And now, after all these toils and troubles, after all these synods in East and West, after all the legations to Alexandria and Rome, after all the almost miraculous adventures of Dorotheus, after a great deal more of what will not bear investigation, and which I have omitted to notice, what was the end of it? Nothing. No bishops from the West approach the East; there is no aid afforded to the Orientals. Genuine history knows of no one of these alleged facts. Nothing was donebut the writing of these forgeries very long after their supposed date.

I will now add some further statements concerning these letters, which will confirm the notion of their forgery.

They are never alluded to by ancient writers. Ruffinus makes no allusion either to them or their contents; nor do the Greek historians. And yet few documents or few events in that century would have been more deserving of notice. The parties engaged in this correspondence were the leaders of the Christian Church, the great Athanasius, the bishop of Rome and the Western prelates, the primate of Cappadocia and the leading Orientals. Many of the letters were synodal letters. Their subject matter was of the most important nature. It was a negotiation, if I may so call it, in which the leading Churches in the world were engaged for seven years, and embassies had been four times sent from the East to the West; once from Athanasius to the East, and once from the West to the East; and yet not the slightest record, hint,

or insinuation of these important proceedings, conducted by such important persons in this public manner, has been preserved beyond these letters, which, on the face of them, have every mark of unreality; and where they do venture on a fact, or dare to hint at any thing which can be grappled with, it is almost a certainty that they are found untrue. When, in addition to all this, the reader recollects that they are based upon a tale which, it is submitted, has been clearly shown to be a Roman invention to support an imaginary supremacy, no doubt, I think, will exist in his mind of their spurious character.

493

INQUIRY

INTO

THE AUTHORITY FOR THE DOCTRINE

OF

THE SUPREMACY OF THE BISHOP OF ROME BY DIVINE RIGHT.

IT is my belief that I have in the "Proofs and Illustrations" justified the history which I have presented of the Roman church during the period embraced by this volume. If I have, it will have been seen that what is recorded of the Roman Church is almost nothing, and that those acts of interference with other churches which appear in the histories and some other writings are forgeries of a much later date, manifestly written to create a belief in a supremacy which had never existed, but which, at the time they were made, the Roman Church was endeavouring to introduce. I shall conclude this volume by an inquiry whether there

is

any evidence in the writings of this period that the Church acknowledged any supremacy by divine right in the bishop of Rome, which is the present pretension of his party. On this account the inquiry forms part of the "History of the Church of

The pretension of the Roman Church is, that its bishop, as successor of St. Peter - to whom they say the government of the whole church was committed by our Lord as the regular bishop, is the bishop of the universal church. This office, they add, implies

I. That where the Bishop of Rome is professedly teaching the whole church, he is infallible in his enunciation of articles of faith, and also of rules of life, in matters necessary to salvation, or which are intrinsically good or bad.

II. That as an earthly prince has a right to make laws for his subjects, so the Bishop of Rome has a right to make laws for his subjects—that is, for all Christians on the face of the earth so as to be binding on their conscience; and has also a right to punish the transgressors with excommunication, suspension, interdict, &c.

III. That all ecclesiastical authority is committed by Christ to him alone, and can only be derived to others through him. And,

IV. That, although he has no temporal authority directly, yet he possesses it indirectly, by having supreme authority in all matters affecting the wel

fare of souls.

Such a claim will, no doubt, strike the unprejudiced reader, after the perusal of the foregoing pages, as deserving only of ridicule. He will have seen that during three hundred and eightyfour years, thirty-six of these awful personages, all, too, with one exception, apparently orthodox,-to say nothing of the Arian thirty-seventh (who, as it