caused it to be asserted in a still more rigid and exclusive form. Within the pale of the Church, under the lawful Bishop, were Christ and salvation; without it, the realm of the Devil, the world of perdition. The faith of the heretic and schismatic was no faith, his holiness no holiness, his martyrdom no martyrdom." Latin Christianity, in the mind of Cyprian, if not its founder, its chief hierophant, had soared to the ideal height of this unity. This Utopia of Cyprian placed St. Peter at the head of the College of co-equal Apostles, from whom the Bishops inherited co-equal dignity. The succession of the Bishop of Rome from St. Peter was now, near 200 years after his death, an accredited tradition. Nor, so long as Carthage and Rome were in amity and alliance, did Cyprian scruple to admit (as Carthage could not but own her inferiority to Imperial Rome) a kind of primacy, of dignity at least, in the Metropolitan Bishop."

between

Rome and

The Punic league suddenly gives place to a Punic war. Dispute A new controversy has sprung up in the interval between the Decian and Valerian persecutions, on Carthage, the re-baptism of heretics. Africa, the East, Alexandria with less decision, declared the baptism by heretics an idle ceremony, and even an impious mimicry of that holy rite, which could only be valid from the consecrated hands of the lawful clergy. Lucius of Rome had ruled but a few months: he was succeeded by Stephen. This pope adopted a milder rule. Every baptism in the name of Christ admitted to Christian privileges. He enforced this rule, according to his adversaries (his own letters are lost), with imperious dictation. At length he broke off communion with all the churches of the East, and of Africa, which adhered to the more rigorous prac

A.D. 255.

66

The second Council of Carthage touches on this absolving power of the priesthood Quando permiserit ipse, qui legem dedit ut ligati in terris etiam in cælis ligati essent, solvi autem possent illa quæ hic prius in ecclesiâ solverentur." The decree of this Council anticipates another instant persecution, and urges, with great force and beauty, the necessity of strengthening all disciples against the coming trial-quos excitamus et hortamur ad prælium non

inermes et nudos relinquamus, sed protectione corporis et sanguinis Christi muniamus. Mansi, sub ann. 252, or Routh, Rel. Sacræ, v. iii. p. 70.

a Hoc erant utique et cæteri Apostoli, quod fuit Petrus, pari consortio præditi et honoris et potestatis: sed exordium ab unitate proficiscitur, et primatus Petro datur, ut una Christi ecclesia et cathedra una monstretur. De unit. Eccles. Compare the whole passage.

tice. But the Eastern hatred of heresy conspired with the hierarchical spirit of Africa, which could endure no intrusion on the prerogatives of the clergy. Cyprian confronts Stephen not only as an equal, but, strong in the concurrence of the East and of Alexandria, as his superior. The primacy of Peter has lost its authority. He condemns the perverseness, obstinacy, contumacy of Stephen. He promulgates, in Latin, a letter of Firmilian, Bishop of the Cappadocian Cæsarea, still more unmeasured in its censures. Firmilian denounces the audacity, the insolence of Stephen; scoffs at his boasted descent from St. Peter; declares that, by his sin, he has excommunicated himself: he is the schismatic, the apostate from the unity of the Church. A solemn Council of eighty-seven bishops, assembled at Carthage under Cyprian, asserted the independent judgment of the African Churches, repudiated the assumption of the title Bishop of Bishops, or the arbitrary dictation of one bishop to Christendom.

с

Yet even during this internal feud, Latin Christendom was gathering into a separate unity. The Churches of Gaul and Spain appeal at once to Rome and to Carthage; Arles, indeed, in southern Gaul, may still have been Greek. But the high character of Cyprian, and the flourishing state of the African Churches, combined with their Latinity to endow them with this concurrent primacy in the West. Martianus, Bishop of Arles, had embraced. Novatianism in all its rigour. The oppressed anti-Novatian party sent to Carthage as well as to Rome, to entreat their aid. Cyprian appears to acknowledge the superior right in the Bishop of Rome to appoint a substitute for the rebellious Novatianist. He urges Pope Stephen, by the memory of his martyred predecessors Cornelius and Lucius, not to shrink from this act of necessary rigour. This,

b He denounced Cyprian, according to Firmilian, as a false Christ, a false apostle, a deceitful workman. Firm. Epist. apud Cyprian. Opera.

