BX 
 
 •C'd 
 
 ■Kit ; '■' 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 myT 
 
 &pt. 
 
 
 tlNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
^ ^ ?<5 
 
 THE POPE 
 
 TIs ?ieaf ef ai-ist? Ik ieii ef ike Cteeh. 
 
 BY 
 
 RIGHT REV, MONSIGNOR CAPEL, D,D 
 
 Domestic Pkelate of His Holiness Pope Leo XHI. 
 
 THIRD THOUSAND. 
 
 FPt. PUSTET & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 
 
 NEW YORK AND CINCINNATf. 
 
 1885. 
 
 PRICE, TWENTy-FI\fE CENTS. 
 
INVALUABLE AS A BOOK OF REFERENCE. 
 
 THE FAITH OF CATHOUCS. (Second Edition ) Confirmed 
 
 bj the Scriptures and attested by the Fathers of the first Five 
 
 Centuries. Compiled by Revs. J. Berington and J. Kirk; 
 
 revised and recast b}" Rev. J. Waterworth, with Preface by 
 
 Right Rev. Monsignor Capel, D.D. 8 vols, octavo, 1,464 
 
 pages, in cloth. Price, net, $6.00. Fr. Pdstet & Co., New 
 
 York and Cincinnati. 
 
 "It is a defense of Roman doctrine of the most legitimate and effective 
 kind. It is even at. appeal to the reason and the learning of all who are able 
 to appreciate so elaborate, and at the same time, so simple an argument. 
 . We may add that the references to the originals are full and 
 clear. Of course, AYe do not pretend to have verified them all, nor compared 
 with the original of the translated passages. But those which we have veri- 
 fied and compared do not convey the impression of any intentional unfair- 
 ness." — The American Literary Churchman, an Anglican^paper, Baltimore. 
 
 "These three volumes will be valuable arid useful. They are quite as 
 important to Protestants as to Roman Catholic teachers and scholars. . . 
 We may therefore recommend the addition of these volumes to the library of 
 Protestant ministers." — The Observer, New York, a Presbyterian paper. 
 
 " This publication will have achieved a real good if it sets American Chris- 
 tians, generally, upon the track of patristical study." — The C/iarchinan, New 
 York, Anglican. 
 
 " It places v/ithin easy reach and in luminous order the Roman view of the 
 'Faith of Catholics,' as grounded on those authorities according to the under- 
 standing of the Roman scholar, rather than the notions of the Protestant con- 
 troversialist, a matter of no small importance where a just judgment of an 
 antagonist system is desired." — The Living Church, Chicago, Anglican. 
 
 " It is a real pleasure to have the peculiar doctrines of the Roman Catholics 
 brought before the public in such a clear, definite and attractive form, and 
 nnder the editorship of a divine so well known as Monsignor Capel." — T'he 
 New York Evangelist. 
 
 "If this be not proof that the Catholic Church of to-day is in doctrine and 
 discipline the Church of the Apostles, the Church of Jesus Christ, there is no 
 proving anything."— r/ie Pasior, New York. 
 
 " Mgr. Capel deserves the gratitude of all Catholics, indeed of all professors 
 of or inquirers into revealed religion, for his timely presentation of the inval- 
 uable work, 'The Faith of Catholics.' "—The Boston^ Posi. 
 
 "As a work of reference on all controversial subjects, arid eminently fitted 
 for ecclesiastical study, there are probably few even of the standard works of 
 the Church better adapted for such uses."— T/ie Boston Catholic Herald. 
 
/ 
 
 y,^. 
 
 THE POPE: 
 
 The Vicar of Christ-, the Head of the Church. 
 
 BY 
 
 RIGHT REV. MONSIGNOR CAPEL, D. D. 
 
 ^w 
 
 Domestic Prelate of His Holiness Pope Leo XHI. 
 
 THIRD THOUSAND. 
 
 Fr. PUSTET & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS; 
 
 new YORK AND CINCINNATI. 
 
 1885. 
 
NvUO^fesvA 
 
 
 s 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 ^^'O 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by P. J. Thomas, in the office of 
 the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C. 
 
 Printed by P, j. THOMAS, 
 San FRAh.cisco, Cal. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Is the Pope possessor of supreme and universal 
 authority over the whole of the Christian Church, is 
 the Pope the Yicar of Christ: are questions of the 
 greatest moment to all believers in Christianity. If 
 the Pope holds such pov^er and position, then is there 
 the absolute need of subjection to him in things 
 spiritual. 
 
 The subject has been treated by me from different 
 standpoints during my tour in the States. The sub- 
 stance of such discourses is now given to the public. 
 
 To meet the demands on time made by the active 
 busy life in America, the matter is presented as con- 
 cisely as possible and in short chapters. 
 
 The intelligence and general information displayed 
 by the people in all parts of the States which I have 
 visited permit me, while presenting a small book for 
 popular use, to treat the subject for an educated peo- 
 ple anxious for solid knowledge. 
 
 To those who wish to prosecute the further study 
 of this question I recommend the following works, to 
 which I have to express m.y indebtedness: Archbishop 
 Kenrick's *' Primacy of S. Peter," Allies' "See of S. 
 Peter," Wilberforce's " Principles of Church Author- 
 ity," Allnatt's '' Cathedra Petri," and '' Faith of 
 Catholics," (Yol. II.,) containing the historical evi- 
 dence ot the first five centuries of the Christian era 
 to the teaching concerning the Papacy. 
 
 T. J. CAPEL. 
 
 Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 
 
 •1885. 
 
^ 
 
 UBI PETRUS: IBI BCOLESIA. 
 
 (S. Ambrose, A. D. 385.) 
 
 PRAYER 
 
 FOR UNITY OF FAITH AMONG ALL MEN 
 
 O G-ODj who liast given Thy only begotten Son as a sacrifice of 
 propitiation for the salvation of the world, that being lifted up 
 from the earth He might draw the hearts of all men to Himself; 
 and Who wiliest not that any should perish, but earnestly 
 desirest that all should be saved; we humbly beseech Thee, that 
 through the wounds and most precious blood of that same 
 beloved Son, Thou wouldst graciously look upon all men, in all 
 parts of the world, whom the subtlety of error hath deceived or 
 the darkness of ignorance hath blinded, and lead them back 
 into the way of truth and salvation. Bemember, O Lord, that 
 they are Thy creatures; despise not, therefore, the work of Thy 
 hands. Begard the tears of Thj Church, the Spouse of Thy 
 Son; hear the groans of Thy servants; and grant that all heresies 
 and schisms being done away, we may enjoy perpetual peace and 
 concord. Grant that all nations, joined to Thee in unity of 
 faith and perfect charity, under the government of Peter may 
 be brought to the pastures of eternal life; and let there be 
 through the whole world One Fold and One Shepherd. So be 
 it; so be it, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
THE POPE: 
 
 THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE PAPACY- 
 
 THE practical experience of life teaches that every or- 
 ganized body of men must have a head. A ship has 
 its captain, an army its commander, a State its governor, 
 a nation its sovereign. 
 
 Admitting that Jesus Christ has established on earth a 
 visible society, His Church, then is it to be expected there 
 would be a Visible Chief. Nay, admitting that this Church, 
 the Kingdom of Heaven, is to embrace the whole earth and 
 be one Nation made up of all nations, circumscribed neither 
 by time nor by race, then common sense says, so vast an 
 organized supernatural and spiritual society stands more in 
 need than any other on earth of a Visible Ruler. 
 
 It is precisely this which is asserted and claimed by 
 Catholics for the Pope of Home. They say this is what 
 Jesus Christ did in the person of S. Peter. And having 
 made such Headship or Presidency an essential part of the 
 Constitution of the Church, then must it ever be found in a 
 continuous line of successors to S. Peter. 
 
 In saying that a Visible Head is given to the Visible 
 Church, there is no displacing of Christ. In Him is all 
 power, all headship. The Church is His, and from Him 
 comes all its spiritual life, imparting feeling and motion to its 
 members. The Visible Head is constituted by Christ, to 
 be the spring, origin and source of external communion 
 and government. 
 
 This is the question now to be investigated. 
 
6 THE pope: 
 
 1. To understand the nature of the power claimed for 
 the Pope, it is necessary to keep in mind that Catholics 
 hold that Jesus Christ has established hvo essential and 
 indestructible elements in His Church. 
 
 First, the Apostolate, consisting in universal jurisdiction, 
 derived directly from Christ. This resides in all its pleni- 
 tude, permanently and solely in the Successors of S. Peter. 
 
 Secondly, the One Episcopate, diffused through many 
 individuals, exercising corporate jurisdiction in the whole 
 world. It resides exclusively in the Body of Bishops who 
 are in union with the successor of S. Peter. Each of these 
 Bishops, when lawfully appointed, does not possess the whole 
 Episcopate, nor part of the Episcopate, but shares in its 
 solidarity without dividing it. So, then, though Jesus Christ 
 directly gave to His Church the One Episcopate, still each 
 individual Bishop receives his authority to rule a diocese 
 indirectly, from our Lord, but through Peter's successor. 
 
 The One Episcopate is plainly subordinated to the Apos- 
 tolate, but not as its lieutenant. Both are established by 
 Jesus Christ. The Episcopate, perpetuating the itpostolic 
 College, ever has its unity, its strength, its power, its unfail- 
 ing faith, its separate shepherds, because of its union with 
 Peter, as a body in fact with its head. In virtue of this 
 relationship. Bishops, at Stated intervals, are obliged to 
 visit the ' ' limina Apostolorum " and render an account of 
 the state of their dioceses. 
 
 Hence the superscription of encyclicals and other letters 
 of the Vicar of Christ to the Church, *' N., by Divine Provi- 
 dence, Pope"; whilst Bishops in their pastoral letters to 
 their diocesans superscribe " N., by the grace of God, and 
 by the favor of the Apostolic See, Bishop of N." 
 
 On the relationship of the Bishops to the Pope, the 
 Vatican Council says: "But so far is the power of the 
 Supreme Pontiff from being any prejudice to the ordinary 
 and immediate power of episcopal jurisdiction, by which 
 Bishops who have been set by the Holy Ghost to succeed 
 and hold the place of the Apostles, to feed and govern each 
 his own flock as true pastors, that their episcopal authority 
 
THE YICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 7 
 
 is really asserted, strengthened and protected by the 
 supreme and universal Pastor; in accordance with the words 
 of S. Gregory the Great: "My honor is the honor of the 
 whole Church, my honor is the firm strength of my brethren. 
 I am truly honored when the honor due to each and all is 
 not withheld." 
 
 The Apostolate and the One Episcopate, as Head and 
 Members, are divinely instituted and are two constituent or- 
 gans of His Body, "which is the Church." Consequently they 
 are essential parts of Christ's kingdom on earth, and must 
 ever be found in it, so long as the Kingdom is to exist. 
 
 2. This Apostolate, or Headship of the Church, or Pa- 
 pacy, as it is called, contains the office of Supreme Gover- 
 nor and Law-giver, of Supreme Judge, of Supreme Doctor 
 or Teacher of the Church. 
 
 1. Office of Supreme Governor.— Of which the Vatican 
 Council "teaches and declares that by the appointment of 
 our Lord, the Roman Church possesses a superiority of 
 ordinary power over all other Churches, and that this power 
 of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, which is truly episco- 
 pal, is immediate ; to which all, of whatever rite and dignity, 
 both pastors and faithful, both individually and collectively, 
 are bound by their duty of hierarchial submission and true 
 obedience, to submit not only in matters which belong to 
 faith and morals, but also in those that appertain to the dis- 
 cipline and government of the Church throughout the world; 
 so that the Church of Christ may be one flock under one 
 Supreme Pastor through the preservation of unity both of 
 communion and of profession of the same faith with the 
 Roman Pontiff. This is the teaching of Catholic truth, 
 from which no one can deviate without loss of faith and of 
 salvation." .... 
 
 The decree then goes on to declare: "If any shall say 
 that the Roman Pontiff has the office merely of inspection 
 or direction, and not full and supreme power of jurisdiction 
 over the Universal Church, not only in things which belong 
 
8 THE POPE: 
 
 to faith and morals, but also in those which relate to the 
 discipline and government of the Church spread throughout 
 the world; or assert that he possesses merely the principal 
 part, and not all the fulness of this supreme power; or that 
 this power which he enjoys is not ordinary and immediate 
 both over each and all the Pastors and the faithful, let him 
 be anathema." 
 
 In virtue of this Supreme Governorship, (a) the Pope has 
 the right to legislate for the whole Church for to him 
 belongs the supreme direction of discipline, (b) He alone 
 has the right to convoke Councils and to decide where they 
 are to be held; over such Councils has he alone the right 
 to preside either in person, or by his substitutes, or by his 
 after-recognition of them; his confirmation of their decrees 
 is needed to make them binding on the Church, (c) To 
 the Pope it belongs directly or indirectly to appoint Bishops, 
 to transfer them to other dioceses, to permit and accept 
 their resignation, and, in case of need, to depose them. 
 
 (d) The Pope alone has the right to create, destroy or modify 
 dioceses; to make and unmake archbishoprics, and the like. 
 
 (e) To the Pope alone does it belong to approve of the 
 foundation of religious orders in the Church, and, if he so 
 judges, to exempt them from the jurisdiction of the Bishops. 
 (/) In a word, the Holy Father, in virtue of his office, has 
 the right and duty to intervene in all that concerns the 
 general good of the Church. To no one on earth is lie 
 accountable; indeed, this applies to his lesser offices of Bishop 
 of the City of Eome, of Metropolitan of the Roman Pro- 
 vinces, of Patriarch in the West. 
 
 ii. Office of Supreme Judge.— The Vatican Council says: 
 *' And since, by the divine right of the Apostolic primacy, 
 the Roman Pontiff is placed over the Universal Church, we 
 further teach and declare that he is the Supreme Judge of 
 the faithful, and that in all causes, the decision of which 
 belongs to the Church, recourse may be had to his tribunal, 
 and that none may reopen the judgment of the Apostolic 
 See, than whose authority there is no greater, nor can any 
 
THE VICAR OF CHEIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 9 
 
 lawfully review its judgment. Wherefore they err from the 
 right course who assert that it is lawful to appeal from the 
 judgments of the Koman Pontiffs to an Ecumenical Council 
 as to an authority higher than that of the Roman Pontiff." 
 
 From every Bishop's court appeal may be made to that of 
 the Archbishop, and thence to the supreme and final adjudi- 
 cation of the Holy See. 
 
 Besides this regular course of procedure every child of 
 the Church has the right to appeal, in spiritual causes, to 
 the Pope, inasmuch as he is the ordinary judge of the whole 
 Church. His judicial power is over pastors and people. But 
 his is the Supreme Court in the Church; his judgment is 
 final, from it there is no appeal. 
 
 In virtue of this office, the Pope claims that he ''has the 
 right of free communication with the Pastors of the whole 
 Church, and with their flocks, that these may be taught and 
 ruled by him in the way of salvation." Consequently, 
 "those must be reproved and condemned who say that this 
 communication of the Supreme Chief with the Pastors and 
 the faithful may be lawfully impeded." It is then clearly 
 prohibited to all, without distinction, to prevent the Holy 
 See from communicating by itself and immediately with the 
 faithful, and from treating and defining questions having 
 reference to their religious interests. So writes Cardinal 
 Jacobini in his letter on the powers of Papal Nuncios. 
 
 To secure free communication at all times, whether in 
 peace or in war, between the Pope and his children, an 
 independent territory always accessible is needed. Civilized 
 nations ought for the moral good of mankind guarantee and 
 secure by international treaty such a territory to the 
 Sovereign Pontiff. 
 
 iii. Office of Supreme Doctor.— " The supreme power of 
 teaching," the Vatican Council proclaims, " is also included 
 in the Apostolic, Primacy which the Roman Pontiff, as the 
 successor of Peter, Prince of the Apostles, possesses over 
 the whole Church, this Holy See has always held, the per- 
 petual practice of the Church confirms, and Ecumenical 
 
10 THE pope: 
 
 Councils also have declared, especially those in which the 
 East with the West met in the union of faith and charity. . . . 
 
 '* To satisfy this pastoral duty, our predecessors ever made 
 unwearied efforts that the salutary doctrine of Christ might 
 be propagated among ail the nations of the earth; and with 
 equal care watched that it might be preserved genuine and 
 pure where it had been received 
 
 "The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of 
 Peter that by His revelation they might make known new 
 doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably 
 keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of 
 faith delivered through the Apostles 
 
 "This gift, then, of truth and never-failing faith was 
 conferred by Heaven upon Peter and his successors in this 
 Chair, that they might perform their high office for the salva- 
 tion of all; that the whole flock of Christ, kept away by them 
 from the poisonous food of error, might be nourished with 
 the pasture of heavenly doctrine; that the occasion of schism 
 being removed, the whole Church might be kept one, and, 
 resting on its foundation, might stand firm against the gates 
 of hell." 
 
 Having made this preamble, the Council goes on to 
 define that the Pope is possessor of that gift of inerrancy 
 or infallibility with which the Divine Eedeemer endowed His 
 Church, And that consequently, when the Pope speaks, ex 
 cathedra, (as a judge fi'om the bench) in his official capacity as 
 Pastor and Doctor of all Christians, doing so by virtue of 
 his supreme Apostolic authority, his definitions regarding 
 faith and morals are infallible or unerring; and, conse- 
 quently, such definitions are of themselves, and not by the 
 consent of the Church, irreformable. 
 
 To the office of Supreme Governor and to that Of 
 Supreme Judge, the Pope brings learning and wisdom, 
 experience and counsel; but, in the exercise of these two 
 offices the Roman Pontiff may make errors of judgment. 
 Obedience is rendered to his supreme authority, just as 
 children render hearty obedience to parents, though they are 
 fallible. 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 11 
 
 It is not SO in the office of Supreme Teacher. Herein the 
 Roman Pontiff cannot err; inerrancy, or infallibility, as it is 
 called, is promised in Peter to this function of the Papacy. 
 To a supreme and infallible authority is obedience in this 
 instance rendered. 
 
 It is necessary to separate the office from the person. It is 
 to the former not to the latter that the gift is attached. 
 Whether the Pope, in his private capacity, has goodness or 
 piety or learning, does not affect his office as Universal 
 Teacher. We accept the inspired writings of the Evangelists 
 as the Word of God without thinking of the writers. Of 
 the Jewish teachers our Lord said: " They sit in the Chair 
 of Moses; do as they say, but not as they do." And we have 
 the memorable fact of Caiphas prophesying truth at the 
 very moment he was iniquitously determining the death of 
 Christ; and the Scripture pointedly adds: "And he said 
 this not of himself, but because he was the High Priest for 
 that year." Impeccability, or freedom from personal wrong 
 doing, does not enter into the question of the Pope as 
 Supreme Teacher. 
 
 There is no freedom from error promised to the Pope as 
 private teacher, theologian, translator of Scripture or au- 
 thor. It is only when exercising Apostolic authority, as 
 Universal Doctor, to define a doctrine to be believed by 
 the whole Church, that the Pope is promised immunity from 
 error. 
 
 In treating scientific or historical questions, the Pope has 
 no gift of infallibility. This is given him exclusively for 
 defining doctrines of faith and morals. For instance, the 
 rotation of the earth round the sun, taught by Galileo, is 
 not in the field of "faith and morals;" therefore any deci- 
 sion made concerning its truth by the Pope would not be 
 protected by inerrancy. Yet, as in this instance, it might 
 be deemed prudent or necessary to protect the natural 
 sense of the Scripture from some scientific theory. 
 
 The Sacred Writers, under inspiration, made known new 
 revelations to men. This is no part of the Pope's office; 
 inspiration enters not into the prerogative of infallibility. 
 The gift is granted to conserve and explain the Revelation 
 
12 ' THE pope: 
 
 in the Gospel already given to man. Every definition does 
 but explicitly state what is already implicitly contained in 
 one or other of the truths and laws of the Gospel. Just as 
 the decisions of Supreme Courts of Law expound existing 
 laws, but do not make new enactments. 
 
 It is the assistance of the Holy Ghost, which is promised 
 to make these ex-cathedra definitions infallible. Therefore, 
 not being inspired, the Pope of necessity must, before 
 defining a doctrine, make use of the ordinary channels of 
 theological enquiry. 
 
 Lastly, the infallibility of the Pope is one, and always has 
 been one, with the infallibility of the Church. It is the 
 same Holy Ghost, abiding for ever with the Spouse of 
 Christ, that aids the Church, whether speaking through its 
 Head alone, or through its Head and One Episcopate, assem- 
 bled in General Council or dispersed in the world, to proclaim 
 infallibly what is the Faith once delivered to the Saints. 
 
 This will explain how those who strenuously opposed as 
 inopportune the definition of the Infallibility of the Pope, 
 yet, as soon as it was defined, heartily accepted it. In 
 common with all Catholics they held the Church to be 
 endowed with the gift of inerrancy when defining matters of 
 Faith and Morals. They admitted the Council of the Vati- 
 can, presided over by Pope Pius IX. of happy memory, to be 
 an Ecumenical Council; therefore, when the definition was 
 made, the "inopportunists," without the least sacrifice of 
 principle but as a logical consequence of their belief in 
 the infallible authority of the Church, accepted without 
 any reserve the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope. 
 
 It has to be added, the profession of this article of faith 
 is but the expression of what the Popes had been doing 
 always. "We all," said Father (now Cardinal) Newman, 
 before the definition, " practically if not to say doctrinally 
 bold the Holy Father to be infallible." And Gladstone, in 
 his notorious " Vaticanism," avows: " The Popes had kept 
 up, with comparatively little intermission, for well nigh a 
 thousand years their claim to dogmatic infallibility." He 
 equally allows that the Vatican Council is, in the Roman 
 sense, a General Council. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE WITNESS OF SCRIPTURE TO THE PAPACY 
 
 i. Text from S. Matthew.— It is recounted that our 
 Blessed Lord, having come into the district of Cesarea 
 Philippi, asked His disciples: '' Whom do men say that 
 the Son of Man is ? " They replied that some said John the 
 Baptist, and others some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one 
 of the prophets. Jesus then said to His disciples, "But 
 whom do you say that I am ? " 
 
 " Simon Peter answered and said: ' Thou art Christ, Son 
 of the living God.' 
 
 ' * And Jesus answering said to him : ' Blessed art tJiou, 
 Simon Barjona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it 
 to thee, but my Father, who is in heaven. And I say to thee, 
 that thou art Peter, and upon this' rock I will build my 
 Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 
 And I will give to thee the Kej^s of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 And whatsoever thoio shall bind upon earth it shall be bound 
 also in heaven, and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth it 
 shall be loosed also in heaven.' " (xvi. 13-20.) 
 
 1. Looking at the narrative as a whole, it plainly refers 
 to one individual, Simon Peter, otherwise Simon Barjona. 
 Throughout the passage it is the personal pronoun, second 
 person singular, that is used. And it is to the same one 
 individual that the promises are made. 
 
 In the next place, the confession of faith in God Incarnate 
 is the cause of the promises which Jesus immediately 
 makes. The confession, as given in the Greek, is rendered 
 singularly emphatic by the repetition of the article, ''Thou 
 art the Christ, the Son of the living God." 
 
 In the third place our Lord expressly denies that Simon 
 had received the knowledge from man, and asserts that it 
 was revealed to him by God the Father; therefore, the con- 
 fession of Simon is his own personal act. He is prompted 
 
 (13) 
 
14 . THE pope: 
 
 to it, not bj ardor of temperament, but by Divine impulse. 
 His response is not the commissioned answer of the Twelve;, 
 he is not their organ but the organ of *' My Father who is in 
 heaven." Hence, though the Master addressed all, "But 
 whom do you say that I am ?" still, when Simon had answered, 
 the Master rejoins to him alone, "And I say also to.^Aee." 
 Of course, Simon, desirous that all should believe, is in this 
 sense the mouthpiece of the Apostles, the leader of the 
 Apostolic Choir, as S. John Chrysostom says. 
 
 2. Passing to the details of the passage there are two 
 principal promises. The first: "And I say to thee : that thou 
 art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and 
 the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 
 
 The implied contrast in the words '■ ' and I say also to 
 thee," as the full rendering of the passage should be, gives 
 additional weight to the promises. The implication is either 
 " as thou, Simon, hast declared my dignity I now declare 
 thine;" or, " since My Father has made known to thee My 
 dignity, I reveal to thee thy office." 
 
 The fact of not using in English the word Peter, in simple 
 though it is in compound forms, for Stone or Rock, some- 
 what mars the force of the English translation. In French 
 it is recognizable immediately: " Tu es Pierre, et sur cette 
 Pierre je battirai mon Eglise." And in the Syro-Chaldaic, 
 in which our Lord spoke, it was as in French: "Thou art 
 Cepha, and upon this Cepha I will build my Church." 
 
 Meyer, one of the most eminent New Testament scholars 
 of our time, a Protestant, says: "The evasion often taken 
 advantage of in controversy with Rome — namely that the 
 * rock ' means, not Peter himself but the firm faith and the 
 confession of it on the part of the Apostle — is incorrect 
 since the demonstrative expression 'on this rock' can only 
 mean the Apostle himself." The promise " thou shalt be 
 called Cephas" that is Stone or Rock, is now fulfilled and its 
 meaning disclosed. 
 
 Jesus Christ is the Builder of His Church, and for its 
 special foundation He selects one of the Twelve and calls 
 him by the name which very frequently, though not always, 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 15 
 
 is in the Old Testament given to God. What the foundation 
 stone is to the building, that was Simon Peter to be to the 
 Church of Christ. Solidity, strength and permanence are 
 implied in "and upon this Eock I will build my Church." 
 The Mighty Architect designed that as long as the Church 
 lasted, so long would this foundation exist; or, as S. Am- 
 brose tersely puts it : ' ' Therefore, where Peter is there is 
 the Church." 
 
 The strength so begotten is indicated and measured by 
 the next clause " and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against it." By this is meant that all the power, the 
 machinations of the spirits of darkness, used by themselves 
 directly, or indirectly by the world and the flesh to assault 
 the Church, can never succeed. The Church will remain 
 firm and unshaken, because she is built for all time on Peter, 
 the foundation, selected by the All-wise, the Almighty 
 Architect. 
 
 This is the plain and natural interpretation of the passage 
 to be found in the earliest Christian writers. 
 
 To this another was added later, without denying that 
 already given. Simon had received the office of Bock be- 
 cause he held and confessed the Divinity of Christ. " And 
 no other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, 
 which is Jesus Christ." Therefore, Peter is not primarily 
 but secondarily the Rock resting on, and deriving all stability 
 from the Rock of Ages. Or, as S. Leo the Great wrote in 
 the middle of the fifth century: "For thou art Peter, that 
 is, whereas I am the inviolable Rock, I the corner stone 
 who made both one, I the foundation besides which no man 
 can lay another: yet thou also art a Rock, because thou 
 art consolidated by My might that, what things alone are 
 Mine, by My power may be common to thee by participa- 
 tion with Me." (Serm. iv. in Natal Ord.) And the Church 
 built on Peter must ever hold as its stable faith, and con- 
 fess that " Christ is the Son of the living God." But the 
 Arians denied this very faith. 
 
 Hence then arose the second and collateral interpretation 
 of our text, emphasizing the faith and the confession of faith 
 
16 THE pope: 
 
 of Peter. In note Q to Tertullian's works in the Library 
 of the Fathers, attributed to the pen of the late Dr . Pusey, 
 it is stated that Tertullian, S. Cyprian, S. Gregory Nazi- 
 anzen and others interpret the Rock of S. Peter's person; 
 then Augustine is cited as explaining the Rock sometimes 
 of S. Peter personally, sometimes of Christ (and we know 
 from IS. Augustine's Retractations, Book 1, c. xxi., that he 
 leaves to the reader the choice of either explanation) ; lastly, 
 the note cites Theodoret and others who interpret the 
 Rock of Peter's confession, and then the following judg- 
 ment is passed: " These explanations, however, in no ivay 
 exclude each other. The words were pronounced to S. Peter 
 by virtue of the true Faith in Christ which he had just 
 confessed; he was a rock by reason of his union with the 
 Rock; that Faith in Christ as the Son of God was his 
 stability, and that of the Church afterwards, and of those 
 who at any time were pillars of the Church." This coming 
 from an Anglican Episcopal source, will, it is hoped, have 
 extra weight with non-Catholics." 
 
