s condemned--I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas. For
all being shown to be Christ's, who in us is not divided, by the help of
God we shall keep the body of the Church unrent, and shall stand with
confidence before the tribunal of the Lord."

Here is the whole East, in the year 381, long before the schism, announcing
to the Bishops of Rome, Milan, Aquilea, and the West, the election of its
Patriarchs, and exercising as an ancient incontestable right that liberty
of self-government, according to the canons, for continuing to do which
very thing, and for nothing else, the Latin Church accounts both the Greek
and English Church schismatic. Now the Eastern Church, as its own rituals
to this day declare, always acknowledged St. Peter's primacy, and that his
primacy was inherited by the Bishop of Rome; but it is apparent at once
that it never received, nay most strongly abhorred, that system of
centralization of all power in Rome, which St. Leo seems to have had before
his eyes. Its most holy and illustrious Fathers never submitted to this
domination. St. Basil had already complained of the Western pride, ([Greek:
dutike ophrus].)[83] St. Gregory of Nazianzum is that very Archbishop by
whose voluntary cession and advice Nectarius is elected. St. Gregory of
Nyssa, and Peter, brothers of St. Basil, are in this council, and so St.
Cyril of Jerusalem. And yet Bellarmine will have it that Bishops who so
wrote and so acted received their jurisdiction from Rome; and what is far
more important, if they did not, the present Papal theory falls to the
ground.

When Gieseler speaks of "the principle of the mutual independence of the
Western and Eastern Church being firmly held in the East generally,"[84] of
course it must be understood that there can be no independence, strictly so
called, in the Church and Body of Christ. Independence annihilates
membership and coherence. Accordingly, I am fully prepared to admit that
the Primacy of the Roman See, even among the Patriarchs, was a real thing;
not a mere title of honour. The power of the First See was really exerted
in difficult conjunctures to keep the whole body together. I am quite aware
that the Bishop of Rome could do, what the Bishop of Alexandria, or of
Antioch, or of Constantinople, or of Jerusalem, could not do. Even merely
as standing at the head of the whole West he counterbalanced all the four.
But I accept _bona fide_ what Socrates and Sozomen tell us. I believe th