given
recognition as an order superior to that of metropolitans and were
styled _patriarchs_. The first Council of Nice recognized this
superior authority possessed by the patriarchates of Alexandria, Rome,
and Antioch. The General Council of Constantinople placed the bishop
of Constantinople in the same rank with the other three patriarchs,
and the General Council of Chalcedon exalted the see of Jerusalem to
a similar dignity. The race for leadership between the patriarchates
then began. On account of the Moslem invasion in the seventh century,
Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch fell away from their former
positions of greatness; therefore the rivalry for leadership was
henceforth between the see of Rome and the bishop of Constantinople.
Rome possessed many natural advantages, and consequently the bishop
of Rome gained the greater prestige. The full-fledged papacy was the
result.

[Sidenote: Fundamental causes]

What produced that transition from the humble apostolic church of the
brethren to the medieval church of the impious Hildebrand, who caused
monarchs to tremble on their thrones? The change resulted from two
particular causes, and it is highly essential to our purpose that
we understand them. One was a misconception both of the Fundamental
constitution of the true church itself as designed by its Founder
and of Christ's perpetual relationship to it; and the second was
the imperialistic tendencies of that age to which the first error
naturally exposed the church.

It is unnecessary here to recite at length that conception of the
primitive church which we have described in preceding chapters as
the concrete expression of the kingdom of God. Such was the only true
_catholic_, or universal, church. Its catholicity, however, was a
moral and spiritual dominion exercised over men by the truth and
Spirit of God, and was rendered visible only in the society of
redeemed believers who held the truth and bore its appropriate fruits
of righteousness. Being composed of the redeemed, it lovingly embraced
within its membership the entire brotherhood of Christ.

[Sidenote: Two theories of catholicity]

It is not too much to say that in the age in which Christianity first
appeared it was difficult for men to appreciate the conception of a
purely moral and spiritual authority which was to be universal and
perpetual. Another idea of catholicity soon began to take possession
of men's minds--the idea of a temporal and earthly