 3. The second promise is contained in the words: ''To 
 thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and 
 whatsoever thou shall bind upon earth it shall be bound 
 also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth it 
 shall be loosed also in heaven." 
 
 The previous figure represented Peter as the foundation 
 stone of the Church. In this promise the figure is changed 
 to being the Key-Holder of the Kingdom of Heaven. Now, 
 Christ himself had the "key of the house of David upon 
 His shoulders: and He shall open and none shall shut: and 
 He shall shut and none shall open." Supreme authority is 
 clearly expressed in these two last sentences, and the 
 whole passage is applied in the third chapter of Revelation 
 to Christ's Supreme Dominion over His Church. 
 
 As "the Rock," Christ was pleased to make Simon the 
 Rock also; so now. He who alone by right and might is the 
 Key-Holder of the house of David, appoints this same 
 Simon Peter to be Key-Holder of the Kingdom of Heaven^ 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF TEE CHURCH. 17 
 
 Keys, by every usage, sacred and profane, are the com- 
 mon symbols of power, of authority and sometimes of 
 possession. And the giving of keys has been the outward 
 expression of investiture and of taking possession. 
 
 Simon Peter is to be so invested. The words of the 
 promise instead of expressing any restriction, do, on the 
 contrary, bear the widest signification. The Keys of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven, that is, of the whole Church, without 
 aiiy limitation of time, are to be given. And the spiritual 
 authority, which they symbolize and confer, is to be exer- 
 cised over all matters lohatsoever that may be of interest to 
 the Kingdom. 
 
 Thus did Peter receive directly and immediately from our 
 Lord Jesus Christ a Primacy of Jurisdiction over the whole 
 Church. 
 
 " If thou thinkest Heaven is closed," says Tertullian, 
 *' remember that the Lord left here the Keys thereof to Peter 
 and through him io the Church." Origen says: '* We may 
 discover much difference and pre-eminence in the words 
 spoken to Peter over and above those spoken to the Apostles 
 generally in the second place. For it is no small difference 
 that Peter received the Keys not of one Heaven but of many." 
 S. Optatus, in like manner: "For the good of unity, blessed 
 Peter both merited to be preferred before all the Apostles, 
 and he, alone, received the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 that he might communicate them to the others." S. Gregory 
 of Nyssa : ' ' Through Peter He gave to bishops the Key of 
 the supercelestial honors." S. Pacian says: "According 
 to the relation of Matthew himself. He spake a little above 
 to Peter; He spake to one that from one He might lay the 
 foundation; afterwards delivering the very same command 
 in common to all.'' (Ep. iii. 26). S. Cyprian writes to 
 Jabianus: " To Peter, first, on whom He built the Church 
 and from whom He appointed and shewed that unity should 
 spring, the Lord gave that power that whatsoever he should 
 loose on earth should be loosed in heaven." (Ep. Ixxii. 7). 
 Lastly, not to tire the reader, Chrysostom writes : ' ' Peter, 
 Avho was set over the whole habitable world; into whose 
 
18 THE POPE : 
 
 hands He put the Keys of Heaven; to whom He entrusted to 
 do, and to support all things; him He ordered to tarry here 
 (Antioch) for a long time." (See Cathedra Petri, p. 18-23). 
 
 It must be remembered that when our blessed Lord 
 promised the Keys to Simon Peter, He continued: *' What- 
 soever thou shalt bind, whatsoever thou shalt loose," etc., the 
 words being in the singular number. But two chapters 
 later S. Matthew recounts that, the Twelve Apostles being 
 together, Jesus says : * ' Whatsoever you shall bind, whatso- 
 ever you shall loose," etc. (xviii. 18). 
 
 Here are precisely the same words, used in the plural 
 number, but without the promise of the Keys, that were 
 said in the singular to Simon. He first receives alone what 
 is given to them collectively ^ he, himself, being one of them. 
 And commenting on the words, S. Leo the Great says: 
 "The right of this power (of the Keys) passed also, indeed, 
 to the other Apostles; and the constitution of this decree 
 has flowed on to all the princes of the Church; but not in 
 vain is that entrusted to one which is intimated to all. For 
 to Eeter is this therefore entrusted individually, because the 
 pattern of Peter is set before all the rulers of the Church. 
 The privilege of Peter therefore remains, whatever judgment 
 is passed in accordance with his equity." (Serm. iv. in Nat. 
 Ord. 3). 
 
 Yenerable Bede writes A. D. 700: ^^ Blessed Peter in a 
 special manner received the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 and the judiciary potver, that all believers throughout the 
 world might understand that all those who in any way sepa- 
 rate themselves from the unity of his faith and communion, 
 such can neither be absolved from the bonds of their sins, 
 nor enter the gate of the Heavenly Kingdom." (Hom. xvi.) 
 
 ii. Text from S. Luke.— At the Last Supper, and on the 
 eve of our Blessed Lord's death, he speaks these words: 
 "Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, 
 that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee 
 that thy faith fail not; and thou being once converted, con- 
 firm thy brethren." (xxii. 31-2.) 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 19 
 
 1. The change from the plural you, the assembled Apos- 
 tles, io thee, Simon, is at once apparent. The adversary of 
 the human race had demanded that he might, by strong 
 temptation, sift the faith of all the Apostles. 
 
 To secure their faith and to preserve it when under such 
 assaults, Jesus the Omnipotent prays absolutely that the 
 faith of one shall be unfailing. Then Simon's faith having 
 been established by the power obtained through this prayer, 
 he is commanded and consequently authorized to strengthen 
 the brethren in that faith in which he himself had been 
 solidly established. 
 
 Jesus first renders Simon's faith stable, and Simon in turn 
 is appointed to give stability to the faith of his brethren. 
 Their strength of faith is derived through Peter, as Peter's 
 is through Christ. It is the faith of the whole Body being 
 pj'eserved through the unfailing faith of the infallible Head. 
 
 2. Fourteen hundred and more years ago S. Leo the 
 Great writes : ' ' As the Passion drew on, which was to shake 
 the firmness of His disciples, the Lord saith, ' Simon, 
 Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you that he may 
 sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for iJiee that thy faith 
 fail not; and when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren,' 
 that ye enter not into temptation. The danger from the 
 temptation of fear was common to all the Apostles, and they 
 equally needed the help of divine protection, since the devil 
 desired to dismay, to make a wreck of all; and yet the Lord 
 takes care of Peter in particular, and asks specially for the 
 faith of Peter, as if the state of the rest ivould he more certain 
 if the mind of their chief were not overcome. So then in Peter 
 the strength of all is fortified, and the help of divine grace is 
 so cn''dered, that the stability which through Christ is given to 
 Peter, through Peter is conveyed to the Apostles. Therefore, 
 since we see that so great a safeguard has been divinely in- 
 stituted for us, reasonably and justly do we rejoice in the 
 merits and dignity of our Leader." (Serm. 4, vol. i.) 
 
 The contrast between the frailty of Simon in denying our 
 Lord three times, and the strength conferred for his future 
 office, adds the greatest weight to our Blessed Lord's words. 
 
20 THE pope: 
 
 iii. Text from S. John.—*' When, therefore, they had 
 dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter: Simon, son of .John^ 
 lovest thou Me more than these ? He saith to Him : Yea^ 
 Lord, thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith to him:: 
 Feed my lambs. He saith to him again : Simon, son of 
 John, lovest thou Me ? He saith to Him : Yea, Lord, thou 
 knowest that I love Thee. He said to him : Feed my lambs. 
 He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest 
 thou Me ? Peter was grieved because He had said to him 
 the third time, lovest thou me. And he said to Him : Lord, 
 thou knowest all things : Thou knowest that I love Thee. 
 He said to him: Feed my sheep." (xxi. 15-17.) 
 
 1. The days of our Lord's earthly sojourn were coming 
 to an end. The Ascension was near. The "little flock" 
 had till then been under the loving direction of Jesus the 
 Good Pastor; and now, before leaving earth, does He ap- 
 point to the whole flock another shepherd. 
 
 The same Simon, son of John, who had already been con- 
 stituted the Rock of the Church, the Key-Holder of the 
 Kingdom, the Confirm er of his Brethren, is now made and 
 appointed Shepherd. S. Chrysostom remarks: ''After so 
 great an evil — the denial of Christ — He again raised him 
 (Peter) to his former honor, and intrusted to his hands the 
 Primacy over the Universal Church." (Hom. v. de Poenit.) 
 
 When Simon was made the foundation-stone of the Church 
 the expression of his most ardent faith was elicited; now a 
 triple confession of his love is exacted. Then is the whole 
 flock — lambs and sheep, people and pastors — by the judg- 
 ment of the Lord Himself, the Shepherd of Shepherds, 
 committed to Simon. The flock still belonged to Christ, for 
 He still speaks of "My lambs, My sheep;" but into His ever- 
 lasting pastorate does He in a special manner appoint Peter 
 to participate, so that the Fold on earth should there be 
 ruled and fed by a visible Shepherd and by Shepherds 
 depending on him. 
 
 To sum up the Gospel evidence : to Simon alone is given 
 the ofiice of permanent Foundation-stone of the Church; to 
 
THE YICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHUECH. 21 
 
 Simon alone is given universal jurisdiction over the whole 
 Church as its Key-Holder; to Simon alone is given the office 
 of infallibly strengthening or confirming his brethren; to 
 Simon alone is entrusted the pastoral government of the 
 One Fold, the Church of Christ. And it is of grave impor- 
 tance to remark that "the gates of hell are not to prevail 
 ^against the Church, because she is built on Peter. The 
 brethren are to be strengthened through Peter's unfailing 
 iaith. The flock is to be ruled by Shepherds under Peter's 
 guidance of them. 
 
 Bossuet, the famed Eagle of Meaux, admirably expresses 
 this truth in these words: " We shall find in the Gospel 
 that Jesus Christ, willing to commence the mystery of 
 unity in His Church, among all His disciples chose 
 twelve; but that, willing to consummate the mystery of unity in 
 .the same Church, among the twelve, he chose one. . . . Say 
 not, think not, that the ministry of S. Peter terminates with 
 him; that which is to serve for support to an Eternal Church 
 can never have an end. Peter will live in his successors. 
 Peter will always speak in his Chair. This is what the 
 Fathers say. This is what six hundred and thirty Bishops 
 at the Council of Chalcedon confirm. . . . 
 
 " It was, then, clearly the design of Jesus Christ to put 
 first in one alone luhat afterwards He meant to put in several ; 
 but the sequence does not reverse the beginning, nor the 
 j5rst lose his place; .... that power given to several car- 
 ries its restriction in its division, ivhilst power given to one 
 alone, and over all, and without exception, carries luith it 'pleni- 
 tude, and, not having to he divided with any other, it has no 
 hounds save those lohich its terms convey.'' (Serm. on the 
 Unity of the Church.) 
 
 Admit that these plain words of our Lord conferred a 
 Primacy of Jurisdiction on Simon, the son of John, and 
 how easy it is to explain that the name of Simon always 
 stands first in the three lists of the Apostles given in the 
 Gospels, though the same order of names is not followed. 
 It gives a new light to preaching from Peter's bark; to our 
 Lord paying tribute for Himself and Peter; to upbraiding 
 
22 THE pope: 
 
 Peter, of the sleeping Apostles in Gethsemane; to the 
 risen Master wishing that '! the disciples and Peter " be told 
 of His resurrection. 
 
 iv. Facts from the Acts of the Apostles.— "The Acts 
 of the Apostles/' written under inspiration, gives us the 
 record of the earliest days of the Church. It would be 
 naturally argued, if Simon Peter was possessed of Supreme 
 Authority, then ought we to find it exercised. Such is the 
 case. Indeed, the first fifteen chapters, which refer to the 
 Church generally, and not, as in the last thirteen, to the 
 work of one Apostle, give as prominent a place to Peter as 
 the Gospels do to the Divine Master. 
 
 ''It is Peter who appoints that one shall be elected to the 
 place of Judas, and presides at the election. It is Peter 
 who stands up with the eleven on Pentecost Day to preach 
 the Gospel; and it is to Peter and the eleven that the 
 multitude reply. It is Peter, though accompanied by John, 
 who performs the miracle on the lame man at the gate of 
 the Temple. It is Peter who on that occasion explained in 
 Solomon's Porch the power of Christ. It is Peter, though 
 both he and John are arrested, who makes the defense. 
 
 ' ' The punishment of Ananias and Sapphira, the anathema 
 on Simon Magus the first heretic, the first visiting and con- 
 firming the Churches under persecution, were all Peter's 
 acts. If he was sent with John by the Apostolic College to 
 the new converts at Samaria, he was himself member and 
 President of that College." (Dollinger: First Age of the 
 Church). 
 
 It is to Peter that God makes known that between Jew 
 and Gentile there is to be no wall of separation. Accord- 
 ingly, in the Council at Jerusalem, Peter settles this doctrinal 
 point, and the Gentiles are not to be circumcised. The 
 disputants held their peace; Paul and Barnabas did but 
 recount their mission among the Gentiles; S. James only 
 confirms Peter's decision by reference to the Scripture. 
 The judgment given by James, who as Bishop of Jerusalem 
 presided, rests on the accepted doctrinal decision, and refers^ 
 only to the disciplinary rule which would produce peace. 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 23 
 
 Jesus says of Himself that He came but to ' ' the lost sheep 
 of the house of Israel." To Peter likewise was more especial- 
 ly entrusted the conversion of the Jews, whilst'to Paul was 
 the care of the Gentiles. This is a mere division of work. 
 It is not the formation of two Churches, the exercise of inde- 
 pendent authorities. For, though S. Paul had been in- 
 structed in the Gospel and had been appointed to the 
 Apostolate by direct revelation, still he goes up to Peter 
 and confers with him fifteen days before undertaking his 
 special office. In speaking of Peter, S. Paul, as S. John 
 Chrysostom remarks on the passage in the Corinthians: " I 
 am of Paul, and I am of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of 
 Christ," preferring Peter greatly before himself, he has ar- 
 ranged his statement on an ascending scale. Indeed, com- 
 menting on I. Cor. ix. 5, S. Chrysostom says: "See Paul's 
 wisdom: he puts the Chief last, for the strongest of the 
 heads of the argument are reserved for that place." 
 
 S. Paul withstood Peter to the face for withdrawing from 
 eating with the Gentile converts at Antioch. This was con- 
 trary to the liberty which had been declared at Jerusalem, 
 and it appeared like vacillating. But it was no error in 
 teaching on the part of S. Peter, only an error of judgment, 
 which S. Paul resisted. A child might do the same to a 
 father without claiming or destroying his authority. 
 
 We may conclude, the history of the Church given in the 
 inspired Acts of the Apostles fully corroborates the state- 
 ment of the Gospel, that Peter is the Rock on which the 
 Church is built, the Key-Holder of the Church, the Con- 
 firmer of his Brethren, the Shepherd of the One Fold. 
 
 3. To fulfill the onerous duties consequent on the care and 
 solicitude of all the Churches, the Supreme Pastor is aided 
 by diverse agencies : the College of Cardinals, the Roman 
 Congregations, Legates, and the Religious Orders. 
 
 Through these the Pope is able to use the eyes, the ears, 
 the experience, the judgment of men selected for their 
 knowledge, their wisdom, their good sense, their virtue. 
 
24: THE pope: 
 
 The College of Cardinals is composed of seventy members 
 when the number is complete. Six of these are Cardinal 
 Bishops holding the suburban Sees of Rome. Fifty are 
 ■Cardinal Priests having the titles of the Parishes in Rome, 
 and fourteen rank as Cardinal Deacons. They may be of all 
 nations, and are appointed solely by the Pope. They are 
 the counsellors of the Holy Father; they take an active 
 part in the govenrment of the Church. Sitting under the 
 presidency of the Supreme Pontiff, they form a Consistory, 
 a kind of Senate. When the Holy See is vacant the Cardi- 
 nals protect and maintain the government of the Church; 
 they in Conclave constitute the body of Electors for the Suc- 
 cessor of S. Peter. 
 
 The Roman Congregations correspond to Departments 
 of State in the civil order. Of these there are eleven more 
 important. Each has one set of affairs committed to it. 
 The Propaganda, for instance, is concerned with foreign 
 missions; the Inquisition, the highest tribunal of Holy 
 Church, presided over by the Pope, adjudicates on all 
 charges against faith; the Congregation of the Index has the 
 censorship of books; that of Bishops and Regulars takes 
 cognizance of the relations of Bishops and the Religious 
 Orders. These Congregations are composed of a competent 
 number of Cardinals, and are organized with presidents, 
 secretaries, theologians, canonists and other officials. The 
 decisions of these congregations, of course with the ap- 
 proval of the Pope, are to be taken as his decisions, and 
 are final for the individual. 
 
 Legates of the Holy See are ambassadors or representatives 
 of the Sovereign Pontiff, entrusted with his power in such 
 measure as he may deem expedient, to be exercised by them 
 in the manner and form prescribed by the Pope. Even 
 when accredited to Governments, these ambassadors of the 
 Holy See are not merely diplomatic agents; they also have 
 authority with regard to the faithful and to religious matters. 
 
 Thus is established the means whereby the Holy Father 
 is brought into closer and more immediate communication 
 
THE TICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 25 
 
 witli his children, and they with him. Indeed, where such 
 Legate or Kepresentative is permanent in a country, there 
 can be a permanent Apostolic Court of Appeal. 
 
 These Delegates of the Pope are truly his lieutenants, 
 bearing according to circumstances the names of Legates, or 
 Nuncios, or Inter-nuncios, or Apostolic Delegates. They are 
 sent wheresoever the Sovereign Pontiff wills, in virtue of his 
 Primacy and Supremacy over the Universal Church, which 
 gives him the right to intervene in every diocese, and to 
 exact obedience to his decisions. 
 
 Bishops ruling Sees are not lieutenants of the Pope. They 
 are true Pastors "placed by the Holy Ghost" ; they suc- 
 ceed to the position of the Apostles; they have ordinary and 
 immediate jurisdiction in their dioceses. The Episcopate 
 being divinely instituted, neither Pope nor Council can 
 destroy it. 
 
 The jurisdiction of Papal Nuncios and their relations with 
 the Bishops of the countries to which they may be accredited 
 are very succinctly and clearly expressed in an important 
 letter of May, 1885, from the Pope's present Secretary of 
 State, His Eminence Cardinal Jacobini. 
 
 The Religious Orders are founded by the authority and 
 with the approval of the Supreme Pastor, who can exempt 
 them as he may judge best from the jurisdiction of the 
 Bishops. These organized bodies depend on the Holy See, 
 and bear the spirit of Rome and of the Church wherever 
 they may be established. They can put their best subjects 
 at all times at the disposal of the Sovereign Pontiff and aid 
 the Pope in the government of the Church. They can 
 be flying columns to the Great Army of God, immediately 
 subject to its Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 4. Bishops and priests receive their sacred character and 
 sacerdotal power through the Sacrament of Order. The 
 power given to the Pope is not sacramental, it is the power 
 of jurisdiction. '^ Now, that power," says Suarez, '^is not 
 given to the Pontiff by any consecration, but by election and 
 the grant of God. For, when He said to Peter ' Feed My 
 h eep,' He impressed on him no new consecration or 
 
26 THE pope: 
 
 character, but gave him simply the power of jurisdiction. So, 
 too, the Pope, lohen rightly elected, is immediately true Pope, 
 and as to that receives no consecration. Nay, if not already 
 a bishop or a priest, he must be afterwards consecrated or 
 even ordained, and nevertheless, in the meantime, he can 
 exercise all acts of mere external jurisdiction" (as Pope.) 
 (De Leg. iv. 4.) 
 
 No Pope can nominate his successor. The appointment 
 of the Sovereign Pontiff is by election ; and the manner of 
 such election has varied much in the history of the Church. 
 Now-a-days, the Cardinals in Conclave constitute the body 
 of Electors. Two-thirds of their votes legitimately indicate 
 the new Visible Head of the Church, who, accepting the 
 office, in that moment receives in its fulness, universality 
 and sovereignty, spiritual jurisdiction from the fountain of 
 all power, Jesus Christ, the. Invisible Head of the One Flock. 
 
 The Pope has still to work out his salvation by believing all 
 and every truth taught by Holy Church, and by using the 
 means of sanctification established by Christ. In this he 
 is precisely as the simplest member of Christ's Kingdom. 
 
 In his new office the Pope, while restricted by the deci- 
 sions and traditions of the past, has to act on his own res- 
 ponsibility. The circumstances and times in which each 
 Pope lives, give an individual character to each Pontiff's 
 reign. The Holy Spirit is continuously aiding, by special 
 grace, the Supreme Pastor to meet the daily needs of the 
 Flock. In all this the Pope is the judge of his actions, is 
 accountable to none on earth, and abides the judgment of 
 the Shepherd of Shepherds. 
 
 The newly-elected takes a new name, and he is "His 
 Holiness the Pope, Bishop of Rome, Yicar of Jesus Christ, 
 Successor of S. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, Supreme 
 Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West,. 
 Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the 
 Roman Province, Sovereign of the Temporal Dominions of 
 the Holy Roman Church." He superscribes as "N., by 
 Divine Providence, Pope." He is addressed '^Your Holi- 
 ness " or " Most Holy Father." In official documents he 
 
THE VICAK OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 27 
 
 speaks of himself as ^' Servant of the Servants of God." 
 The latter comes from Pope S. Gregory the Great, A. D. 
 590-604. The Patriarch of Constantinople, John, then liv- 
 ing, ambitiously usurped the title of Universal Bishop. 
 *' It is a lamentable thing," says S. Gregory, " to be forced to 
 suffer patiently, that, despising all others, my brother and 
 fellow-bishop, John, endeavors to be called the only Bishop." 
 (Lib. V. Ep. xxi.) When it was applied to Gregory the 
 Great, implying that he alone was Bishop, he strongly 
 objected to it and selected " Servus Servorum Dei." 
 
 This rejection of "Universal Bishop" has been construed 
 into a denial on the part of S. Gregory of the Supremacy of 
 the Sovereign Pontiffs. But facts prove such a construction 
 to be erroneous. The very title had been used in the 
 Council of Chalcedon. S. Gregory himself writes: " It is 
 evident to all who know the Gospels that by the voice of the 
 Lord the care of the whole Church was committed to holy 
 Peter, the Prince of all the Apostles. For to him it is said: 
 . . . 'Thou art Peter,' etc. Behold the Keys of the 
 Heavenly Kingdom; the power of binding and loosing is 
 given to him; to him the care and government of the whole 
 Church is committed." (Lib. v. Ep. xx.) And elsewhere 
 S. Gregory says: "Who is ignorant that the holy Church 
 is established on the firmness of the Chief of the Apostles, 
 who in his name expressed the firmness of his mind, being 
 called Peter, from the Kock." (Lib. vi. Ep. iii.) Once more 
 S. Gregory writes : ' ' And as to what they say concerning 
 the Church of Constantinople, who doubts that it is subject 
 to the Apostolic See ? This is constantly avowed by our most 
 pious Emperor, and by our brother, the Bishop of that 
 city." (Lib. ix. Ep. xii.) 
 
 To these very precise statements concerning the Suprem- 
 acy of the See of Peter have to be added the acts of S. 
 Gregory. It was he who sent S. Augustine to convert 
 Anglo-Saxon Britain; it was he who commanded S. Augus- 
 tine to be consecrated Bishop by Virgilius, the Primate of 
 Aries in France; it was he who established the Arch- 
 bishoprics of Canterbury and York, with their suffragan 
 
28 • THE POPE: 
 
 bishoprics; it was he who made S. Augustine first Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury. And, in conferring Archiepiscopal 
 Jurisdiction, S. Gregory says: '' We giYe you ^?o authority 
 over the Bishops of France because the Bishop of Aries 
 received the pallium (the emblem of Archiepiscopal Juris- 
 diction) in ancient times from my predecessors, and ive are 
 not to deprive him of the authority he has received. . . . But 
 as for the Bishops of Britain we commit them to your care." 
 <Bede i. c. 27). 
 
 These acts and this teaching show that S. Gregory re- 
 jected the title but not the office of Universal Bishop. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 S. PETER WAS BISHOP OF ROME. 
 
 The tradition of the Church found in the pages of Chris- 
 tian writers from the earliest days, engraved in the monu- 
 ments and catacombs of Bome, witnessed in the constant 
 pilgrimages to the Eternal City, is that S. Peter first 
 established his see at Antioch and afterwards at Rome, 
 where he was Bishop twenty-five years, and was there 
 crowned with martyrdom. It is not pretended by this that 
 the Apostle resided continuously in the Eternal City for 
 that period, but that he held the See during a quarter of a 
 century previous to his death. 
 
 Just as some of the Popes who lived at Avignon, and had 
 never been in Rome, nevertheless were Bishops of Rome; 
 so, in like manner, S. Peter having fixed his see in Rome, it 
 is not of the essence of his bishopric that he should have 
 been actually present or have continuously resided there. 
 The facts of S. Peter's residence for some time in Rome and 
 of his martyrdom there are, however, incontestible. 
 
THE YICAE OF CHEIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHUECH. 29 
 
 i. Assertions of Non-Catholics.— The eminent Protestant 
 antiquarian, Dr. Cave, says: "We intrepidly affirm, with 
 all antiquity, that S. Peter was at Borne and for some time 
 resided there. . . . All, both ancient and modern, will, I 
 think, agree with me that Peter may be called Bishop of 
 Home in a less strict sense, inasmuch as he laid the founda- 
 tions of this Church and rendered it illustrious hy martyrdom.''' 
 (Ssec. Apos. S. Pet.) 
 
 2. The distinguished Protestant Bishop Pearson, who died 
 in 1686, writes in his ' ' Two Dissertations on the Series and 
 Succession of the Pirst Bishops of Rome": "That S. 
 Peter was at Rome is proved from Ignatius, Papias, Diony- 
 sius of Corinth, IrensBus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, 
 Origen, Cyprian, Lactantius, Eusebius, Athanasius, Epi- 
 phanius, Julian the Apostate, Augustine, Palladius. There- 
 fore it is ivonderfid that those can Ije found ivho deny that Peter 
 was ever at Rome.'' (Diss. i. c. 7.) 
 
 3. The Protestant Archbishop Bramhall writes : ' ' That S. 
 Peter had a fixed chair at Antioch, and after that at Rome, is 
 what no man ivho giveth any credit to the ancient Fathers and 
 Councils and historiographers of the Church can either deny or 
 ivell doubt of" (Works, p. 628, ed. Oxford.) 
 
 4. Dean Milman, the Protestant historian of Latin Chris- 
 tianity, writes: "Before the end of the third century the 
 lineal descent of the Bishops of Rome from S. Peter was unhesi- 
 tatingly claimed and obsequiously admitted by the Christian 
 luorld." (Yol. iii. p. 370.) 
 
 5. Another Protestant historian, Canon Robinson, lately 
 Professor of Church History in King's College, London, 
 writes: " It is not so much a spirit of sound criticism as a 
 religious prejudice, which has led some Protestants to deny 
 that the Apostle (Peter) was ever at Rome, ivhere all ancient 
 testimony represents him to have suffered, together loith 8. Paid, 
 in the reign of Nero." (Yol. i. p. 4.) 
 
so THE POPE: 
 
 6. Another learned and renowned Protestant, Grotius, 
 says, in a note on "The Church that is at Babylon elected 
 together with you, saluteth you " (1 Pet. v. 13): " Ancient 
 and modern interpreters differ about this ' Babylon.' The 
 ancients understood it of Rome, where that Peter luas, no true 
 Christian will doubt. ^' 
 
 7. On this passage the notorious Dr. Dollinger writes : 
 *' St. Peter's own testimony in his first Epistle raises to a 
 certainty the fact of his having been at Rome. The letter 
 is written from a city he calls Babylon. This cannot 
 reasonably be understood of the Egyptian Babylon, a 
 strong fortress and station of a Roman legion; and thus the 
 question arises whether it is Babylon on the Euphrates, or 
 whether, according to a method of speech very natural to 
 the Jews of that day, from the usage of the Prophets, it 
 means Rome. The latter is the belief of the Ancient 
 Church, following a tradition of the Apostolic age, to which 
 Papias bears testimony. 
 
