Leo X. was the head of the national church. Nevertheless, though these may be my private feelings on subjects so remotely connected with the pure and undefiled religion of the gospel, it is not less my duty to discuss these matters in treating of the great events of Ecclesiastical History.

However strongly Gregory might oppose the exorbitant ambition of John of Constantinople, that patriarch persisted in calling himself the Universal Bishop, though not, it would seem, in the sense in which he had been understood by the Roman Pontiff. In any sense the title was offensive, and the bishop of Rome did not fail to exert all his power, and to use every art to induce the eastern prelate to lay it aside. We have seen that this title was first claimed, or rather revived, (for some such appellation had been conferred on Leo I. in the years 445 and 450, by Valentinian III. emperor of the West, and Marcian of the East,*) during the pontificate of Pelagius II., and that his successor Gregory the Great strenuously opposed it. But the next pontiff, Boniface III. we are informed,

History of Popery, vol. i. p. 1. Essay on Scripture Prophecy, p. 104. Carolus Sigonius de Occid. Imper. p. 106, 314, and the learned Annotator on Mosheim, says, that Leo and Justinian had conferred this title on the Bishops of Constantinople. See note s. vol. ii. p. 112. of his translation of Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. 8vo. ed.

tried every measure in his power to have the title made over, by an inalienable right, to himself and his successors of the apostolic see of Rome. He used all his influence with the emperor Phocas to assist him in this struggle for mastery, or rather for the honour of a name; and he is said to have succeeded; yet it does not appear at present, that the bishops of Rome have any such title, further than as they are styled the Head of the Church, an appellation, which, in some sense, the patriarchs of Constantinople themselves at first granted to them. The contests, however, on this subject, at length grew so furious, that a foundation was laid in them for that great schism which afterwards divided the Greek and Latin churches.

The reader should observe, that this question has nothing to do, strictly speaking, with the title of Pope. Of the use of this word, no dispute arose till a much later period, when Gregory VII. A. D. 1076, transferred this title to himself only and his successors.* Nor should the reader fall into that common mistake, so

* Padre Paolo sopra Benef. Eccles. c. viii. and the other authorities referred to in Card's Historical Outlines of the Rise and Establishment of the Papal Power, p. 5. Without admitting all the reasoning of this latter writer, I cannot mention him without noticing the elegance and the majesty of his style, the great extent of his reading, and the general value of his various publications.

confusing and injurious to this subject, of confounding the supremacy of the bishop of Rome, an honour allowed to him by all Catholic writers, with the infallibility of the Pope, an attribute never granted to him by the Church, though some persons, who would have written any other nonsense to gain the favour of the Roman Court, have ridiculously asserted it.

For the present I will dismiss this subject of the supremacy: we shall shortly have occasion to advert to it. As, however, it is so obviously connected with the origin of national ecclesiastical establishments, and the subsequent temporal authority of the Pope; and as those establishments have a relation so near to the conversion of Constantine the Great, I will here glance at the accounts we have received of this great and important event in the history of the church and of the Roman Empire.

Either at noon, or at midnight-awake, or asleep-alone, or in the midst of his army-on a march, or during the heat of battle-in the

* Except, indeed, such accommodating and "modest❞ authors as the late Doctor Alexander Geddes; who seemed almost inclined, as some have thought, to give up Transubstantiation, to please the Church of England; the Trinity, to gratify the Unitarians; and even, it is to be feared, the Scriptures themselves, to conciliate the Deists; though candour should lead one to hope, that the Doctor was guided in these matters by the honest dictates of his mind.

south, or in the east, or in both at the same time-on his passage over the Alps, at Treves, Besançou, or some other place,* Constantine the Great saw, or thought he saw, a miraculous vision, which was followed by two very opposite consequences :-his conversion to a religion which forbids the shedding of blood, and the immediate destruction of a whole army. The task were endless and useless to trace this story and the evidences of it through the various channels and the perplexing ramifications by which it is attested, confirmed, amplified and confuted. The sacred oath of the Emperor to his doubting biographer, Eusebiust-the martyr and veteran Artemius, whose apocryphal Acts are prudently rejected by Tillemont,§ and unnoticed by Du Pin; the flowery Lactantius, or as Mr. Gibbon conjectures, Cæcilius; the poet Prudentius, ** Baronius,++

* Vid. Tillemont des Empereurs, tom. iv. p. 573.

+ Euseb. in Vit. Const. 1. i. c. 28.

Act. S. Artem. apud Metaphor. 20 Octob. in Cressey's Church History of Brittany, p. 122.

Mem. Eccles. tom. vii. p. 1317.

De Mortibus Persecut. c. xlvi.

1 Dec. and Fall, iii. 16. Mr. Gibbon is partly supported in this conjecture by Le Clerc (Bibliotheque Ancienne et Moderne, tom. iii. p. 438,) and by the learned and rational Lardner (Cred. part II. vol. vii. p. 94.) In ascribing this declamation on the death of Persecutors to Cæcilius, the Roman Historian " tamely follows the Colbert MS."

** Prud. contra Symmach. 1. 1. 464, 482.

tt Au. Eccles. A. D. 312.

Philostorgius,* Gelasius of Cyzicus,† and a long train of others, both sacred and profane, historians, poets, and panegyrists narrate, in numerous forms, and with an amusing variety of incident and contradiction, the following fact:

After the death of his father, Constantius Chlorus, who expired at the imperial palace, in the city of York, A. D. 306, Constantine marched into Italy, against the cruel persecutor Maxentius, with an army of 40,000 men. During this march, he became extremely sensible of the danger of the expedition which most probably would decide the fate of the empire; and feeling some doubt as to the power of his troops, and more still, it would seem, as to the national deities whose promises had excited the hopes and disappointed the confidence of former emperors in similar exigencies, he turned his thoughts towards that Being in whom his father had more successfully trusted; and earnestly desired that some signal of the divine approbation should be afforded him. In the midst of these devout and fervent aspirations, there appeared to him, early in the afternoon, during a clear and open day, the figure of a luminous cross, immediately above or upon the body of the sun; and this was visible to his

Eccles. Hist. apud M. l'Abbé Du Voisin's Dissertat. sur la Vision de Constantin.

+ Act. Con. Nicen. 1. i. c. 4.