emperors and the ecclesiastical exclusiveness and absolutism of the popes. ISTor can it be at all consistently carried out upon the state-church basis ; for every concession to dissenters loosens the bond be- tween the church and the state. The immunities and privileges, which were conferred upon the catholic church in the Roman empire from the time of Constantine by imperial legislation, may be specified as follows : 1. The exemption of the