Theodosian Code,
Sulpicius Severus, Life of Martin of Tours, Life of Ambrose by Paulinus,
Augustine's "De Civitate Dei," Epistles of Ambrose; also those of
Jerome; Claudien. The best modern authorities are Tillemont's History of
the Emperors; Gibbon's Decline and Fall; Milmans's History of
Christianity; Neander; Sheppard's Fall of Rome; and Flecier's Life of
Theodosius. There are several popular Lives of Theodosius in French, but
very few in English.

LEO THE GREAT.

* * * * *

A.D. 390-461.

FOUNDATION OF THE PAPACY.

With the great man who forms the subject of this Lecture are identified
those principles which lay at the foundation of the Roman Catholic power
for fifteen hundred years. I do not say that he is the founder of the
Roman Catholic Church, for that is another question. Roman Catholicism,
as a polity, or government, or institution, is one thing; and Roman
Catholicism, as a religion, is quite another, although they have been
often confounded. As a government, or polity, it is peculiar,--the
result of the experience of ages, adapted to society and nations in a
certain state of progress or development, with evils and corruptions, of
course, like all other human institutions. As a religion, although it
superadded many dogmas and rites which Protestants do not accept, and
for which they can see no divine authority,--like auricular confession,
the deification of the Virgin, indulgences for sin, and the
infallibility of the Pope,--still, it has at the same time defended the
cardinal principles of Christian faith and morality; such as the
personality and sovereignty of God, the divinity of Christ, salvation in
consequence of his sufferings and death, immortality, the final
judgment, the necessity of a holy life, temperance, humility, patience,
and the virtues which were taught upon the Mount and enforced by the
original disciples and apostles, whose writings are accepted
as inspired.

In treating so important a subject as that represented by Leo the Great,
we must bear in mind these distinctions. While Leo is conceded to have
been a devout Christian and a noble defender of the faith as we receive
it,--one of the lights of the early Christian Church, numbered even
among the Fathers of the Church, with Augustine and Chrysostom,--his
special claim to greatness is that to him we trace some of the first
great developments of the Roman Catholic power as an institution. More
than