from his hand the investiture of such privileges as they still retain. If St. Gregory did not mean this by the terms 'Solus Sacerdos,' 'Universus Episcopus,' what did he mean? That the Pope should be the only Priest who offered sacrifice, or the only Bishop who ordained, confirmed, &c. is physically impossible. Nor did the title of the Bishops of Constantinople tend to this: but to claim to themselves jurisdiction over the co-ordinate Patriarchs of the East, as the Popes have since done over the Bishops of the whole world. We have no need to consider what is the amount of this difficulty to Roman Catholics themselves: the same Providence which has placed them under that obedience, has placed us outside of it. Our cause, indeed, cannot be different now from what it was at the commencement of the separation. If inherently indefensible then, it is so now. But if then 'severe but just,' the lapse of three centuries in our separate state may materially affect our relative duties. I affirm my conviction, that it is better to endure almost any degree of usurpation, provided only it be not anti-Christian, than to make a schism: for the state of schism is a frustration of the purposes of the Lord's Incarnation; and through this, not only the English, and the Eastern Church, but the Roman also, lies fettered and powerless before the might of the world, and bleeding internally at every pore. How shall a divided Church meet and overcome the philosophical unbelief of these last times? or, the one condition to which victory is attached being broken, crush the deadliest attack of the old enemy? But the schism is made; let those answer for it before Christ's tribunal who made it. Now that it is made, I see not how a system, which is not a true development of the ancient Patriarchal constitution, but its antagonist, according to St. Gregory's words, can be forced upon us, on pain of our salvation, who have the original succession of the ancient Bishops of this realm, if any such there be, and the old Patriarchal constitution, 'sua tantum si bona norint.' I ground our present position simply on the appeal to tradition and the first six centuries.