of the way. In
378, also, Gratian refusing the office, Damasus, the Bishop of Rome, was
"declared Pontifix Maximus,"(4) and made "the sole judge in religious
matters." All who would not adhere to the religion "professed by the
Pontiff Damasus, and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria," were declared
heretics.--_Gibbon_, v. 2, p. 156. Damasus, by virtue of his power,
introduced the worship of the saints, and of Mary, "the mother of
God,"--excommunicating those who dissented. Thus the apostasy, by adopting
the gods of the heathen, and the name of the heathen pontiff, began to be
set up, and the excommunicated church disappeared in the wilderness.

In the ninth century a document was produced, which claimed to be a deed
of gift from Constantine to the Pope, dated A. D. 324, ceding him the city
of Rome and all Italy, with the crown, the mitre, &c.; but the forgery of
this has been fully exposed. With the removal of the capital of the world
to Constantinople, the empire began to decline; but the church augmented
as fast. A provisional synod at Sardica, in A. D. 344, and a decree of the
Emperor Valentinian III., in 445, had acknowledged the Bishop of Rome as
the primate of the five patriarchs, and as the last tribunal of appeal
from the other bishops; but the edicts of the Pope were often disregarded
and opposed, and he continued subject to the civil power till the
subversion of the Western empire by Odoacer, King of the Heruli, in A. D.
476.

The ten kingdoms which had arisen on the ruins of the Western empire (p.
169), had nearly all embraced Christianity, corrupted by Arianism. And the
barbarians transferred to their Christian instructors, the profound
submission and reverence which they were accustomed to yield to the
teachers of paganism,--many of the rites and ceremonies of which had been
incorporated into the Catholic service. Ecclesiastical courts were
established, in which were tried all questions relating to character,
office, or property of the clergy; and thus they became nearly independent
of the civil judges.

The Heruli, which was the first of the ten horns plucked up, were
conquered by the Ostrogoths, in A. D. 493, when all Italy submitted to
Theodoric. He fixed his capital at Ravenna, which left the Pope the only
Prince of Rome; and the Romans, for protection, were forced to pay more
deference to him.

About A. D. 500, two Popes were simultaneously elected, when Theodoric
gave the papal chair to Symmachus. Gros