God
you worship grant prosperity to your times, and your own dignity maintain
the honour of the Roman name to the universe in this collapsing world),
that the state of the Church be not less in your eyes than that of the
commonwealth; that the power which God has given to you may be also for our
good; and that you have not less love in your Church for the See of Peter,
than in your city for the crown of the world. If, in your wisdom, you
consider the matter to its bottom, you will see that not only the cause
carried on at Rome is concerned. In the case of other bishops, if there be
any lapse, it may be restored; but if the Pope of Rome is endangered, not
one bishop but the episcopate itself will seem to be shaken. You well know
how we are steering the bark of faith amid storms of heresies, whose winds
roar around us. If with us you fear such dangers, you must needs protect
your pilot by sharing his labour. If the sailors turn against their
captain, how will they escape? The shepherd of the Lord's sheepcot will
give an account of his pastorship; it is not for the flock to alarm its own
pastor, but for the judge. Restore, then, to us if it be not already
restored, concord in our chief."

Even after this synod at Rome, the opponents of Symmachus did not cease
their attempts. Clergy and senators sent in a new memorial to the king
Theodorick, in favour of the anti-pope Laurentius, who returned to Rome in
502; and it was four years, during which several councils were held, before
the schism was finally composed. Theodorick then commanded that all the
churches in Rome should be given up to Pope Symmachus,[88] and he alone be
recognised as its bishop.

Against the attacks made upon the fourth synod, which had dismissed the
consideration of the charges against the Pope as beyond its competence,
Ennodius, at that time a deacon, afterwards bishop of Pavia, wrote a long
defence. This writing was read at the sixth synod at Rome, held in 503,
approved, and inserted in the synodal acts. We may, therefore, quote one
passage from it, as the doctrine which it was the result of all this schism
to establish.[89] "God has willed the causes of other men to be terminated
by men; He has reserved the bishop of that one see without question to His
own judgment. It was His will that the successors of the Apostle St. Peter
should owe their innocence to heaven alone, and show a spotless conscience
to that most absolute scrutiny. Do not suppose that