 ''That St. Peter had passed over the boundaries of the 
 Roman empire into Parthia to Babylon on the Euphrates, 
 that there was already a Christian community there, and 
 that from thence the Apostle salutes the believers to whom 
 he is writing — this is more than improbable. Strabo and 
 Pliny mention Babylon as 'a great desert,' which, chiefly 
 from the neighborhood of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, had 
 become emptied of inhabitants (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 26; 
 Strabo, xvi. 738). The towns of Nearda and Nisibis were 
 the principal Jewish settlements in the Babylonian Satrapy; 
 the Jews moved from Babylon several years before St. Peter 
 could have come there, because they could not hold out 
 against the heathen inhabitants, who were hostile to them; 
 and soon afterwards another emigration took place on 
 account of a pestilence. Five years later more than 50,000 
 Jews were put to death in Seleucia by the Syrians and 
 Greeks, and the remainder went, not back to Babylon, but 
 to Nearda and Nisibis (Josephus, Arch, xviii. 9); the only 
 inference therefore to be drawn from Josephus's History is, 
 that at the date of St. Peter's Epistle there were no longer 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 31 
 
 any Jews in Babylon; and so, too, Agrippa, in his speech at 
 the beginning of the Jewish war, knew of no Jews to name 
 beyond the Jordan, except those in the province of Adiabene. 
 That S. Mark, who was in ' Babylon ' (1 Pet. v. 13) with 
 the Apostle, was at Kome at the precise time when there is 
 every reason to believe that this Epistle was written, is clear 
 from St. Paul's mentioning him (Col. iv. 10, Philem. 24). 
 Soon after he was staying in Asia Minor, whence St. Paul 
 recalled him to Rome (2 Tim. iv. 11), shortly before his 
 death." (First Age of the Church, pp. 97, 98). 
 
 In his History Dollinger once more writes : ' ' The 
 Roman Church must have been founded by an Apostle, and 
 that Apostle can only have been Peter. St. Paul declares, 
 in his Epistle to the Romans, that he had often withstood 
 his longing to come to them, because he made a principle 
 of only bringing the Gospel where Christ had not yet been 
 preached, so as not to build on another man's foundation. 
 But now, after the Church had been founded in the West, 
 he was going into Spain, and would visit Rome on the way 
 (Rom. XV. 20-24). He was unwilliDg, then, at that time to 
 undertake a regular Apostolic office in Rome, 'because the 
 foundation was already laid.' By whom? St. Paul cannot 
 possibly have meant by the chance visit of some nameless 
 believer, or by those who returned from Jerusalem and 
 related what they had heard there; he found irregular pre- 
 announcements of that kind in most churches, to which he 
 none the less devoted his special energies. He cannot, in 
 a word, mean it was his principle only to teach where no 
 one had preached the Gospel before him; for, on the one 
 hand, no intelligible ground for such a rule can be 
 imagined, — on the other, the contrary is proved by his 
 labors in Antioch and Cyprus, and his anxious care and 
 earnest exhortations written to the community of Colossae, 
 which was unknown to him personally. He must refer, 
 therefore, to his former agreement with the great Apostles 
 at Jerusalem, and the position he took towards them, 
 according to which he desired to abstain from meddling 
 with their work, or building on a foundation laid by them. 
 
32 THE POPE: 
 
 There can be no doubt, then, that it was St. Peter, perhaps^ 
 accompanied by St. John, who had laid the foundation in 
 Rome. 
 
 '* The formation of a Church at Eome, in the centre of 
 the Empire, where the number of Jews was greater and 
 their position more important than at any other town out of 
 Judea excepting Alexandria, was far too important a matter 
 to be left to chance. . . . While all the principal Churches 
 have their tradition about the men to whom they owe their 
 first foundation, Peter is marked out, both by the universal 
 tradition of all Churches and the special tradition of the 
 Eoman, as the founder and first ruler of that Church, and 
 is said — which comes to the same thing — to have first gone 
 to Rome under Claudius." 
 
 In face of these positive assertions made by writers, some 
 of latest date, learned in Christian antiquity and not mem- 
 bers of the Eoman Church, it is unnecessary to do more 
 than cite a few of the more striking testimonies on which 
 they relied. 
 
 ii. Early Witnesses.— The Father of Ecclesiastical His- 
 tory, Eusebius, (a Greek, let it be remembered). Bishop of 
 Csesarea, died about 340. The first nine books of his 
 Church History were, according to the modern scholars 
 Lightfoot and Wescott, written before 315, that is, but two 
 hundred and forty-nine years after the death of S. Peter. 
 
 Eusebius, who was possessed of rare capability and thirst 
 for knowledge, had access to the unrivalled collection of 
 Christian works made by Pamphilius, and also to the library 
 of Bishop Alexander of Jerusalem. Many of those works 
 are now lost, and it is in the pages of Eusebius that the 
 knowledge of ecclesiastical literature of the second century 
 is in great part to be found. 
 
 1. Eusebius refers in different places in his writings to 
 the fact that S. Peter was Bishop of Rome. Sufiice it to 
 quote one passage from his Chronicles: " Peter the Apos- 
 tle, the first Pontiff of the Christians, when he had first 
 
THE VIOAE OF CHEIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHUECH. 33 
 
 founded the chair at Antioch, 'proceeds to Rome, where, preach- 
 ing the Gospel, he continues for twenty-five years Bishop of that 
 city:' 
 
 2. Eusebius cites Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, who, 
 when writing in 170 to the Roman Christians, states that 
 both the Corinthian and Eoman Churches were ^^ planted''' 
 by Peter and Paul. 
 
 3. S. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, who himself tells us of his 
 friendly relations with S. Polycarp, the disciple of the Apos- 
 tle S . John, writes, about the year 190, in his work against 
 heresies, concerning the Roman Church as the " greatest, 
 most ancient, known to all, founded and constituted by the most 
 glorious Apostles Peter and Paul" He then gives the names 
 of the Popes from S. Peter down to Elutherius, "who now 
 in the twelfth place holds the office of the Episcopate from 
 the Apostles." (Adv. Haer. iii. 3). 
 
 
 
 4. S. Clement of Alexandria, the head of the Catecheti- 
 cal School of Alexandria about 190, relates that: "When 
 Peter had proclaimed the word publicly at Rome, he allowed 
 S. Mark to reduce his sayings to writing." (Cited by 
 Eusebius Hist. Ecc. Lib. vi., c. 14). 
 
 5. Tertullian, who lived from A. D. 154 to 220, writing 
 against heresies pretending to claim Apostolic origin, sug- 
 gests that an appeal be made to the succession of the 
 bishops in each See and so learn what is Apostolic doctrine. 
 "If thou art near to Italy," he says, "thou hast Rome 
 whence we also have an authority at hand. That Church 
 how happy on which the Apostles poured out all their doc- 
 trine, with their blood; luhere Peter had a like passion with 
 the Lord, where Paul is crowned with an end like the 
 Baptist's." (De Prsescript Hseret). 
 
 6. S. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, wrote about A. D. 
 255 to Antonianus: "Cornelius was made Bishop (of 
 Rome) by the judgment of God and His Christ, by the 
 
34 THE pope: 
 
 testimony of almost all the clergy by the suffrage of the people 
 who were present; at a time when no one had been made 
 (bishop) before him; when the place of (Pope) Fabian, that 
 is when the place of Peter, and the rank of the sacerdotal 
 chair were vacant." (Ep. 5^). 
 
 7. About the year 372, S. Optatus, Bishop of Milevis, whom 
 the great S. Augustine numbered among the most renowned 
 Doctors of the Church, when striving to convince Parmenian 
 that the Donatists were schismatics, writes: *' You cannot 
 then deny that in the city of Pome the Episcoval Chair was first 
 established by Peter, in which Chair sat Peter, the Head of the 
 Apostles.'^ (Lib. ii, c 2.) And a little later on, S. Optatus 
 gives the succession of the Bishops of Rome, from S. Peter 
 down to Pope Siricius, then living. 
 
 8. S. Jerome, half a century later, in his Catalogue of Ec- 
 clesiastical Writers, says : ' * Simon Peter, after presiding as 
 Bishop of the Church of Antioch and preaching to those of 
 tUe Circumcision dispersed in Pontus, Galacia, Cappadocia, 
 Asia and Bithynia, in the second year of Claudius, went to 
 Rome to vanquish Simon Magus, and there, for five and twenty 
 years, he held his sacerdotal chair, until the last, that is, the 
 fourteenth year of Nero, by whom being crucified with his 
 head downwards, he was crowned with martyrdom." . 
 
 9. S. John Chrysostom, who, before becoming Archbishop 
 of Constantinople, was priest and preacher at Antioch from 
 381 to 398, says: " And, as I have named Peter, I am 
 reminded of another Peter (Flavian, Bishop of 
 Antioch), our common father and teacher, who has both 
 inherited Peter s virtue and his Chair. Yea, for this is one 
 privilege of this our city that it had at first as teacher, the 
 leader of the Apostles. For it was befitting that that city, 
 which before the rest of the world was crowned with the 
 Christian name, should receive as shepherd, the J^irst of the 
 Apostles. But after having had him as our teacher we did 
 not retain him, but surrendered him to regal Bome.^' (Tom. 
 iii., Hom. ii.) 
 
THE VICAR or CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 35 
 
 And so, writer after writer of the early centuries asserts or 
 implies that S. Peter was Bishop of Rome. Indeed, the 
 very See itself is usually referred to in the Acts of Councils, 
 in imperial documents and in Christian writers as the 
 *' Chair of Peter," "the Place of the Prince of the 
 Apostles," "the Episcopal Chair in which sat Peter, the 
 Head of the Apostles." 
 
 ill. The Voice of Monuments.— The monuments and cata- 
 combs of Eome bear their testimony to the residence of S. 
 Peter in the Eternal City. 
 
 1. There is the majestic Basilica containing the relics of 
 the martyred Apostle, which inspired the words of Byron: 
 
 " But thou of temples old, or altars new, 
 
 Standest alone — with nothing like to thee — 
 Worthiest of God, the holy and the true. 
 
 Since Zion's desolation, when that He 
 Forsook His former city, what could be 
 
 Of earthly structures, in His honor piled, 
 Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, • 
 
 Power, glory, strength, and beauty — all are aisled 
 In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. 
 
 " Enter; its grandeur overwhelms thee not; 
 
 And why? it is not lessened; but thy mind, 
 Expanded by the genius of the spot, 
 
 Has grown colossal, and can only find 
 A fit abode wherein appear enshrined 
 
 Thy hopes of immortality ; and thou 
 Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined. 
 
 See thy God face to face, as thou dost now 
 His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by His brow," 
 
 The gorgeous temple of our day has under its glorious 
 dome the crypt, the only remnant of the Basilica built at 
 the request of Pope Sylvester by Constantino. The work, 
 begun in 316, at which this Christian Emperor labored with 
 his own hands and carried away twelve loads of earth in 
 honor of the Twelve Apostles, did in turn but replace the 
 Oratory founded A. D. 90 by Anicletus, Bishop of Kome. 
 He is said to have been ordained by S. Peter. The Oratory 
 marked the spot where many Christian martyrs had suffered 
 
36 THE pope: 
 
 in tlie circus of Nero and where S. Peter was buried after 
 his crucifixion. Anastasius recounts how the body of S. 
 Peter was exhumed, when the Basilica of Constantino was- 
 erected, and re-interred in a shrine of silver enclosed in a 
 sarcophagus of gilt bronze. (Hare's Walks in Eome, pp. 
 570-2.) 
 
 2. While S. Peter's covers the sacred remains of the 
 Prince of the Apostles, the Churches of S. Pudentiana, of S. 
 Pietro in Carcere with its Mamertime prisons, of S. Pietro 
 in Yinculo, of S. Pietro in Montorio, of the Domine-Quo- 
 Vadis, can each give its traditional connection with the 
 life, or the labors, or the martyrdom of S. Peter in Rome. 
 
 ' ' One hundred and fifty years, " says Gibbon, ' ' after the 
 glorious deaths of SS. Peter and Paul, the Vatican and the 
 Ostian Road were distinguished by the tombs or rather the 
 trophies of those spiritual heroes. In the age which fol- 
 lowed the conversion of Constantino, the Emperors, the 
 consuls and the generals of armies, devoutly vis\ted the 
 sepulchres of a Tent-maker and a Fisherman, and their 
 venerable bones were deposited under the altars of Christ, on 
 which the Bishops of the Royal City continually offered the 
 Unbloody Sacrifice." (Decline and Fall, R. E. chap, xiv,) 
 
 3. Well may Dr. Nath'l Lardner, another distinguished 
 Protestant writer, say with regard to this whole tradition : 
 *'It is easy to observe that it is the general, uncontradicted, 
 disinterested testimony of ancient ivriters in the several parts 
 of the ivorld — Greeks, Latins, Syrians. As our Lord's predic- 
 tion concerning the death of S. Peter is recorded in one of the 
 four Gospels, it is very likely that Christians would observe 
 the accomplishment of it, which must have been in some 
 place. And about this place there is no difference among 
 Christian ivriters of ancient times. Never any other place was 
 named besides Rome. Nor did any other city glory in the 
 martyrdom of Peter. There were disputes in the second 
 and third centuries between the Bishop of Rome and other 
 J3ishops and Churches about the time of keeping Easter and 
 
THE VICAE OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 3T 
 
 about the baptism of heretics. Yet none denied the Bishop 
 of Rome to have what they called the Chair of Peter. 
 
 "It is not to our honor nor our interest, either as Chris- 
 tians or Protestants, to deny the truth of events ascertained 
 by early and well-attested tradition." (Hist, of the Apostles 
 and Evangelists, Ch. xviii.) 
 
 4. '*It is difficult," says Wilberforce in his Principles of 
 Church Authority, chapter 9, " to understand how such a 
 question can have been seriously raised, since there is 
 scarcely an ancient (Christian) writer who does not either 
 assert or allude to his (S. Peter's) residence in that city 
 (Rome)." Wilberforce was Archdeacon in the Episcopal 
 Church of England when he wrote the famed book from 
 which this extract is taken. But having completed the 
 w^ork, he resigned his position and joined the Church of 
 Rome. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE WITNESS OF HISTORY TO THE PAPACY. 
 
 i. The Papacy a Present Fact —In the whole world there 
 is but one bishopric known as '' The Apostolic See:" there 
 is but one episcopal throne known as " The Chair of Peter." 
 
 That bishopric, that throne is at Rome, the centre of au- 
 thority and the seat of government of the Church which 
 alone calls itself, and is alone called by friend and by foe 
 ^' The Catholic Church." 
 
 To express that the "Chair of Peter" is the "root and 
 womb of the Catholic Church," as S. Cyprian wrote to Pope 
 Cornelius sixteen hundred and thirty years ago, the Church 
 is called the "Roman Catholic Church" — Roman then not 
 from nationality, but because the headship, the centre of 
 authority, the seat of government of Christ's Kingdom on 
 earth are at Rome. 
 
38 THE pope: 
 
 Our holy lord, Leo XIII., occupies to-day the Chair of 
 Peter, and exercises the Apostolate of Peter throughout the 
 world. 
 
 In union with, and in submission to Pope Leo XIII. are 
 some nine hundred bishops, governing as many dioceses. 
 These collectively constitute the One Episcopate established 
 by Jesus Christ, by which the Apostolic College is per- 
 petuated. 
 
 The latest and lowest estimate puts at two hundred and 
 seventy-five millions those who render obedience in things 
 spiritual to Leo XIII. Of all nations, and tongues, and 
 forms of government, they form one compact, organic body 
 under the Pope of Home. Political persecution and 
 worldly criticism have, by God's mercy, done good. Never 
 has history presented the Church better knit together in its 
 members with its Head. And so the Papacy, possessed of 
 everlasting youth, is a living, visible fact in the world. 
 
 Its action is no less manifest. From his high watch-tower 
 our holy Father, Leo XIIL, observes the signs of the times. 
 He, aided by wisdom, experience and divine help has, 
 through encyclical letters, instructed the world at large, and 
 the children of the Church in particular, concerning the 
 sacred fundamental laws of religious, civil and domestic 
 society. His Holiness has, in like manner, raised his voice 
 against the enemies, secret and avowed, of social order. 
 On his subjects the holy Father has earnestly inculcated the 
 union of all hearts in the cause of holy Church; an increase 
 of piety and devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ through the 
 holy Rosary; a spirit of unworldliness and of alms-giving 
 by laboring under the banners of S. Francis of Assissi and 
 of S. Vincent of Paul; an extension of the sacred and pro- 
 fane sciences among the clergy; a loyal obedience of peo- 
 ple to pastors and of people and pastors to the Holy See, 
 and finally the Father of the Faithful has, " moved by the 
 consciousness of the greatest, the most holy, that is. Apos- 
 tolic obligation, issued the most memorable encyclic out of 
 the fourteen, on The Christian Constitution of States." 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 39 
 
 To secure the fullest exercise and extension of holy 
 Church, Pope Leo XIII. has labored to have closer rela- 
 tion with Catholic Governments; to non-Catholic rulers he 
 has extended the right hand of friendship; and even with 
 Mahometan and pagan sovereigns has he entered into com- 
 munication. 
 
 These varied acts done at different times have been borne 
 by steam and electricity to the furthermost parts of the 
 earth. They have been published and commented on in 
 the press of the civilized world. And so the name of the 
 Pope has become a household word in every land and the 
 teaching of the Papacy a familiar fact. 
 
 The assemblies of Catholic Bishops around the Chair of 
 Peter on the occasions of proclaiming the Immaculate Con- 
 ception of the Blessed Virgin, the Canonization of the 
 Japanese Martyrs, the Jubilee of Pius IX. of happy 
 memory, and the Vatican Council, have made the men of 
 the nineteenth century conversant with the present living 
 powers of the Papacy. 
 
 ii The Papacy a Contin-aoTis Past Fact-— Our present 
 Pope is the two hundred and fifty-eighth successor of S. 
 Peter. That long, venerable, glorious line of Roman Pon- 
 tiffs can be traced as a river to its source . It stands out as 
 prominently in the life of the Church as does the succession 
 of rulers in the story of a country. In one sense the history 
 of Christianity is the history of the Popes. 
 
 Profoundly interesting as it is to trace the glories, the trials, 
 the vicissitudes of the Papacy, yet our purpose will be bet- 
 ter served by concentrating attention on some oije period, 
 and therein to judge by facts whether the rights and pre- 
 rogatives of the Pope now claimed, were then exercised. 
 
 The fifth century, that is, from A. D. 400 to 500, in the 
 middle of which the first of the Leos sat on the " Chair of 
 Peter," is singularly suited for such an examination. 
 
 The Church had passed through its three centuries of 
 persecution. The Edict of Milan, A. D. 313, according lib- 
 erty to the Christian religion, allowed the Church freedom 
 
40 THE pope: 
 
 to grow and unfold, as does a plant, developing from witliin 
 the organs and powers which God the Son had given to her 
 constitution. "The grain of mustard seed" was becoming 
 a tree. The baby Church, born Pentecost-day, waxed strong, 
 its different members exercising their appointed functions. 
 By A. D. 400, the Church was planted in every part of the 
 Roman Empire. She had erected her Basilicas, and in 
 these temples of the true God she gave pomp and grandeur 
 to her liturgy. Already had two of her General Councils 
 been held. 
 
 To use an epithet of our day, the Church in the fifth 
 century was '' undivided ^ The voices of the Greek or 
 Eastern Bishops were united with those of the Bishops of 
 the West. The Schism came not till the middle of the ninth 
 century. I 
 
 Nor can the False Decretals of Isidore Mercator be urged 
 in this century against the prerogatives of the Papacy, for 
 they did not make their appearance till about A. D. 840. 
 
 Then while the Church was exercising, in the fifth century, 
 her power to stem the flood of heresies which had come, 
 and to convert the hordes of Huns, Yandals and Northmen 
 that swept down on the Roman Empire, she was singu- 
 larly strong in saintly and learned bishops and priests. 
 It is sufficient to name S. John Ghrysostom, S. Augustine 
 (who had been taught by S. Ambrose), S. Cyril of Alexandria, 
 S. Jerome, S. Peter Chrysologus, S. Vincent of Lerins, S. 
 Leo the Great, with Socrates and Sozomen, the historians. 
 
 It will be readily conceded that the testimony of the fifth 
 century must therefore be of the greatest weight in deter- 
 mining whether the Bishop of Rome is by divine right the 
 Supreme Head of the Christian Church. 
 
 iii The Testimony of Writers of the 5th Century.— 
 1. The century opens with S. John Chrysostom in the See 
 of Constantinople. He died in 404. This eminent Doctor of 
 the Church, in his work on the Priesthood, writes: " Why 
 did Christ shed His blood? That he might obtain posses- 
 sion of these very sheep which He entrusted to Peter and to his 
 successors.''^ (Bk. ii. n. 1.) 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 41 
 
 Now, of Peter, S. Chrysostom elsewhere sajs: *' Peter, 
 the head of the Choir of the Apostles, the mouth of the 
 disciples, the pillar of the Church, the buttress of the faith, 
 the foundation of the Confession, the fisherman of the uni- 
 verse, he who raised up our race from the depths of error 
 even to heaven, he who was ardent and full of confidence, 
 yea, rather full of love, when all the rest remained silent, came 
 up to the Master and said ''how often shall my brother 
 offend," etc. (Horn, de Dec. Mill, 3.) 
 
 Keferring to St. Peter's denial of Christ, S. John Chrys- 
 ostom says: ''After so great an evil He (Jesus) again raised 
 him to his former honor and intrusted to his hands the 
 Primacy over the Universal Church.^' (Hom. V. de 
 Poenit. 2.) 
 
 And, commenting on S. John, xxi. 15, the Saint writes : 
 "And why, then, passing by the others, does He (Jesus) 
 converse with Peter on these things? He was the chosen 
 one of the Apostles, and the mouth of the disciples, and 
 Leader of the Choir. On this account also Paul tvent upon 
 a time to see him rather than the others. And, withal, to shew 
 him that he must have confidence, as the denial was done 
 away with, He (Jesus) puts into his (Peter's) hands the Pres- 
 idency over his brethren, and he brings not forward that 
 denial, neither does he reproach him with the past, but 
 says to him 'If thou love Me ride over the brethren,' .... 
 and the third time He gives him the same injunction, 
 shelving at lohat a price He sets the Presidency over His oiun 
 sheep. And if any one should say how then did James re- 
 ceive the throne of Jerusalem ? This I would answer, He 
 appointed this man (Peter) Teacher, not of that Throne hut of 
 the World.'' (Hom. Ixxxviii. in Joan.) 
 
 And S. John Chrysostom, suffering from the violence and 
 intrigue of Theophilus, writes in 404 to Pope Innocent, as a 
 subject to his Superior, and says: "Now that you have be- 
 come acquainted with all these things, my most honored 
 and religious Lords, display that vigor and zeal which 
 becomes you, so as to suppress so great a wickedness 
 which has invaded the churches. . . . Vouchsafe to 
 
42 ' THE pope: 
 
 write back that what has been wickedly done bj one party, 
 whilst I was absent, and did not decline a trial, has no 
 force, and indeed it has not in its own nature; and that they 
 who have been proved to have acted thns against all law, be 
 subjected to the laws of the Church; and allow us to enjoy 
 uninterruptedly your letters, and love, and all the rest, as we 
 formerly did. . . . Having stated all the above matters, and 
 you having learnt everything more clearly from the religious 
 lords, my fellow-bishops, bring to this matter for me, I be- 
 seech you, that zeal which is required at your hands." (Ep. 
 i. ad. Innoc.) 
 
 2. From the Bosphorus we turn to Egypt, to another 
 eminent Prelate, S. Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, raised 
 to that dignity eight years after the death of S. John 
 Chrysostom. 
 
 Commenting on the text S. Matt. xvi. 16, Cyril says: 
 Jesus '' promises to found the Church, assigning immova- 
 bleness to it, as He is the Lord of virtues, and over this 
 (the Church) He sets Peter as Shepherd." 
 
 In like manner on Luke xxii. 31, the Saint says: 
 ^' Therefore passing by the other disciples He (Jesus) comes 
 to the Coryphoeus (Peter) himself . . . 'and fchou be- 
 ing once converted, confirm thy brethren;' that is, become a 
 Support and a Teacher to those who come to Me by faith." 
 
 Writing on Mary the Mother of God, Cyril addresses 
 Nestorius in these words : ' ' That these things are really so, 
 let us produce a witness most worthy of faith, a most holy 
 man, and Archbishop of the whole habitable World, that Coeles- 
 tine, who is both Father and Patriarch of the mighty City of 
 Borne, who himself also exhorted thee by letter, bidding 
 thee desist from that maddest of blasphemies, and thou didst 
 not obey him.'' (Faith of Catholics, vol. ii. p. 83.) 
 
 S. Cyril presided, by the authority of Pope Coelestine, in 
 his place, over the Third General Council held at Ephesus. 
 On that occasion Cyril said in the Council: " Let the letter 
 received from the Most Holy Pope Coelestine, Bishop of the 
 Apostolic See, be read to the Synod with becoming honor." 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 43 
 
 3. Our next witness is the illustrious S. Augustine, 
 Bishop of Hippo. He is the voice of North Africa while S. 
 Cyril was yet living. 
 
 Writing against the Manicheans : " / am held, " says he, 
 ''m the Communion of the Catholic Church, by . . . the 
 succession of priests from the very Chair of the Apostle 
 Peter, to whom the Lord after His resurrection committed 
 His sheep to be fed, even to the present Episcopate." (Cont. 
 Man. Fund. 5). To the Donatists in like manner S. Augus- 
 tine says: " Come my brethren if you wish to be grafted in 
 the vine. . . . Reckon up the bishops from the very See of 
 Peter. . . . That is the Rock which the proud gates of hell 
 do not destroy." These words plainly show that S. Augus- 
 tine realized to the full the words of his Spiritual Father, S. 
 Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan: ^' Where Peter is, there is 
 the Church." 
 
 S. Augustine says of Peter: ''By reason of the Primacy 
 of his Apostolate he represented the person of the Church, 
 and was a type of its universality." (In Joan, cxxiv., 5.) 
 And writing against Faustus, Augustine says: "Peter was 
 made Pastor of the Church, as Moses was made the Ruler of 
 the Jewish People." (Lib. xxii., c. 70.) And once more: 
 "It was the will of Christ to make Peter, to whom he com- 
 mended His sheep as to another self, one with Himself, that 
 so he might commend His sheep to him; that He might be 
 Head, and the other bear the figure of the body, that is, the 
 Church, and that like man and wife they might be two in one 
 flesh." (Serm. xlvi., 30.) Finally: "For if the order of 
 bishops, succeeding to each other, is to be considered, how 
 much more securely and really beneficially do we reckon 
 from Peter, himself, to whom, being as a figure of the 
 Church, the Lord says: 'Upon this Rock I will build my 
 Church and the gates of hell shall not overcome it.' For to 
 Peter succeeded Linus," and he gives the succession down 
 to Pope Anastasius then living, and continues: " In thig 
 order of succession no Donatist bishop appears." (Ep. liii. 
 Genoroso). 
 
 These instances, from among many that might be cited. 
 
44 THE pope: 
 
 shew in the clearest way that S. Augustine believed Peter 
 to hold the Primacy of authority, to be the Supreme Pastor 
 and Ruler of the Church. An interesting passage, wherein 
 Augustine compares S. Cyprian to S. Peter, brings out 
 pointedly the primacy of the latter: "I think that the 
 Bishop Cyprian may, without any insult to himself, be com- 
 pared to the Apostle Peter as far as regards the crown of 
 martyrdom. But I ought rather to be afraid of being 
 contumelious towards Peter. For who knows not that 
 primacy (or princedom) of the Apostleship is to be preferred 
 before any Episcopate whatever ? But, although the grace 
 of the Chairs is widely different, yet one is the glory of the 
 martyrs." (De Bapt. Cont. Donat, Lib. ii. n. 2). 
 
 Of the Roman Church he says in it: " The Primacy of the 
 Apostolic See has always been in force." (Ep. xliii. Glorio. 
 n. 7.). And elsewhere: "The Chair of the Roman Church 
 in which Peter sat, and in which Anastasius now sits." 
 {Cont. Lit. Petilian, Lib. ii. c. 15.) 
 
 S. Augustine, with the Bishops of the Councils of Car- 
 thage and Milevis, turned to Pope Innocent for the confir- 
 mation of the decrees which had been drafted, " wishing 
 it," say they in their letter, "to be decided whether their 
 little streamlet floived from the same source whence came the 
 abundance of the Head.'' 
 
