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324 VII.

THE PAPACY WHICH CAUSED THE DIVISION HAS PERPETUATED AND STRENGTHENED IT BY INNOVATIONS, AND MADE IT A SCHISM.

From the facts which we have just discussed, it appears that the Papacy in the ninth century sought dominion over the Church, and the position of a sovereign pontificate, the centre of unity and the guardian of orthodoxy. Its defenders are very far from contesting this; but they claim that these pretensions were not new, and to prove this they appeal to the dogmatic testimony of the Fathers, to the facts of ecclesiastical history of the first centuries of the Church, and even to the word of God.

We announced it as our special purpose to show their assertions to be false in regard to the first eight centuries of the Church, and this we have done.

We grant that after the ninth century the Popes assumed to exercise the sovereign pontificate. We have pointed out the first occasions on which Rome came before the Eastern Church with her new pretensions, and we have ascertained that the Oriental Church refused to recognize them.

It is thus beyond all doubt that it was the Papacy which provoked the division, by seeking to impose a sovereignty upon the whole Church which had been unknown during the first eight centuries of the Church.

Union being reëstablished, at least in appearance, be-