Page:Guettée papacy.djvu/234

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230
THE PAPACY.

of him whose seat you fill. Is it not of him that the Truth himself said, 'When thou shalt be old ... another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not'?" (John 21:18.)

We know that these words were addressed by our Lord to St. Peter. In another letter to the same Anastasius, St. Gregory thus expresses himself, after having quoted what he believed to be the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch:

"I have introduced in my letter these words drawn from your writings, that your Holiness may know that your own holy Ignatius is also ours. For as we have in common the master, the prince of the Apostles, we must neither of us exclusively claim the disciple of this prince of the Apostles."[1]

St. Gregory wrote to Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, "We have received, with the same tenderness as it was given us, the benediction of St. Mark the Evangelist, or rather, more properly speaking, of the Apostle St. Peter."[2]

He wrote again to the same, after having congratulated him upon his refutation of the errours of the Monophysites:

"Praise and glory be in the heavens to my saintly brother, thanks to whom the voice of Mark is heard from the chair of Peter, whose teaching resounds through the Church as the cymbal in the tabernacle, when he fathoms the mysteries — that is to say, when, as priest of the Most Highest, he enters the Holy of Holies."[3]

Was any thing more flattering ever said to the Bishops of Rome than Gregory here says to Eulogius of Alexandria? Does not the saintly Pope seem to copy the very words of the Council of Chalcedon,

  1. Ib. Book V. Ep. 39.
  2. Ib. Book VIII. Ep. 39.
  3. Ib. Book X Ep. 85.