 The Pope replied to both Councils. In the first letter he 
 says: "You have referred to our judgment, knowing what 
 is due to the Apostolic See, since all who are placed in this 
 position desire to follow the Apostle himself, from whom the 
 very Episcopate and all the authority of this title spring. 
 Eollowing whom, we know as well how to condemn the evil 
 as to approve the good." Then he continues: '' In pursu- 
 ance of no human hut a divine sentence, the Fathers have 
 decreed that whatever was being carried on, although in the 
 ^most remote provinces, should not be terminated before it 
 ivas brought to the knowledge of this See, by the full author- 
 ity of which the just sentence should be confirmed." 
 
 And, in the second letter, Pope Innocent says : " Especially 
 so often as a matter of faith is under discussion, I conceive 
 
THE VICAE OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 45 
 
 that all my brethren and fellow-bishops can only refer to 
 Peter; that is the source of their own name and honor, just 
 as your affection hath now referred, for what may benefit all 
 churches in common throughout the ivorld. For the inventors 
 of evils must necessarily become more cautious when they 
 see that, at the reference of a double Synod, they have been 
 severed from ecclesiastical communion hy our sentence.'' 
 
 S. Augustine, after the confirmation of the decrees by 
 Pope Innocent, and having the Pope's letters in mind, sums 
 up the history of Pelagi^nism by saying: *'The decisions of 
 the two Councils on this matter have been sent to the Apos- 
 tolic See; whence, also, the replies have come. The cause 
 is ended; may the error soon terminate also." (Serm. cxxxi.) 
 
 More is not needed to shew S. Augustine's belief in theory 
 and in practice in the Supremacy of the Roman See; and 
 this notwithstanding his protestation with that of his African 
 fellow-bishops in the affair of Aspiarius against the arrogance 
 of the Pope's representatives. 
 
 Augustine's words, just cited, have given rise to the oft- 
 repeated apothegm: "Rome has spoken; the cause is 
 finished." 
 
 4. From Augustine in North Africa we turn to Cassian 
 the Monk, the founder of Monasticism in the West. He had 
 been brought up in a monastery at Bethlehem; and we may 
 fairly claim him as a witness to the teaching in Palestine. 
 Cassian died about 440. Writing on the Incarnation, he 
 says: " You would fain have the authority of a greater in- 
 dividual, .... let us interrogate the greatest — that disciple 
 amongst the disciples, that teacher amongst the teachers, 
 who, ruling the helm of the Roman Church, as he had the Pri- 
 macy of Faith, so also had the Primacy of the Priesthood. Tell 
 us, then, toll us, O Peter, Prince of the Apostles, how the 
 churches are to believe in God; for it is just that thou 
 shouldst teach us who wast thyself taught of the Lord, and 
 that thou shouldst open to us the gate of which thou 
 receivedst the key." (Da Incar. liii.) 
 
46 THE POPE: 
 
 5. S. Yincent of Lerins, priest and monk, is our next 
 witness. He died about 445. Twelve years before, he com- 
 pleted and published ia clear and elegant language his 
 " Commonitorum " against schismatics and heretics. 
 
 Having asserted that " in the Catholic Church itself very 
 great care is to be taken that we hold that which has been be- 
 lieved everywhere, always andhy all men,'" S. Vincent illustrates 
 what he means by this, universality, antiquity and consent. 
 He then points out how an army of confessors and martyrs 
 in common with all religious men '' go counter to novel 
 inventions." And he continues: *'Such examples are 
 everywhere plentiful. But not to be prolix we will select 
 some one, and and this in preference from the Apostolic See, 
 that all men may see more plainly than the sun's light with 
 what force, what zeal, what endeavor the blessed succession of 
 the blessed Apostles ever defended the integrity of religion once 
 received. In days past, therefore, Agrippinus of blessed 
 memory. Bishop of Carthage, the first of all mortal men, 
 against the divine Scripture, against the rule of the Univer- 
 sal Church, against the sense of all his fellow-priests, 
 against the custom and institutes of our forefathers, held 
 that baptism ought to be repeated. . . . When, therefore, 
 on every side men reclaimed against the novelty of the 
 thing, and all the priests in every direction, each according 
 to his zeal, did oppose, then Pope Stephen of blessed memory, 
 Prelate of the Apostolic See, resisted with the rest of his 
 colleagues, indeed but still beyond the rest; thinking it, I 
 suppose, becoming that he should eoccel all the rest as much in 
 devotion for the Faith as he surpassed them in authority of 
 place. In fine, in an Epistle which was then sent to Africa, 
 he gave a decree in these words, ' Nothing is to be innovated, 
 nothing but what has been handed down.' . . . What, 
 therefore was the result of the whole business ? What, 
 indeed, but the usual and accustomed one. Antiquity, to wit, 
 was retained; novelty exploded." (Adv. Haeres. n. 6). 
 
 6. We now turn to Italy to hear the teaching of the 
 learned S. Peter Chrysologus, Archbishop of Eavenna, from 
 
THE VICAK OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHUKCH. 47 
 
 433 to 454. He writes to Eutyches tlie heretic : " We exhort 
 you, honored brother, that in all things you obediently attend 
 to those things which have been written by the most blessed 
 Pope {Leo) of the City of MomSj because blessed Peter, who lives 
 and presides in his own See, gives, to those who seek, true faith. 
 For we, in our solicitude for peace and true faith, cannot, 
 without the consent of the Bishop of the Roman City, hear 
 causes of faith." (Faith of Catholics, vol. ii. p. 89). 
 
 And in his sermon on the 99th Psalm, the same Saint 
 says: ''Hence it is that, when about to return to heaven, 
 He {Jesus) commends His sheep to be fed by Peter in his stead ^ 
 (Serm. vi.) 
 
 And, once more: "Let Peter hold his long-established 
 Primacy over the Apostolic Choir; let him open to those who 
 enter the kingdom of heaven." (Serm. cliv.) 
 
 7. Our next witnesses are the Greek historians, Socrates 
 and Sozomen, who lived and wrote in the fifth century. 
 
 Socrates says : "Athanasius was scarcely able to reach 
 Italy ... at the same time also Paul of Constanti- 
 nople, and Asclepas of Gazse, and Marcellus of Ancyra, and 
 Lucius of Adrianople, who had each for different causes 
 been accused and driven from their churches, are found to 
 be ill that regal city, Rome. They make known their several 
 cases to Julius, Bishop of Pome, and he, as is the prerogative of 
 the Church that is at Pome, armed and strengthened them 
 with authoritative letters, and sent them back to the East, 
 having restored to each his own See, and severely blaming 
 those who had rashly deposed them. And they having de- 
 parted from Rome, and confiding in the letters of Bishop 
 Julius, recover their churches." (Hist. Ecc. Bk. ii. c. 15.) 
 
 Sozomen narrates the same facts concerning the appeals 
 of these bishops of the East to Pope Julius. Of the 
 Pope's letters he says: "And as, on account of the dignity of 
 his throne, the care of all pertains to him, he restored to each 
 his own Church." And referring to the letter of the same 
 Pope Julius to the Arian bishops, he cites from it these 
 words: " It is a sacerdotal law, that the things done con- 
 
48 THE pope: 
 
 trary to tlie sentiment of the Bishop of the Eomans be- 
 looked upon as null." (Hist. Ecc. Bk. iii, c. 8.) 
 
 This same Sozomen elsewhere having named those who 
 denied the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, and the Catholic 
 Bishops who defended it, adds: " This important question 
 being agitated, and, as was to be expected, daily increasing 
 in importance by the eagerness for disputation, when the 
 Bishop of Eome learnt this, he with the priests of the West 
 wrote to the Churches of the East to worship a con substan- 
 tial and equally glorious Trinity. And after this had been 
 done, they were all silent, and this important question 
 seemed settled, as having been once for all decided hy the judg- 
 ment of the Church of the Romans.'' (Hist. Ecc. Bk. vi. c. ^2.) 
 
 8. Theodoret, Bishop of Cja^us, in Palestine, was charged 
 with sympathizing with the doctrine of Nestorius. The 
 *' Robber Council "had deposed him, but he appealed to 
 Pope Leo the Great and was restored to his episcopal dig- 
 nity; and because of Pope Leo's action, Theodoret took his 
 seat in the Council of Chalcedon. In his letter of appeal 
 to the Pope, Theodoret says: " If Paul, that herald of the 
 truth, that trumpet of the Holy Ghost, repaired to Peter to 
 bring from him an explanation to those of Antioch who were 
 disputing concerning questions of the law, with much greater 
 reason do we, who are so worthless and lowly, hasten to 
 your Apostolic Throne to receive from you a cure for the wounds 
 of the churches, for it pertains to you to hold the Primacy in all 
 things.. For your throne is adorned with many preroga- 
 tives .... These (Peter and Paul) have made your 
 throne most illustrious; this is the culminating point of 
 your blessings. And their God has even now made illus- 
 trious their throne, having established therein your Holi- 
 ness, emitting the rays of orthodoxy. . . . But 1 await 
 the sentence of your Apostolic throne. . . . Do not, I 
 pray you, reject my supplication nor despise my miserable 
 gray hairs so insulted after so many labors. But above all 
 things,! beg to learn from you whether I must needs acquiesce 
 in this unjust deposition, or not; for I await your sentence. 
 
THE YICAB OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 49 
 
 And should you command me to abide by what has been 
 adjudged, I will do so, and to no one will I give further 
 trouble, but will await the just judgment of our God and 
 Saviour." (Ep. cxiii. Leoni.) 
 
 9. We close our references to individual writers by citing 
 from the African Bishop, Victor Vitensis, who wrote the 
 History of the Persecutions under the Yandals. He died 
 in the year 490. **If the king," says Bishop Victor, '^wish 
 to know which is the One True Faith let him send to his 
 friends, and I, too, will write to my brethren that my fellow 
 bishops may come — men who may be able, with me, to 
 demonstrate to you our common faith, and especially the 
 Roman Church, luhich is the head of all the churches ^ (De 
 Per sec. Afric. Bk. iii.) 
 
 These saintly writers of the fifth century, renowned for 
 learning, holding responsible ecclesiastical dignity in 
 various parts of the Church, representatives of many 
 nations, knew nothing of a mere honorary primacy, nor of 
 the human institution of the papacy, nor of the limitation 
 of papal power to a Western Patriarchate. They hold 
 and practically profess that the Bishop of Eome is ap- 
 pointed, by God, Supreme Pastor of the whole Church. 
 They did what is expressed in the Canon of S. Patrick 
 of A. D. 450: "If any case cannot easily be decided 
 in that See (the local one of S. Patrick) ... we have 
 decreed that it be sent to the Apostolic See, that is, to the 
 Chair of the Apastle Peter, which holds authority in the 
 Citv of Eome." 
 
 iv. The Testimony of Councils in the 5th Century.— 
 Pelagianism was making considerable progress in North 
 Africa. To stem it two provincial Synods were held at Car- 
 thage and Milevis in 416. In each case, when the assembled 
 Bishops, had completed the work of the Synod and had con- 
 demned the Pelagian heresy, the decrees were sent to Pope 
 Innocent at Rome for confirmation. 
 
50 THE pope: 
 
 1. The sixty-eight bishops of the Council of Carthage write : 
 ''These proceedings of ours, Lord and Brother, we have 
 thought are to be made known to your holy charity, that to 
 the statutes of our lowliness may be added the authority of 
 the Holy See for the defence of the salvation of many, and 
 the correction of the perversity of some." 
 
 *'They implore," says Milman, the Protestant historian, 
 ** the dignity of the Apostolic Throne, of the Successor of 
 S. Peter, to complete and ratify what is wanting to their 
 more moderate power." (Hist. Lat. Christ. Bk. ii. c. 2.) 
 
 Indeed, the Fathers of the Council say this in so many 
 words: " We do not pour back our streamlet for the pur- 
 pose of increasing your great fountain. . . . We wish it to 
 be decided by you whether our stream, however small, flows 
 forth from that same head of rivers whence comes your own 
 labundance; and by your answers to be consoled respecting 
 .our common participation of grace." (Ep. clxxvii. n. 19.) 
 
 Pope Innocent replies by commending the Bishops for 
 ^* keeping to the precedents of ancient tradition," *'for 
 knowing what is due to the Apostolic See, knowing that all 
 of us who have been placed in this position desire to follow 
 the Apostle, from whom the Episcopate itself and the whole 
 authority of this title has been derived. With him for our 
 model, we both know how to condemn what is evil and to 
 approve of what is commendable." (Ep. clxxxi.) 
 
 2. From the Council of Milevis the fifty-nine Fathers write : 
 ^' As the Lord by the sovereign gift of His own grace has 
 placed you in the Apostolic See ... we beseech you that 
 you would vouchsafe to apply your pastoral diligence . . . 
 thinking that those (the Pelagians) who hold such pernicious 
 opinions will more easily yield to the authority of your 
 Holiness, derived as it is from the authority of Holy Scrip- 
 ture." 
 
 To the Fathers Pope Innocent replies: ''Carefully, as was 
 befitting, do you consult what is the secret wish of this 
 Apostolic dignity (a dignity, I repeat, upon which falls, 
 besides those things that are without, the solicitude for all 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 51 
 
 the churches) as to what opinion is to be held in matters of 
 such moment; having herein followed the pattern of an 
 ancient rule, which you, equally with myself, know has 
 always been observed by the whole world. . . . Wherefore 
 we do, by the authority of the Apostolic Power, declare 
 Pelagius and Coelestius, the inventors of novel words, . . . 
 deprived of the Communion of the Church." (Ep. xxx. ad 
 Con. Meliv.) 
 
 The great S. Augustine, who, with other African Bishops, 
 signed these letters, says that Pope Innocent "wrote back 
 to us on all these matters in a manner that was right and 
 becoming in the Prelate of the Apostolic See." (Ep. 
 clxxxvi. Paulino, 2.) And, preaching a little later, S. 
 Augustine says: "Already the decisions of two Councils 
 have been sent to the Apostolic See, whence, also, replies 
 have been received. The cause is ended. Would that the 
 error may likewise presently terminate." (Serm. cxxxi. n. 
 10.) 
 
 3. From these Provincial Synods we may pass to the 
 Third General Council, that of Ephesus. It was con- 
 voked, with the consent and approbation of Pope 
 Coelestine, by the Emperors of the East and West, Theodo- 
 sius and Valentinian, in 431. 
 
 It was this Pope, it will be remembered, who sent S. 
 Patrick and S. Palladius to convert the Irish. The same 
 Pope appointed Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, with Lupus, 
 Bishop of Troyes, to visit Britain, and there defend the 
 Catholic Faith against Pelagianism. 
 
 The convoking of the Council of Ephesus was necessitated 
 by the heretical teaching of Nestorius, Bishop of Constan- 
 tinople, concerning the number of Persons in Jesus Christ. 
 S. Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, tried to win Nestorius to the 
 true doctrine but failed. Both appealed to Pope Coelestine. 
 The decision was that Nestorius should recant within ten 
 days or be deposed. Nestorius refused. Cyril was com- 
 missioned to pronounce sentence of deposition. "Arming 
 yourself," says Pope Coelestine, "with the authority of this, 
 
52 THE POPE: 
 
 our See, and using our Succession, you shall, with resolute 
 severity, put in execution this sentence." (Ep. xi.) In hiS' 
 Arcliiepiscopal City of Alexandria, 8. Cyril published 
 twelve anathemas against Nestorius. He responded with 
 twelve other anathemas. 
 
 To declare the true faith, and to bring about concord, the 
 Council of Ephesus was convoked. It opened its first ses- 
 sion on June 22d, 431. There were one hundred and sixty 
 Bishops present; but by the end of the first session they 
 numbered one hundred and ninety-eight. They were almost 
 all Bishops of the East. 
 
 As the original documents of the Council, as well as later 
 writers, shew, S. Cyril of Alexandria presided as Kepresen- 
 tative of Pope Coelestine. Besides delegating his own 
 authority to Cyril, the Pope sent three Legates — Philip, a 
 priest, and two bishops, Arcadius and Projectus. 
 
 In his letter to the Council the Pope says that he had 
 sent these Legates to be present at what was done ^^ and to 
 execute what lias been previously ordained by us. To whom we 
 doubt not that assent will -be given by your Holiness.'" 
 (Ep. xviii.) 
 
 After the letters of Pope Coelestine had been read, and 
 received with acclamation, one of the Legates (Philip) said; 
 *'We acknowledge our thanks to the holy and venerable 
 Synod, that, the letters of our holy and blessed Pope having 
 been read to you, you have united your holy members, by your 
 holy voices and acclamation, to that holy Head; for your Blessed- 
 ness is not ignorant that the Blessed Peter, the Apostle, was the 
 Head, of all the Faith, as also of the Apostles^ (Act. ii.) 
 
 In the first session of the Council sentence of deposition 
 was pronounced against Nestorius. 
 
 Concerning this deposition one of the assembled Fathers, 
 Firinus, Bishop of Cappadocia, said: "The holy Apostolic 
 See of the most holy Bishop Coelestine has already, by the^ 
 letter sent to the most holy Bishop Cyril, prescribed the sen- 
 tence and the order to be observed in the present course. We 
 have adhered to this, and have put that decree into execution, 
 pronouncing the canonical and apostolic judgment on him " 
 (Nestorius). 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OP THE CHURCH. 53 
 
 The sentence of deposition was read a second time in the 
 third session, and on that occasion the Legate, Philip, said: 
 "* ' It is a matter of doubt to none, yea, ratker it is a thing 
 knoivn to all ages, that the holy and most Blessed Peter, the 
 prince and head of the Apostles, the pillar of the Faith, the 
 foundation of the Catholic Church, received the Keys of the King- 
 dom from Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour and Redeemer 
 of mankind. And to him was given authority to bind and 
 loose sins; who even till this present, and always, both lives 
 and judges in his successors. Wherefore our holy and most 
 blessed Pope Coelestine, the Bishop, the canonical successor and 
 holder of his place, has sent us to the holy Synod as represen- 
 tatives of his person. As, therefore, Nestorius, the author of 
 this new impiety, has not only allowed the term fixed by the 
 Apostolic See to pass hy, but also a much longer period of 
 time, the sentence upon him stands ratified by a decree of 
 all the churches." (Act. iii.) 
 
 The Council defined One Person in Jesus Christ and de- 
 clared the Blessed Yirgin to be '' Mother of God," because 
 she, "after the flesh, bore the Word from God who had 
 become flesh; that the Word is united substantially to flesh." 
 
 The decrees were signed by the Lep^ates, and the next 
 year were confirmed by Pope Sixtus III., the successor of 
 Coelestine. 
 
 Neander, the well known Protestant historian, confesses 
 that, in the affair of Nestorius, the Pope " claimed for him- 
 self a supreme judiciary authority" and by "the sovereign 
 •authority of the Apostolic See commissioned S. Cyril to 
 depose Nestorius." (Yol. iv. p. 145, Bohn's Series). 
 
 We may say, with greater truth, the supremacy of the 
 Koman Pontiff is patent throughout. The appeal is made 
 from Greeks, both Archbishops, one of Constantinople the 
 other of Alexandria, to Pope Coelestine; he judges and 
 prescribes the sentence of deposition to take place under 
 certain circumstances; he authorizes Cyril to carry the sen- 
 tence into execution. With Pope Coelestine's consent the 
 General Council is convoked; he appoints its President; 
 he sends thither his three Legates; his letters are read. 
 
54 THE pope: 
 
 approved and complied with; each act of the Council is intro- 
 duced by reference to Cyril presiding as the Vicar of the 
 Pope. Coelestine's office as holder of S. Peter's authority 
 is plainly stated and accepted, no one dissenting. The 
 assembled Fathers state that they depose Nestorius, ''neces- 
 sarily constrained thereto by the Canons and by the letter of 
 our most Holy Father and fellow-minister Coelestine, Bishop of the 
 Church of the Romans.'' The decrees of the Council are signed 
 in the first place by the Pontiff's appointed President and 
 Legates. Finally, the decrees are confirmed by the Pope. 
 
 Could the office of Supreme Governor and Supreme 
 Teacher of the Church be more plainly exercised? The 
 assembled Fathers declare that Peter ' ' always lives and 
 exercises judgment in his successors." (Act. iii.) In this 
 they do but repeat in a new form what the Council of Aries 
 had said more than a century earlier. Eome is called " the 
 place in which the Apostles (Peter and Paul) continually sit 
 in judgment." 
 
 All this is done one thousand ^ye hundred and fifty years 
 ago, in one of the undisputed General Councils, composed 
 of Bishops nearly all from the East; some four hundred and 
 fifty years before the Greeks separated from the Church; 
 and but one hundred years after the first General Council of 
 the Church had been held at Nice. 
 
 4. The Council of Chalcedon, convoked in 451, bears still 
 more striking evidence to the Supremacy of the Pope. 
 
 The heresy of Eutyches broke out in the East. A Synod 
 at Constantinople, presided over by its Bishop, Flavian, 
 condemned and deposed Eutyches. He appealed to Pope 
 Leo the Great. The Pope having examined the acts of the 
 Synod confirmed the sentence passed on Eutyches . 
 
 Dioscorus, Patriarch of Alexandria, sympathizing with 
 the teaching of Eutyches, used influence at the Imperial 
 Court of Constantinople to have a General Council called. 
 This was done, and Pope Leo was invited to send Legates. 
 Dioscorus presided. His proceedings were so uncanonical 
 and outrageous that the Council bears the evil title of "the 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH 55 . 
 
 Kobber- Synod." Its decrees, though confirmed by the Em- 
 peror Tlieodosius II., were rejected by Pope Leo, who also 
 annulled its acts. 
 
 The accession of Marcian to the Imperial Throne brought 
 better times. Marcian, in conjunction with the Western 
 Emperor Yalentinian III., summoned, with the consent of 
 Pope Leo, a General Council. It met in October, 451, at 
 Chalcedon. There were about six hundred Bishops present, 
 the greater number of them being Easterns. 
 
 As they themselves say in their Synodal Letter, Pope Leo 
 ' 'j^resided as Head over the members, in those who hold his place, " 
 that is, his Legates. These were Bishops Paschasinus and 
 Lucentius, together with Boniface and Basilius, priests. In 
 the third session of the Council they announced that Pope 
 Leo ' ' ordered them to preside over the Council in the place of 
 hii)isel/.'' Paschasinus subscribes as presiding over the 
 Synod in the place of "the most blessed and Apostolic Leo, 
 of the city of Rome, Bishop of the Universal Church''; and 
 Lucentius as " Vicar of the most blessed and Apostolic 
 man, Leo, Bishop of the ivhole Church."" 
 
 In the first session, the Legate Paschasinus declared: 
 " We have instructions from the most blessed and Apostolic 
 Pope of the City of Rome, the Head of all the Churches, by 
 which his Apostleship has thought fit to enjoin, that Dios- 
 corus, Archbishop of Alexandria, shall not sit with us, but 
 be put on his defence." 
 
 Among the charges made, Lucentius, another Legate, 
 narrates that Dioscorus "dared to hold a Council without 
 the authority of the Apostolic See, which had never been 
 done, nor was it lawful to do." Dioscorus was found guilty 
 of the charges, and was formally deposed in the third 
 session. 
 
 The sentence of deposition thus terminates: "Where- 
 upon Leo, the most holy and blessed Archbishop of the 
 greater and elder Rome, has, by the agency of ourselves 
 (the Legates) and the present Synod, in conjunction with 
 the thrice blessed and all-honored Peter, who is the Rock 
 and Foundation of the Catholic Church and the Basis of the 
 
56 THE POP±]: 
 
 Orthodox Faitli, deprived him (Dioscorus) of the episcopal 
 dignity and every priestly function. Accordingly, this 
 holy and great Synod decrees the provisions of the Canons 
 against the aforesaid Dioscorus." 
 
 Beginning with Anatolius, Archbishop of Constantinople, 
 the assembled bishops gave their assent, "agreeing in all 
 things with the Apostolic See." 
 
 In the second session the Dogmatic Letter of Pope Leo, 
 addressed to Flavian, Archbishop of Constantinople, which 
 Dioscorus would not have read in the Eobber Council, was 
 communicated to the Fathers. It contains an elaborate 
 statement of the doctrine of the Incarnation. In its 
 entirety it was received with acclamation by the assembled 
 Prelates, who on hearing it exclaimed: " This is the faith of 
 the Apostles, We all believe this. The orthodox believe 
 this. Anathema to him who does not believe this. Peter 
 has spoken thus, by the mouth of Leo. " 
 
 In the fourth session this letter is formally approved. 
 It had been shewn by the Council to be in agreement with 
 the explicit teaching of Holy Church. The Bishop's sig- 
 natures were needed, not to confirm the doctrine, but to 
 make a stronger barrier against the spread of the teaching 
 of Eutyches. 
 
 Against this Eutychean heresy the Council drew up a 
 dogmatic formula which was adopted in the fifth session. 
 And this ended what may be called the doctrinal work of 
 the Synod. That of passing disciplinary canons ensued. 
 By the end of the fourteenth session the Papal Legates 
 and more than two-thirds of the Bishops had withdrawn 
 and dispersed. 
 
 Anatolius, Archbishop of Constantinople, availed himself 
 of the opportunity and introduced in the next session the 
 notorious 28th Canon. By it the See of Constantinople 
 was to have not merely "the pre-eminence of honor" 
 assigned to it by the 6th Canon of the Second General 
 Council held at Constantinople, but also supreme jurisdiction 
 over Pontus and Asia. 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 57 
 
 The small minority of tlie Bishops remaining passed the 
 Canon. ''It claims," says Milman, the Protestant historian, 
 '*' only the subscription of a hundred and fifty prelates, and 
 those chiefly of the diocese of Constantinople." 
 
 The Council by Synodal Letter, as well as the Emperor 
 Marcian by private letter, ask of Pope Leo his confirmation 
 of the Decrees and Canons, the latter asserting that 
 ** the whole authority and validity of its decrees depended 
 on his sanction and confirmation." Anatolius expresses 
 the same in almost similar words. The Synodal Letter 
 says: " We beg of you, therefore, to honor with your sanc- 
 tion our judgment; and as we have contributed our harmo- 
 nious agreement with the Head in all good things, so let your 
 Supremacy deal, as is becoming, with your children." 
 
 Pope Leo, by a circular letter of March 21, 453, confirmed 
 the definition of faith made by the Council. But the 28th 
 Canon the Pope refused to ratify, as being in opposition to 
 the Canons of the First Council of Nice. 
 
 Writing to the Emperor Marcian, the Pope says, concern- 
 ing Anatolius of Constantinople and this Canon: "Let the 
 foresaid Bishop be content that through the assistance of 
 your piety and by my favor he Jiolds the Episcopal See of such 
 a city, which, however, he cannot make an Apostolic See.'' 
 (Ep. civ.) 
 
 And on the same question the Pope writes to the Empress 
 Pulcheria: "All decrees, then, of Episcopal Councils which 
 contravene the regulations contained in the Canons of Nice, 
 we, seconded by your faithful piety, make void, and by the 
 authority of Blessed Peter the Apostle, by one general censure, we 
 invalidate them.''' (Ep. cv. 3.) 
 
 This confirmation of the decisions and decrees of Synods 
 by the Pope, as necessary before they can be binding on the 
 Church, is seen in the first General Council held at Nice. 
 The Bishops, in their Synodal Letter to Pope Sylvester, ask 
 that their decisions may be confirmed by his agreement. 
 
 This principle was so well known and recognized that 
 Pope Nicholas L, at the time of the Photian Schism, wrote: 
 *' In Universal Councils no act, as you know, is valid, or is to 
 
58 THE pope: 
 
 be received, but what the See of S. Peter has approved; and, 
 on the other hand, whatever she alone has rejected, that only 
 is rejected." 
 
 It is impossible for an unprejudiced mind to follow the 
 dealings of Pope Leo the Great throughout the Council of 
 Chalcedon without realizing the full action of his supreme 
 power of " Ucumeyiical ArcJibishop and Patriarch,'' as he is 
 called in the libellus of Ischyrion read in the Council. He 
 rests his authority on being the successor of S. Peter, to 
 whom it had been committed by Christ; the Fathers 
 accept and endorse the claim and its origin. 
 
