f the first ages." "The Bishop represents
Christ, and stands in his place on earth. As therefore the Priesthood of
Christ embraces all sacerdotal authority and complete power to feed the
flock, so that while we may indeed distinguish and define the various
powers included in that fullness and perfection, yet it is a great crime to
dissever and rend them in any way from each other, just as we distinguish
without dividing the attributes and perfections of the Godhead itself; so
the Episcopate in its own nature contains the fullness of the Priesthood,
and the perfection of the Pastoral office. For Christ received the
perfection of the Priesthood from His Father, when He was sent by Him.
Moreover the perfection of the Priesthood, or both the Episcopal powers,
(_i.e._ the Sacerdotal and the Pastoral,) He gave at once to His Apostles
when he sent them as He himself was sent by the Father. Lastly, that same
perfection they transmitted to Bishops, sending them as they themselves
were sent by Christ." "Whence Bishops are Fathers by the most noble
participation of divine Fathership which is on earth; so that here that
expression of Paul is true--'From whom every Fathership in heaven and earth
is named.' For no greater Fathership is there on the earth than the
Apostolical and the Episcopal." _Thomassin_, Part I. Liv. i. ch. 2.

And, viewed in itself, this power was sovereign and independent in every
individual Bishop, who was the spouse of the Church, the successor of the
Apostles, and of Peter, the centre of unity; able, moreover, to communicate
this authority to others, and to become the source of a long line of
spiritual descendants. But was this power in practice exercised in so
unmodified a form? Would there not have been not only imminent danger, but
almost certainty, that a power unlimited in its nature, committed to so
large a body of men, who might become indefinitely more numerous, yet were
each independent centres of authority, instead of tending to unity would
produce diversity? Accordingly we find, together with the apostolical
authority, admitted to be lodged in the Episcopal body in general, a
preponderating influence exercised by certain sees, viz. by Rome in the
West, and by Alexandria and Antioch in the East. Under these leading
Bishops are a great number of metropolitans; and others, again, like the
Bishops of Cyprus, have their own metropolitan, but are not subordinate to
either of the three great sees. Next to t