288 TllLRD PEEIOD. A.D. 311-590.
court. ELeiiee evoii contending parties in the Eust were accus tomed to seek counsel and protection from the Eomun chair, and oftentimes gave that see the coveted opportunity to pui the weight of its decision into the scale. This occasional practice then formed a welcome basis for a theory of jurisdiction. The lioma locuta est assmncd the character of a supreme and linal judgment. Rome learned much and forgot nothing. She knew how to turn every circumstance, with consummate adjuinistrative tact, to her own advantage.
Finally, though the Greek church, down to the fourth ecumenical council, was unquestionably the main theatre of church histoiy and the chief seat of theological learning, yet, according to the universal law of history, " Westward the star of empire takes its way," the Latin church, and consequently the Roman patriarchate, already had the future to itself. While the Eastern patriarchates were facilitating by interna) quarrels and disorder the conquests of the false prophet, Rome was boldly and victoriously striking westward, and winning the barbarian tribes of Europe to the religion of the cross.
§ 58. The Latin PatriarGh.
These advantages of the patriarch of Rome over the patriarch of Constantinople are at the same time the leading causes of the rise of the papacy, which we nmst now more closely pursue.
The papacy is undenial>ly the result of a long process of history. Centuries were enq^loyed in building it, and centuries have already been engaged upon its partial destruction. Lust of honor and of power, and even oi:>eu fraud,' have conti-ibuted to its development ; for human nature lies hidden under episcopal robes, with its steadfast inclination to abuse the power intrusted to it ; and the greater the power, the
' Recall the interpolations of papistic passages in tlie works of Cyprian; the Roman enlargement of the sixth canon of Nice ; the citation of the Sardican canon under the name and the authority of the Nicene council ; and the later notorioiu pseudo-Isidorian decretals. The popes, to be sure, were not the original authors of these falsilications, but they used them freely and repeatedly for their purposes.
§ 5S. THE LATIN PATRIAECH. 289
stronger is tlie temptation, and the worse the abuse. But behind and above these hnman impulses lay the needs of the church and the plans of Providence, and these are the proper basis for explaining the rise, as well as the subsequent decay, of the papal dominion over the countries and nations of Europe. That Providence which moves the helm of the history of world and church according to an eternal plan, not only prepares in silence and in a secrecy unknown even to themselves tlie suitable persons for a given work, but also lays in the deptiis of the past the foundations of mighty institutions, that they may appear thoroughl}^ furnished as soon as the time may demand them. Thus the origin and gradual growth of the Latin patriarchate at Pome looked forward to the middle age, and formed part of the necessary external outfit of the church for her disciplinary mission among the heathen barbarians. The vigorous hordes who destroyed the West-Poman empire were to be themselves built upon the ruins of the old civilization, and trained by an awe-inspiring ecclesiastical authority and a firm hierarchical organization, to Christianity and freedom, till, having come of age, they should need the legal schoolmaster no longer, and should cast away his cords from them. The Catholic hierarchy, with its pyramid-like culmination in the papacy, served among the Pomanic and Germanic peoples, until the time of the Peformation, a purpose similar to that of the Jewish theocracy and the old Poman empire respectively in the inward and outward preparation for Christianity. The full exhibition of this pedagogic purpose belongs to the history of the middle age ; but the foundation for it we find already being laid in the period before us.
The Poman bishop claims, that the four dignities of bishop, metropolitan, patriarch, and pope or primate of the whole church, are united in himself. The first tliree ofiices must be granted him in all historical justice ; the last is denied him by the Greek church, and by the Evangelical, and by all non- Catholic sects.
His bishopric is the city of Pome, with its cathedral church of St. John Lateran, which bears over its main entrance the inscription : Omniv/ra urhis et orhis eGclesiarum mater et caput ;