hich his Church should be
built. But Christ himself is the rock, not a mortal man. "Other
foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ,"--a
truth reiterated even by Saint Augustine, the great and acknowledged
theologian of the Catholic Church, although Augustine's views of sin and
depravity are no more relished by the Roman Catholics of our day than
the doctrines of Luther himself, who drew his theological system, like
Calvin, from Augustine more than from any other man, except Saint Paul.

But arrogant and unfounded as was the claim of Leo,--that Peter, not
Christ, was the rock on which the Church is founded,--it was generally
accepted by the bishops of the day. Everything tended to confirm it,
especially the universal idea of a necessary unity of the Church. There
must be a head of the Church on earth, and who could be lawfully that
head other than the successor of the apostle to whom Christ had given
the keys of heaven and hell?

But this claim, considering the age when it was first advanced, had the
inspiration of genius. It was most opportune. The Bishop of Rome would
soon have been reduced to the condition of other metropolitans had his
dignity rested on the greatness of his capital. He now became the
interpreter of his own decrees,--an arch-pontiff ruling by divine right.
His power became indefinite and unlimited. Just in proportion to the
depth of the religious sentiment of the newly converted barbarians would
be his ascendancy over them; and the Germanic races were religious
peoples like the early Greeks and Romans. Tacitus points out this
sentiment of religion as one of their leading characteristics. It was
not the worship of ancestors, as among the Aryan races until Grecian and
Roman civilization was developed. It was more like the worship of the
invisible powers of Nature; for in the rock, the mountain, the river,
the forest, the sun, the stars, the storms, the rude Teutonic mind saw a
protecting or avenging deity. They easily transferred to the Christian
clergy the reverence they had bestowed on the old priests of Odin, of
Freya, and of Thor. Reverence was one of the great sentiments of our
German ancestors. It was only among such a people that an overpowering
spiritual despotism could be maintained. The Pope became to them the
vicegerent of the great Power which they adored. The records of the race
do not show such another absorbing pietism as was seen in the monastic
retreats of the