o the deliverer of their race.

There is nothing like this elsewhere in history.

Constantine, Valens, Theodosius, Justinian, and, no less, Alaric and
Ataulph, Attila and Genseric, Theodorick and Clovis, Arius, Nestorius,
Eutyches, as well as St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Ambrose, St.
Chrysostom, St. Augustine, St. Cyril, and, again, Dioscorus, Acacius, and a
multitude of the most opposing minds and beliefs which these represent,
contribute, in their time and degree, for the most part unconsciously, and
many against their settled purpose, to acknowledge this Primacy as the Rock
of the Church, the source of spiritual jurisdiction, the centre of a divine
unity in a warring world. In St. Gregory we see the power which has had
antecedents so strange and concomitants so repulsive deposited in the hands
of a feeble old man who is constantly mourning over the cares in which that
universal government involves him, while the world for evermore shall
regard him as the type and standard of the true spiritual ruler, who calls
himself, not Ecumenical Bishop, but Servant of the servants of God. It is a
title which his successors will take from his hand and keep for ever as the
badge of the Primacy which it illustrates, while it serves as the seal of
its acts of power. He calls himself servant just when he is supreme.

In St. Gregory the Great, the whole ancient world, the Church's first
discipline and original government, run to their ultimate issue. In him the
patriarchal system, as it met the shock of absolute power in the civil
sovereign, and the subversion of the western empire by barbarous
incursions, accompanied by the establishment of new sovereignties and the
foundation of a new Rome, the rival and then the tyrant of the old Rome,
receives its consummation. The medieval world has not yet begun. The
spurious Mahometan theocracy is waiting to arise. In the midst of a world
in confusion, of a dethroned city falling into ruins, the successor of St.
Peter sits on an undisputed spiritual throne upon which a new world will be
based in the West, against which the Khalifs of a false religion will exert
all their rage in the East and South, and strengthen the rule which they
parody. A new power, which utterly denies the Christian faith, which
destroys hundreds of its episcopal sees and severs whole countries from its
sway, will dash with all its violence against the Rock of Peter, and
finally will have the effect of making the bishop