was quite different from
that power which was set up in the middle ages. This is only one of a vast
number of proofs which distinguish the Primacy from the present Supremacy.
And it is the more valuable, because St. Leo certainly carries his notion
of his own rights as universal Primate further than any Father of his time.
I shall have occasion to make a like remark presently in the matter of St.
Gregory's protest.

But, indeed, such a Canon as this being passed in the most numerous
Ecumenical Synod, in spite of the opposition of the Pope's Legates, speaks
for itself. I am well aware that St. Leo refused to receive it, that, "by
the authority of the blessed Peter, he annulled it by a general
declaration, as contrary to the holy Canons of Nicea."[106] Accordingly it
was not received in the West; but it nevertheless always prevailed in the
East, and the Popes ultimately conceded the point it enacted. And[107] from
the hour it was enacted to this, it has remained the law of the Eastern
Church; and the Patriarchal power, which in the Western Church has
developed into the Papal, has remained attached to the throne of
Constantinople in the other great division of Christ's kingdom.

The ninth Canon of Chalcedon also says:--"If a Clergyman has any matter
against his own Bishop or another, let him plead his cause before the
Council of the province. But if either a Bishop or Clergyman have a
controversy against the Metropolitan of the same province, let him have
recourse either to the Exarch of the Diocese, or to the throne of the
imperial city of Constantinople, and plead his cause before it." I remark
this, because it is a far greater power of hearing appeals granted to the
Bishop of Constantinople, than was granted to the Bishop of Rome a hundred
years before at the Council of Sardica.

Now, let us be fair and even-handed. If the great influence and authority
exercised at the Council of Chalcedon by St. Leo is to be acknowledged as
witnessing the Roman Primacy, let us also grant, that unless the Acts and
the Canons of the first four Ecumenical Councils are to be swept away as
waste paper before the omnipotence of Papal prerogative, then the ancient
decrees of Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, offer an
insurmountable barrier to the present claims of Rome. But concerning the
Canons of Nicea, St. Leo, at least, says:--"I hold all ecclesiastical rules
to be dissolved, if any part of that sacrosanct constitution of t