succession of haughty prelates who equalled the magnificence and exceeded the arrogance of kings.[1]
From the day of its birth almost to the present hour the Church has been agitated by internal dissensions generated by the efforts of reason to understand and to define those inscrutable mysteries, to a belief in which every supernatural religion must owe its existence. The primitive religion of the ancients was a natural growth, accepted insensibly during a state of savagery and maintained politically long after it had been repudiated by philosophy, but Christianity was offered to a world already advanced in civilization, and had to pass through a process of intellectual digestion before it could take its place as an unassailable national belief. The Church, before it stands clearly revealed in the light of history, had been inspired with the conception of a Trinity by a contemplation of the Platonic philosophy; and the problem as to how this doctrine could be expounded as not inconsistent with monotheism occasioned the first of those great councils called Oecumenical. It met in 325 at Nicaea. St. Martin of Tours (c. 370) was waited on at table by the Empress; he handed the cup to his chaplain, thus giving him precedence over the Emperor; Sulp. Severus, Vita St. M., 20; Dial., ii, 6. See further Gieseler, op. cit., i, 91.]
- ↑ In 367 Damasus and Ursinus fought a battle in one of the Roman churches for the papal seal; 137 corpses were removed next day from the pavement of the sacred edifice. "I am not surprised at the contention," says Ammianus, "when I consider the splendour of the dignity. The successful aspirant is enriched by the offerings of matrons, rolls about in his chariot sumptuously apparelled, and surpasses the profusion of royalty in his banquets"; xxvii, 3. As the Vicar of God, bishops professed to stand above temporal princes; Apostol. Constit., ii, 34. The Bishop of Tripolis declared to the Empress Eusebia (c. 350) that he would not visit her unless she descended from the throne to meet him, kissed his hands, and waited his permission to reseat herself after he had sat down, etc.; Suidas, sb. [Greek: Leontios
