§ 223. The Fundamental Relation Between Church and State

The distinction we have drawn between the Church and the State, and their independence from one another, does not exclude but precisely thereby determines their mutual relation in the world. The Church is not a kingdom of this world, but she is in the world, and her members must at the same time be members of the state, and are thus bound by both ecclesiastical and civil laws. But what, according to the fundamental teaching of the Orthodox Church, is that relation between Church and State?

If one wished to follow, in the strict sense, the prescriptions of the positive law of the Orthodox Church, that relation could be nothing other than a close bond between State and Church—that is, of mutual support and mutual supplementing in that which each, by its own nature, does not possess in itself and cannot dispose of, for the sake of one common end: the temporal and eternal good of man. This bond between Church and State has been precisely regulated, both by law and by the ecclesiastical practice of earlier ages, and it has always brought good to mankind when the ecclesiastical power, and likewise the state power, held themselves strictly within the boundaries traced for them by that law, and when, in accordance with the common end, they jointly developed their activity in matters assigned to them. But it has not always been so; and it has not been so because the respective bearers of power, both ecclesiastical and civil, have not always been imbued with a pure conception of the high calling of the Church in the world.

According to her calling, the Church has the task in the world of turning all nations to the true God, of preaching to them the eternal truth, of teaching them to love God and their neighbor as themselves, to do to others what they would not wish done to themselves, to forgive their enemies, to shun every evil, to despise earthly comforts, to become holy, and to be united with God. Such a task of the Church, as one sees, is purely moral in character, and accordingly she cannot in herself make use of any earthly means to accomplish this task, but only spiritual means, convinced that the time must come when the world will come to know and be penetrated by the loftiness of the spiritual principle of the Church. But toward the fulfillment of her task the Church has always advanced and advances boldly and resolutely, without regard to whatever oppositions the world may place in her path. Christ founded her for the sake of man, for the sake of society; so if she finds in worldly society an obstacle to the exercise of her calling—if she finds that in this or that state the aim of the world is held to be the attainment of the greatest earthly enjoyment, that the lofty thought of eternity is neglected, that worldly institutions contradict the religious and moral truths which the Church preaches—in such a case there can be no bond between Church and State, there can be no such unity as is necessary for the common good of mankind, but there can only be such a relation between them as worldly conditions of the time allow. In general, as an independent institution which has her own firmly fixed end and her own particular means, which she employs wisely but also resolutely to attain that end of hers in the world, the Church has taken, and takes today, toward this or that state, whatever position that particular state takes toward her. For her it is entirely indifferent what state constitution prevails in a given state. She sees in the representative of state power God’s anointed and appointed one, called to govern the state, and she teaches her sons to obey that power. But at the same time she carries out her divine calling boldly; and it depends on the state whether it avails itself of the Church’s work in matters concerning the happiness and progress of the people. If the state is imbued with the loftiness of the Church’s calling, if it understands that the Church can work only beneficially for the good of the people, and if it assists her so that she may the more easily fulfill her calling, then the Church too lends her help to the state power, and in that state there then prevails that harmony between ecclesiastical and civil authority which has always brought only good to society. If the state assumes an undefined position toward the Church, and leaves the Church to herself, in such a case no evil at all will befall the Church, but it will befall the state itself, which is deprived of, and chooses not to make use of, that moral weapon which lies in the hands of the Church, and which the state, however progressive it may consider itself and however much it may proclaim the humanitarian principles that guide it, can never fully command. To this day history has not shown that progress and humanitarianism apart from Christianity signify anything of consequence, whereas with Christianity they signify everything, and only through Christianity do they gain permanence. The evil, then, will befall only the state in such a position toward the Church. The Church will perhaps suffer there from without, since she lacks the state assistance necessary to her for the easier exercise of her calling and for her development and activity, in accordance with that calling, within human society; but in herself she will suffer nothing from this—rather, there will be revealed all the more her high significance and her inner strength, that even without state assistance she can still hold firm and act as an independent power.

