Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/182

192 the Patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria, in a letter to him, made use of expression, ‘as you commanded,’ Gregory desired him never again to employ such a phrase; ‘for,’ said he, ‘I know who I am, and who you are. You are my brother in dignity, but on account of your piety, I regard you as my father. I have not commanded you in any thing, I have endeavored only to show you that which appeared profitable to me.’ Eulogius had also called him, Papa Unversalis, a title of honor, which the Greeks, with their taste for a rhetorical and complimentary mode of speech, often allowed to their bishops. Gregory, however, felt this to be unseemly, and wrote to Eulogius, as well as to others, who also gave him the designation of universal bishop; ‘ Far from us be all terms which inflate pride and wound love!’ He strove earnestly that this name should be alone applied to the Saviour, as the invisible head of the general church, regarding it as inapplicable to any man. ‘And truly,’ adds he, ‘when Paul heard that some said, “I am of Paul, others of Apollos, and others again of Cephas,” he exclaimed with the greatest abhorrence of this sundering from Christ, “Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in Paul's name?” If the Apostle could not thus bear that the members of the Lord's body should arrange themselves piecemeal under other heads, what canst thou, at the last day, reply to Christ—the head of the universal church—who hast endeavored to subordinate to thyself all the members of Christ. And truly, what is Peter, the first amongst the Apostles, other than a member of the holy, universal church? What are Paul,