 5. The Bishops of the Province of Tarragona in Spain 
 held their Council in 460. They write to Pope Hilary: 
 "Even though," say they, "no necessity of ecclesiastical 
 discipline had supervened, we might indeed have had re- 
 course to tJiat privilege of your See, whereby the keys, having 
 been received after the Kesurrection of the Saviour, the indi- 
 vidual preaching of the most blessed Peter had for its object 
 the enlightening of all men throughout the whole world; 
 tJie Supremacy of ivhose Vicar, as it is eminent, so is it to he 
 feared and loved by all. Accordingly, we, adoring in you the 
 God whom you serve blamelessly, have recourse to the Faith 
 commended by the Apostle; thence seeking for answers whence 
 nothing hy error, nothing hy presumption, hut all ivith Ponti- 
 fical deliberation is prescribed. These things being so, there 
 is, however, amongst us a false brother whose presumption, 
 as it can no longer be passed over in silence, so also does 
 the urgency of the future judgment compel us to speak. . . 
 [They state their complaints against Silvanus, and add] : . . 
 As therefore these acts of presumption, which divide unity, 
 which make a schism, ought to be speedily met, we ask of 
 your See that we be instructed, by your Apostolic directions, as to 
 what you would have be observed in this matter. ... It 
 will assuredly be your triumph, if in the time of your Apostle- 
 ship the Catholic Church hears that the Chair of Peter prevails, 
 if the fresh seeds of the tares be extirpated." QDited in 
 Faith of Catholics, vol. ii., p. 99.) 
 
THE VICAE OF CHKIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 59 
 
 6. A Council was convened at Kome by Pope Gelasius in 
 the year 494. It asserts : ' ' Though all the Catholic churches- 
 throughout the world be but one bridal 'chamber of 
 Christ, yet tlie Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Ghurck 
 has been preferred to the rest by no decrees of a Council, but 
 has obtained the Primacy by the Evangelic Voice of our Lord 
 and Saviour, Himself saying, ' Thou art Peter and upon 
 this Eock I build my Church,'" etc. . . . Then the de- 
 cree goes on to affirm: "First, therefore, is the Boman 
 Church, the See of Peter the Apostle, 'not having spot or 
 lorinTde or any such thing.' But, second, is the See conse- 
 crated at Alexandria in the name of blessed Peter, by 
 Mark, his disciple and Evangelist, who was sent by Peter 
 the Apostle into Egypt, taught the word of truth and 
 consummated a glorious martyrdom. And, third, is the 
 See of Antioch held in honor in the name of the same 
 most blessed Apostle Peter, because that he dwelt there 
 before he came to Rome, and there first the name of the 
 new people of the Christians arose." (Gelas. Col. 1261.) 
 In their acclamations at the close of this Council the 
 Bishops called Pope Gelasius "The Yicar of Christ." 
 
 These assemblies of Bishops referred to in this section 
 represent all the countries in Eastern Europe, Western Asia, 
 North Africa, Italy and Spain. These Councils speak in the 
 beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the fifth century. 
 
 They recognize, publish and bow to the Supreme Author- 
 ity of the Boman Pontiff over the Universal Church. They 
 make no protest against the prerogatives and rights claimed 
 by the Pope; on the contrary, they accept them as living 
 traditions. They regard the Apostolic See as the center of 
 communion of the Christian Church, and the center of the 
 Orthodox Faith. They admit all these claims, not as con- 
 cessions made by the Church, but as divinely instituted in 
 blessed Peter by the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 ill. The Voice of the Popes in the 5th CentTiry.— 
 St. Anastasius, who was Pope when the century opened, 
 writes: " Care shall not be wanting on my part to guard the 
 
60 THE pope: 
 
 faith of the Gospel as regards my peoples, and to visit hj 
 letter as far as I am able the parts of my body throughout 
 the different regions of the earth." (Ep. i. ad Joan. Hieros.) 
 His successor, St. Innocent I., in like manner writes: 
 * ' Who is ignorant that what was delivered to the Roman Church 
 hy Peter the Prince of the Apostles, and is even now preserved, 
 ought to he observed hy all; nor anything be superinduced or 
 introduced which has not that authority, or which may seem 
 to derive its pattern elsewhere." (Ep. ad Decentium 
 XXV. n. 2.) 
 
 2. Pope Zosimus, the next in succession, writes: ^'Although 
 the tradition of the Fathers has assigned so great an authority to 
 the Apostolic See, that no one should dare to dispute ahout a judg- 
 ment given hy it, and that See, by Canons and regulations, has 
 kept to this; and the discipline of the Church, in the laws 
 which it yet follows, still pays to the name of Peter, from 
 whom that See descends, the reverence due; for canonical 
 antiquity, by universal consent, willed that so great a power 
 should belong to that Apostle, a poiuer also derived from the 
 actual promise of Christ our God, that it should be his to loose 
 what was bound, and to bind what was loosed, an equal state 
 of power heing hestowed upon those who, hy his will, should he 
 
 found worthy to inherit his See, for he has hoth charge of all the 
 
 Churches, and especially of this ivherein he sat You 
 
 are not ignorant that We rule over his Place, and are in pos- 
 session also of the Authority of his Name." (Ep. xi. ad 
 Afros.) 
 
 3. The next occupant of the Koman See, St. Boniface I., 
 writes: " The institution of the Universal Church took its 
 beginning from the honor bestowed on hlessed Peter, in vjhom its 
 government and headship reside. For from him as its source did 
 ecclesiastical discipline flow over all the Churches, when the cul- 
 ture of religion had begun to make progress. The precepts 
 of the Synod of Nice bear no other testimony; insomuch that 
 that Synod did not attempt to make any regulations in his regard, 
 as it saw that nothing could he conferred that was superior to his 
 
THE YICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 61 
 
 oimi dignity; it kneiv, in fine, that everything hadheen bestowed on 
 him by tlie word of the Lord. It is, therefore, certain that this 
 Church is to the churches spread over the whole world as 
 the head is to its own members; from which Church who so 
 has cut himself off becomes an alien from the Christian 
 Religion." (Ep. xiv. Epis. Thess.) 
 
 4. Pope S. Coelestine, the next in succession, writes to the 
 Bishops of Illyrium: " We in a special manner are con- 
 strained by our charge, which regards all men, we, on whom 
 Christ has in the ^person of holy Peter the Apostle, when he gave 
 him the keys to open and to shut, imposed as a necessity to be en- 
 gaged about all men." (Ep. iii.) 
 
 5. Pope S. Xystus III., the successor of S. Coelestine, 
 Avrites to John, Patriarch of Antioch, who rebelled as a 
 Schismatic against Pope and Council, but afterwards re- 
 turned to Catholic unity: **You have learned by the 
 result of this present business what it is to agree in senti- 
 ment with us. The blessed Apostle Peter, in his successors, 
 has transmitted lohat he received. Who would separate him- 
 self from his doctrine, whom the Master Himself declared 
 to be the first among the Apostles?" (Ep. vi.) 
 
 6. Pope S. Leo the Great succeeded as Pontiff S. Xystus. 
 Leo's sermons, letters and acts, superabound in teachings of 
 this kind. On the occasion of appointing the Bishop of 
 Thessalonica Patriarch over the ten Metropolitans of 
 Eastern Illyricum, S. Leo says: "And whereas our care is 
 extended throughout all the Churches — this being required of 
 us by the Lord, who committed the Primacy of the Apostolic 
 dignity to the most Blessed Apostle Peter, in reward, of his faith, 
 establishing the Universal Church on the solidity of him, the 
 foundation — we associate in that necessary solicitude which 
 we feel, those who are joined with us in the charity of (epis- 
 copal) fellowship. Wherefore, following the example of 
 those whose memory is venerable to us, ive have committed to 
 our brother and felloio-bishop , Anastasius, to act in our stead- 
 
62 THE pope: 
 
 a,nd we have enjoined him to be watchful that nothing un- 
 lawful be attempted by any one; to whom that your friend- 
 liness be, in things pertaining to ecclesiastical discipline, 
 obedient, we admonish you. For obedience will not be so much 
 rendered to him as to us, ivho are known, in our solicitude, to 
 have given him this commission throughout those provinces." 
 (Ep. V.) 
 
 The authority and zeal in this letter characterize all 
 Pope Leo's deeds and writings. The Protestant historian. 
 Dean Milman, in his History of Latin Christianity, admits 
 that '^ the Pontificate of Leo the Great is one of the epochs 
 of Latin, or rather of universal Christianity. . . . On the 
 throne of Rome alone, of all the greater Sees, did religion 
 maintain its majesty, its sanctity, its piety; and if it de- 
 manded undue deference, the world would not be rigidly 
 inclined to question pretensions supported as well by such 
 conscientious power as by such singular and unimpeachable 
 virtue, and such inestimable benefits conferred on Rome, on 
 the Empire, on civilization. . . . Supremacy, held by so 
 firm and vigorous a hand as that of Leo, might seem almost 
 necessary to Christendom." (Book ii. c. 4.) 
 
 7. We have cited from the Popes who successively occu- 
 pied the Chair of S. Peter in the first half of the fifth century. 
 The latter half affords similar testimony from the succeed- 
 ing Popes. They all speak as men " having authority." 
 
 And lest the reader may be wearied, suffice it to quote 
 the words of S. Gelasius, who sat on the Chair of Peter in 
 the last decade of the fifth century : 
 
 '' Wherefore, then," asks Pope Gelasius, ''is the Lord's 
 discourse so frequently directed to Peter ? Was it that the 
 rest of the holy and blessed Apostles were not clothed with 
 like virtue? Who (Jare assert this? No, but that, by a 
 Head being constituted, the occasion of schism might be removed; 
 and that the compact bond of the Body of Christ, thus uni- 
 formly tending by the fellowship of a most glorious love, to 
 One Head, might be shewn to be One." . . . , 
 
 '*For which cause our forefathers . . . referred to that 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 63 
 
 Chair wherein the Prince of the Apostles (Peter) had sat, 
 the derived origin of their priesthood, seeking thence the 
 weightiest buttresses to give firmness to their own solid 
 structures, that by this spectacle it may be manifest to all 
 men that the Church of Christ is truly one throughout, and 
 indivisible. .... 
 
 "There were assuredly twelve Apostles, endowed with 
 equal merits and equal dignity; and whereas, they all shone 
 equally with spiritual light, yet was it Christ's will that one 
 amongst them should be the Euler, and him, by an admira- 
 ble dispensation, did He guide to Rome, the queen of 
 nations, that in the principal City He might direct that first 
 and principal (Apostle) Peter. And there, as he shone con- 
 spicuous for power of doctrine, so also, made glorious by the 
 shedding of his blood, does he repose in a place of everlast- 
 ing rest, granting to the See tvhich he himself blessed, that it he, 
 according to the Lord's promise, never overcome by the gates of 
 hell, and that it be the safest harbor for all who are tempest- 
 tossed. In that harbor whosoever shall have reposed, shall 
 enjoy a blessed and eternal place of safety; whereas he that 
 shall have despised it, it is for him to see to it what kind 
 of excuses he will plead at the day of judgment." (Faith of 
 Catholics, vol. ii. p. 101-2.) 
 
 Again, in his epistle to the Bishops of Dardania, Pope Gela- 
 sius writes: '^ The first See both confirms every Synod by its oivn 
 authority, and guards by its continuous rule, by reason of its supre- 
 macy, which, received by the Apostle Peter from the mouth of the 
 Lord, the CJiurch nevertheless sanctioning, it both always has held 
 and retains. . . . We will not pass over in silence what 
 every church throughout the world knows, that the See of the 
 Blessed Apostle Peter has the right to absolve from what 
 has been bound by the sentence of any prelates whatsoever, 
 in that it has the right of judging of the whole Church; neither 
 is it lawful for any one to pass judgment on its jiidgment, seeing 
 that the canons have willed that it may be appealed to from 
 any part of the world, but that from it no one be permitted to 
 appeal.'' (Ep. xiii.) 
 
64 THE pope: 
 
 In a commentary on this letter which, appears in the Pro- 
 testant Work, C Smith & "Wace's Dictionary of Christian 
 Biography and Literature,") it is said: "In the address- 
 of Pope Gelasius 'to the Bishops of Dardania,' he eoiarges 
 on its being the function of the Roman See, not only 
 to carry out the decisions of Synods, but even to give 
 such decisions their whole authority. Nay, the purpose 
 of Synods is spoken of as being simply to express the 
 assent of the Church at large to what the Pope had 
 already decreed, and what was therefore already bind- 
 ing. This, he says, had been the case at Chalcedon. 
 Further instances are alleged of Popes having, on their 
 own mere authority, reversed the decisions of Synods, 
 absolved those whom Synods had condemned, and con- 
 demned those whom Synods had absolved. The cases of 
 Athanasius and Chrysostom are cited as examples of the ex- 
 ercise of such power. Lastly, any claim of Constantinople, 
 contemptuously spoken of as in the diocese of Heraclea, to 
 be exempt from the judgment of 'The First See,' is put aside 
 as absurd, since ' the power of a secular kingdom is one 
 thing, the distribution of ecclesiastical dignities another.' " 
 (p. 619.) 
 
 8. It is manifest from these extracts, purposely made few 
 in number and selected from the writings of the Popes in the 
 fifth century, that they claimed as matter of living tradition 
 known to all, and asserted that they had supreme and 
 universal authority in the whole Church. They rest this 
 authority on divine right in the promise made by our Lord 
 Jesus Christ to the* most Blessed Peter. They confirm their 
 claim by constant reference to Councils and to the general 
 acceptation of the Christian world. 
 
 Neander, the Protestant ecclesiastical historian, com- 
 menting on the reply of Pope Innocent to the Council of 
 Carthage in 416, passes this judgment: "In the minds of 
 the Roman Pontiffs we perceive the beginning already to 
 develop itself more clearly arid distinctly, that to them, as 
 the successors ^and representatives of the Apostle Peter,. 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 65 
 
 "belonged the sovereign guidance of the whole world. . . . 
 It is impossible to doubt as to what the Popes, even as early 
 as the fifth century, believed themselves to be, or would fain 
 be, in relation to the rest of the Church, after having once 
 listened to the language which they themselves hold on the 
 subject." (Vol. iii. p. 241, Bohn's Trans.) 
 
 This is stated even more pointedly by the well-known 
 Protestant, Barrow, in his Treatise on the Pope's Supremacy. 
 Referring to the cqoostolic confirmation given by Popes to 
 the election of bishops and metropolitans, Barrow says: 
 *'Pope Leo I. saith that Anatolius of Constantinople did 
 * by favor of his assent obtain the bishoprick of Constanti- 
 nople.' The same Pope is alleged as having confirmed 
 Maximus of Antioch. The same did write to the Bishop of 
 Thessalonica, his Yicar, that he should ' confirm the elections 
 of bishops by his authority.' He also confirmed Donatus, 
 an African bishop : ' We will that Donatus preside over the 
 Lord's flock, upon condition that he remember to send us 
 an account of his faith.' Also Gregory I. doth complain of 
 it as an inordinate act, that a bishop of Salonse was ' or- 
 dained without his knowledge.' Pope Damasus did confirm 
 the ordination of Peter Alexandrinus : ' The Alexandrians, ' 
 saith Sozomen, ' did render the churches to Peter, being 
 returned to Borne with the letters of Damasus, which con- 
 firmed both the Mcene decrees and his ordination.' " 
 (Suppos. VI. vi.) 
 
 Again, Barrow writes on the Appointment of Vicars Apos- 
 tolic of tJie Pope: "Thus did Pope Coelestine constitute 
 Cyril in his room. Pope Leo appointed Anatolius of Con- 
 stantinople. Pope Felix, Acacius of Constantinople. 
 Pope Hormisdas, Epiphanius of Constantinople. Pope 
 Simplicius to Zeno of Seville: ' We thought it convenient 
 you should be held up by the Vicariate authority of our 
 See.' So did Siricius and his successors constitute the 
 bjshops of Thessalonica to be their Vicars in the diocese of 
 Illyricum, wherein, being then a member of the Western 
 Empire, they had caught a special jurisdiction; to which 
 Pope Leo did refer in those words, which sometimes are 
 
66 THE POPE : 
 
 impertinently alleged with reference to all bishops, but con- 
 cern only Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica : * We have 
 intrusted thy charity to be in our stead, so that thou art 
 called into part of the solicitude, not into plentitude of the 
 authority.' So did Pope Zosimus bestow a like pretence of 
 vicarious power upon the Bishop of Aries, which city was 
 the seat of the temporal Exarch in Gaul. So to the bishop 
 of Justiniana Prima, in Bulgaria (or Dardania Europoea) the 
 like privilege was granted." (Suppos. YI., x.) 
 
 And on the question of final appeal to the Pope of Rome as 
 successor to S. Peter and the Head of the Church, which the 
 Council of Sardica had formally acknowledged in its decrees, 
 A. D. 343, Barrow gives the following instances: ''Thus 
 did Marcian go to Rome and sue for admission to com- 
 munion there. So Fortunatus and Felicissimus in S. Cyprian, 
 being condemned in Afric, did fly to Bome for shelter; of 
 which absurdity S. Cyprian doth so complain. So likewise 
 Martianus and Basilidis, in S. Cyprian, being outed of their 
 Sees for having lapsed from the Christian profession, did fly 
 to Stephen (the Pope) for succor to be restored. Maximus, 
 the Cynic, went to Bome to get a confirmation of his election 
 at Constantinople. So Marcellus, being rejected for hetero- 
 doxy, went thither to get attention for his orthodoxy, of 
 which S. Basil complaineth. So Aparius, being condemned 
 in Afric for his crimes, did appeal to Bome. And on the 
 the other side, Athanasius being with great partiality con- 
 demned by the Synod of Tyre; Paulus and other Bishops 
 being extruded from their Sees for orthodoxy; S. Chrysos- 
 tom being condemned and expelled by Theophilus and his 
 accomplices; Flavianus being deposed by Dioscorus and 
 the Ephesine Synod; Theoderet, being condemned by the 
 same : did cry out for help to Bome. Chelidonius, Bishop of 
 Besanon, being deposed by Hilarius of Aries for crimes, 
 did fly to Pope Leo. Ignatius, Patriarch of Constantinople, 
 being extruded from his See by Photius, did complain to the 
 Pope." (Suppos. Y. X.) 
 
 On the point of appeals to Bome, the Protestant Dean 
 Miiman avows that the two Canons of Sardica do establish 
 
THE YICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 67 
 
 * ' a general right of appeal from all parts of Christendom to 
 Borne.''' (Hist, of Lat. Christ. Bk. ii. c. 4.) But appeals 
 are made to superior authority; and bjthe early laws of the 
 Church there was no appeal from one Patriarchate to an- 
 other; therefore the appeal to Rome was to the Supreme 
 Source of Authority. 
 
 Barrow, Neander^ Milman, as historians, cannnot conceal 
 the undeniable fact of the exercise of universal power by 
 the Popes over the Church as early as the fourth and fifth 
 centuries. But instead of realizing that this was but nat- 
 ural, as soon as the Church was freed from persecution, and 
 could follow the law of growth by developing her Apostolate 
 divinely instituted in Peter, and her Corporate Episcopate 
 divinely histituted in the College of Apostles, these Protes- 
 tant eminent writers do but see usurpation on the part of the 
 Popes. 
 
 The exercise of the Papal Supremacy at this earlv period 
 is admitted not only by Church writers like those cited, but* 
 also by secular historians like Hallam. Let the judicious 
 reader see whether the Divine Institution of the Papacv is 
 not the only solid and true explanation of these facts. 
 
 iv. Testimony from the G-reek Schism.— To the histori- 
 cal evidence for the recognized divine institution of the 
 Supremacy of the Pope in the fifth century it is well to add 
 the doctrinal definition gradually evolved by the develop- 
 ment of the Greek schism. 
 
 It is not usual for General Councils to make definitions of 
 faith, unless some doctrine has been assailed, misrepresented 
 or denied. Now, as a matter of fact, for the first nine centu- 
 ries no heretic made a direct attack upon the doctrine of 
 Papal Supremacy. There was therefore no need of defini- 
 tion. But when the Photian schism in the middle of the 
 ninth century begot a denial of the Visible Headship of the 
 Church, she, in her Eighth General Council, in 869, exacted 
 a Declaration of Faith on this point. And this led later to 
 formal definitions concerning the Supremacy of the Pope. 
 
68 THE pope: 
 
 1. At Epliesus and at Chalcedon we have seen how the 
 assembled Bishops treated the successor of S. Peter in the 
 Chair of Eome as the * ' Universal Bishop of the whole 
 Church." 
 
 The definitions made by these Councils against Nestorian- 
 ism and Eutychianism did not unfortunately crush these 
 heresies. They formed two sects which rapidly spread in 
 the East. Early in the sixth century there seemed to 
 be hope of reconciling one of the Sects, (the Eutychians, 
 otherwise called Monophysites,) and of healing the Acacian 
 schism lately formed. 
 
 To bring about submission and reconciliation, an appeal 
 was made A. D. 516 to Pope Hormisdas by the clergy of the 
 East. They address their letter ' ' To the most holy and 
 blessed Patriarch of the whole earth, Hormisdas, holding 
 the See of Peter, Prince of the Apostles.'' And in their com- 
 munication they say : ' ' Since Christ our God has appoirited 
 "gou Chief Pastor, and Teacher, and Physician of soids, we 
 beseech you, therefore, most Blessed Father, to arise and 
 condole with the Body torn to pieces, for you are the Head 
 of all, and avenge the Faith despised, the Canons trodden 
 under foot, the Fathers blasphemed. The Flock itself comes 
 forward to recognize its own Shepherd in you, its true Pastor 
 and Doctor, to whom the care of the Sheep is intrusted for 
 their Salvation." (Labbe, Tom. Y. p. 598; Mansi, Tom. viii» 
 p. 424.) 
 
 In consequence. Pope Hormisdas sent a deputation to Con- 
 stantinople bearing a Profession of Faith, with a promise of 
 allegiance. This is known as " The Formula of Pope 
 Hormisdas." 
 
 Therein it is declared: ''Wherefore the sentence of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ cannot be set aside, in which He says : 
 * Thou art Peter and upon this Rock will I build- My 
 Church,' etc. The above words are confirmed in their re- 
 sults, /or in the Apostolic See religion has alivays been preserved 
 without spot. Anxious, therefore, not to be severed from 
 this hope and faith, and following in all things the constitu- 
 tutions of the Fathers, we anathematize all heretics 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 69 
 
 We receive and approve all the encyclical letters of Pope 
 Leo which he wrote concerning the Christian religion. 
 Whence, as we have said before, following in all things the 
 Apostolic See, and prof essing all its decrees, we hope that we may 
 deserve to he in the one communion tvith you which the Apostolic 
 Bee proclaims, in which is the entire and trus solidity of the 
 Christian Religion. We promise, also, that the names of 
 those luho are cut off from the Communion of the CathoUc 
 Church, that is, not consentient with tlve Apostolic See, shall 
 not be recited during the Sacred Mysteries." 
 
 This profession of faith was signed in 519 by the 
 Emperor, by the Patriarchs, by the Bishops, who returned 
 to Catholic unity. Therein it is cleairly asserted that 
 the Supreme authority of the Eoman Pontiff rests on the 
 promise of Christ, that it is incumbent upon every Chris- 
 tian to be united with the Apostolic See, and that all who 
 are not in communion with the Roman Church are cut off 
 from the Communion of the Catholic Church. 
 
 This was the Faith embedded in the mind and acts of the 
 United East and West. 
 
 2. When the Imperial seat of Government was trans- 
 ferred to Constantinople this city was a simple bishopric. 
 But with its new honors it grew ambitious and aspired to be 
 a, Patriarchate, as is shown by the 6th Canon of the Second 
 General Council in 381. Seventy years later, at the 
 Council of Ephesus, Anatolius of Constantinople, with some 
 one hundred and fifty Bishops, a fourth part of the assembled 
 Fathers, drew up and subscribed the 28th Canon, giving to 
 Constantinople authority over the Patriarchates of Alexan- 
 dria, Antioch and Jerusalem. By the end of the sixth cen- 
 tury, beginning with John the Faster, the Patriarch of 
 Constantinople assumed the title of "Ecumenical, or Uni- 
 versal Bishop." A century later, the Canons enacted by 
 the Synod in Trullo, held at Constantinople, clearly manifest 
 enmity against Rome and covertly insinuate the indepen- 
 dence of the East, m matters of discipline. 
 
 The Roman Pontiffs, instinct with faith, foresaw in these 
 ambitious attempts the elements of schism, and accordingly 
 
70 THE pope: 
 
 resisted them. The 6th Canon of Constantinople, assigning 
 pre-eminence of honor to Constantinople after Eome, was 
 ignored by the Popes until 1215, when the Latin Patriarch- 
 ate was established at Constantinople. Then the Fourth 
 Council of Lateran, under Innocent III., accorded the privi- 
 lege. And as to the 28th Canon of Chalcedon, neither 
 Pope Leo nor any of his successors ever confirmed it. 
 
 The pride and ambition of the Bishops of Constantinople, 
 inflamed by the Imperial Court, at length produced their 
 fruits, and brought matters to a heading in the year 858. 
 
 Photius, a man of much learning but of unscrupulous 
 character, was then uncanonically consecrated Bishop and 
 usurped the See of Constantinople, from which its lawful 
 Bishop, Ignatius, had been exiled by the Imperial Court for 
 resisting the conduct of some of its members. 
 
 The Emperor Michael sought the approbation of Pope 
 Nicholas I. for Photius. This the Pope not only refused, 
 but he also condemned the treatment of Bishop Ignatius, . 
 and the usurpation of Photius. In the same year the Pope 
 passed sentence of deposition and degradation from the 
 clerical rank on Photius. 
 
 The latter contumaciously retained the See, convoked a 
 Synod in the Imperial City, and pronounced sentence of de- 
 position and excommunication on the Pope. Later, Photius 
 published an Encyclical containing a long list of charges 
 against the Western Church. 
 
 Shortly afterwards, Photius was ejected by the new Em- 
 peror Basil, Ignatius was restored to his See, and Pope 
 Hadrian II., who had succeeded Nicholas, labored with zeal 
 to heal the schism. 
 
 The Eighth General Council was convoked for this pur- 
 pose at Constantinople in 869. The excommunication of 
 Photius by the Pope was recognized. 
 
 Each of the Bishops, before taking his seat in the Coun- 
 cil, signed the Formula of Hormisdas, given above; and thus 
 were East and West united in the profession of belief con- 
 cerning the supremacy and universal authority of the Boman 
 Tontiff. 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 71 
 
 The schism was for the moment healed. It unfortu- 
 nately broke out again and again; and it was finally con- 
 summated by Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constanti- 
 nople, in 1052. Several efforts have since been made to 
 heal the rent, but without lasting success. 
 
 3. Two of these efforts culminated in convoking two 
 General Councils, the one at Lyons in 1274, the other at 
 Florence in 1439, by Pope Gregory X. and by PopeEugenius 
 IV., respectively. 
 
 The Formula of Faith subscribed by the Latin and Greek 
 Bishops and by the Greek Emperor, Michael Palseologus, at 
 the Council of Lyons, contained these words: ^^The Holy 
 Roman Cliurcli holds supreme and full primacy and headship 
 over the whole Catholic Church, which she truly and humbly 
 acknowledges herself to have received from the Lord Himself, 
 in the person of Blessed Peter, the Prince and Head of the 
 Apostles, whose successor is the Roman Pontiff, with the 
 plenitude of power. And as before all others she is bound to 
 defend the truth, so also if any questions arise concerning the 
 faith, they ought by her judgment to be defined. . . . By 
 mouth and heart we confess that which the sacred and holy 
 Roman Church truly holds, and faithfully teaches and 
 preaches." 
 
 At the Council of Florence the assembled Fathers, both 
 Greek and Latin, defined " That the Holy Apostolic See and 
 the Roman Bishop hold the Primacy over all the ivorld; that 
 the Roman Pontiff is the successor of Blessed Peter, the 
 Prince of the Apostles, the true Yicar of Christ, the Head 
 of the whole Church, and the Father and Teacher of all 
 Christians; and that to him, in the person of Blessed Peter 
 luas committed by our Lord Jesus Christ tlie fidl poioer of feed- 
 ing , directing and governing tlie Universal Church, as also is 
 contained in the Acts of QEcumenical Councils and in the 
 sacred Canons." 
 