If the state assumes toward the Church a hostile, adversarial stance, the Church will in such a case take up whatever position circumstances allow her, will withdraw into herself, and will patiently await the time when God’s justice shall triumph; but she will never cease to preach her teaching, and if she should happen to be provoked to struggle, she will fight with her spiritual weapons resolutely and to the end, even should thousands of her sons fall, firmly believing that sooner or later the final victory must be on her side. As a spiritual, independent power, the Church can exist even outside the state, can employ her spiritual means for her ends without needing the state to assist her with its earthly means; but the state, as an earthly power, cannot long exist without a spiritual, moral power, for it will then be transformed into a mere band of men who, lacking moral restraint, will live by simple physical force, such as even the animal possesses. And moral power resides in the Christian Church; and since this is so—and no one in the world will ever be able to prove that it is not—then the Church, however much she may be persecuted by the state, may with complete confidence calmly await the time when the state itself, in its own interest, will draw near to the Church and avail itself of that moral power of which the Church alone disposes fully and unconditionally. But even in such a position, persecuted by the state, the Church will never depart even for a moment from her fundamental teaching on the origin and significance of state power, nor will she incite her members to resist that power, or rouse them to seize by force what they do not enjoy in that state on equal terms with subjects of other faiths. The kingdom of Christ is not a kingdom of political liberty, but of spiritual liberty, the liberty of truth, freedom from error and evil; and that liberty no earthly power, no state, will ever be able to wrest from the Church.

And this is the fundamental, principled standpoint of the Church in judging the relation between herself and the state. From this fundamental standpoint a conflict between the one and the other, between state power and ecclesiastical power, is impossible—or more precisely, it is not possible for the Church to provoke a conflict with the state; but if conflicts have occurred and do occur, this happens because that fundamental standpoint is abandoned and room is given to human passion, namely when one power or the other oversteps the established bounds of its own sphere and strives to gain the upper hand over the other. Surveying the history of the Church in general, one sees that conflicts between Church and State in the domain of the Eastern Church have been altogether few compared with the conflicts that occurred in the West; and there, moreover, they were for the most part provoked by ecclesiastical power, whereas in the domain of the Eastern Church it was always the state power that provoked them. This is explained by the new ecclesiastical constitution which came to prevail in the West after the division of the Churches.

It is well known what was the cause of the conflicts between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV, between John XXII and Louis of Bavaria, and so forth. This same thing gave rise to that system of ecclesiastical constitution which today, in Protestantism, is altogether different from the constitution of the Church of the apostolic age and the centuries that followed. By the proclamation of the principle that state power must in everything submit to the prescriptions of ecclesiastical power, and that rulers must be dependent on the Roman pontiff, who in certain cases has the right to deprive them of the throne and to release their subjects from due allegiance—by the proclamation of this and other similar principles, there necessarily arose in the West an altogether different view of the relation between Church and State, a view entirely new alongside the principled standpoint that had prevailed in the Church for the first ten centuries. A sharp reaction arose against that principle, especially in France, in Roman Catholic Germany, and in Austria: in the first, under Louis XIV; in the second, in the middle of the eighteenth century; and in the third, under Emperor Joseph II in the last quarter of the same century. What that reaction expressed itself in is shown to us by the four articles proclaimed at the great assembly of the French clergy in 1681, under the presidency of the celebrated Bossuet, known under the name of the “Declaratio cleri Gallicani,” namely: 1) to St. Peter and his successors is granted power in spiritual, not in temporal, affairs; 2) the pope is dependent on the council; 3) the exercise of the pope’s power is limited by the canons and by the prescriptions of the positive law in force in France; and 4) the doctrinal ordinances of the pope cannot be altered unless they have been received and approved by the whole Church. In the same direction Roman Catholic Germany expressed itself through the learned bishop Hontheim, who published his relevant work in 1763 under the pseudonym Febronius; and the same occurred in Austria, when Joseph II subjected the ordinances of the ecclesiastical power to his placet. The first of these was named Gallicanism, the second Febronianism, and the third Josephinism. These pronouncements on the relation between Church and State appeared in the practical sphere, but they were also developed in theory, and created in the West several distinct systems, which their respective adherents sought to prove scientifically. There arose the hierocratic system, which denies the state any independence whatsoever, and, opposed to it, the territorial system with the device: “cuius regio, illius et religio.” The struggle between the adherents of the one system and the adherents of the other was carried on to the death; and, presumably in order to bring it to an end, there was proclaimed the principle of “a free Church in a free state,” which the minister Cavour adopted for Italy, whereby it was intended to dissolve every bond of the state with the Church, so that the state should have no influence whatsoever in the affairs of the Church, nor the Church any right to seek help from the state, still less any right to exert influence in the affairs of the state.

