The civil and ecclesiastical ministers had transgressed the limits of their respective provinces.

The secular judge had presumed to receive an appeal, and to pronounce a definitive sentence, in a matter of faith, and episcopal jurisdiction.

The bishops had disgraced themselves, by exercising the functions of accusers in a criminal prosecution.

The cruelty of Ithacius, [59] who beheld the tortures, and solicited the death, of the heretics, provoked the just indignation of mankind; and the vices of that profligate bishop were admitted as a proof, that his zeal was instigated by the sordid motives of interest.
Since the death of Priscillian, the rude attempts of persecution have been refined and methodized in the holy office, which assigns their distinct parts to the ecclesiastical and secular powers.

The devoted victim is regularly delivered by the priest to the magistrate, and by the magistrate to the executioner; and the inexorable sentence of the church, which declares the spiritual guilt of the offender, is expressed in the mild language of pity and intercession.
[Footnote 51: See the Sacred History of Sulpicius Severus, (l.ii.