Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 3 5 Iearth earthy, for it had grown in spite of all worldlyinfluence, in spite of that imperial power whose forcenone knew better than himself. The acts of his predecessorswere before him, and of their last and mostdesperate attack on the Church he had been an eyewitness.He knew that during all that time it hadbeen at the best and always discouraged by them,at the worst and often persecuted. The sameness ofthe structure and the multiplicity of its extent inthis spiritual creation could not fail to strike themind of such an observer as Constantine. It wasa sight worthy of a Roman emperor, for it waswrought with more than Roman order, wisdom, andpertinacity.This was the fact, uniform and universal, as itmet the eye of Constantine. Its existence cannot bedisputed nor its force parried. By the side of it alldiscussion of certain points of detail, as, for instance,how the Apostolic power became restricted in thebishop, yet that of the bishop everywhere superior tothe priests, must be termed otiose and fruitless. Itake the unquestionable result of the Church's developmentby her own intrinsic power, since she was notfavoured by the State but throughout opposed, as theone fact which I need, and as the only one which Ithink it worth while to state. Before it all speculationsof infidel criticism fall to the ground: the factis a thousand times more powerful than them all,speaks for itself, and is sufficient. It is enough tolook upon the finished structure of the divine buildingas it rose before the gaze of the first ChristianEmperor.When Constantine examined the nature of theauthority thus everywhere set up, which so moved