contest with
the Church for supremacy; for one only, the Hohenstaufen, were conscious of
a fixed purpose. They encountered a direct struggle with the Church; but
the conflict issued to the honour of the Church. The Popes who led it came
out of it with a renown in the world's history, which without that conflict
they would never have so gloriously attained. If we look from these events
before and afterwards upon the ages, and see how the institution of the
Papacy outlasts all other institutions in Europe, how it has seen all
States come and go, how in the endless change of human things it alone
remains unchanged, ever with the same spirit, can we then wonder if many
look up to it as the Rock unmoved amid the roaring billows of centuries?"
And he adds in a note, "This is not a polemical statement, but the verdict
of history".[221]

The time of St. Gregory in history bore the witness of six centuries; the
time of Innocent III. of twelve; the time of Leo XIII. bears that of more
than eighteen centuries to the consideration of this contrast between the
natural fickleness of men and of lives of men, shown from age to age, and
the persistence, on the other hand, of one idea in one line of men. The
eighteen centuries already past are yet only a part of an unknown future.
But to construct such a Rock amid the sea and the waves roaring in the
history of the nations reveals an abiding divine power. It leaves the
self-will of man untouched, yet sets up a rampart against it. The
explanation attempted three hundred and fifty years ago of an imposture or
an usurpation is incompatible with the clearness of an idea which is
carried out persistently through so many generations. Usurpations fall
rapidly. But in this one case the divine words themselves contain the idea
more clearly expressed than any exposition can express it. The King
delineates His kingdom as none but God can; it must also be added that He
maintains it as none but God can maintain.

We may return to St. Gregory's own time, and note the unbroken continuity
of the Primacy from St. Peter himself. It is a period of nearly six hundred
years from the day of Pentecost. Just in the middle comes the conversion
of Constantine. Before it Rome is mainly a heathen city, the government of
which bears above all things an everlasting enmity against any violation of
the supreme pontificate annexed by the provident Augustus to the imperial
power, and jealously maintained by every succee