mulation of preeminence and power prevailed among the Metropolitans
themselves, each of them affecting to display, in the most pompous
terms, the temporal honors and advantages of the city over which he
presided; the numbers and opulence of the Christians who were subject to
their pastoral care; the saints and martyrs who had arisen among them;
and the purity with which they preserved the tradition of the faith, as
it had been transmitted through a series of orthodox bishops from the
apostle or the apostolic disciple, to whom the foundation of their
church was ascribed. From every cause, either of a civil or of an
ecclesiastical nature, it was easy to foresee that Rome must enjoy
the respect, and would soon claim the obedience of the provinces. The
society of the faithful bore a just proportion to the capital of the
empire; and the Roman church was the greatest, the most numerous,
and, in regard to the West, the most ancient of all the Christian
establishments, many of which had received their religion from the pious
labors of her missionaries. Instead of oneapostolic founder, the utmost
boast of Antioch, of Ephesus, or of Corinth, the banks of the Tyber were
supposed to have been honored with the preaching and martyrdom of
the two most eminent among the apostles; and the bishops of Rome very
prudently claimed the inheritance of whatsoever prerogatives were
attributed either to the person or to the office of St. Peter. The
bishops of Italy and of the provinces were disposed to allow them
a primacy of order and association (such was their very accurate
expression) in the Christian aristocracy. But the power of a monarch was
rejected with abhorrence, and the aspiring genius of Rome experienced
from the nations of Asia and Africa a more vigorous resistance to her
spiritual, than she had formerly done to her temporal, dominion. The
patriotic Cyprian, who ruled with the most absolute sway the church of
Carthage and the provincial synods, opposed with resolution and success
the ambition of the Roman pontiff, artfully connected his own cause with
that of the eastern bishops, and, like Hannibal, sought out new allies
in the heart of Asia. If this Punic war was carried on without any
effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the
weakness of the contending prelates. Invectives and excommunications
were their only weapons; and these, during the progress of the whole
controversy, they hurled against each oth