Ladies and Gentlemen,--It is plain that the importance of the churches
in the primitive Christian community was in proportion to their
apostolic nobility. The guaranty of orthodoxy was in the succession of
the bishops, by which the great churches were linked to the apostles. A
direct line appeared to afford a very strong assurance of conformity of
doctrine, and it was jealously maintained. Now, what can be said of a
church founded by both Peter and Paul? It is clear that such a church
ought to endure in order to have a veritable superiority over others.
The _chef-d'[oe]uvre_ of the competency of the Roman Church was the
establishment of this superiority. That once assured, the ecclesiastical
destiny of Rome was established. When this city should have cast off her
secular character, she would have another,--a sacred capacity,
corresponding to that of Jerusalem.
She would know how to confiscate to her profit this Christianity which
she had so cruelly combated,--so much had humanity suffered, to escape
from those whom fate had designed for this great secular task, _regere
imperio populos!_
Under Antonine and Marcus Aurelius, Rome reached its highest grandeur;
its rule of the whole world seemed to be undisputed; no cloud could be
seen upon its horizon. The emigration from the provinces, above all from
the Orient, was augmented rather than lessened. The Greek-speaking
population was larger than it had ever been. All who desired a place in
the world aspired to come to Rome: nothing was sanctioned until it had
received the stamp of this universal exposition of the products of the
entire universe.
The centre of a future catholic orthodoxy was evidently there. The
well-developed germ of the Papacy existed under Antonine. The Church of
Rome showed itself more and more indifferent to those crude Gnostic
speculations which occupied some minds filled with the intellectual
activity of the Greeks, but tainted with the reveries of the Orient. The
organization of Christian society was the principal labor at Rome. This
extraordinary city applied to this object the energetic moral strength
and the practical genius which she has employed in the most diverse
causes. Careless of speculation, decidedly hostile to dogmatic
innovations, she presided there,--a mistress already trained by all the
changes which had been brought about in discipline and in the
hierarchy.