 Though the union created by the Council of Lyons lasted 
 hardly six years, and that effected by the Council of Florence 
 not more than four years, yet the Formula of Hormisdas, 
 
72 THE pope: 
 
 signed, it is said, in all, by some 2,500 Bishops, tlie Formula 
 of Faith, signed at the Council of Lyons, and the dogmatic 
 definition formulated and promulgated by the united Greek 
 and Latin Fathers assembled in General Council at Florence 
 under the presidency of Eugene IV., will ever remain as the 
 explicit declarations of the adhesion of East and West to the 
 divinely appointed Supremacy of the Eoman Pontiff, as 
 successor of S. Peter, over the whole Church of God. 
 
 4. The Vatican Council of 1870, in its Dogmatic Constitu- 
 tion on the Church of Christ, defines : (1) "That Blessed Peter 
 the Apostle was appointed the Prince of the Apostles, the 
 Visible Head of the whole Church Militant, and that he re- 
 ceived directly and immediately from our Lord Jesus Christ a 
 primacy, not only of honor, but also of true and proper 
 jurisdiction. (2) That it is by the institution of Christ the 
 Lord, or by divine right, that Blessed Peter should have a 
 perpetual line of successors in the Primacy over the Uni- 
 versal Church, and that the Roman Pontiff is the successor 
 of Blessed Peter in this primacy. (3) That the Eoman 
 Pontiff has the office, not merely of inspection, but full and 
 supreme jurisdiction over the Universal Church, not only in 
 things which belong to faith and morals, but also in those 
 which relate to the discipline and government of the Church 
 spread throughout the world; that he possesses not the prin- 
 cipal part, but the fulness of this supreme power; that this 
 power is ordinary and immediate, both over each and all the 
 Churches, and over each and all the Pastors and the faith- 
 ful. (4) That the Eoman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathe- 
 dra, that is, when, in discharge of his supreme office of Pastor 
 and Doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme 
 Apostolic Authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or 
 morals to be held by the Universal Church, by the divine 
 assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of 
 that infallibility with which the divine Eedeemer willed that 
 His Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regard- 
 ing faith or morals; and that therefore such definitions of 
 the Eoman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves and not 
 from the consent of the Church." 
 
THE VICAE OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 73 
 
 5. To sum up the " Witness of History to the Papacy; " 
 it is patent, first, that as early as the fifth century the 
 Supremacy of the Pope, as Governor and Teacher of the 
 Universal Church, for unity of faith and of communion, was 
 taught by the Bishops and ecclesiastical writers; was claimed 
 and acted on by the Popes; was accepted in its fulness by 
 General and Provincial Councils; and was appealed to as 
 final in its decisions by pastors and people from every part 
 of the Church. 
 
 Secondly, that such Supreme Authority in government 
 and in teaching over the whole Church was held to be, 
 not by concession of the Church nor by usurpation on 
 the part of the Popes, but by Divine right, having been 
 instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ in the person of Blessed 
 Peter; and that it was perpetuated in the Eoman Pontiff, 
 the successor of S. Peter in the Apostolic See of Eome. 
 
 Thirdly, the Greek schism caused a dogmatic definition of 
 the Supremacy of the Pope by the assembled Episcopate of 
 the whole Church at Florence, which confirmed and more ex- 
 plicitly stated the doctrines enunciated in the *' Formula of 
 Hormisdas"; and in the Profession of Faith accepted and 
 signed at the Synod of Lyons. 
 
 Fourthly, the Vatican Council re-affirms the definition of 
 Florence, and states more explicitly the nature of the Uni- 
 versal Jurisdiction of the Pope and the Unerring Character 
 of his office as Universal Doctor or Teacher. 
 
 It needs but ordinary observation to see that no funda- 
 mental change is made in the declarations of Pope Hormis- 
 das in 519, of the Council of Lyons in 1274, of the Council 
 of Florence in 1439, of the Council of the Vatican in 1870. 
 More definiteness alone is given to the definitions of the 
 rights and prerogatives of the Sovereign Pontiff. 
 
 It cannot be other than a special providence, that the tes- 
 timony adduced from the fifth century comes not only from 
 the " Undivided Church'' but also in greater part from the 
 Greek or Eastern Bishops assembled in General Councils. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THFi PAPACY A DOCTRINAL TEST. 
 
 i. The Arm of Unity— While the Apostles were yet 
 living there were turbulent, unruly spirits that revolted 
 against the authority and the teaching of these pastors, and 
 thus produced schisms and heresies. The first centuries of 
 the Church's existence witnessed the formation of severa-^ 
 sects, each holding some of the Gospel truth, and therefore 
 claiming to call themselves Christians. But they possessed 
 neither divine authority to teach, nor had they the faith 
 once delivered to the Saints. 
 
 Against these the Church made war; her teachers were 
 ever proclaiming the organic and therefore inseparable 
 unity of the Church and of her Teaching. 
 
 1. S. Irenaeus, writing before the end of the second cen- 
 tury, thus speaks in his great work "Against Heresies:" 
 "The Church, though spread over the whole world, to the 
 earth's boundaries, having received both from the Apostles 
 and their disciples the faith ; . . . . having, as I have said 
 received that preaching and this faith, the Church, though 
 spread over the whole world, guards it sedulously as though 
 dwelling in one house; and these truths she uniformly 
 holds, as having hwi one soul, and one and the same heart; 
 and these she proclaims and teaches, and hands down, 
 uniformly, as though she had but one mouth. For though 
 throughout the world the languages are various, still the 
 force of the tradition is one and the same. And neither 
 do the churches founded in Germany, nor those in Spain, 
 in Gaul, in the East, in Egypt, in Africa, nor in the re- 
 gions in the middle of the earth, believe or deliver a dif- 
 ferent faith; but as God's handiwork, the sun, is one and 
 the same throughout the universe, so the preaching of the 
 truth shines everywhere, and enlightens all men that wish 
 to come to the knowledge of the truth." (Adv. Hseres., 
 Book i. c. 10.) 
 
 (74) 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 75 
 
 2. S. Cyprian, struggling against the Novatians, writes, in 
 the middle of the third century: "The Lordsaith ' I and the 
 Father are one '; and again, of the Father, the Son and the 
 Holy Ghost, it is written: 'and these three are one'; and 
 does any think tliat oneness, thus proceeding from the divine 
 immutability, and cohering in heavenly sacraments, admits of 
 being sundered in the Church, and split by the divorce of an- 
 tagonist wills ? He who holds not this unity holds not the law 
 of God, holds not the faith of Father and Son, holds not the 
 truth unto salvation. This sacrament of unity, this bond of 
 concord inseparably cohering, is signified in the place in the 
 Gospel where the coat of Our Lord Jesus Christ is in no 
 wise parted nor cut." (S. Cyprian, De Un. Ecc. 5, 6.) 
 
 In the same treatise the Saint continues: " There is one 
 God and one Christ, and His Church one, and the Faith one, 
 and a people joined in solid oneness of body by a cementing con- 
 cord. Unity cannot be sundered, nor can one body be divided 
 by a dissolution of its structure, nor be cast piecemeal abroad 
 with vitals torn and lacerated." (De Un. Ecc. n. 19.) 
 
 3. S. Augustine, in the early part of the fifth century, fol- 
 lows the same plan when opposing the Donatists. He argues : 
 "The question between us undoubtedly is, where is the 
 Church ? Whether with us or with the Donatists ? That 
 Church assuredly is one, lohich our ancestors called the Catholic ^ 
 that they might show, by the name itself, that it is through- 
 out the whole. . . . But this Church is the Body of Christ, 
 as the Apostle says, 'for His Body which is the Church.' 
 Whence assuredly it is manifest that he who is not in the 
 members of Christ cannot have Christian salvation. Now, 
 the members of Christ are united to each other by the charity 
 of unity J and, by the same, coliere to their own Head, which is 
 Christ Jesus." (De Unit. Ecc. n. 2.) 
 
 Here are three instances of three great champions fighting 
 for the Faith and for the Church in the earliest ages. Each 
 insists on the inseparable, essential and indestructible 
 unity of the Kingdom of Christ. 
 
76 THE POPE: 
 
 ii. The Arm of the Apostolate .— To have an easy visi- 
 ble evidence of being in the One True Church, each of these 
 great champions insists on communion with the Roman 
 Church, the See of Peter as the Center of Unity. 
 
 1. S. Irenaeus deemed it sufficient to appeal to the tradi- 
 tion of the Roman Church for confounding all heretics. He 
 says: ^' But as it must take up too much time in such a 
 volume as this to enumerate the successions of all the 
 Churches, by pointing out that tradition, which the greatest 
 and most ancient and most universally known Church of 
 E/Ome, founded and constituted by the two most glorious 
 Apostles, Peter and Paul, holds from the Apostles, and the 
 faith announced to all men, which, through the successions 
 of her Bishops, has come down to us, we confound all those 
 who in any way, whether through pleasing themselves, or 
 vain-glory, or blindness, or perverse opinion, assemble 
 otherwise than behooveth them. For to this Church, on ac- 
 count of a more powerful principality, it is necessary that every 
 Church, that is, the faithful everywhere, should he in communion 
 (or should agree, 'convenire'), in which (Church) ever, by 
 those who are on every side, has been preserved that tra- 
 dition which is from the Apostles.'' Then having given 
 the succession of the Popes down to his own day, Ire- 
 naeus concludes: "By this same order, and by this same 
 succession, both that tradition which is in the Church from 
 the Apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down 
 to us. And this is a most full demonstration that it is one 
 and the same life-giving faith which is preserved in the 
 Church from the Apostles and handed down in truth." (Adv. 
 Haer. Lib. iii. c. 3.) 
 
 In the most unflinching way, S. Irenaeus, in this passage, 
 says that every Church has to agree with the Roman Church. 
 So, then, Jerusalem, and Antioch, and Alexandria, though 
 they could claim Apostolic origin, must of necessity, accord- 
 ing to this Apostolic Father, conform or be in agreement 
 with the Roman Church. And the reason assigned is her 
 ^'pre-eminent authority,'^ as given in Clark's Ante-Nicene 
 
THE VICAR OP CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 77 
 
 Library, (or, "her more powerful headship;" or, "her more 
 powerful supremacy;" or, "her more powerful, absolute 
 sway;" as other modern critics have rendered ^^ propter 
 potentiorem principalitatem . ") 
 
 2. S. Cyprian writes to the Lapsed, saying: " Our Lord, 
 whose precepts and warnings we ought to observe, determin- 
 ing the honor of a Bishop and the ordering of His own 
 Church, speaks in the Gospel and says to Peter : ' I say 
 unto thee, thou art Peter, etc' Ihence the ordination of 
 Bishops and the ordering of the Church runs doiun along the 
 course of time and line of succession, so that the Church is 
 settled upon her Bishops, and every act of the Church is 
 regulated by these same prelates." (Ep. xxxiii. 3.) 
 
 Again : ' ' There is but one Baptism and one Holy Ghost, 
 and one Church, founded hy Christ the Lord upon Peter, 
 through an original and principle of unity.''' (Ep. Ixx. 5.) 
 
 He writes to Antonianus concerning his reconciliation: 
 ' ' I received your first letter, dearest brother, firmly uphold- 
 ing the concord of the Sacerdotal College and cleaving to the 
 Catholic Church, loherein you did not communicate with Nova- 
 tian, hut folloived my advice and agreed with Cornelius, our 
 brother Bishop, to hold one uniform course. You wrote also 
 that I should transmit a copy of the same letter to our col- 
 league, Cornelius, that so laying aside all anxiety, he might 
 know that you held communion ivith him, that is, luith the 
 Catholic Church.'' (Ep. Iv. i.) 
 
 And to Pope Cornelius: " After all this, they yet, in addi- 
 tion, having had a pseudo-Bishop ordained for them by 
 heretics, dare to set sail and carry letters from schismatic 
 and profane persons to the Chair of Peter, and to the principal 
 Church, luhence tlie Unity of the Priesthood took its rise, remem- 
 bering not that they are the same Romans whose faith has 
 been commended by the Apostle, to whom faithlessness can 
 have no access." (Ep. lix., n. 18.) 
 
 3. S. Augustine, in the early part of the fifth century, pur- 
 sues the same line. Against the Manichean heresy he 
 writes: " Not to mention, therefore, this wisdom which you 
 
78 ' THE pope: 
 
 Manicliees do not believe to be in the Catholic Church, many 
 other reasons there are which most justly keep me in her 
 bosom. The agreement of peoples and nations keeps me; 
 an authority begun with miracles, nourished with hope, 
 increased with charity, strengthened by antiquity, keeps me; 
 the succession of priests from the Chair itself of the Apostle 
 Peter — unto whom the Lord after his resurrection committed 
 His sheep to he fed — down even to the present Bishop ^ keeps me; 
 finally, the name itself of the Catholic Church, keeps me — 
 a name which, in the midst of so many heresies, this Church 
 alone has not without cause so held possession of, as that, 
 though all heretics would fain have themselves called 
 ^Catholics,' yet to the enquiry of any stranger 'where is 
 the meeting of the Catholic Church held ? ' no heretic would 
 dare point out his own basilica or house." (Cont. Ep. 
 Fund. Man). 
 
 The same Augustine, burning with the desire to convert 
 the Donatists, taught his flock to sing: '' Come brethren, if 
 you wish to be engrafted in the Vine, we grieve to see you 
 lie thus cut off from it. Number your Bishops from the very 
 Chair of Peter, and in that list of Fathers trace the succession. 
 This is the Bock against which the proud gates of hell do 
 not prevail." (Psalm c. Donat. ix. 7.) 
 
 With these Donatists, S. Optatus, Bishop of Milevis, 
 argued, about 375, in these words: ''Thou canst not then 
 deny but thou knowest that in the City of Rome, on Peter, the 
 first, was the Episcopal Chair conferred, wherein might sit 
 Peter, the Head of all the Apostles; whence also he was 
 called Cephas, that in that one Chair unity might he preserved 
 hy all; nor the other Apostles each contend for a distinct Chair 
 for himself, and that lohosoever should set up another Chair 
 against the Single Chair, might at once he condemned as a schis- 
 matic and a sinner. Therefore in that One Chair, which is the 
 first of the prerogatives, sat Peter first. To him succeeded 
 Linus, etc. etc., down to Siricius, who is at this day associated 
 with us with whom the whole world is concordant, with us in the 
 one hond of communion by the intercourse of letters of peace. 
 Tou who wish to claim to yourselves the holy Church, tell 
 
 ■■■ 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 79 
 
 US the origin of your Chair." (De Schism. Donat. lib. ii. 
 n. 24.) 
 
 The Protestant historian, Neander, frankly admits that S. 
 Optatus *' represents the Apostle Peter as the Head of the 
 Apostles, as the representative of the Unity of the Church 
 and of the Apostolic power, who had received the Keys of 
 the Kingdom for the purpose of giving them to the others. 
 . . . In the Roman Church he perceives the indestructi- 
 ble Cathedra Petri. This stood in the same relation to the 
 other Episcopal Churches as the Apostle Peter stood to the 
 rest of the Apostles. The Roman Church represents the 
 one Visible Church, the one Episcopate. There was one 
 Apostolic power in Peter, from which the Apostolic power 
 of the others issued forth, as it were, like so many different 
 streams; and in like manner there is one Episcopal power in 
 the Roman Church, from which the other Episcopal powers 
 are but so many streams." (Hist, of Church, Bohn's Trans., 
 vol. iii. p. 236.) 
 
 Neander might have added S. Ambrose and the Council 
 of Acquileia, held in 381, expressly describe the Roman 
 Church as "The Head of the whole Roman world. . . . 
 Whence floiu uyito all the rights of venerable communion. ^^ 
 (Ep. xi. n. 4). 
 
 4. It is plain from the above that these illustrious Bishops, 
 in the earliest centuries of the Church's history, regarded 
 communion with the Bishop of Rome as an essential condi- 
 tion for being in the Church of Christ and for holding the 
 True Faith. This was the test of Orthodoxy. It served 
 also as a beacon in storms, as the following show: 
 
 5. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who died in 397, was the 
 spiritual teacher of S. Augustine. The Bishop argues on 
 the text: " This is Peter, to whom He said, 'Thou art Peter, 
 and upon this Rock will I build my Church.' Therefore^ 
 where Peter is^ there is the Church; where the Church is, there 
 is no death, but eternal life.' " (In Psal. xl. Ennar.) 
 
 This same Ambrose tells us that when his brother Satyrus 
 was shipwrecked and was cast on a shore inhabited by a 
 
80 THE pope: 
 
 people about whose orthodoxy he was doubtful, Satyru& 
 '* called the Bishop to him, and not accounting any grace 
 true which was not of the True Faith, enquired whether the 
 Bishop agreed with the Catholic Bishops, that is, with the Bo- 
 man Church.'' (De Excessu Frat. n. 46.) 
 
 In like manner, S. Jerome, cotemporary with S. Am- 
 brose, just mentioned, was living in the Holy Land. 
 Schisms were prevailing at Antioch. Being in doubt with 
 which of the disputing Bishops he ought to remain in com- 
 munion, S. Jerome writes (A. D. 376) to Pope Damasus a 
 letter, wherein he says: " Since the East tears in pieces the 
 Lord's coat, and foxes lay waste the Vineyard of Christ, sa 
 that among broken cisterns, which hold no water, it is diffi- 
 cult to understand where is the sealed fountain and the en- 
 closed garden ; therefore have I thought that I should consult 
 the Chair of Beter, and the faith praised by the Apostle, 
 thence now soliciting food for my soul. . . . Although your 
 greatness terrifies me, yet your kindness invites me. . . . 
 I speak with the Successor of the Fisherman, with the Disciple of 
 the Cross. I, following no leader hut Christ, am united with 
 your Blessedness, that is, with the Chair of Beter. On the 
 Bock I know that the Church is built. Whoever eats the 
 Lamb out of this house is profane. Whoever may not be in 
 the Ark of Noe will perish in the deluge. ... I know 
 not Vitalis; Melitus I reject; I am ignorant of Paulinus^ 
 Whosoever gathereth not with thee, scatter eth; that is, he who 
 is not of Christ is of anti-Christ." (Ad Dam. Ep. xv.) 
 
 ill. The Arm of Indefectible Doctrine.— The Fathers we 
 have cited lay, as their words shew, great stress on Unity of 
 Faith. They point to the ilpostolic See of Eome as the 
 center of such unity. Peter, who first sat therein, "even 
 till this present, and always, both lives and judges in his suc- 
 cessors." In the '' Apostolic See religion has always been 
 preserved without spot." Therein is ''the solidity of the 
 Christian religion." 
 
 So evident is ''this purity of faith" io the See of Peter 
 that the famed Anglican, Palmer, writes: " We find that the 
 
THE VIOAE OF CHEIST; THE HEAD OP THE CHURCH. 81 
 
 Eoman Church was zealous to maintain the true faith from 
 the earliest period, condemning and expelling the Gnostics, 
 Artemonites, etc. And during the Arian mania it was the 
 bulwark of the Catholic Faith." (The Church, p. vii., c. iii.) 
 This is a wondrous avowal from a member of the Episco- 
 palian Church of England. A predecessor of his. Bishop 
 Bull, cites, with approbation from Eufinus, who says: "In 
 the Church of the City of Rome, however, we do not find 
 that this has been done (namely, adding words to the Creed, 
 as other churches had) ; the reason of which I conceive is 
 this, that that no heresy ever had its origin there.'"' 
 
 But let lis hear some of the Fathers speak of Eome: "In 
 which Church ever has been preserved that tradition which 
 is from the Apostles;" so writes S. Irenaeus of the Roman 
 Church. And S. Cyprian says of certain schismatical and 
 profane men who ventured to set sail for the See of Peter, 
 that they did not reflect that the "faith of the Romans is 
 extolled by the Apostle, to whom false faith can have no 
 access." We have already heard S. Augustine: "Con- 
 cerning this matter, two councils were sent to the Apostolic 
 See, whence the rescripts have come; the cause is finished." 
 Leo the Great says of his predecessors: they were men "who 
 for so many ages have been preserved by the teaching of the 
 Holy Spirit from any inroad of heresy." (Serm. II. in die 
 Assump. suse.) Elsewhere the same Leo writes: "The 
 solidity of that faitJi which is perpetual; and as that which 
 Peter believed in Christ abides for ever, so does that for 
 ever abide which Christ instituted in Peter." The same 
 thought made Chrysostom call Peter the "Rock of Faith." 
 
 In the Formula of Hormisdas, already given, is it said 
 that '■ ' in the Apostolic See is the perfect and true solidity 
 of the Christian religion;" and again, "these words ' Thou 
 arb Peter, etc.,' are proved by their effects, for in the 
 Apostolic See the Catholic religion has ever been preserved 
 immaculate, and the faith taught without stain." Let it be 
 remembered, that in the Eighth General Council of the 
 Church this Formula was signed by all the Fathers. 
 
THE pope: 
 
 Pope Agatho, in his letter to Constantine IV., accepted by 
 the Sixth General Council, says: "This is the rule of true 
 faith which this Apostolic Church of Christ, the Spiritual 
 Mother of your most peaceful empire, holds and defends 
 both in prosperity and adversity, which Church by the grace 
 of Almighty God will never be shown to have strayed at any 
 time from the path of Apostolic tradition, nor to have yielded 
 ever to the perverse novelties of heretics; but what in the 
 beginning she received from her founders, the chief of the 
 Apostles of Christ, she retains unsullied to the end, accord- 
 ing to the divine promise of our Lord and Saviour Himself, 
 which in the Gospel He gave to the Prince of His Apostles : 
 'Peter, Peter, behold Satan hath desired to have you,' etc. . 
 ... it is well known to all, that the Apostolic Pontiffs, my 
 predecessors, have always fearlessly done." 
 
 This clear statement of the unerring faith of the Apostolic 
 See, and of its infallible voice, is unreservedly accepted by 
 ihe Fathers in Council. For their letter says: God hath 
 given us a wise physician, even your Holiness "who firmly 
 repelled the contagious plague of heresy by the antidotes of 
 orthodoxy; and impartest the strength of health to the 
 members of the Church. To thee, therefore, as the First 
 See of the Universal Church, standing upon the firm Rock, 
 we leave what is to be done, having read the letter of a true 
 confession sent by your paternal Blessedness to our most 
 religious Emperor, which we recognize as divinely written 
 from the Supreme Head of the Apostles." (Mansi xi. §^ 
 239, 683.) 
 
 This Council was assembled at Constantinople in 680, and 
 was in great part composed of Eastern Bishops. They 
 made Pope Agatho's letter to the Emperor their own, and 
 received it with the acclamation: "Peter hath spoken by 
 Agatho." 
 
 The declaration of Infallibility by the Pope and its recep- 
 tion by the Council are the more remarkable, as in this very 
 Council Pope Honorius is numbered among sundry heretics 
 and is anathematized. 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 83 
 
 But, let it be borne iu mind, he was not condemned for 
 heresy. This is expressly said by Pope Leo II., who con- 
 firmed the decrees and therefore gave them their binding 
 force. Here are his words: "We anathematize Honorius, 
 who did not strive with energy to maintain the purity of 
 this Apostolic Church by the teaching of the Apostles, but 
 who permitted that this Church without spot should become 
 stained by profane treason." Honorius had given no defini- 
 tion of faith — indeed he declined to do so, as the words of his 
 own letter show. It was an error of judgment on his part, 
 into which he had been led by the cunning of Bishop Ser- 
 gius. Not only do the letters of Honorius shew there was 
 no definition of faith, but also that they were of a private 
 nature and written in the interests of peace. Leo II., just 
 referred to, writes to the Bishops of Spain on the occasion 
 of confirming the decrees: "Honorius, who failing in the 
 duty of his Apostolical Authority, instead of extinguishing 
 the flame of heresy, fomented it by neglect.'' 
 
 It will be noticed that in the very passage of Pope Leo 11. 
 condemning Honorius, the Boman Church is described as 
 " without spot'' — " the immaculate," and "without stain" of 
 the Formula of Hormisdas. 
 
 Apart from this testimony of such great writers it might 
 logically be argued, the supreme authority to govern 
 implies the supreme power to judge and teach in matters of 
 doctrine. And so these Fathers would naturally pass from 
 union with Bome for being in the True Church to union 
 with Borne for holding the True Faith. 
 
 The prince of Catholic theologians, S. Thomas Aquinas, 
 expresses this in a few short sentences: "For the unity of 
 the Church, it is necessary that all the faithful agree in 
 faith. But concerning points of faith, it happens that ques- 
 tions are raised by which the Church would be divided by a 
 diversity of opinions, unless it were preserved in unity by 
 the sentence of one. So, then, it is demanded for the 
 preservation of the Church's unity that there be one to 
 preside over the whole Church. Now it is plain that Christ 
 is not wanting in necessary things to the Church which He 
 
84 THE pope: 
 
 loved, and for whicli He shed His blood, since even of the 
 Synagogue it is said by the Lord, ' what more ought I to 
 have done for my vineyard, which I have not done.' We 
 cannot therefore doubt that one, by the ordering of Christ, 
 presides over the whole Church." (Contra Gent. lib. iv.) 
 
 2. Holding this doctrine, and having in mind the universal 
 tradition of the Church from its earliest ' days, it is no 
 wonder that when Bishop Fisher of Rochester, in England, 
 was called upon in 1535 by Henry YIII. to renounce the 
 Supremacy of the Pope and acknowledge the supremacy of 
 the King, the Bishop preferred martyrdom to such a pro- 
 cedure. His words, spoken in Convocation on that occasion, 
 should be engraven on the heart. "We cannot," said he, 
 ' ' grant this unto the King, but we must renounce our unity 
 with the See of Home. And if there were no further matter 
 in it than a renouncing of Clement YII., Pope thereof, then 
 the matter were not so great; but in this we do forsake the 
 first /ou7' General Councils, which none ever forsook; 
 we renounce all canonical and ecclesiastical laws of the 
 Church of Christ; we renounce all other Christian princes; 
 we renounce the unity of the Christian world, and so leap 
 out of Peter's ship to be drowned in the wave of all heresies, 
 sects, schisms and divisions; for the First and General 
 Council of Nice acknowledged Silvester, the Bishop of 
 Borne, his authority to be over them by sending their de- 
 crees to be ratified by him. The Council of Constanti- 
 nople did acknowledge Pope Damasus to be their chief by 
 admitting him to give sentence against the heretics, Mace- 
 donius, Sabellius, and Eunomius. The Council of Eph- 
 esus acknowledged Pope Coelestine to be their Chief Judge 
 by admitting his condemnation upon the heretic Nestorins. 
 The Council of Chalcedon acknowledged Pope Leo to be 
 their Chief Head, and all General Councils of the world ever 
 acknowledged the Pope of Bome only to be the Supreme 
 Head of the Church; and now, shall we acknowledge 
 another Head, or one Head to be in England and another 
 in Bome?" 
 
THE VIOAE OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OP THE CHURCH. 85 
 
 This saintly, heroic Bishop, who died a martyr for the Su- 
 premacy of the Pope, did but witness to the indefectible 
 tradition of the Church planted by St. Augustine in England. 
 
 Yenerable Bede, A.D. 700, speaking of Pope S. Gregory the 
 Great, who commissioned S. Augustine to preach in England, 
 writes: "We may and rightly ought to call him our 
 Apostle; because, whereas he hore the pontifical power over all 
 the Churches already reduced to the faith of truth, he made 
 our nation, till then given up to idols, the Church of Christ." 
 (Book ii. c. 1.) 
 
 St. Aldhelm, who died in 709, Bishop of Sherburn, in Eng- 
 land, thus writes of the Chair of Peter: "To conclude 
 everything in the casket of one short sentence. In vain of 
 tlie Catholic faith do they vainly boast loho follow not the teach- 
 ing aiid rule of St. Peter. For the foundation of the Church 
 and ground of the faith, primarily in Christ and then in Peter, 
 unrocked by the stress of tempests, shall not waver, the Apostle 
 so pi'onouncing; other foundation no one can lay besides that 
 which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. But to Peter has the 
 Truth thus sanctioned the Church's privilege : ' Thou art 
 Peter, and upon his this Bock I will build my Church.' " 
 
 Alcuin, the most distinguished scholar of the latter half 
 of the eighth century, who died in 804, wrote, twenty years 
 before his death: "Let no Catholic dare to contend against 
 the authority of the Church, lest he be found to be a schis- 
 matic or a non-Catholic; let him folloio the most approved 
 authority of the Roman Church, that whence we have received 
 the seeds of the Catholic faith we may find the exemplars of 
 salvation; that the members be not severed from their Head; 
 that the Key-bearer of the Heavenly Kingdom may not reject 
 them as having wandered from his doctrines.'' (Ep. Ixx.) 
 
