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22 churches is supported only upon a custom legalized by Councils.

As for the universal sovereignty, absolute, of divine right — in other words, the Papacy — facts and catholic testimony of the first eight centuries condemn instead of sustaining it.

History reveals to us the Papacy, after several fruitless attempts, taking its birth from circumstances and establishing itself in the ninth century, with its double political and ecclesiastical character. Its real founder was Adrian L Nicholas I. chiefly contributed to its development; Gregory VII. raised it to its loftiest pitch.

Adrian I. was in fact the first Pope. They who before this occupied the see of Rome, were only bishops, successors, not of St. Peter, as has been declared and repeated to satiety, but of Linus, who was already bishop of Rome when St. Peter arrived in that city, to seal there by his martyrdom the faith he had preached. The defenders of the Papacy commit, therefore, at the outset, one of the grossest historical errors in carrying back the Papacy, that is, the Papal sovereignty, to the origin of Christianity. This error has led them to a thousand others, impelled, as they have been, to seek proofs for the support of this false theory in the history of the Church and in the writings of the ancient fathers. They have thus wrested facts and distorted testimonies. They have even dared to attack Holy Scripture, and by delusive anti-catholic interpretation, made it bear false witness in favor of their system. It is thus that the Church of Rome was the first to give example of those individual interpretations for which she so bit-