e, a Greek organization, conducted
their worship in that tongue, and composed their writings in it. Though
it retained much of this foreign aspect so long as Rome continued to be
the residence, or was more particularly under the eye of the emperors,
it was gradually being affected by the influences to which it was
exposed. On Western Europe, the questions which had so profoundly
agitated the East, such as the nature of God, the Trinity, the cause of
evil, had made but little impression, the intellectual peculiarity of
the people being unsuited to such exercises. The foundation of
Constantinople, by taking off the political pressure, permitted native
peculiarities to manifest themselves, and Latin Christianity emerged in
contradistinction to Greek.

[Sidenote: Modified by Africanism.]

Yet still it cannot be said that Europe owes its existing forms of
Christianity to a Roman origin. It is indebted to Africa for them. We
live under African domination.

I have now with brevity to relate the progress of this interesting
event; how African conceptions were firmly established in Rome, and, by
the time that Greek Christianity had lost its expansive power and ceased
to be aggressive, African Christianity took its place, extending to the
North and West, and obtaining for itself an organization copied from
that of the Roman empire; sacerdotal praetors, proconsuls, and a Caesar;
developing its own jurisprudence, establishing its own magistracy,
exchanging the Greek tongue it had hitherto used for the Latin, which,
soon becoming a sacred language, conferred upon it the most singular
advantages.

[Sidenote: Subordinate position of the early Roman Church.]

The Greek churches were of the nature of confederated republics; the
Latin Church instinctively tended to monarchy. Far from assuming an
attitude of conspicuous dignity, the primitive bishops of Rome led a
life of obscurity. In the earliest times, the bishops of Jerusalem, of
whom James, the brother of our Lord, was the first, are spoken of as the
heads of the Church, and so regarded even in Rome itself. The
controversy respecting Easter, A.D. 109, shows, however, how soon the
disposition for Western supremacy was exhibited, Victor, the Bishop of
Rome, requiring the Asiatic bishops to conform to the view of his Church
respecting the time at which the festival of Easter should be observed,
and being resisted therein by Polycrates, the Bishop of Ephesus, on
behalf of the Easte