no need to enter into the formal examination of more recent pretensions and developments. There was no need to assert in so many words that the Pope was not infallible, either personally, with the lives of John X. and his execrable fraternity before us, or officially, when they have been sometimes accused of heresy; sometimes compelled to appeal to a general council; sometimes repudiated by those councils; sometimes deposed by them. There was no need to refute the idea of an infallible guidance in matters of faith, with the spectacle of East and West divided, with council anathematising council, and popes and patriarchs launching their spiritual thunderbolts against each other. Still less was there any need to advert to fallacies so transparent as those which rest the papal claims on the possession of moral power, when that which they have possessed or exercised has been so frequently used to desolate the earth instead of furthering the kingdom of peace; when the offenders against the first principles of all law have been suffered to escape unpunished and unnoticed, and the rebel against canons and councils has been thrust into the dungeon or consigned to the stake; when offences against a remote consanguinity or spiritual relationship were hunted down, but license and profligacy were unchecked and unreproved; when the ban of excommunication fell on the most enlightened of statesmen, the most judicious and clear-sighted of rulers, and miscreants dead to all sense of mercy and humanity were taken into its special favour. Evidence such as this, abounding as it does throughout the whole annals of the Papacy and of Christendom, it would be superfluous to strengthen by seeking for obscure early intimations of protests against papal pretensions, for ancient signs of suspicion and repudiation of Roman supremacy, for decrees of councils which asserted their own independence. It would be vain to attempt to overthrow it by referring to tomes of decretals (were they as genuine as they are false), by citing the most ancient precedents, by appeals to the gravest canons,-vain to rest on the promises of Scripture, or on that prior ground of the want which it is alleged that men must feel for an unerring guidance in the province of faith.

The Roman Church could not but have, from its situation, a sensible influence over all other nations. Rome was still, before the transference of the empire to the shores of the Bosporus, the centre of the civil and commercial world. To it flowed the trade and the enterprise of all nations, and with these were imported every new theory, every fresh schism and heresy. Thither came those who had fallen under suspicion of departing from the faith, thither appealed those who had accused them

of corrupting the doctrine of Christ. Received by all these as an arbiter, if not a judge, the decisions of the Bishop of Rome were eagerly courted, and sometimes admitted by more than those in whose favour they were given. Yet the importance thus acquired was not sufficient to establish an inherent supremacy; there is not the slightest sign that during that period it was either entertained by, or had even suggested itself to, the minds of the bishops of Rome. Nor was it for a brief period that Christianity in Rome, and elsewhere in the West, remained Greek and not Roman. Its theology and ritual were alike Greek; till the age of Tertullian Latin Christianity could lay no claim to anything like a popular literature. And here manifestly (as the Dean has happily observed), is furnished the explanation of the singular fact mentioned by Sozomen, that for a long time after the introduction of Christianity there was no public preaching in Rome.

During this period the course of events was preparing the way for the separation of Latin from Eastern Christianity as a distinct and complete system. In the West the Church was identifying itself more and more with the language of old Rome, and separating itself from Greek forms of thought, Greek feeling, and Greek theology. In the second century Latin sermons were impracticable from the immense majority of Christians who spoke Greek. In the fourth century, Athanasius has, during three years' sojourn at Rome, to master the Latin language before he can venture to appear before the Pope with any confidence of being able to explain the subtle distinctions of the Trinitarian controversy.

But the popes were again favoured by their distance from the actual scene of this and the other early controversies. At the several eastern councils in which the Pope interfered at all, he was represented by his deputies. His absence enhanced his dignity, while it saved him from the unseemly turmoils which frequently disgraced those councils, and from being hastily committed in person to decisions which, when given by others, he might, if need were, repudiate. Yet before the Papacy could attain to something like its subsequent importance, it had to pass through a dark and discouraging ordeal. The persecution of Liberius by Constantius for his resolute defence of the great champion of the Trinitarian controversy; the intrusion of the Anti-pope Felix into his see; the fearful and bloody factions, which polluted the streets of Rome in the strife between Damasus and Ursicinus; could have left men but little time to anticipate the day when emperors would tremble at the behests of their successors.

Yet the danger was not so great, the crisis not so momentous, as it seemed to be. The dark cloud passed away, and Rome found herself advancing rapidly to spiritual dominion, and that from influences not altogether proceeding from herself. In the minds of Augustine, of Jerome, and of Ambrose, the magnificent idea of a spiritual monarchy, of a theocracy with a visible hierarchy analogous to the subordination of angelic dignities, — had already received shape. In their writings it was given to the world. Probably before none of them, certainly not before Augustine, rose the image of the historical papacy of a later day. His city of God embraced not earth alone, but heaven. It had no mixture of worldly policy, it knew nothing of reliance on secular power. But the less definite outlines of this Divine kingdom upon earth harmonised well with the old ideas of Roman sovereignty, long dormant, but never altogether extinguished.