It is superfluous to enter into an analysis of all these theories, or to show how, for instance, this last theory of “a free Church in a free state” runs counter to the very laws of nature, according to which it is simply impossible for one free power to exist within another free power. These theories were an unavoidable phenomenon in the historical life of the Western Church, conditioned by the constitution of that Church. In the domain of the Eastern Church no such phenomena occurred, nor can they occur. Conflicts, to be sure, did occur there too between the one power and the other, but they were, first, very rare, and, further, they were provoked not by ecclesiastical but always by state power, and that only when the state power suddenly demanded of the Church that she lend her authority to approve some act contrary to the positive law of the Church, or when the state power itself wished, on its own, to introduce into the ecclesiastical constitution something not in accord with the fundamental constitution and historical life of the Church, bypassing the ecclesiastical power and establishing something that properly belonged, in the first place, to the competence of the ecclesiastical power. As examples one may cite, from the era of the Byzantine empire, the conflicts under Emperor Leo VI at the beginning of the tenth century, or under Michael Palaeologus in the second half of the thirteenth century. These and similar conflicts in the domain of the Eastern Church, although in their time they did produce social disorders, never went so far as to create any new theory of the relations between Church and State, or to violate the fundamental principle of the ancient Church on this question—the principle of joint action and close bond, without the subjection of one power to the other, not in the sense of a contract, or as they say in the West a “concordat,” by which there would exist between Church and State, for a fixed time, such and such relations, which could then be altered by a change of circumstances.

Joint action and bond between Church and State—this is the teaching that rests on Holy Scripture, which the Orthodox Church has always preached and with which the law of that Church has become imbued. “Kings shall be the nursing fathers of the Church” was foretold already in the Old Testament by the prophet Isaiah,[1] and they shall be the guardians of the faith and of God’s commandments[2] — whereby was laid the foundation of that bond which must exist between state power and the Church. We have already cited the relevant passage from the Pauline epistles on this question. The Fathers of the Church idealize this bond, this concord, bringing the independence of the one and the other power within its own sphere while at the same time stressing their affinity, which at bottom determines their mutual relation.[3] Chrysostom, in interpreting the aforementioned passage from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, stresses the duty of the bishop to submit to the state power; while in his interpretation of Paul’s second Epistle to the Corinthians, he notes the submission which the state power owes to the Church, and thereby clarifies both the mutual bond between the two powers and the character of their mutual relation.[4] The bishop submits to the state power as a subject of the state, and not because his episcopal power derives from the representative of state power; and likewise the representative of state power submits to the bishop as a member of the Church, as a sinful man who seeks his salvation from the Church, and not because his own power proceeds from episcopal power. In this mutual subordination of the one to the other—of ecclesiastical power to civil, and vice versa—one sees as clearly the distinction and independence of the two as one sees the necessity of their mutual bond, with regard to the recognition, by the one and the other, of a higher guiding principle in mankind. With regard to this necessity of their bond for the attainment of the common end, Christ drew the distinction between that which is God’s and that which is Caesar’s: the state has need of help from the Church for spiritual matters, for that moral strength by which it may sustain in its subjects love and striving toward the good, while the representatives of the Church have need of help from the state and from the laws of the state, so that they may more freely and easily spread among men the Christian conceptions of good and justice. The Church invokes God’s blessing on the representative of state power and prays “for his realm, for victory, endurance, peace, health, and salvation, and especially that God may help and prosper him in all things, and put under his feet every enemy and adversary.”[5] The state, for its part, defends the interests of the Church and assists her, that she may freely exercise her moral influence on society, so that peoples may thereby become happier.