 S. Anselm, the famous scholastic philosopher and Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, who died in 1089, informs us: ^^ Itis 
 certain that he tuho does not obey the ordinances of the Roman 
 Pontiff, lohich are issued for the mMintenance of the Christian 
 religion, is disobedient to the Apostle Peter, whose Vicar he is, 
 nor is he of that flock which was given to hiin {Peter) by God. 
 Let him, then, find some other gates of the Kingdom of 
 
86 THE POPE: 
 
 Heaven, for by those he shall not go in, of which the Apos- 
 tle Peter holds the Keys." (Ep. xiii.) 
 
 And the holy Abbot of Kidal, in Yorkshire, S. iElred, 
 whom Butler says died in 1167, earnestly exhorts: *' Breth- 
 ren, let no one seduce you with vain words. Let no one say 
 to you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, since Christ ever abides in 
 the faith of Peter, which the Holy Roman Church has especially 
 received from Peter , and retains in the Pock, which is Christ. 
 .... Of this Church Peter was the first Prince, to whom 
 it was said, 'Upon this Bock I will build My Church;' and 
 again, ' Feed My Sheep;' and again, ' To thee will I give the 
 Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt 
 bind upon earth shall be bound, too, in heaven,' and the rest. 
 This is the Church which the Holy Apostle calls of the 
 first-horn, the plentitude of ivhose power in the person of its- 
 Prince parsing over from the East to the West by the authority 
 of the Holy Spirit established itself in the Roman Church. . . . 
 This is the Roman Church, with whom he who communicates 
 not is a heretic. To her it belongs to advise all, to judge of 
 all, to provide for all, to whom in Peter that word was ad- 
 dressed, 'And thou, sometime converted, confirm thy breth- 
 ren.' Whatsoever she decrees I receive; I approve what 
 she approves; what she condemns I condemn." (Serm. 23.) 
 
 The Church in England planted by 8. Gregory grew for 
 930 years, that is, to the so-called Beformation, upholding 
 with the "Undivided Church," that the test of being in 
 the True Church, and of holding the True Faith, is commu- 
 nion with the Apostolic See. " Defender of the Faith," a 
 title of the Kings of England, was conferred on Henry YIII. 
 by Pope Leo X., for his work^ " Defence of the Sacraments. ''^ 
 The Boyal Author therein valiantly upholds the prerogatives 
 of the Pope. The Vatican Library has the presented copy, 
 with Henry's inscription, " Anglorum Bex Henricus, Leo 
 decime, mittit Hoc opus et fidei testem et amicitiae." This 
 work, defending the Pope and the teaching of the Boman 
 Church, was published twelve years before Henry YIIL 
 proclaimed, by Act of Parliament, his own Spiritual Su- 
 premacy. 
 
CHAPTER YI. 
 
 THE PAPACY AN OBJECT OF DEVOTION. 
 
 A KEEN devotion to the Holy See and to the Pope has been 
 a special characteristic of all the Saints in every age of the 
 Church. Bitter hatred of the Papacy has been a marked 
 feature of every heretic and schismatic. To the unbeliever 
 the power of Rome has invariably been an object of su- 
 premest scorn and a source of intense irritation. To the 
 fervent Missioner of the Church the See of S. Peter has 
 been an object of veneration, a fountain of light, a sure 
 guide in difficulties, a fortress to be defended with unflinch- 
 ing courage. The cold, indifferent Catholic holds but little 
 to the counsels of the Sovereign Pontiff, and is ever ready, 
 through worldly prudence or cowardice, to minimize the 
 power of the Pope. The Catholic, solid in faith, possessed of 
 spiritual discernment, and eager in the work of salvation, 
 ever manifests a high-minded allegiance, an exceeding loy- 
 alty to the successors of S. Peter, a child-like love and a 
 manly bravery in defending th,e interests of the Holy See. 
 
 From these undeniable facts it is not difficult to gather 
 that devotion to the Papacy is the necessary consequence o£ 
 strong faith, and an essential part of Catholic piety. 
 
 i. Inward Keverence; Outward Honor.— As we have seen, 
 tlie Pope is the Yicar of Christ on earth, the holder of 
 the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, the possessor of the 
 Sovereign Authority over the Church of Christ. 
 
 Viceroys and Ambassadors of Kings are honored because 
 of those whom they represent; and every insult to them is 
 resented as if offered to their Lords and Masters. In like 
 manner, what is done to the Pope, whether it be for or 
 against him, has to be referred to Jesus Himself. From 
 this standpoint in the light of faith, if ' honor is to be ren- 
 dered to whom honor is due,' then assuredly ought there be 
 
 (87) 
 
88 THE pope: 
 
 to the Vicar of Christ in the heart and mind of every Cath- 
 olic a reverential love, a reverential fear, finding expression 
 not only in words but in deeds of unfeigned homage. 
 
 To ponder on the dignity of the Pope, to sympathize in 
 his sorrows, to rejoice in his joys, to be interested in his 
 interests, to speak reverentially of him and of his doings, 
 to visit Eome, to seek the Apostolic blessing, to secure 
 priests and bishops trained in the Eternal City bearers of 
 the traditions of the Holy See^ to be anxious to have Legates 
 or Nuncios of the Pope settled in our midst, to desire Car- 
 dinal protectors of our countries resident in Pome, to have 
 national seminaries near to the Tombs of the Apostles, to 
 establish Peligious Orders having their Generals dwelling 
 near to the Holy Father: are so many ways of showing our 
 reverence and homage to the Vicar of Christ. 
 
 11. Loyal Obedience: Dutiful Allegiance.— "The Pope," 
 says Cardinal Newman, "like St. Peter, is the Vicar of his 
 Lord. He can judge and he can acquit; he can pardon and 
 he can condemn; he can command and he can permit; he 
 can forbid and he can punish. He has a supreme jurisdic- 
 tion over the people of God. He can stop the ordinary 
 course of sacramental mercies; he can excommunicate from 
 the ordinary grace of redemption; and he can remove again 
 the ban which he has inflicted. It is the rule of God's prov- 
 idence that what His Vicar does in severity or in mercy on 
 earth. He Himself confirms in heaven. . . . 
 
 " In the Pope's administration of Christ's Kingdom, in his 
 religious acts, we must never oppose his will, or dispute his 
 word, or criticise his policy, or shrink from his side. There 
 are kings of the earth who have despotic authority, which 
 their subjects obey, indeed, but disown in their hearts; but 
 we must never murmur at that absolute rule which the Sov- 
 ereign Pontiff has over us, because it is given to him by 
 Christ, and in obeying him we are obeying his Lord. We 
 must never suffer ourselves to doubt that in his government 
 of the Church he is guided by an intelligence more than 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 89 
 
 human. His yoke is the yoke of Christ; he has the responsi- 
 bility of his own acts, not we; and to his Lord must he render 
 an account, not to us. Even in secular matters it is ever 
 safe to be on his side; dangerous to be on the side of his 
 enemies. Our duty is — not, indeed, to mix up Christ's 
 Vicar with this or tUat party of men, because he in his high 
 station is above all parties — but to look at his formal deeds, 
 and to follow him whither he goeth, and never to desert him, 
 however we may be tried, but to defend him at all hazards 
 and against all comers, as a son would a father, and as a wife 
 a husband, knowing that his cause is the cause of God." 
 
 And elsewhere : ''The voice of Peter is now, as it ever 
 has been, a real authority, infallible when it teaches, pros- 
 perous when it commands, ever taking the lead wisely and 
 distinctly in its own province, adding certainty to what is 
 probable and persuasion to what is certain. Before it 
 speaks, the most saintly may mistake; and after it has spoken 
 the most gifted must obey. 
 
 ''Peter is no recluse, no abstracted student, no dreamer 
 about the past, no doter upon the dead and gone, no pro- 
 jector of the visionary. Peter for eighteen hundred years 
 has lived in the world; he has seen all fortunes; he has en- 
 countered all adversaries; he has shaped himself for all 
 emergencies. If there ever was a power on earth who had 
 an eye for the times, who has confined himself to the prac- 
 ticable, and has been happy in his anticipations, whose 
 words have been deeds, and whose commands prophecies, 
 such is he, in the history of ages, who sits from generation 
 to generation in the Chair of the Apostles, as the Yicar of 
 Christ and Doctor of His Church. It was said by an old 
 philosopher, who declined to reply to an imperious argu- 
 ment : ' It is not safe controverting with the master of twenty 
 legions.' What Augustus had in the material order, that 
 and much more has Peter in the spiritual. When was he 
 ever unequal to the occasion ? When has he not risen with 
 the crisis ? What dangers have ever daunted him ? What 
 sophistry foiled him ? What uncertainties misled him ? 
 When did ever any power go to war with Peter, material or 
 
90 THE pope: 
 
 moral, civilized or savage, and get the better ? When did 
 the whole world ever band together against him solitary and 
 not find him too many for it ? 
 
 "All who take part with Peter are on the winning side. 
 The Apostle of Christ says not in order to unsay : for he has 
 inherited that word which is with power."* 
 
 To these ever-to-be remembered loyal expressions of a 
 heart sensitively devoted to Christ's Yicar on earth, may be 
 added the authoritative teaching of that Yicar himself, 
 Leo XIII., written as lately as June 17, 1885: 
 
 ''In the Church of God, by the express will of its Divine 
 Founder, two distinct orders are established in the plainest 
 way — the teaching Church and the Church taught, the pas- 
 tors and the flocS: — and among the pastors one of them who 
 is for all the Supreme Head and Pastor. To the pastors 
 alone has been given the full power of teaching, judging, 
 directing; on the faithful has been imposed the duty of fol- 
 lowing these teachings, of submitting with docility to these 
 judgments, of letting themselves be governed, corrected, and 
 led to salvation. Accordingly, it is a matter of absolute 
 necessity that the faithful laity ^ should submit themselves 
 with heart and mind to their own pastors, and these with 
 them to the Supreme Head and Pastor. On this subordi- 
 nation and obedience depend the order and life of the 
 Church. They are the indispensable condition for doing 
 right and arriving happily in port. If, on the contrary, the 
 laity attribute authority to themselves ; if they claim to make 
 themselves judges and doctors; if inferiors prefer, or try to 
 make prevail, in the government of the universal Church, a 
 direction different from that of the supreme authority, they 
 are practically overturning order, bringing confusion into a 
 great number of minds, and departing from the right way. 
 
 "And it is not necessary, in order to fail in so sacred a 
 duty, to offer an open opposition, either to the Bishops or 
 the Head of the Church; indirect opposition is enough; and 
 it is the more dangerous the more it is sought to veil it by the 
 appearance of the contrary. A man fails also in that sacred 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 91 
 
 duty if, while slioiving himself jealous for the power and prerog- 
 atives of the Soverngn Pontiff, he does not respect the Bishops 
 tuho are in communion ivith him, or does not hold their authority 
 in due account, or interprets unfavorably their acts and intentions 
 before any decision of the Apostolic See, It is also a proof of 
 insincere submission to establish an opposition between Sovereign 
 Pontiff' and Sovereign Pontiff'. Those who, in the case of 
 two different directions, reject the present one, and hold to 
 the past one, give no proof of obedience to the authority 
 which has the right and duty of directing them, and in some 
 respects resemble those who, after condemnation, would ap- 
 peal from it to the next Council, or to a better informed 
 Pope. 
 
 '* The right opinion on this point, then, is that in the gen- 
 eral government of the Church, outside of the essential 
 duties of the Apostolic Ministry which are iniposed on all 
 Pontiffs, each of them is free to follow the rule of conduct 
 which he judges best for the times, and the other circum- 
 stances of the case. In that He is the sole judge, having on 
 this point not only special lights, but also the knowledge of 
 the situation and the general needs of the Catholic Church, 
 according to which it is fitting that His Apostolic solicitude 
 should be regulated. His duty is to care for the good of the 
 Universal Church, with which is co-ordinated the good of its 
 various parts, and all those who are placed under this co- 
 ordination must second the action of the Supreme Director 
 and assist his plans. As the Church is One, and as its 
 Head is One, so its government is likewise One, and to that 
 all must conform themselves. 
 
 " The result for Catholics of forgetfulness of these princi^ 
 pies is a diminution of respect, veneration and confidence 
 towards him who has been given to them as Head. The 
 bonds of love and obedience which should unite all the 
 faithful to their pastors, and the faithful as well as their 
 pastors to the Supreme Pastor, are thus weakened. And 
 yet on these bonds principally depend the preservation and 
 the salvation of all. 
 
^2 THE pope: 
 
 * ' By forgetting and no longer observing these principles, 
 a broad road is opened for dissensions and discords among 
 Catholics, to the great detriment of the union which is the 
 distinctive mark of the faithful of Jesus Christ. At all 
 times, but particularly at present on account of the combi- 
 nation of so many hostile powers, this union ought to be the 
 ^supreme and universal interest, in presence of which every 
 feeling of personal liking or private advantage ought to dis- 
 appear. 
 
 " Such a duty, while incumbent upon all without exception, 
 is most strictly so on journalists, who, if they were not ani- 
 anated with the spirit of docility and submission so neces- 
 sary to every Catholic, would help to extend and greatly 
 -aggravate the evils that we deplore. Their obligation in all 
 that touches religious interests and the action of the Church 
 in society is therefore to submit themselves fully with heart 
 jaud mind, like all the other faithful, to their own Bishops 
 .and to the Roman Pontiff, to follow and reproduce their 
 teachings, to second heartily their motions, to respect 
 iheir intentions and to make them respected." — " Tablet." 
 
 These words of the Holy Father now guiding the Bark of 
 "S. Peter need no commentary to enforce loyal obedience. 
 
 iii. The Tribute of Prayer-— On the Yicar of Christ de- 
 volve most momentous duties and immense responsibilities, 
 the like of which no other man has. A single day's govern- 
 ment of the Church of God involves more important conse- 
 quences than does the rule of the mightiest or most widely- 
 spread nation. The consciences of millions are to be in- 
 formed; the peace of thousands depend on the appeals made 
 to Eome. 
 
 To the innumerable anxieties consequent on such arduous 
 duties must be added the sorrows brought by lurking ene- 
 mies within, and open enemies without the Church. There 
 will ever be Judases to betray with a kiss, and Pilates with 
 Herods to succumb to popular exigencies. The Vatican 
 must ever be a Calvary. 
 
THE YICAK OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. " 9^ 
 
 God, in His ineffable good||iess, fits His Vicar for the 
 office, and continuously aids him in the exercise of his ex- 
 ceeding great responsibilities, by special grace. Tlie Holy 
 Spirit is ever directing and sustaining the steps of Peter in 
 his successors, the Roman Pontiffs. 
 
 But for such succor, supplication has ever to be made. 
 Hence, wherever and whenever the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: 
 is ofi'ered, the living Pope is prayed for by name. In the 
 Missal there are special Collects for the Supreme Pastor to 
 be said at appointed times. And in the one Liturgical 
 Litany, that of the Saints, are there special prayers for the 
 reigning Pope. 
 
 Therein God is, in mercy, asked to grant to His servant 
 whom he has pleased to appoint Pastor of the Flock, pre- 
 servation and length of days; blessedness on earth; deliver- 
 ance from enemies; direction in the way of salvation; con- 
 tinued protection; desires to do what is pleasing to God, and 
 doing it with all his strength; edification oithe flock bT 
 word and example; the salvation of himself and his fold. 
 
 As often as the hand of persecution is on the Vicar of 
 Christ, or that he stands in exceptional need of assistance 
 from on high, the Church makes unceasing public prayer,, 
 as it did of old when Peter was cast into prison. 
 
 These public appeals to the Throne of God remind the 
 members of the Church that both charity and justice ought 
 to lead them to make self-sacrificing prayer for the Sov- 
 ereign Pontiff. 
 
 Nay, gratitude urges the same duty. For every Catholic 
 ought to know that the action of the supreme power of the 
 Vicar of Christ daily operates in the spiritual life of every 
 child of the Church. In a genuine and real sense is the 
 Pope called the Holy leather. The individual Catholic should 
 know that every absolution received, every indulgence 
 gained, every blessing obtained by the *soul through the 
 ordinary channels of divine grace, is derived directly from 
 the ministration of the immediate priest or bishop, but 
 ultimately from Christ's Vicegerent, the Pope, who, from 
 that reservoir of spiritual and divine authority committed to 
 
94 THE pope: 
 
 him by the Incarnate Son of God, dispenses, through dulj 
 appointed ministers, the wafer of life in streamlets to each 
 individual soul in Holy Church. 
 
 iv. The Tribute of Peter's Pence.— For the service of 
 God, and to acknowledge His supreme dominion over men, 
 the Jews had to give one-tenth of all fruits and profits justly 
 acquired. Under the Christian dispensation no specified 
 portion is allotted for Divine worship; but the obligation to 
 contribute still exists. St. Paul says: "The Lord hath 
 ordained that they who preach the Gospel should live by 
 the Gospel." (1 Cor. ix. 14.) 
 
 This being so, it devolves on all the members of the 
 Church to give some portion of their substance to support 
 the Chief Pastor, the Bishop of Bishops. His personal 
 daily wants are met by the most modest pittance. But, for 
 the administration of the Government, of the Church, and 
 to meet the aecessary expenses of missionary work, the Pope 
 must have a considerable amount of money at his command. 
 The greatest economy is used. Some of the most distin- 
 guished of the clergy employed in the administration re- 
 ceive salaries for which a second or third-class clerk would 
 not give his services in America. 
 
 On the free-will offerings of the Faithful must the Pope 
 usually depend for material resources — the more so now, as 
 the Holy See has been robbed of its temporal possessions. 
 The Vatican and its Garden still leave the Pope a King, but 
 imprisoned and without revenue. Our present Holy Father 
 did, in his letter to the Bishop of Orleans, say of Peter's 
 Pence: •' It is a work of capital importance, without which 
 there would be for the Holy See neither liberty nor dignity, 
 nor any assured means of exercising its divine ministry." 
 
 In the providence of God may this not be an occasion 
 leading the children of the Church not to leave merely to the 
 generosity of individuals, nor to occasional collections, the 
 support of the Head of the Church, but by systematic 
 organization to establish something like a regular, perma- 
 nent revenue, still leaving individuals to do what their 
 
THE YICAK OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 9 
 
 devotion or special gratitude may dictate. An income 
 banked in the pious generosity of tlxe faithful, completely 
 made up of voluntary contributions, would be sheltered 
 from the covetous greed and the rapacious hands of church- 
 spoilers. It would, of course, be non-rateable property, and 
 all, even to the last farthing, that would be given could 
 without any loss be at the service of the Holy Father. 
 
 In many churches, by the order and under the direction 
 of the Bishop of the diocese, an annual collection on a fixed 
 Sunday is made for the maintenance of the Sovereign Pontiff. 
 This is a great step in advance. 
 
 Our forefathers, in the British Isles, deemed it a duty and 
 an honor to tax every family or every house in the land for 
 the Vicar of S. Peter, Bishop of Rome. The sum fixed was 
 one penny, no inconsiderable amount in those days. 
 
 Why not return with some modification to this same plan ? 
 It is a duty to support our pastors, and therefore the Pastor 
 of Pastors. Why should there be delicacy in teaching such 
 an obligation ? Let it be a part of the theoretical and prac- 
 tical education of our people. Let it be inculcated as a 
 part of the religious training in our schools, our convents 
 and our colleges. 
 
 Suppose that every Catholic were trained from childhood 
 to give once a month the lowest coin of the State as Peter's 
 Pence to the immediate pastor, or to put it into a Peter's 
 Pence Box prominently placed in the church or chapel 
 attended; allow that the pastor transmitted this month by 
 month to the Bishop of the Diocese, who in turn sent it to 
 the Holy See every quarter or half year: thus would be 
 secured, without any new organization or extra labor, and 
 without interfering with special gifts, the maintenance of the 
 Sovereign Pontiff. The dignity of the Holy See would be 
 sustained; and the Holy Father's hands so enriched, could 
 dispense such aid as would very materially advance the great 
 missionary work of the Church. 
 
 Apart from the approach to a fixed revenue which might 
 be thus collected, the very fact of being invited to make 
 twelve such offerings every year would be so many acts 
 
96 
 
 THE pope: 
 
 upholding that ** Devotion to the Pope " which every earnest 
 Catholic must see becomes more and more necessary in the 
 present state of the world. Such an organized collection 
 would have the further advantage of reminding Catholics of 
 their solemn obligation to do their best in supporting their 
 parochial schools and Churches. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LIST OF THE POPES AND OF THEIR TITLES- 
 
 The First Century: — 
 
 S. Peter, 42-67 or 68. 
 S.Linus (2Tim. iv., 21). 
 
 S. Anenclitus, or Cietus. 
 S. Clement, 92-101. 
 
 The Second Century: — 
 
 S. Evaristus. 
 
 S. Alexander, until 119. 
 
 S. Xystus (Sixtus), until 127. 
 
 S. Telesphorus, 127-139. 
 
 S. Hyginus, 139-142. 
 
 S. Pius, 142-157. 
 S. Anicetus, 157-168 
 S. Soter, 168-177. 
 S. Elutherius, 177-192. 
 S. Victor, 192-202. 
 
 The Third Century :- 
 
 S. Zephyiinus, 202-219. 
 S. Callistus, 219-223. 
 S. TJrbanus, 223-230. 
 S. Pontianus, 230-235. 
 S. Antherus, 235-236. 
 ■S. Fabianus, 236-250. 
 S. Cornelius, 251-252. 
 S. Lucius, 253. 
 
 S. Stephen I., 253-257. 
 
 S. Xystus II. (Sixtus), 257-258. 
 
 S. Dionysius, 259-269. 
 
 S. Felix I., 269-274. 
 
 S. Eutychianus, 274-283. 
 
 S. Caius, 283-296. 
 
 S. Marcellinus, until 304. 
 
 The Fourth Century :- 
 
 S. Marcellus, 308-310. 
 
 S. Eusebius, 310. 
 
 S. Melchiades, 311-314. 
 
 S. Sylvester I., 314-315. 
 
 S . Marcus, 336. 
 
 S. Julius I., 337-352. 
 
 Liberius, 352-366. (Felix II., 
 
 355, Anti-Pope. 
 S. Damasus, 366-384, 
 S. Siricius, 385-398. 
 S. Auastasius, 402. 
 
 * The best list of Popes is Bianchini Editio Anastas, biblioth. de vitis Rom. Pontificum 
 Hist, of Popes by Haas, Tiib.; by Groene, Ratisb. 1864 sq., 2 vols. ; Alzog's Ch, Hist. 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 97 
 
 The Fifth Century:— 
 
 S. Innocent I., 402-417. 
 
 S. Zosimus, 417-418. 
 
 S. Boniface, 418-422. 
 
 S. Ccelestine, 422-432. 
 
 S. Sixtus III., 432-440. 
 
 S. Leo I., the Great, 440-461. 
 
 S. Hilarius, 461-467. 
 
 S. Simplieius, 467-483. 
 S. Felix III., 483-492. 
 S. Galasius I., 492-496. 
 S. Anastasins, 496-497. 
 S. Symmachus, 498-514. 
 rence, Anti-Pope). 
 
 (Law- 
 
 The Sixth Century :- 
 
 S. Hormisdas, 514-523. 
 S. John I., 523-526. 
 S. Felix IV., 526-530. 
 S Boniface II., 530-532. 
 S.John II., 532-535. 
 S. Agapetus, 535-536. 
 S. Silverius, 536-540. 
 
 The 
 
 Sabinian, 604-605. 
 Boniface III. , 606. 
 S. Boniface IV.. 607-614. 
 S. Deusdedit, 615-618. 
 Boniface v., 619-625. 
 Honorius I., 625-638. 
 Severimis, until 640. 
 John IV., 640-642. 
 Theodore I., 642-649. 
 S. Martin I., 649-655. 
 
 The 
 
 John VI., 701-705. 
 John VII., 705-707. 
 Sisinnius, 708. 
 Constantine, 708-715. 
 S. Gregory II., 715-731. 
 S. Gregory III., 731-741. 
 S. Zachary, 741-752. , 
 
 The 
 
 Stephen V., 816. 
 S. Paschal I., 817-824. 
 Eugene II., 824-827. 
 Valentine, 827. 
 Gregory IV., 827-844. 
 SergiusII., 844-847. 
 S. Leo IV., 847-855. 
 Benedict III., 855-858. 
 
 7 
 
 Vigilius (537), 540-555. 
 Pelagius I., 555-560. 
 John III., 560-573. 
 Benedict I., 574-578. 
 Pelagius II.. 578-590. 
 S. Gregory I., the Great, 590- 
 604. 
 
 Seventh Century: — 
 
 Eugene I. (654), 655-657. 
 
 S. Vitalian, 657-672. 
 
 Adeodatus, 672-676. 
 
 Donus or Domnus I., 676-678. 
 
 S. Agatho, 678-682. 
 
 S Leo II., 682-683. 
 
 S. Benedict II., until 685. 
 
 John v., 685-686. 
 
 Conon, 687. 
 
 S. Sergius I., 687-701. 
 
 Eighth Century: — 
 
 Stephen II., 752. 
 
 [Died -without ha-^ting been conse- 
 crated. Is not counted by the 
 majority of historians.] 
 
 Stephen III., 752-757. 
 
 S. Paul I., 757-7G7. 
 
 Stephen IV., 768-772. 
 
 Hadrian I., 772-795. 
 
 S. Leo III., 795-816. 
 
 Ninth Century: — 
 
 S. Nicholas I. (the Great) 858-867 
 S.Hadrian II., 667-872. 
 John VIII., 872-882. 
 Marinus I. 882-884. 
 Hadrian III., 884-885. 
 Stejjhen VI., 885-891. 
 Formosus, 891-896. 
 
^8 
 
 THE pope: 
 
 The Ninth Century (Continued) : — 
 
 Boniface VI., 896 (15 days). 
 Stephen YII , 896-897. 
 Bomanus, 897 
 
 Theodore II., 897 or 898. 
 John IX., 898-900 
 
 The Tenth Century — 
 
 Benedict IV., 900-903 
 Leo v., 903. 
 Christopher, 903. 
 Sergius III., 904-911. 
 Anastasius III., 911-913. 
 Lando, 913. 
 John X., 914-928. 
 Leo VII., 928. 
 Stephen VIII., 929-931. 
 John XI., 931-936. 
 Leo VI., 936-939. 
 Stephen IX , 939-942. 
 Marinus II., 943-946. 
 Agapete II., 946-955. 
 
 John XII., 956-964. 
 
 (Leo VIII., 963o Benedict V., 
 964. Anti-Popes). 
 
 John XIII., 965-972. 
 
 Benedict VI., 972-974. 
 
 (Boniface, Franco, VII., 974.) 
 
 Benedict VII., 974-983. 
 
 John XIV., 983-984. 
 
 John XV., 984-996. 
 
 Gregory V., 996-999. (1st Ger- 
 man Pope). 
 
 (John XVI., 997, Anti-Pope). 
 
 Sylvester II., 999-1003. (1st 
 French Pope). 
 
 The Eleventh Century : 
 
 John XVII., 1003. 
 
 John XVIII., 1003-1009. 
 
 Sergius IV., 1009 1012. 
 
 Benedict VIII., 1012-1024. 
 
 John XIX., 1024-1033. 
 
 Benedict IX., 1033-1044. 
 
 Gregory VI., 1044-1046. 
 
 Clement II., 1046-1047. (2d Ger- 
 man Pope) . 
 
 Damasus n., 1048, 23 days. (3d 
 German Pope) . 
 
 S. Leo IX., 1049-1054. (4th Ger- 
 man Pope). 
 
 Victor II., 1055-1057, (5th Ger- 
 man Pope). 
 
 Stephen X., 1057-1058. (6th Ger- 
 man Pope. 
 
 Nicholas II., 1058-1061. {Ith 
 German Pope; 
 
 Alexander II., 1061-1073. (Hou- 
 orius II., Anti-Pope). 
 