The elements of confusion and violence were at work both in the East and West-confusion in the former from contending religious factions, in the latter from the disruption of the old society by the inroads of barbarians. Amidst scenes of tumult and terror, Chrysostom, the world-famed orator, the dauntless reprover of royal license and popular corruption, had been driven from his patriarchal throne. Before the Bishop of Rome, Innocent (not less deserving than any other of the name of Great), he laid his appeal for a general council to judge between him and his intruding rival. That appeal availed not to win back for him the throne which he had lost; but a great accession of moral influence was the reward of the Pope for his steadfast maintenance of a righteous cause. Innocent had deplored the scenes of reckless anarchy in the streets and churches of Constantinople: he was now to witness the repeated inroads of the terrible Alaric with his savage Goths, the last struggle of pagan Rome with the destined instruments of its downfall. Twice repelled by the arms of Stilicho, for the third time, when Stilicho had fallen a victim to the infatuated frenzy of Honorius, the hosts of Alaric battered the walls of Rome, and were averted from their prey, not probably without the intervention of Innocent, at the price of a costly ransom. Master of the city of the Cæsars, he set up and dethroned one on whom he bestowed their empty title; and then again summoned his hordes to the onset, and let loose his legions for the final pillage of pagan Rome. By a happy fortune, Innocent was at Ravenna, on a vain mission to obtain succour from the powerless Emperor for the beleaguered city. The head of Western Christendom was not to witness her dying splendours extinguished in flames and

blood. The invader himself, it is said, was swayed by some strange influence towards the Christians. Against their persons and substance he forbade all violence; their churches he protected from desecration; only the worshippers of the ancient gods were abandoned to the swords and the license of his soldiery. Before the return of the Pope, pagan Rome had virtually ceased to exist. The forum, with its gorgeous temples which inspired the triumphant eulogies of Claudian on the victories of Stilicho, had lost its ancient majesty; the spell of the tutelar gods was broken. Palaces lay deserted, temples were left to decay. Rome was to spring from her ashes, Christian in her faith, in her art, and in her government; and in place of the old shrines and the old priesthood,-the pontiffs, and the flamens, and the augurs,-were to arise the temples of the Christian faith with their more magnificent hierarchy. The successor of the Galilean fisherman had inherited more than all their ancient sacerdotal dignity, more than the barren pomp of the titles of the old republic. Caring little for high-sounding names, he had attained a more solid power; he was now on the road to universal empire.

Twenty years later, the papal throne was filled by a worthy representative of Innocent I. Like him Leo the Great had to arbitrate in Eastern controversy, like him to witness the inroads of barbarians, yet with greater success to draw off the invader from the gates. The Huns of Attila were encamped on the shores of the lake Benacus. Leo went forth at the head of the ambassadors of Rome, and averted the storm from the devoted city. The populace had not yet lost all traces of their faith in the divination and mythology of old times. They attributed their deliverance to the stars, and thronged to the Circensian games: the pencil of Raffaelle has immortalised the legend of the armed apparition of the Christian protectors of the Eternal city. Five years sufficed to bring against them a less placable enemy; and again Leo went forth to plead before Genseric the cause of his defenceless fellow-citizens. Some mitigation of the lot of conquered cities he did indeed obtain : those only who offered resistance might be killed, the captives should not be tortured or the buildings burnt. But beyond this the arm of the Vandal could not be arrested; and the few relics of heathenism, the statues which had been suffered to decorate the capitol after the pillage by Alaric, now fell into his hand and were carried away as trophies. The last links were broken between Christian and Pagan Rome. The ship which was bearing her gods to Carthage foundered at sea.

Thus far the papal supremacy, such as it was, had been for

the most part acquired by legitimate means and exercised for beneficial purposes. The great idea of unlimited dominion which had first been conceived in its completeness by the comprehensive mind of Innocent I., had made no slight advance towards its realisation under Leo the Great. But in this idea the notion of temporal supremacy was altogether subordinate. The empire, aimed at thus far, resembled rather the fairer vision which rose before the mind of Augustine. But if they saw the possibility of realising their idea, they could not foresee the force of circumstances in modifying or distorting it. Doubtless the moral influence of the popes was beginning more and more to influence the civil relations of Rome. It was the only power which then existed in the freshness of its early vigour. The empire of the West, already little more than nominal, was waning rapidly away. But long before the Papacy could appear as a temporal power, it must exhibit strange fluctuations and pass through more than one period of depression, apparently of decay. The resignation of Augustulus, which by the pompous pride of the Roman senate was interpreted into an assertion of the reunion of East and West under one emperor, is an event almost unnoticed in the papal epistles. The popes are busied with intrigues in the East, in battling with the pretensions of the patriarch of Constantinople to parity of honour with the see of Rome. Yet the substitution of the real empire of Odoacer for the empty sovereignty of Augustulus had a directly practical bearing of far greater moment than they had conceived. But the full consequences of this subjection were scarcely felt till the victories of Justinian had temporarily reunited the East and West under a single sceptre.

Before these events one interruption had occurred in the monotonous controversies of the Eastern Church. It came in the shape of an exhortation to peace, not from the spiritual but the civil power. The Henoticon of Zeno would have mitigated the acrimony of contending factions by removing the causes and objects of their discord; but the combatants were not to be so separated; and the vain attempt to bring about toleration ended in a schism between the two great divisions of Christendom which lasted for forty years. The Henoticon, like some other pieces of legislation and expressions of individual opinion, was both out of time and out of place. Like the Peace of the Empire proclaimed by Henry IV., like the premature civilisation of the Sicilian court of Frederic II., it spoke to men with whom forbearance and moderation were synonymous with absolute apostacy from all faith. Yet as indicating the course which should at a future time guide even