This relation between Church and State is given solemn expression on several occasions by the Christian emperors themselves. Theodosius II and Valentinian III, at the time of the Nestorian disputes, write to the bishops of Alexandria: “The condition of our state depends on religion, since between them there is much that is common and akin. They support one another, and the one flourishes by the flourishing of the other, so that true faith shines with justice, and the state blooms when it unites the two in itself. And as emperors, who have been appointed by God to be a refuge of piety and happiness for our subjects, we always take care to preserve their indissoluble bond, serving thereby the providence of God and men; and we serve that providence when we attend to the progress of the state, and the subjects, when, giving ourselves as it were wholly to them, we guide them in pious faith and in a life worthy of the faithful, and take care, as we ought, of the one and the other. For it is impossible that one who cares for the one (the state) should not likewise think of the other (the Church).”[6] Emperor Justinian, in his 6th Novel, expresses this same view of the relation between Church and State even more clearly: “The greatest goods that the highest goodness of God has granted to men are the priesthood and the imperial power, of which the one (the priesthood, ecclesiastical power) cares for divine things, while the other (the empire, state power) directs and cares for human things, and both, proceeding from one and the same source, adorn the ornament of human life. Therefore nothing lies so much upon the hearts of emperors as the honor of the priests, who for their part serve them, praying unceasingly to God for them. And if the priesthood be in every way well ordered and pleasing to God, and the state power govern well and justly the state entrusted to it, then there will be good accord between them in everything that is useful and good for mankind. For this reason we apply our greatest care that the true dogmas of God and the honor of the priesthood be preserved, and through this we hope to receive the greatest goods from God, and to hold firm what we have.”[7] This same Justinian issued, in 530, a law by which the ecclesiastical canons must have the same force as the imperial laws, and what they (the canons) forbid, the imperial laws too must forbid.[8] He repeated this same thing later in his Novels of 542 and 545.[9] Between 879 and 886 there was issued the Epanagoge of the imperial laws, in which the state power and the ecclesiastical power at Constantinople, and their mutual relation, are set forth and explained in detail: “The emperor is the lawful headship, the good of all subjects, which rewards and punishes without partiality. His task is to do good. He must carry into effect all the precepts of Holy Scripture, the ordinances of the seven ecumenical councils, and the civil laws. In orthodoxy—namely in right belief concerning the Holy Trinity and in zeal for the faith—the emperor must be distinguished above all. In issuing laws he must have regard to existing custom, but no custom that contradicts the canons may be allowed to stand. The patriarch is a living image of Christ, who must in word and deed represent the truth. His calling is to care for the salvation of the souls entrusted to him. To him belongs the right of teaching and the fearless defense of truth and faith before the emperor. The emperor and the patriarch, the civil power and the priesthood, stand to one another as body and soul, necessary for the order of the state, just as body and soul are for the living man. In their harmony and concord consists the happiness of the state.”[10] This view of the relation between ecclesiastical and civil power was so firmly fixed in the consciousness of the Church that she always bitterly lamented whenever it was in any way disturbed. After the iconoclast emperors, when Constantine together with his mother Irene ascended the imperial throne and orthodoxy triumphed, the fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council enthusiastically greet the restoration of the former relations between Church and State, and in the acts of the council we read this: “The priest is the consecration and strengthening of imperial power, and imperial power is the strength and support of the priesthood… The priesthood watches over and cares for heavenly things, while imperial power, through just laws, governs earthly things. Now the wall of partition has fallen, and the desired bond is again restored.”[11] By this a canonical seal was set upon the teaching concerning the relation between the two powers, which the Church of earlier times preached and with which both the Fathers of the Church and the Christian rulers were imbued.

With such esteem for her and devotion to the Church, with such great care of theirs for the good of the Church and the progress of the true faith, the Christian emperors could—and the Church found nothing objectionable in this—call themselves “divine,” their laws likewise “divine,” their ordinances “divine,” and so forth.[12] Nor did they do this in the sense of their pagan predecessors, or as though they wished to arrogate to themselves power over the Church, but because they believed that state power was established by God, and because they wished to show their subjects too the divine institution of their power, and to rule the state “by the grace of God.” The Church has always regarded them as such, and regards them so still, and, consecrating them by her special rite and anointing them to the kingship, she numbers them among the ranks of consecrated persons, upon whom a higher grace of God has been poured out. Constantine the Great, in his address to the fathers of the Council of Nicaea, calls the bishops “bishops” in matters that concern the inner life of the Church, and calls himself a “bishop” in matters of the outer ecclesiastical life—and the Fathers of the Church find nothing to reproach him for in this. The fathers of the Council of Chalcedon acclaim the emperor Marcian as “priest-emperor,”[13] and Pope Leo the Great, that strict orthodox teacher, does not hesitate to acknowledge the priestly authority of emperors who are imbued with the interests of the Church and labor for her progress. Of the emperor Theodosius he says that in him there was not only an imperial but also a priestly spirit, for he convened the Council of Ephesus and by his laws condemned the heretics;[14] and he calls the emperor Marcian “guardian of the faith” on account of his condemnation of Eutyches.[15] And the Fathers of the Church regarded it as an unconditional attribute of the imperial power that it should be the guardian of the faith, and therefore they turned to that power every time it was necessary to establish some article of faith against some heretical teaching; and the emperors responded to this, considering that they were thereby fulfilling one of the duties entrusted to them by God himself. The reason for this did not arise from the notion that the Fathers of the Church held that God’s truth itself needed to be confirmed and guarded from outside injury by imperial power. They themselves, like the emperors themselves, believed in that truth, for it already contained within itself the ground of its own existence, and is eternal in itself; rather, the thought of the need for imperial power to confirm and guard the purity of the faith arose from the striving to secure both the temporal and the eternal good of man, to cultivate in men all that is good and noble, and to preserve them from all that is evil and that might destroy the happiness of society and turn it away from the path to eternal life. Human nature is weak, and not everyone is capable of grasping the moral and religious reason why one must keep, for its own sake, the truths of faith and morals; rather it is necessary, for this reason, that everyone should fear, besides the heavenly, also the earthly penalty for the violation of those truths; and leave human nature without this restraint, and the way is then open to every disorder in the Church, disorder in society, and consequently disorder in the state itself. The necessity of state power for the preservation of the purity of the faith has been recognized throughout the ages; and the thought of that necessity has penetrated the legislation of all the Christian states that exist today.[16]

