all hear again[25]. It is quite in his
style.

It is natural to say, and many of us no doubt have said it, that there is
no improbability in the statement that such an application was made. I
used to think so, but each further investigation makes the improbability
seem more real. Neither if we look to the Church of Rome, at the time, nor
if we look to the state of Gaul, shall we find encouragement for a story,
which in itself it would be very pleasant to believe of our British
predecessors. It might be thought not unlikely that some Christian,
escaping from the terrible persecutions just then enacted at Lyons and
Vienne, had fled northwards through lands all pagan, and had reached pagan
Britain. But if that were so, he would scarcely tell Lucius to send to
Rome. There were Christians in Southern Gaul: send to them. The man's
allegiance to a centre would be to Asia Minor, not to Rome. The Bishops of
Rome, too, were not particularly strong men in early times, nor men of
much distinction. The really great men were in the East; were in Africa;
anywhere but Rome. The secular world was still ruled from the pagan city
of Rome; but ecclesiastical Rome was not in a large way as yet: it did not
as yet live up to its natural position. Rome was marked out by its supreme
secular position to be the centre of the Western Church; and it had,
besides, the great ecclesiastical claim of its origin. It was the most
ancient of the Churches of the West. It alone could stand the test, stated
so convincingly by Tertullian, of Apostolical foundation; for it, and it
alone in the West, had a letter that could be read in its churches from
the Apostle who founded it. Rome, as Tertullian says, had a letter written
by its founder, equal in this supreme respect, as he puts it, to Corinth,
Philippi, Thessalonica, Ephesus. It had also the exceptional happiness, as
Tertullian justly describes it, of being the scene of the martyrdom of its
founder, St. Paul; and of that other great Apostle who found a grave
there, St. Peter; to which Tertullian adds the miracle of St. John at the
Latin gate. The force of the claim which its secular position gave to it
was fully and justly recognised by the Second General Council, in terms
which are a permanent stumbling-block to the mediaeval claims of Rome. The
Fathers, assembled in 381, declared that the see of Constantinople should
rank next in precedence to the see of Rome, on the ground that
Constantinople, now the se