The history of the Church during the two succeeding centuries is merely an exemplification of these claims. It was in the spirit of this document that Innocent II, in the speech with which he opened the Second Lateran Council in 1139, reminded his hearers that Rome was the head of the world, and that the highest ecclesiastical offices were derived from the Roman pontiff as by a kind of feudal right, and could not he lawfully held without his permission. Innocent III, we have seen, describes himself as the Vicar of God or of Jesus Christ. Thus, although the Pope is potentially present everywhere in the Church, he cannot exercise the great power belonging to the office personally, so that he has called in his brethren, the co-bishops, to share in the care of the burden entrusted to himself; but in doing so he has subtracted in no whit from the fulness of power which enables him to enquire into individual cases and to assume the office of judge at will. Others, then, may be admitted to a share in the care of the Church (_pars solicitudinis_); but to the Pope has been given the fulness of power (_plenitudo potestatis_). Thomas Aquinas shows how bishop and archbishop equally derive their authority from the Pope, and finds parallels to the relationship between the Pope and the other officers of the Church in the dependence of all things created upon God and the subordination of the proconsul to the Emperor. This deliberate policy on the part of the Papacy to absorb into itself the whole spiritual authority of the Church may be traced in its attempts to set itself up as supreme administrator, supreme lawgiver, and supreme judge.