Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/319

272 Cicero, Cæsar, passed to the Christian bishops, as that genius fled from the earth, howling over his crumbled work. The spirit of those ancient heroes came into the Church; their practical skill; their obstinate endurance; their power of speech with words like battles; their lust of power; their resolution which nothing could overturn, or satisfy. The Greek Christians were philosophic, literary; they could sling stones at a hair's-breadth. In the early times they had all the advantage of position; “the chairs of the apostles;” the Christian Scriptures written in their tongue. Theirs were the great names of the first centuries, Polycarp, Justin, the Clements, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, Basil, the Gregories, Chrysostom. But the Latin Church had the practical skill, the soul to dare, and the arm to execute: its power therefore advanced step by step. Its chiefs were dexterous men, with the coolness of Cæsar, and the zeal of Hannibal. Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, would have been powerful men anywhere—in the court of Sardanapalus, or a college of Jesuits. They brought the world into the Church. ’Twas the world's gain, but the Church's loss. The Emperor soon learned to stoop his conquering eagles to the spiritual power, which shook the capital. The Church held divided sway with him. The spiritual sceptre was wrested from his hands. Constantine fled to Byzantium as much to escape the Latin clergy as to defend himself from the warriors of the North.

Now the Catholic Church held to the first truths of Religion and of Christianity, as before shown. Its peculiar and distinctive doctrine was this, that God still acts upon and inspires mankind, being in some measure immanent therein. This doctrine is broad enough to cover the world, powerful enough to annihilate the arrogance of any Church. But the Roman party limited this doctrine by adding, that God did not act by a natural law, directly on the mind and conscience, heart and soul, of each man, who sought faithfully to approach Him, but acted miracu-