The attempts which have been made to reconcile the indignant language of Pelagius and Gregory, with the usurped prerogatives of their successors, by ingeniously exaggerating the pretensions of the Eastern Patriarch, are utterly ineffectual. Indeed, if evidence were required to prove that the assumptions of the Papacy in the present day are not inferior to those of the Patriarch of the East, we need not go farther in quest of such evidence than the Papal Brief of September last. For we do not read that John of Constantinople ever ventured of his own will and pleasure to extinguish two ancient archiepiscopal sees, together with the whole diocesan Episcopate of both provinces. We do not read that John ever had the hardihood to abolish all the Constitutions and Canons, however ancient, of an independent National Church, and to substitute for them the _jus commune_, or common law of Constantinople. We do not read that John ever presumed to grant territorial designations, and titles of honour, to his own nominees, contrary to the civil constitution of a powerful and independent kingdom, within which those titles and dignities were to be assumed. On the contrary, we know that John, so far from perpetrating aggressions on the prerogatives of foreign sovereigns, was entirely subordinate to the civil power of his own country, and depended solely on the favour and authority of the emperor for the support of his assumptions. And yet Pius the IXth ventures to do what John of Constantinople never even attempted; and has shut his eyes to the fact that he has thereby exposed himself to the anathemas of his infallible predecessors. Strong language has been used, (on some occasions too strong,) by a justly indignant people in reprobation of his presumption; but however strong that language may be, it has not as yet approached the acrimony of the expressions used by Pelagius and Gregory the Great on far inferior provocation.