Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/286

 orderly descent of all spiritual instruction and life to men. When this channel is stopped, which it may be by the love of dominion, greatness, riches, or any other worldly delight, these blessings are interrupted in their course; and then some judgment, to remove the cause, must be executed before that channel can be reopened for their descent. Now such a stoppage and such a removal have occurred more than once during the history of the Christian Church. The phenomena attending all such remarkable events are represented to us by that wonderful scenery in the world of spirits which is described in many chapters of the Apocalypse.

Every one knows that defections in the Church broke out in the apostolic era. They are spoken of several times in the epistles, with a view to their correction. And John, in his addresses to the seven Churches in Asia, enumerates the faults and backslidings of which each were guilty; nor are there any indications that those failings were removed. This falling away was accompanied by the increase of a variety of errors, while the love of dominion, during several generations, grew with amazing luxuriance and strength. The dogmata which had been enacted by the Council of Nice in the fourth century, were, in the fifth, succeeded by a new distress. A quarrel, which for some time had been fermenting, now broke out between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Bishop of Rome. The object of this dispute was, who should be the greatest: each had his partisans, and each had large territories to govern, with extensive jurisdiction. The Emperors of the east supported the Patriarch, those of the west maintained the pretensions of Rome; and the result was that first great division, known in the history of Christianity as the separation of the Greek from the Latin Church. In doctrine they