§ 51. 140 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. violence. But, involved in the idea of Jewisli theocracy and of a state church, she practically confounded in various ways the position of the law and that of the gospel, and in theory approved the application of forcible measures to heretics, and not rarely encouraged and urged the state to it ; thus making herself at least indirectly responsible for the persecution. This is especially true of the Roman church in the times of her greatest power, in the middle age and down to the end of the sixteenth century ; and by this course that church has made herself almost more offensive in the eyes of the world and of modern civilization than by her peculiar doctrines and usages. The Protestant reformation dispelled the dream that Chris- tianity was identical with an outward organization, or the papacy, and gave a mighty shock thereby to the principle of ecclesiastical exclusiveness. Yet, properly speaking, it was not till the eighteenth century that a radical revolution of views was accomplished in regard to religious toleration ; and the progress of toleration and free worship has gone hand in hand with the gradual loosening of the state-church basis and with the clearer separation of civil and religious rights and of the temporal and spiritual power. In the beginning of his reign, Constantine proclaimed full freedom of religion (312), and in the main continued tolerably true to it ; at all events he used no violent measures, as his successors did. This toleration, however, was not a matter of fixed principle with him, but merely of temporary policy ; a necessary consequence of the incipient separation of the Roman throne from idolatry, and the natural transition from the sole supremacy of the heathen religion to the same supremacy of the Christian. Intolerance directed itself first against heathen- ism ; but as the false religion gradually died out of itself, and at any rate had no moral energy for martyrdom, there resulted no such bloody persecutions of idolatry under the Christian em- perors, as there had been of Christianity under their heathen predecessors. Instead of Christianity, the intolerance of the civil power now took up Christian heretics, whom it recognized as such. Constantine even in his day limited the freedom and the privileges which he conferred, to the catholic, that is, the § 27. KESTEICTION OF KELIGIOUS FKEEDOM. 141 prevailing orthodox hierarchical church, and soon after the Coun- cil of Kice, bj an edict of the year 326, expressly excluded heretics and schismatics from these privileges.' Accordingly he banished the leaders of Arianism and ordered their writings to be burned, but afterward, wavering in his views of ortho- doxy and heterodoxy, and persuaded over by some bishops and his sister, he recalled Arius and banished Athanasius. He himself was baptized shortly before his death by an Arian bishop. His son Constantius was a fanatical persecutor both of idolatry and the Nicene orthodoxy, and endeavored with all his might