 S. Gregory VII , 1073-1085. 
 
 Victor III., 1086-1087 
 
 Urban II., 1088-1099 
 
 Paschal II., 1099-1118. 
 
 The Twelfth Century : — 
 
 Gelasius II., 1118. 
 Calixtus IL, 1119-1124. 
 Honorius IL, 1124-1130. 
 Innocent II. , 1130-1143. 
 Coelestine II., 1143. 
 Lucius II. , 1144-1145. 
 S. Eugene III., 1145-1153. 
 Anastasius IV., 1153-1154 
 
 Hadrian IV. 1154-1159 (English) 
 Alexander III., 1159-1181. 
 Lucius III., 1181-1185. 
 Urban III., 1185-1187. 
 Gregory VIII., 1187. 
 Clement III., 1187-1191. 
 Coelestine III., 1191-1198. 
 Innocent III., 1198-1216, 
 
THE VIOAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OP THE CHURCH. 
 
 99 
 
 The Thirteenth Century: — 
 
 Honorius III., 1216-1227. 
 Oregory IX., 1227-1241. 
 CoelestineIV.,1241. (17 days). 
 Innocent IV., 1241-1254. 
 Alexander IV., 1254-1261 
 Urban IV., 1261-1264. 
 €lement IV.. 1264-1268. 
 31. Gregory X., 1271-1276. 
 Innocent V., 1276. (A French- 
 man). 
 Hadrian v., 1276. (38 days). 
 
 John XXI. (XX.) 1276-1277. (A 
 
 Portuguese) . 
 Nicholas III., 1277-1280. 
 Martin IV., 1281^1285. (A 
 
 Frenchman). 
 Honorius IV., 1285-1287. 
 Nicholas IV., 1288-1292. 
 S. Cgelestine V., 1294. (Resigns 
 
 voluntarily, 1296). 
 Boniface VIII., 1294-1303. 
 
 The Fourteenth Century :- 
 
 Bl. Benedict XI., 1303-1304. 
 
 Popes of Avignon f Frenchmen). 
 Clement v., 1305-1314. 
 John XXII., 1316-1334. 
 Benedict XII., 1334-1342. 
 Clement VI., 1342-1352. 
 Innocent VI., 1352-1362. 
 S. Urban v., 1362-1370. 
 
 Gregory XI., 1370-1378. 
 
 Popes at Rome and Avignon. 
 Urban VI., 1378-1389. (Clement 
 
 VII., at Avignon, 1378-1394.) 
 Boniface IX., 1389-1404. (Btne- 
 
 dict XIII., at Avignon, 1394- 
 
 1417). 
 
 The Fifteenth Century: — ' 
 
 Innocent VII., 1404-1406. 
 
 Gregory XII., 1406-1409. 
 
 Alexander v., 1409-1410. (Elected 
 by the Council of Pisa). 
 
 John XXIII., 1410-1415. (De- 
 posed by the Council of Con- 
 stance, May 29th, 1415; so like- 
 wise Benedict XIII., April 1st, 
 1417; and Gregory XII., resigned 
 voluntarily). 
 
 Martin V., 1417-1431. 
 
 (A 
 
 Eugune IV., 1431-1447. (Felix 
 v., Anti-Pope, 1439-1448). 
 
 Nicholas v., 1448-1455. 
 
 Calixtus III., 1455-1458. 
 Spaniard). 
 
 Pius II., 1458-1464. 
 
 Paul II., 1464-1471. 
 
 Sixtus IV., 1471-1484. 
 
 Innocent VIII., 1484-1492. 
 
 Alexander VI., 1492-1503. 
 Spaniard) . 
 
 (A 
 
 Pius III., 1503. 
 
 Julius II., 1503-1513. 
 
 LeoX., 1513-1521. 
 
 Hadrian VI., 1522-1523. (A Neth 
 
 erlander) 
 Clement VII., 1523-1534. 
 Paul III., 1534-1549. 
 Julius III., 1550-1555. 
 Marcellus II (Only 21 days). 
 Paul IV . 1555-1559. 
 
 The Sixteenth Century: — 
 
 Pius IV., 1559-1565. 
 
 S. Pius V. 1566-1572. 
 Gregory XIII., 1572-1585. 
 Sixtus v., 1585-1590. 
 Urban VII. (13 days). 
 Gregory XIV. (10 months and 
 
 10 days). 
 Innocent IX., 1591. (A little 
 
 more than two months). 
 Clement VIII., 1592-1605. 
 
100 
 
 THE pope: 
 
 Tlie Seventeentli Century: — 
 
 Leo XI. (27 days). 
 Paul v., 1605-1621. 
 Gregory XV., 1621-1623. 
 Urban VIII., 1623-1644. 
 Innocent X., 1644-1655. 
 Alexander VII., 1655-1667. 
 
 Clement IX., 1667-1669, 
 Clement X., 1670-1676. 
 Innocent XI., 1676-1689. 
 Alexander VIII., 1689-1691. 
 Innocent XII., 1691-1700.. 
 
 The Eighteenth Century :- 
 
 Clement XI., 1700-1721. 
 Innocent XIII., 1721-1724. 
 Benedict XIII. , 1724-1730. 
 Clement XII., 1730-1740. 
 
 Benedict XIV., 1740-1758. 
 Clement XIII., 1758-1769, 
 Clement XIV., 1769-1774. 
 Pius VI., 1775-1799. 
 
 The Nineteenth Century: — 
 
 Pius., VII., 1800-1823. 
 Leo XII., 1823-1829. 
 Pius VIII., 1829-1830. 
 
 Gregory XVI., 1831-1846. 
 Pius IX., 1846-1878. 
 
 LEO XIII., 
 
 Now gloriously reigning. 
 
 2. To this list of the Successors of S. Peter in his Chair at; 
 Koine may be fitly added the titles and appellations given 
 from the earliest times to the Pope and his See by Christian 
 writers, and used in various Church documents. Each of 
 such appellations expresses a summary of the belief of those 
 who used it, in one or other of the prerogatives, of the Suc- 
 cessor of S. Peter. 
 
 By a happy thought, S. Francis of Sales, the one canonized 
 Saint who specially labored among our dissenting brethren, 
 has collected into litany form several of these titles. The 
 characteristic piety of this author in casting into such a 
 form the appellations of the Apostolic See and its occupant 
 may well be followed. 
 
 The additions made to the list of such titles by the re- 
 searches of modern days maybe seen in Allnatt's '* Cathedra 
 Petri," and in '* The Primacy of S. Peter demonstrated from 
 the Liturgy of the Graeco-Russian Church," by Tondini. 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 101 
 
 3Eeir of Peter's Administration; 
 (Bishops of Spain, 440 A. D.) 
 
 Most Divine Head of all Heads; ^ 
 
 (S.Theodore, A. D. 809.) 
 
 Eolj Father of Fathers, Pontiff Supreme over all Prelates; 
 
 (Bishops of Africa, 649 A. D.) 
 
 Overseer of the Christian Religion; 
 
 (A. Marcellinus, Pagan Historian, A. D. 360.) 
 
 The Chief Pastor; Pastor of Pastors; 
 (S. Columbanus, Ireland, born 543.) 
 
 Peter, by thy Power; 
 
 (S. Bernard, A. D. 1150.) 
 
 Christ, by Unction; 
 
 (id.) 
 
 Servant, of the Servants of the Lord; 
 
 (S. Gregory the Great, died 604.) 
 
 Apostolic Chair, Apostolic See, Chair of Peter the Apostle; 
 
 (S.Jerome, A. D. 390.) 
 
 Apostolic Throne; 
 
 (S. Athanasius, A. D. 362.) 
 
 Place in which the Apostles constantly sit in Judgment; 
 
 (Council of Aries, A. D. 314.) 
 
 The Place of Peter ; 
 
 (S. Cyprian, martyred A. D. 250.) 
 
 Abraham by Patriarchate; 
 
 (S. Ambrose, 1 Tim. iii., died 340.) 
 
 Melchisedec in Order; 
 
 (S. Bernard.") 
 
 Moses in Authority; 
 
 (id.) 
 Samuel in the Judicial Office; 
 
 (id.) 
 High Priest, Supreme Bishop; 
 
 (id.) PROTECT US* 
 
102 THE pope: 
 
 Prince of Bishops; 
 
 (id.) 
 
 Heir of the Apostles; Peter in power; 
 
 (id.) 
 
 Key-Bearer of the Kingdom of Heaven; 
 
 (id.) 
 
 Pontiff, appointed with plenitude of power; 
 (id.) 
 
 Supreme Chief; Most powerful Word; 
 
 (Ignatius of Constantinople, 869.) 
 
 Orderer, Healer, Pre-eminent Catholic Physician; 
 (id.) 
 
 Yicar of Christ; 
 
 (Eoman Council, 494.) 
 
 Sovereign Bishop of Bishops; 
 
 (Council of Chalcedon, 451.) 
 
 Sovereign Priest; 
 (id.) 
 
 Buler of the House of the Lord; 
 
 (Cou. Carthage to Pope Damasus, died 384.) 
 
 Guardian of the Vine of the Lord; 
 (Cou. Chalcedon.) 
 
 Prelate of the Apostolic See ; 
 
 (S. Vincent of Lerins, 434.) 
 Peter, who lives and presides in his own See;, 
 
 (S. Peter Chrysologus, died 454.) 
 
 See, never overcome by the Gates of Hell; 
 
 (Pope Gelasius, died 496, and S. Augustine.) 
 
 Sovereign Pontiff; 
 
 (Cou. of Chalcedon.) 
 
 Apostolic Lord and Father of Fathers; 
 
 (Bishops of Dardania, 495.) GOVERN TJB. 
 
THE VICAR OF CHEIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH 103 
 
 Peter speaking through Leo, through Agatho; 
 
 (Cou. Chalcedon, and Gth General.) 
 
 (Ecumenical Archbishop and Patriarch; 
 
 (in Cou. Chalcedon.) 
 
 Head and Chief of the Episcopate; 
 
 (Pope Innocent, died 417.) 
 
 The Bishop of the Catholic Church; 
 
 (Pope Cornelius, martyred 252.) 
 
 Constituted unto all men Interpreter of the Voice of B. Peter. 
 
 (Cou. Chalcedon.) 
 
 Peter, who always lives and exercises judgment in his 
 Successors; 
 (id.) 
 Chief Pastor and Teacher and Physician of Souls; 
 
 (Eastern Clergy to Pope Hormisdas, 514.) 
 
 True Pastor and Doctor; 
 (id.) 
 
 Eock of Faith; 
 
 (S. John Chrysostom, died 404.) 
 
 See, in which the tradition of the Apostles has always been 
 preserved; 
 
 (S. Irengeus, martyred 202.) 
 
 Apostolic See, wherein the Catholic religion has ever been 
 preserved immaculate and faith taught without stain; 
 (Formula of Hormisdas, 516.) 
 
 Bock, against which the proud Gates of Hell prevail not; 
 
 (S. Augustine, died 430.) 
 
 Apostolic Throne, where are the foundations of Orthodox 
 Faith; 
 (Stephen of Dora, 649.) 
 
 See, in which Christ has deposited the Keys of Faith; 
 (S. Theodore, Abbot, Constantinople, 809.) 
 
 Infallible Pope; 
 
 (Cou. Vatican, 1870.) TEACH US. 
 
104 THE pope: 
 
 Ohair of Peter, Ruling Churcli, wheiice the Unity of the 
 Priesthood has its source; 
 
 (S. Cyprian, Letter 55 to Pope Cornelms.) 
 
 ^oot and Matrix of the Catholic Church; 
 
 (id. in another letter to Cornelius.) 
 
 One Church and one Chair, founded by the Voice of the 
 Lord upon a Rock; 
 (id. to the Pope, 40.) 
 
 Church, from which rights of Communion flow to all; 
 
 (S. Ambrose, Letter 11, died 397.) 
 
 Holy Church, established on the firmness of the Chief of 
 the Apostles; 
 
 (S. Gregory the Great, died 604.) 
 
 Bee, which the Lord appointed to preside over the rest; 
 (S. Leo, Letter 120 to Theodoret, died 461.) 
 
 Head over the members; 
 
 (id.) 
 Head of all the Holy Priests of God; 
 
 (Code of Justinian, Book i.) 
 
 Head of all the Holy Churches; 
 
 (Emperor Justinian, Letter to Pope John II.) 
 
 Archbishop of the whole habitable world; 
 
 (S. Cyril of Alexandria, died 444.) 
 
 Chief of the Universal Church; 
 
 (S. Avitus of Vienne, Letter 31, died 523.) 
 
 Bishop of Bishops, that is. Sovereign Pontiff; 
 
 (Tertullian, de Pudicitia c. 1., died about 220.) 
 
 Presiding Church of Rome; 
 
 (Letter to the Romans by S. Ignatius, disciple of the Apostle John and 
 second Bishop of Antioch after the Apostle Peter, martyred 108.) 
 
 Church, on account of thy more powerful Headship; 
 
 (S. Irenseus against Heresies, Book ii.) 
 
 Church, with which the faithful everywhere should agree; 
 ■(ibid.) UNITE US. 
 
THE YICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. IDS' 
 
 The great S. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, "the coun- 
 sellor of noblemen, bishops, princes and popes," writes, A. 
 D. 1150, to Pope Eugenius III., using many of the titles 
 above cited: 
 
 '^ Who art thou? The High Priest, the Supreme Bishop. 
 Thou art the Prince of Bishops, thou art the Heir of the 
 Apostles. Thou art Abel in Primacy, Noah in government, 
 Abraham in the patriarchal rank, in order Melchisedech, in 
 dignity Aaron, in authority Moses, Samuel in the judicial 
 office, Peter in power, Christ in unction. Thou art he to 
 whom the Keys of Heaven are given, to whom the Sheep are 
 intrusted. There are, indeed, other doorkeepers of Heaven, 
 and other shepherds of the flocks; but thou art the more 
 glorious in proportion as thou hast also, in a different 
 fashion, inherited before others both these names. The 
 iormer have the flocks assigned to them, each one his own: 
 to thee all are intrusted. One Flock for the One. Not merely 
 for the sheep, but for all the shepherds also thou art the 
 One Shepherd. Whence do I prove this, thou askest? 
 From the word of the Lord. For to whom — I say not among 
 the Bishops, but among the Apostles — have the whole flock 
 been committed in a manner so absolute and undistinguish- 
 ing ? ' If thou lovest Me, Peter, feed My sheep. ' What sheep ? 
 The inhabitants of this or that city or country, those of a 
 particular kingdom ? ' My sheep,' He saith. Who does not 
 see that He designates not some, but all? Nothing is ex- 
 cepted where nothing is distinguished. The power of others 
 is limited by definite bounds; thine extends even over those 
 who have received authority over others. Canst thou not, 
 when a just reason occurs, shut up Heaven against a Bishop, 
 depose him from his episcopal office, and deliver him over 
 to Satan ? Thus thy privilege is immutable, as well in the 
 keys committed to thee as in the sheep intrusted to thy 
 care." — {De Considerat. Lib. ii. c. 8, quoted by Hergenrother, 
 Anti-Janus, Eng. trans, p. 100.) . 
 
 3. And now our task is done, very imperfectly, it is true. 
 Yet, the lines drawn and the facts cited will be, it is hoped, 
 sufficient to satisfy the honest enquirer that the God of 
 
106 THE pope: 
 
 Goodness has left for the conservation of Unity of Faith and 
 Unity of Communion a Supreme, Universal and Yisible 
 Head to His Church on earth, in the person of Peter and 
 his Successors. 
 
 The philosophical mind of Leibnitz, the eminent German 
 Protestant, has seized and expressed in his '* Systema Theo- 
 logica" the need for such a centre of unity. He says: ''As, 
 from the impossibility of the bishops frequently leaving the 
 people over whom they are placed, it is not possible to hold 
 a Council continuously, or even frequently, while at the same 
 time the person of the Church must always live and subsist, 
 in order that its will may be ascertained, it was a necessary 
 consequence, by the divine law itself, insinuated in Christ 's 
 most memorable words to Peter (when he committed to him 
 specially the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, as well as 
 when he thrice emphatically commanded him to feed his 
 sheep), and uniformly 'believed in the Church, that one 
 among the Apostles, and the successor of this one among 
 the bishops, was invested with pre-eminent power; in order 
 that by him, as the visible centre of unity, the body of the 
 Church might be bound together ; the common necessities 
 be provided for ; a Council, if necessary, be convoked, and, 
 when convoked, directed ; and that in the interval between 
 Councils provision might be made lest the commonwealth of 
 the faithful sustain any injury. And as the ancients unani- 
 mously attest that the Apostle Peter governed the Church, 
 suffered martyrdom, and appointed his successor in the city 
 of E>ome, the capital of the world ; and as no other bishop 
 has ever been recognized under this relation, we justly 
 acknowledge the Bishops of Eome to be chief of all the 
 rest." 
 
 S. Thomas of Aquinas, who died in 1274, on his way to 
 that Council of Lyons already referred to as being convoked 
 to heal the Greek schism, anticipates, as a theologian, in his 
 great work ' ' Against the Gentiles " what we have cited from 
 Leibnitz. 
 
THE VICAR OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. lOT 
 
 Aquinas writes: " But should anyone object that Christ 
 is the One Head and One Shepherd, who is the One Bride- 
 groom of the One Church. The objection is not sufficient. 
 For it is plain that Christ Himself performs the Sacraments 
 of the Church. For it is He who baptizes; He who forgives 
 sins; He is the true Priest who offered Himself on the altar 
 of the Cross, and by whose virtue His body is daily conse- 
 crated on the altar. And yet, because He was not at present 
 to be visibly with the Church, He hath chosem Ministers by 
 lohom He dispenses these sacraments to the faithful. 
 
 *' Therefore, by the same reason, inasmuch as He was about- 
 to withdraw His visible presence from the Church, it was 
 fitting that He should commit to some one the charge of the 
 Universal Church. Hence it is that He said to Peter, before 
 His ascension, ' Feed my sheep ; ' and, before His passion, 
 * Thou, when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren.' 
 And to Peter alone He promised ^ I will give to thee the? 
 Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven,' so that the power of the 
 Keys might be pointed out as to be derived through him ta 
 others for the preservation of the Churches unity. 
 
 '* But it cannot be said that although He gave this dignity 
 to Peter, yet it is not derived through him to others. For it is- 
 plain that Christ so set up His Church, that it would last 
 forever, according to Isaias ix. 7 : ' He shall sit upon the^ 
 Throne of David, and upon his Kingdom, to order it, and 
 to establish it with judgment and with justice henceforth, 
 forever.' 
 
 r 
 
 "It is plain, therefore, that He set up in their ministry 
 those who then were, in such a way that their power should 
 be continued in their successors for the good of the Church 
 unto the end of the world; especially as He says Himself 
 ' Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world.' 
 
 "But by this is excluded the presumptuous error of certain 
 persons who endeavor to withdraw themselves from obe- 
 dience and subjection to Peter, by not recognising his 
 Successor, the Boman Pontiff, as Pastor of the Universal 
 Church." (Contra Gentiles, iv. 76). 
 
108 THE POPE: 
 
 Eour hundred years ago the whole of Europe, including 
 the English-speaking people, believed this. But, in an evil 
 moment, Luther raised the standard of revolt, and the 
 silent, seething spirit which had been long working in 
 Europe, threw off, as the Jews did of old, the yoke of the 
 Lord, in the person of His Vicar on Earth. 
 
 Henry VIII., thwarted by the Pope, who refused to grant 
 liim a divorce, led England to desert the Church of S. 
 Augustine, and to repudiate the authority of the Successors 
 of Pope Gregory the Great, the Apostle of England. 
 Happily, his work, '* The Defence of the Seven Sacraments," 
 published in 1521 against Luther, remains, to bear evidence 
 to what the King believed before he became a slave to pas- 
 sion. It is this work which obtained for him from Pope 
 Leo X. the title still seen on the coins of the realm, *' De- 
 fender of the Faith," ^. e., the Eoman Catholic Faith. 
 
 The Eoyal author says: *'I will not offer such an insult 
 to the Pope as to dispute anxiously and minutely about his 
 rights, as if the matter could be considered doubtful. Luther 
 <jannot deny that every orthodox church acknowledges and 
 venerates the most holy Koman See as mother and head 
 (primatemj, unless indeed by distance or intervening dangers 
 some are prevented from access to her. Hence, if the Roman 
 Pontiff has acquired this great and world-wide power, 
 neither by the command of God nor even by the consent of 
 men, but by his own violence, as Luther pretends, then I 
 would ask him to inform us at what period, he seized this 
 Tast dominion ? The beginning of so mighty a power can- 
 not surely be obscure, especially if it has taken place in 
 modern times. But even if it took place more than one or 
 two ages ago, he may certainly give an account of it from 
 history. If, however, it is so ancient that its origin is for- 
 gotten, then he ought to know that it is a fixed and universal 
 principle of all laws, that a power or right which so tran- 
 scends the memory of men that its beginning cannot be 
 ascertained, must ever be held to have begun lawfully; so 
 that it is forbidden by the consent of all nations to 
 overthrow what has long remained unmoved. 
 
THE YICAE OF CHRIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 10^ 
 
 " But, most certainly, if any one will examine the records 
 of antiquity he will find that, long ago, immediately after 
 the cessation of persecution (protinus post pacatum orhem), 
 almost all the churches of the Christian world obeyed the 
 Boman Church, nay, even Greece herself though the empire 
 had been transferred thither, yielded to the Eoman Church 
 in whatever regarded the Primacy, except in times of some* 
 violent schism. 
 
 *'St. Jerome shows clearly what judgment he formed of 
 the authority of the Roman See, since, though he was not 
 himself a Eoman, yet he openly declares that it is enough 
 for him if the Pope of Rome approves his faith, whoever 
 else may find fault with it. 
 
 **Now, as Luther so impudently lays down that the Pope 
 has no right whatever over the Catholic Church, even by 
 human law, but has acquired his tyranny by mere force, I 
 greatly marvel that he should deem his readers so credulous 
 or so stupid as to believe that an unarmed priest, alone, and 
 without followers — and such he must have been in Luther's 
 supposition before he obtained the power which he invaded — 
 could ever even have hoped to acquire such an empire, being 
 without rights and without title, over so many bishops who 
 were his equals, and over so many and far separated nations. 
 Nay, more than this, how can any one believe that all peoples, 
 cities, provinces and kingdoms were so prodigal of their 
 property, their rights and their liberty, as to give to a for- 
 eign priest, to whom they owed nothing, more power than 
 he himself ever dared to hope for ? But what matters it what 
 Luther thinks ? In his anger and envy he does not know 
 himself what he thinks, but shows that his science has been 
 clouded, and his foolish heart darkened, and that he has 
 been given up to a reprobate sense, to do and say what is 
 unseemly. How true is the saying of the Apostle : * If I 
 should have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and 
 all science, and if I should have all faith so as to move moun- 
 tains, and have not charity, I am nothing.' And how far 
 from charity this man is, is evident from this, not only that 
 in his madness he destroys himself, but still more that he 
 
110 THE pope: 
 
 endeavors to draw all others with him to perdition, since he 
 strives to turn all from their obedience to the Sovereign 
 Pontiff. .... 
 
 ''He does not consider that, if it is provided in Deuter- 
 onomy (xvii. 12) that he that will be proud and refuse to 
 obey the commandment of the priest, who ministereth at 
 ihat time to the Lord and the decree of the judge, that man 
 shall die; what horrible punishment he must deserve, who 
 refuses to obey the highest priest of all, and the supreme 
 judge on earth! .... Yet Luther, as far as in him lies, 
 disturbs the whole Church, and seduces the whole body to 
 rebel against its head, to rebel ' against whom is like the sin 
 of witchcraft, and like the crime of idolatry to refuse to obey.' 
 {1 Kings XV. 23). 
 
 ''Wherefore, since Luther, hurried along by his hatred, 
 casts himself into destruction, and refuses to be subject to 
 the laws of God, setting up his own instead, let us, on the 
 other hand, the followers of Christ, be on our guard lest, as 
 the Apostle says, by the disobedience of one man, many be 
 made sinners.'* (Defence of the Seven Sacraments cited 
 from Rev. T. E. Bridge tt's Defender of the Faith). 
 
 This was the inherited teaching of the people of the 
 British Isles. This made them believe with the heart and 
 profess with the mouth that one faith which alone was 
 taught and practised through the length and breadth of the 
 land during nigh a thousand years. 
 
 King Henry's after-fall destroyed not the force of his 
 argument. The Commandments are daily violated, but this 
 lessens not their truth. The King deserted the Bark of 
 Peter, and launched forth in a ship of his own build, flying 
 the flag of his own Spiritual Supremacy. His crew, as 
 might have been expected, having neither a true compass 
 nor a divinely appointed Captain, are being worsted in the 
 storm of doubt, know-nothingism and non-belief. 
 
 Peter's Bark alone can ride the tempest. The invisible 
 presence of Jesus is there. As of old, He teaches the 
 multitude from the Ship of Peter. There can the soul find 
 
THE VICAR OP CHEIST; THE HEAD OF THE CHUECH. Ill 
 
 safety in the surging sea of religious confusion. Earnest souls ! 
 seek there the peace of stable faith, the rich means of Sal- 
 vation. The See of Peter is your only secure anchorage. 
 
 Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai, expresses this with all 
 his persuasive power when trouble threatened the Church 
 in France. His touching words are as music to the ear 
 and honey to the mouth: 
 
 '^O Church of Borne! O Sacred City! O dear and com- 
 mon country of all true Christians ! In Jesus Christ there 
 is neither Greek, nor Scythian, nor Barbarian, nor Jew, nor 
 Gentile; in thy bosom they are as one people; all are citizens 
 of Eome, and every Catholic is a Roman. Behold the 
 mighty stem which has been planted by the hand of Jesus 
 Christ ! Every branch which is separated from it fades, 
 withers and dies. O Mother ! whoever is a child of God is 
 also thy child; after the lapse of so many ages thou art yet 
 fruitful. O Spouse! thou bringest forth children to thy 
 husband in every quarter of the globe ; but whence is it that 
 so many unnatural children now contemn their Mother, arise 
 up against her, and consider her as a cruel step-dame? 
 ^\Yhence is it that her authority should give them such vain 
 offence? What! shall the sacred bond of union, which 
 should unite every one in a single flock, and make all minis- 
 ters as a single pastor, shall that be the pretext for a fatal 
 dissension ? Shall we produce those times, which will be 
 the last, when the Son of Man shall hardly find faith upon 
 the earth? Let us tremble, my dearest brethren, let us 
 tremble, lest the reign of God, which we abuse, should be 
 taken away from us, and be given to other nations who will 
 bear the fruits. Let us tremble, let us humble ourselves, 
 lest Jesus Christ carry elsewhere the torch of pure faith, and 
 leave us in that gloomy darkness which our pride has de- 
 served. O Church, whence Peter will forever strengthen his 
 brethren, let my right hand forget itself if ever I forget 
 thee ! Let my tongue cleave to my mouth and be motion- 
 less, if thou be not, to the last breath of life, the princi- 
 pal object of my joy and my rejoicings." 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 CATHOLIC : Eighth Edition, much Enlarged. An Essential and 
 Exclusive Attribute of the True Church, by Right Rev, Mon- 
 signor Capel, D.D.; to which is appended St. Cyprian's whole 
 "Treatise on the Unity of the Church," St. Cyril's "Lecture 
 on the Catholic Church," St. Pacian's " Treatise on the name 
 Catholic." 170 Pages. Price, 50 cents. Fr. Pustet & Co., 
 New York and Cincinnati. 
 
 •'But the value of Monsignor Capel's work goes far beyond the special oc- 
 casion which induced its preparation and publication. It is a complete re- 
 sume of the evidences, theological, and historical, that the Holy Komrin Apos- 
 tolic Church, and it alone, has right to the name Catholic. The Hrgument is 
 clear and conclusive, and the historical citations are as full as can be com- 
 pressed into the compass of nearly one hundred octavo pages. " — The Am- 
 erican Q>iarterly lievieio. 
 
 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. (Tenth Thousand.) 40 pp. 8vo.) 
 
 CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION. (Twenty-fipst Thousand.) 
 
 40 pp. 8vo. 
 
 SINS OF THE TONGUE. A Sermon. (In Press.) 
 
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