Why have the successors of St. Peter possessed so much power in the West and none in the East? This is just the same as to ask why the bishops of Würzburg and Salzburg obtained for themselves regal prerogatives in a period of anarchy, while the Greek bishops always remained subjects. Time, opportunity, the ambition of some, and the weakness of others, have done and will do everything in the world. We always except what relates to religion. To this anarchy, must be added opinion; and opinion is the queen of mankind. Not that, in fact, they have any very clear and definite opinion of their own, but words answer the same end with them. "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." The zealous partisans of the bishop of Rome contended, about the eleventh century, that whoever gives the greater gives the less; that heaven surrounded the earth; and that, as Peter had the keys of the container, he had also the keys of what was contained. If by heaven we understand all the stars and planets, it is evident, according to Tomasius, that the keys given to Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter, were a universal passport. If we understand by heaven the clouds, the atmosphere, the ether, and the space in which the planets revolve, no smith in the world, as Meursius observes, could ever make a key for such gates as these. Railleries, however, are not reasons. Keys in Palestine were wooden latches with strings to them. Jesus says to Barjonas, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." The pope's clergy concluded from these words, that the popes had received authority to bind and unbind the people's oath of fidelity to their kings, and to dispose of kingdoms at their pleasure. This certainly was concluding magnificently. The Commons in the states-general of France, in 1302, say, in their memorial to the king, that "Boniface VIII. was a b---- for believing that God bound and imprisoned in heaven what Boniface bound on earth." A famous German Lutheran--the great Melancthon--could not endure the idea of Jesus having said to Simon Barjonas, Cepha or Cephas, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my assembly, my church." He could not conceive that God would use such a play of words, and that the power of the pope could have been established on a pun. Such a doubt, however, can be indulged only by a Protestant.