n; it is impossible to say what she will do next.' For where is the
evidence of caprice in the history of the Roman Church? If any State has
been guided by a fixed policy, which has imposed itself inexorably on
its successive rulers, in spite of the utmost divergences in their
personal characters and aims, that State is the Papacy.

Beneath all the eddies which have broken the surface, the great stream
has flowed on, and has flowed in one direction. The same logic of events
which transformed the constitutional principate of Augustus into the
sultanate of Diocletian and Valentinian, has brought about a parallel
development in the Church which inherited the traditions, the policy,
and the territorial sphere of the dead Empire. The second World-State
which had its seat on the Seven Hills has followed closely in the
footsteps of the first. It is not too fanciful to trace, as Harnack has
done, the resemblance in detail--Peter and Paul in the place of Romulus
and Remus; the bishops and arch-bishops instead of the proconsuls; the
troops of priests and monks as the legionaries; while the Jesuits are
the Imperial bodyguard, the protectors and sometimes the masters of the
sovereign. One might carry the parallel further by comparing the schism
between the Eastern and Western Churches, and the later defection of
northern Europe, with the disruption of the Roman Empire in the fourth
century; and in the sphere of thought, by comparing the scholastic
philosophy and casuistry with the _Summa_ of Roman law in the
Digest.[50]

The fundamental principles of such a government are imposed upon it by
necessity. In the first place, progressive centralisation, and the
substitution of a graduated hierarchy for popular government, came about
as inevitably in the Catholic Church as in the Mediterranean Empire of
the Caesars. The primitive colleges of presbyters soon fell under the
rule of the bishops, the bishops under the patriarchs; and then Rome
suffered her first great defeat in losing the Eastern patriarchates,
which she could not subjugate. The truncated Church, no longer
'universal,' found itself obliged to continue the same policy of
centralisation, and with such success that, under Innocent III, the
triumph of the theocracy seemed complete. The Papacy dominated Europe
_de facto_, and claimed to rule the world _de jure_. Boniface VIII, when
the clouds were already gathering, issued the famous Bull 'Unam
sanctam,' in which he said: 'Subes