claimed that they recognised no Pope, that each patriarch ruled over
a portion of the Church. The Anglicans rejected both Pope and patriarch,
and admitted no ecclesiastical order higher than the Episcopate. Foreign
Protestanism refused to tolerate even bishops, or any authority but the
parish clergy under the supremacy of the ruler of the land. Then the
sects abolished the local jurisdiction of the parish clergy, and
retained only preachers. At length the ministry was rejected as an
office altogether, and the Quakers made each individual his own prophet,
priest, and doctor.

The Papacy, that unique institution, the Crown of the Catholic system,
exhibits in its history the constant working of that law which is at the
foundation of the life of the Church, the law of continuous organic
development. It shared the vicissitudes of the Church, and had its part
in everything which influences the course and mode of her existence. In
early times it grew in silence and obscurity, its features were rarely
and imperfectly distinguishable; but even then the Popes exerted their
authority in all directions, and while the wisdom with which it was
exercised was often questioned, the right itself was undisputed. So long
as the Roman Empire upheld in its strong framework and kept together the
Church, which was confined mostly within its bounds, and checked with
the stern discipline of a uniform law the manifestations of national and
local divergence, the interference of the Holy See was less frequently
required, and the reins of Church government did not need to be tightly
drawn. When a new order of States emerged from the chaos of the great
migration, the Papacy, which alone stood erect amid the ruins of the
empire, became the centre of a new system and the moderator of a new
code. The long contest with the Germanic empire exhausted the political
power both of the empire and of the Papacy, and the position of the Holy
See, in the midst of a multitude of equal States, became more difficult
and more unfavourable. The Popes were forced to rely on the protection
of France, their supremacy over the States was at an end, and the
resistance of the nations commenced. The schism, the opposition of the
general Councils, the circumstances which plunged the Holy See into the
intrigues of Italian politics, and at last the Reformation, hastened the
decline of that extensive social and political power, the echoes and
reminiscences of which occasioned dis