a proposition to which one does all the honour possible in calling
it only extravagance."[122]

After all this Fleury says: "At last the Pope Vigilius resigned himself to
the advice of the Council, and six months afterwards wrote a letter to the
Patriarch Eutychius, wherein he confesses that he has been wanting in
charity in dividing from his brethren. He adds, that one ought not to be
ashamed to retract, when one recognises the truth, and brings forward the
example of St. Augustin. He says, that, after having better examined the
matter of the three chapters, he finds them worthy of condemnation. 'We
recognise for our brethren and colleagues all those who have condemned
them, and annul by this writing all that has been done by us or by others
for the defence of the three chapters.'"[123]

Nor can I think it a point of little moment that Bishops of Rome were at
different times deposed or excommunicated by other Bishops. As in the
second century the Eastern Bishops disregard St. Victor's excommunication
respecting Easter; and in the third St. Firmilian in Asia, and St. Cyprian
in Africa, disregard St. Stephen's excommunication in the matter of
rebaptizing heretics; so when the Bishops of the Patriarchate of Antioch
found that Pope Julius had received to communion St. Athanasius, and others
whom they had deposed, they proceeded to depose him, with Hosius and the
rest.[124] This was in the fourth century. In the fifth, Dioscorus, at the
Latrocinium of Ephesus, attempts to excommunicate St. Leo. In the sixth, as
we have just seen, the Bishops of Africa, Illyria, and Dalmatia, all of the
West, separate Pope Vigilius from their communion, and the former
afterwards solemnly excommunicate him. It matters not that in all these
cases the Bishops were wrong; I quote these acts merely to prove that they
esteemed the Bishop of Rome the first of all Bishops indeed, yet subject to
the Canons like themselves, and only of equal rank. For on the present
Papal theory, such an act, as we have seen le Pere Lacordaire affirm, would
be merely suicidal,--pure insanity. It is in utter contradiction to the
notion of an ecclesiastical monarchy.

In like manner we find portions of the Church, as that of Constantinople,
again and again out of communion with the Roman Pontiff, but they do not
therefore cease to be parts of the true Church. So Gieseler states that in
consequence of jealousies about the condemning the three Chapters the
Archbishops of