The remarks of Tillemont on this Canon are significant, and worth transcribing.[99] "It seems," he says, "to recognise no particular authority in the Church of Rome, save what the Fathers had granted it, as the seat of the empire. And it attributes in plain words as much to Constantinople as to Rome, with the exception of the first place. _Nevertheless I do not observe that the Popes took up a thing so injurious to their dignity, and of so dangerous a consequence to the whole Church._ For what Lupus quotes of St. Leo's 78th (104th) letter, refers rather to Alexandria and to Antioch, than to Rome. St. Leo is contented to destroy the foundation on which they built the elevation of Constantinople, maintaining that a thing so entirely ecclesiastical as the Episcopate ought not to be regulated by the temporal dignity of cities, which, nevertheless, has been almost always followed in the establishment of the metropolis, according to the Council of Nicea. "St. Leo also complains that the Council of Chalcedon broke the decrees of the Council of Nicea, the practice of antiquity, and the rights of Metropolitans. Certainly it was an odious innovation to see a Bishop made the chief, not of one department, but of three; for which no example could be found save in the authority which the Popes took over Illyricum, where, however, they did not claim the power to ordain any Bishop." Now I suppose any Roman Catholic would observe that this Canon is entirely opposed to the present Papal theory: he would say that St. Leo and the West for that very reason refused to receive it. The opposition, beyond all question, is such, that it is quite impossible to reconcile them. Let any one, then, read through the 104th letter of St. Leo to the Emperor Mauricius, the 105th to the Empress Pulcheria, and the 106th to Anatolius himself, and he will see that St. Leo bases his opposition to it throughout on its being a violation of the Nicene Canons: there is not a word in all the three letters about any violation of the rights of St. Peter. May we not quote, alas! St. Leo's words, in these letters, to St. Leo's successor. "He[100] loses his own, who lusts after what is not his due.... For the privileges of the Churches, instituted by the Canons of the holy Fathers, and fixed by the decrees of the venerable Nicene Synod, cannot be plucked up by any wickedness, or changed by any innovation. In the faithful execution of which work, by the help of Christ, I am bound to show persevering service; since the dispensation has been entrusted to me, and it tends to my guilt, if the rules of the Fathers' sanctions, which were made in the Nicene Council for the government of the whole Church, by the teaching of God's Spirit, be violated, which God forbid, by my connivance; and if the desire of one brother be of more weight with me than the common good of the whole house of the Lord." This to the Emperor. To the Empress, thus:--"Since no one is allowed to attempt[101] anything against the