By this is explained also that participation which emperors or their delegates took in the convening, holding, and concluding of the ecumenical councils. The emperors and their delegates were not present at the ecumenical councils as judges in matters of faith and as heads of the Church, but as guardians of peace and order in the Church, under the title and with the rights of defenders of the faith. “God has appointed you shepherds of the Church, and therefore you must deliberate on everything that concerns the Church of Christ,” said Constantine the Great to the bishops of the Council of Nicaea.[17] The emperor Marcian declares at the Council of Chalcedon that “he wished to be present at the council in order to confirm the faith and to secure freedom of action at the council, and not to display some power and force of his own.”[18] Being personally present at the First Council of Nicaea, Constantine the Great himself followed the proceedings of the council, and as guardian of order reconciled the parties and brought them back to the main subject whenever they strayed from it. Other emperors, who were not personally present at councils, entrusted this task to their delegates; and what their task was we see from the following letter which Theodosius and Valentinian addressed to the fathers of the Third Ecumenical Council: “We take great care of everything that is of common benefit, and especially of that which pertains to piety, for piety brings men all other goods as well. For this reason we have already written earlier about everything necessary for your assembling; and since care must also be taken for the order and peace necessary in the deliberations of your holy council, we have taken care that the council should not be disturbed from any quarter in its work. And although we are convinced that you have no need of any outside help to guarantee peace to yourselves and to others, nevertheless our diligent care for piety has moved us to see to this as well. For this reason it has been charged to our most exalted official Candidianus to be present at your holy council, but in such a way that he shall not intervene in the deliberations on matters of doctrine, since it is not fitting for one who is not a bishop to intervene in the affairs of the Church; besides this, he shall remove from the city everyone who has no business there…; likewise he will take care that disputes in the deliberations do not overstep their bounds and that the truth, which your holy council is to elucidate, does not suffer thereby, and that no clamor should arise which would hinder the truth from being swiftly revealed, but that each, having calmly heard what another says, should declare either his assent or set forth his objections, so that thus, through the sifting of the opinions of all, without any hindrance, a common conclusion may be reached and your holiness may establish the incontestable truth… In particular our majesty has commanded this most exalted official Candidianus to take care that no one leave the place appointed for deliberation, whether to return home, or to go to the emperor, or to depart to any other place; and likewise that no new ecclesiastical question be proposed by anyone, nor any proposal introduced that does not pertain to the question that is chiefly at hand, until that main question is resolved—and whatever else is needed for the attainment of the knowledge of the truth shall, after full examination, receive afterward the confirmation befitting Orthodox piety…”[19] At the Fourth Ecumenical Council, certain adherents of Monophysitism, whom the council was to condemn, appealed to the emperor; and the emperor on that occasion wrote to the council as follows: “Had I myself wished to decide this matter, I would not have convened a council… but now I command that you submit to the council and learn what you ought to learn, and whatever the holy council decides is law for me; this I follow, this I believe.”[20]

There is nothing contrary to ecclesiastical authority, nor indeed anything anti-canonical, even in those autograph signatures by which the emperors confirmed the decisions of the ecumenical councils. In themselves these signatures were nothing other than the execution of the wish of the ecclesiastical power itself, and in their purpose they served as a sign that the conclusions of the council had been received as positive laws in the state. By this confirmation of theirs the Christian emperors declared their submission to those conclusions, as obedient sons of the Church; and, as representatives of the rights of the people and as guardians of its good and happiness, they thereby vouched before the Church, for all their subjects, that the ordinances and laws of the Church would be sacredly respected, that they would not be subjected to any violation, and that they would serve as a guiding principle in the life and activity of all members of the state. The state power, in its participation at the ecumenical councils, appeared only as an external, auxiliary and legislative force; and where that external participation of hers ended, there the independent power of the Church revealed itself.

