of Apostolic succession from St. Peter, an authority which was not his; he even very justly traces his Church back to St. Paul, and not to St. Peter. Thus, when, in another place, he calls the authority of his predecessor the authority of St. Peter, he means by that only the rights which the Bishops of Rome had received from the councils for the honour of St. Peter, who had made that Church illustrious by his glorious death!
Could any one find in St. Gregory's letter to the Patriarchs the language of a superiour toward his subordinates? St. Gregory, as first bishop of the Church, as first of the Patriarchs, takes the lead, calls the attention of the other Patriarchs, his brethren, to the encroachments of one of their number. He entreats them to join him in resisting what he regards as a misfortune for the whole episcopate; nay, for the universal Church. He does not make the slightest allusion to any superiour authority in himself; he appeals only to the divine precept and to the canons, against an usurpation, which he calls diabolical. Is this the language of a chief, of a universal monarch? Clearly not. We cannot read this beautiful letter of St. Gregory to the Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria without being convinced that such a Papacy as is now assumed to be of divine right, was unknown to him; that he cried out against tendencies that may be looked upon as the first attempts at universal jurisdiction; that he looked upon those first attempts as an enterprise which might upset the Church and which threatened the rights of the entire priesthood. Perhaps he attached too much importance to a purely honorary title which only emanated from the imperial authority; but he saw, under this title, an anti-canonical undertaking, and the first attempts at a universal Papacy. What would he say of this Papacy itself, with all its modern pretensions? He would justly show himself its greatest enemy, and would see in it the