Excidisti enim temet ipsum; noli te fallere. Siquidem ille est verè schismaticus, qui se a communione Ecclesiastica unitatis apostatam fecerit. Firm. ad Cyprian. I see no ground to doubt, with some Roman Catholic writers,

the authenticity of this letter. No doubt it is a translation from the Greek; if by Cyprian himself, it accounts for the sameness of style A Donatist forgery would have been in a different tone, and directed against different persors. Compare Walch Ketzer-Geschichte, ii. 323, et seqq. Routh, note ii. p. 151.

d A.D. 256. Apud Mansi, sub ann. or Routh, Rel. Sac. iii. p. 91.

however, was but a letter from one bishop to another, from Cyprian of Carthage, to Stephen of Rome. The answer to the Bishops of Spain is the formal act of a synod of African Bishops, assembled under the presidency of the Bishop of Carthage. It is a Latin religious state paper, addressed by one part of Latin Christendom to the rest. The Spanish Bishops, Basilides and Martialis, of Leon and Astorga, had, during the Decian persecution, denied the faith, offered sacrifice, according to the language of the day, returned to wallow in the mire of paganism. Yet they had dared to resume, not merely their privileges as Christians, but the holy office of bishops. Whatever leniency might be shown to humbler penitents, that the immaculate priesthood should not be irrevocably forfeited by such defilement, revolted not only the more severe, but the general sentiment. Two other bishops, Felix and Sabinus, were consecrated in their place. Basilides found his way to Rome, and imposed by his arts on the unsuspecting Stephen, who commanded his reinstatement in his high office. Appeal was made to Carthage against Rome. Cyprian would strengthen his own authority by that of a synod. At the head of his thirty-five bishops, Cyprian approves the acts of the Presbyters and people of Leon and Astorga in rejecting such unworthy bishops; treats with a kind of respectful compassion the weakness of Stephen of Rome, who had been so easily abused; and exhorts the Spaniards to adhere to their rightful prelates, Felix and Sabinus."

A.D. 259.

The persecution of Valerian joined the Bishops of Rome and of Carthage, Xystus the successor of Stephen, and the famous Cyprian, in the same glorious martyrdom." Dionysius, a Calabrian, is again a Greek Bishop of Rome, mingling with something of congenial zeal, and in the Greek language, in the controversies of Greek Alexandria, and condemning the errors of the Bishop of the same name, who had the evil report of having been the predecessor of Arius in doctrine. Dionysius, of Alexandria, however, a prelate of great virtue, it should seem, was but

e

Cypriani Epist. lxvii.

f The Decrees of the Council of Carthage are the earliest Latin public docu

ments.

Cyprian. Epist. Ixvii.

h On the martyrdom of Cyprian, Hist. of Christ. ii. 251.

i

A.D. 270.

incautiously betrayed into these doubtful expressions ; at all events, he repudiated the conclusions drawn from his words. With all the more candid and charitable, he soon resumed his fame for orthodoxy. When the Emperor Aurelian transferred the ecclesiastical judgment over Paul of Samosata, a rebel against the Empire as against the Church, from the Bishops of Syria to those of Rome and Italy, a subtle Greek heresy, maintained by Syrian Greeks, could not have been adjudicated but by Greeks or by Latins perfect masters of Greek. Dionysius, as Bishop of Rome, passed sentence in this important controversy.

Towards the close of this third century, throughout the persecution of Dioclesian, darkness settles again over the Bishops of Rome. The apostacy of Marcellinus Marcellinus, is but a late and discarded fable, adopted as favour- A.D. 296. ing the Papal supremacy. Legend assembles three hundred Bishops at Sinuessa, three hundred Bishops peaceably debating at such times in a small Neapolitan town. This synod refused to take cognizance of the crime of St. Peter's successor. Marcellinus was forced to degrade himself.

The legend, that his successor, Marcellus, was reduced to the servile office of a groom, rests on no better Marcellus, authority. Had it any claim to truth, the suc- AD. 394. cessors of Marcellus had full and ample revenge, when kings and emperors submitted to the same menial service, and held the stirrup for the Popes to mount their horses.

i Compare, on the act of Aurelianus, Hist. of Christ. ii. p. 257.

of Constan

tine.

CHAPTER II.

ROME AFTER THE CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE.

THUS, down to the conversion of Constantine, the Conversion biography of the Roman Bishops, and the history of the Roman Episcopate, are one; the acts and peculiar character of the Pontiffs, the influence and fortunes of the See, excepting in the doubtful and occasional gleams of light which have brought out Victor, Zephyrinus, Callistus, Cornelius, Stephen, into more distinct personality, are involved in a dim and vague twilight. On the establishment of Christianity, as the religion if not of the Empire, of the Emperor, the Bishop of Rome rises at once to the rank of a great accredited functionary; the Bishops gradually, though still slowly, assume the life of individual character. The Bishop is the first Christian in the first city of the world, and that city is legally Christian. The Supreme Pontificate of heathenism might still linger from ancient usage among the numerous titles of the Emperor; but so long as Constantine was in Rome, the Bishop of Rome, the head of the Emperor's religion, became in public estimation the equal, in authority and influence immeasurably the superior to all of sacerdotal rank. The schisms and factions of Christianity now become affairs of state. long as Rome is the imperial residence, an appeal to the Emperor is an appeal to the Bishop of Rome. The Bishop of Rome sits, by the imperial authority, at the head of a synod of Italian prelates, to judge the disputes with the African Donatists.

As

Melchiades held the See of Rome at the time of Con

Melchiades.

A.D. 312

314, Jan. 31.

stantine's conversion, but soon made room for Silvester, whose name is more inseparably conSilvester. nected with that great event. Silvester has become a kind of hero of religious fable. But it was not so much the genuine mythical spirit which unconsciously