while the former, leaving this quite
inviolate, builds together the whole Church in one vast living structure.
For as the Bishops of the province have their Metropolitan, and their
spring and autumn Councils under him, so the Metropolitan stands in a like
relation to his Exarch, or Patriarch; and of the five great Patriarchs of
Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, who are found at
the Council of Chalcedon to preside over the Church Catholic, that of Rome
has the unquestioned primacy, and is seen at the centre, sustaining and
animating the whole. "The most important of all the powers of
Metropolitans, Exarchs, and Patriarchs, was the election of Bishops, the
confirmation and consecration of Bishops elected. For all the other degrees
of authority were founded on this one, which rendered the Metropolitan the
Father, Master, and Judge of all his suffragans."[34] "And so that famous
Canon of the Council of Nicea, (the 6th,) which seems in appearance only to
confirm the ancient right of the three first Metropolitans of the world to
ordain the Bishops of all the provinces of their dependence, establishes in
effect all the rights and all the powers of the Metropolitans, because it
establishes the foundation on which they all rest. 'If any one be made a
Bishop contrary to the sentence of his Metropolitan, the great Synod
declares that he should not be a Bishop.' Nothing is juster than to found
the right of a holy and paternal rule on the right of generation. For by
ordination the Bishops engender not children indeed, but Fathers, to the
Church." This system continued unimpaired in the whole Church, at least to
the time of St. Gregory the Great. It offers, I think, an unanswerable
refutation to what must be considered the strongest argument of the Roman
Catholics for the Supremacy, that there could be no unity in the Church
without it, as a living organized body; history says, there _was_ unity,
with five co-ordinate Patriarchs, and an Episcopate twice as numerous as
that of the present Latin Communion. In the Latin Church itself, this
system was only gradually overshadowed by another system which sprang from
the excessive development of one of its parts; in the Greek and Russian
Church, it continues down to this day; whatever ecclesiastical constitution
we still have ourselves, is a part of this system. And by reference to, and
under cover of this, which if not strictly of Divine right, as is the High
Priesthoo