inted to carry out their decisions; the latter was their master, and
entitled to require their submission. The former presided over the
ministers of, perhaps, three or four comparatively poor congregations
dispirited by recent persecution; the latter had the charge of at least
five-and-twenty flourishing city churches, [361:1] together with all the
bishops in all the surrounding territory. In eventful times an
individual of transcendent talent, such as Pepin or Napoleon, has
adroitly bolted into a throne; but the bishop of Rome was indebted for
his gradual elevation and his ultimate ascendancy neither to
extraordinary genius nor superior erudition, but to a combination of
circumstances of unprecedented rarity. His position furnished him with
peculiar facilities for acquiring influence. Whilst the city in which he
was located was the largest in the world, it was also the most opulent
and the most powerful. He was continually coming in contact with men of
note in the Church from all parts of the Empire; and he had frequent
opportunities of obliging these strangers by various offices of
kindness. He thus, too, possessed means of ascertaining the state of the
Christian interest in every land, and of diffusing his own sentiments
under singularly propitious circumstances. When he was fast rising into
power, it was alleged that he was constituted chief pastor of the Church
by Christ himself; and a text of Scripture was quoted which was supposed
to endorse his title. For a time no one cared to challenge its
application; for meanwhile his precedence was but nominal, and those,
who might have been competent to point out the delusion, had no wish to
give offence, by attacking the fond conceit of a friendly and prosperous
prelate. But when the scene changed, and when the Empire found another
capital, the acumen of the bishop of the rival metropolis soon
discovered a sounder exposition; and Chrysostom of Constantinople, at
once the greatest preacher and the best commentator of antiquity,
ignored the folly of Tertullian and of Cyprian. "Upon the rock," says
he, "that is, upon the faith of the apostle's confession," [362:1] the
Church is built. "Christ said that he would build His Church on Peter's
confession." [362:2] Soon afterwards, the greatest divine connected with
the Western Church, and the most profound theologian among the fathers,
pointed out, still more distinctly, the true meaning of the passage.
"Our Lord declares," says Au