place, to express themselves in phrases of vulgar thought, and to sacrifice truth to popular ignorance for momentary convenience.1

12. ANOTHER EXAMPLE.

Take a notable example. Canon Hussey in his valuable work, "The Rise of the Papal Power," demonstrates that this enormous system was the product of multiplied abuses, beginning with harmless incidents and accidents, and growing by slow accretions into the arrogant claims of the Middle Ages. A schoolboy's snowball becomes an avalanche, in like manner, when it falls from his hand and rolls down the mountain. It was not the avalanche, however, while it was the plaything. Yet this learned author confounds his own plan of tracing the "Rise of the Papal Power," by talking of the "supremacy" (which was never universally admitted or enforced even in the Roman communion until our own times) as if it existed from the fourth century. He confounds it with the "primacy"; and while he shows that the whole fabric grew out of a harmless function conferred only for the West by a provincial council, and probably by an abuse of that, he yet speaks of "the supremacy" as if it had been born at this council, where, as he proves clearly enough, such a thing was not even conceived.2 Going back of this, however, he calls good Sylvester "Pope Sylvester"; whereas if he was a Pope in the Nicene age, there was no "Rise of the Papal

1 See Note A.

2 See Note B.

Power." Why do men go on proving by facts what they seem to refute in words? If a scholar undertakes to show how and when Bishops of Rome became "Popes," why does he confound his pupil by calling them "popes" ages before a pope was dreamed of? To recur to my illustration: all this misleads and mystifies, as when the Ptolemaic system is adopted in practice, while the Copernican verities are theoretically proved.

13. TOKENS OF A NEW ERA.

There are gratifying tokens of an approaching era of investigation, and of historiography based on demonstrated truth and fact. Several recent writers have just fallen short of making themselves leaders in this coming era of scientific history. In a mere sentence Milman records a fact, which, had he seen its importance, would have led him to construct his history of Latin Christianity on fresh and original bases. Such work would have immortalized him. I refer to his brief but all important statement that the local Roman church was for three hundred years a mere colony of Greek Christianity, and that the Church's roots and matrices were wholly Oriental.1 Dean Stanley enlarges on this in his "Eastern Church," but just misses the bearings of his facts. Had he based his attractive work upon them, it would have risen. to the rank of a grand epoch-maker, a genuine work of genius. Take, for example, the passage I will cite, and observe how it revolutionizes con1 See Note C.

ventional ideas of the antiquity of the Paparchy, or of Rome as the "mother of churches." He

says:

"The Greek Church reminds us of the time when the tongue, not of Rome, but of Greece, was the sacred language of Christendom. It was a striking remark of the Emperor Napoleon, that the introduction of Christianity itself was, in a certain sense, the triumph of Greece over Rome; the last and most signal instance of the maxim of Horace, Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit. The early Roman church was but a colony of Greek Christians or Grecized Jews. The earliest Fathers of the Western Church wrote in Greek. The early popes were not Italians, but Greeks. The name of pope is not Latin, but Greek, the common and now despised name of every pastor in the Eastern Church. . . . She is the mother, and Rome the daughter. It is her privilege to claim a direct continuity of speech with the earliest times; to boast of reading the whole code of Scripture, Old as well as New, in the language in which it was read and spoken by the Apostles. The humblest peasant who reads his Septuagint or Greek Testament in his own mother tongue on the hills of Boeotia may proudly feel that he has access to the original oracles of divine truth which pope and cardinal reach by a barbarous and imperfect translation; that he has a key of knowledge which in the West is only to be found in the hands of the learned classes."1

All this is true, but the author fails to see what it carries with it. Eppur si muove, said Galileo; but if that was true, the whole system of the universe was to be reformed, as it existed in the schools and in the inveterate habits of human thought. "The East is the mother, and Rome the

1 See Note D.

daughter," says the Dean; but if this be true, the entire structure of scholastic theology, the Paparchy, and the Council of Trent, are swept away with the fallacy that assumes the reverse. Dean Stanley's work should have proceeded on this fundamental fact of history, and his history of the East should have been illustrated in its true relations to the original constitutions of Christendom.

14. A BRILLIANT WORK THAT JUST MISSES A PRIZE.

But the saddest specimen of collapse is the framework of a book which would have revolutionized Western thought about one of the grandest of historical themes, had it been true to the very facts which it proceeds to make evident. I refer to Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire," a most valuable work, and one which betokens the coming era, but only as a foggy morning is often the harbinger of a brilliant day. How could the writer have missed the opportunity of identifying the rise of the Holy Roman Empire" with the formation of the Paparchy, which never existed till Charlemagne had created the possibility of a new œcumenical theory for the Church by creating a new Ecumene, or Imperial basis, for its development. Bryce fails to economize this truth. It is a pity that so good a monograph must be written over again. Its faults are as glaring as its merits are great; and that is saying much in a single phrase.1

1 See Note E.

15. SCIENTIFIC HISTORY.

Now the new era of scientific history will be created just as soon as some able and original genius shall be raised up to apply, in historiography, the principles which our age has inexorably demanded in other scientific work.

The law

of such a movement is simply that of sweeping away demonstrated falsehood and fable, and of proceeding at every step upon the rock foundation of fact. If the East gave to Christianity its historic form and shape, its creed and doctrine, its whole cast and visible outline before the world, why not proceed accordingly? Yes, why not? A thousand myths disappear from the Western mind when once these truths are worked out and made manifest. No more haggling about the popes of controvertists. The entire Papal theory perishes as soon as we find where Rome stood at first, and how absolutely inconsiderable was her place in the early founding and teaching of churches.

16. THE MOTHER OF THEOLOGY.

He who examines the true history of the ages before Constantine is forced to find in Alexandria all with which popes and schoolmen have credited old Rome. After Antioch, the see of St. Mark was the nurse, if not the mother, of the churches, and if not their mistress, yet their schoolmaster.1 It formed their mind and speech. Latin Christianity itself rose out of Alexandria, the head and brain. 1 See Note F.