From the same mistaking of the present Church for the kingdom of God, came in the distinction between the “civil” and the “canon” laws: the civil law being the acts of “sovereigns” in their own dominions, and the canon law being the acts of the Pope in the same dominion. Which canons, though they were but canons, that is, “rules propounded,” and but voluntarily received by Christian princes, till the translation of the empire to Charlemagne; yet afterwards, as the power of the Pope increased, became “rules commanded,” and the emperors themselves, to avoid greater mischiefs, which the people blinded might be led into, were forced to let them pass for laws.