In acknowledging this participation of state power in ecclesiastical affairs, the Church acknowledges it in principle; nor does that principle suffer from the circumstance that there were, in the historical life of the Church, several rulers who were heretics and who by their ordinances condemned Orthodoxy and protected heresy. A new teaching—or let us say, some teaching that begins to be preached in the Church in a new way—before it is recognized as heresy, must undergo much time; it must be thoroughly examined, and only the ecumenical voice of the Church, whether at an ecumenical council or by the written agreement of all the primates of the Church, can proclaim that teaching to be heresy. And until that is reached, some wavering may occur even in the minds of the most learned pastors of the Church, who, precisely as such, as men imbued with deep piety and high learning, strive to discern the true truth. There is no shortage of examples in the history of the Church of several among the most eminent pastors of the Church inclining toward one or another heretical teaching, and even defending it in writing, until the voice of the ecumenical Church condemned that teaching and proclaimed it heresy. This could the more easily happen because not every word in a heretical teaching was false, and the heretics had much that was Orthodox in their teaching as well; and, on the other hand, they supported their teaching with such citations and such passages from biblical and patristic history that only a particularly sharp eye and a particularly deep knowledge of Orthodox doctrine could discern where the error lay in the general teaching of one or another group of heretics. Individual Orthodox pastors, if at certain moments they too inclined toward heresy, did so precisely out of love for Orthodoxy and in the full conviction that they were defending the truth; and, in writing on this, they were fully convinced that they were helping the truth to be more clearly revealed. And if this could happen even among the pastors of the Church themselves, who were theologically trained and specially appointed to guard the deposit of Orthodoxy entrusted to them, could it not much more easily happen among the Christian emperors, who did not possess theological training as the pastors of the Church did, and who were called to defend Orthodoxy only in a secondary and outward manner? The position of the emperors, as heads of the state, and indeed heads of all their subjects without distinction of faith, who were bound to render justice to every subject, whatever his faith—this position of the emperors became especially burdensome whenever some heresy of considerable significance for society arose in the state. Great disputes would arise among parties defending this or that religious teaching, disputes that brought the parties to the utmost exasperation, and in such circumstances each party would turn to the emperor, that he might take it under his protection and recognize it as Orthodox. The wavering that arose among the pastors of the Church at the appearance of a heresy arose with double force among the emperors, who now had first to protect the true faith, and then to restore the disturbed order in society. The heretics knew how to use, in such a case, every possible means, both directly and through high state officials, to persuade the emperors that their teaching was Orthodox, and, consequently, that the Orthodox pastors had departed from the Church—and it happened that emperors yielded to the persuasions of heretical leaders, and, wishing by their imperial power to restore peace, issued edicts contrary to Orthodoxy. In acting thus, they were convinced that they were defending the true doctrine of the Church and that they were not at all breaking the bond with the Church, though in fact they were breaking it. This is shown, with few exceptions, by all the edicts of emperors who protected one heresy or another. And from this it clearly follows that the fundamental principle regarding the relation of the state to the Church remained, in these emperors who were carried away by heresy, the very same as that held by the Orthodox emperors—only that principle was wrongly put into practice. This question, regarding the Church’s judgment and her right concerning the edicts of emperors who were heretics, we have touched upon here because it is a very important question, and because, judging it not in this way but instead elevating to a principle the conduct of heretical emperors toward the Church, and, on the basis of this principle, judging the relation that ought to exist between Church and State, one falls into false theories; and, without examining all the circumstances under which certain Christian emperors were carried away by heresies and persecuted the Orthodox pastors of the Church, it was already asserted categorically that there was a harmful influence of state power in ecclesiastical affairs, and that it must therefore be finally and in principle rejected. Thus one arrived, from the other side, at the theory of “a free Church in a free state.”