THE PAPAL GOVERNMENT. 623 



was unaware, or, if aware, of the manner in which the strong hand of 

 Providence inverted her designs, that by this, her system of universal 

 toleration of every ancient faith, /she absolutely destroyed them all. 

 Brought thus to bear upon one another at a common central point, their 

 contradictions, inconsistencies, fallacy, and emptiness became apparent. 

 The men of capacity first made the detection, their opinions spreading 

 by degrees through society. Well might St. Chrysostom say that the 

 error of idolatry vanished of itself, and that paganism seemed in his day 

 " like a conquered city, whose walls were overthrown, her halls, theatres, 

 and public buildings consumed by fire, her defenders slain, and here and 

 there a few old men and children lingering among the ruins. Even 

 these were soon found no more." 



It is sometimes said that the Boman empire was essentially composed 

 of cities ; that at its fall its fragments were cities ; and that it left nothing 

 to posterity but its municipal system. Such a statement is not true. 

 Its legacy was of a far higher order. It left the religion it had adopted, 

 the civil law, and the foreshadowing of the great deeds that might be ac- 

 complished by the white man organized and united. To this, in a more 

 perfect way, the affairs of our times are still conspicuously tending. We 

 begin to hear of the opinion of Europe, the public law of Europe, expres- 

 sions which are gaining each day more and more significance. 



In that phantasmagorial. exhibition which we call history, events give 

 birth to events as in dissolving views, the phantoms of the i nfluenceoftlie 

 actors stalking one after another. It is not always possible empire in its 

 for us, with the slender information we possess, to determine 

 the time of origin of etch incident, or its true and actual bearings. The 

 secret history of antiquity is almost unknown. Nearly every circum- 

 stance in the decline of the Roman empire was fraught with important 

 consequences for modern times. Among the more obvious facts which 

 attract our attention are the dislocation of the centre of the empire by 

 the translation of the seat of government to Constantinople, the conse- 

 quent acquisition of power by the bishops of Home in the West, the in- 

 cessant emigrations and invasions of barbarians from the North, the con- 

 quests of the Saracens, from whom it seemed af one time that Europe 

 would hardly escape, and that the threat of Muza would come to pass, 

 that the name of Mohammed should be proclaimed in the Vatican ; the 

 consolidation of ecclesiastical policy, and the repeated attempts of the 

 Church to suppress barbarism attempts so signally successful that by 

 the end of the eighth century many of those nations had written systems 

 of law ; the separation of the Greek and Latin Churches, the The Papal 

 different phases which the latter assumed as she was affected government, 

 by existing circumstances, how she extricated herself from an almost 

 barbarous state after the empire had failed her, how she asserted the in- 



