to do wrong things, by the help of God, as is well known, did not obey
him."

In this same letter the Pope uses the following words: "We are confident
that no one truly a Christian is ignorant that the first see, above all
others, is bound to execute the decree of every council which the assent of
the universal Church has approved; for it confirms every council by its
authority, and maintains it by its continued rule, in virtue of its own
principate which the blessed Apostle Peter received by the voice of the
Lord, but continues to hold and retain by the Church subsequently following
it".

Pope Gelasius had in vain striven to gain the emperor Anastasius. After the
return of his legates, Faustus and Irenaeus, who had gone in the embassy of
Theodorick to Constantinople, he wrote to the emperor, in the year 494, a
famous letter,[63] warning him to defend the Catholic faith, which
Anastasius had not yet openly deserted, nor professed himself an Eutychean.
In it he says: "Glorious son, as a Roman born, I love, I reverence, I
receive you as Roman emperor: as holder, however unworthy, of the Apostolic
See, I endeavour as best I can to supply by opportune suggestions whatever
I find wanting to the complete Catholic faith. For a dispensation of the
divine word has been laid upon me; woe is me if I preach not the Gospel!
Since the blessed Apostle Paul, the vessel of election, in his fear thus
cries out, how much more have I in my smallness to fear if I shrink from
the ministry of preaching inspired by God, and transmitted to me by the
devotion of the fathers? I entreat your piety not to take for arrogance the
execution of a divine duty.[64] Let not a Roman prince esteem the
intimation of truth in its proper sense an injury. Two, then, O emperor,
there are by whom this world is ruled in chief--the sacred authority of
pontiffs and the royal power. Of these that of priests weighs the heavier,
insomuch as they will have in the divine judgment to render an account for
kings themselves. For you know, most gracious son, that pre-eminent as you
are in dignity over the human race, you nevertheless bow the neck
submissively to those who preside over things divine. From them you seek
the terms of salvation; and you recognise that it is your duty in the
order of religion to submit rather than to command in what concerns the
reception and the distribution of heavenly sacraments. As to these matters,
then, you know that you depend on their ju