O Christe, numen unicum ut discrepantum gentium
O splendor, O virtus Patris, mores et observantiam,
O factor orbis et poli, linguas et ingenia et sacra,
atque auctor horum moenium! unis domares legibus.
Qui sceptra Romae in vertice En omne sub regnum Remi
rerum locasti, sanciens mortale concessit genus:
mundum quirinali togae idem loquuntur dissoni
servire et armis cedere: ritus, id ipsum sentiunt.
Hoc destinatum, quo magis Confoederantur omnia
ius Christiani nominis hinc inde membra in symbolum:
quodcunque terrarum iacet mansuescit orbis subditus:
uno illigaret vinculo. mansuescat et summum caput.
Da, Christe, Romanis tuis Peristephanon, ii. 413 ff.
sit Christiana ut civitas:
per quam dedisti ut caeteris
mens una sacrorum foret.
(2) The Pope, Leo the Great (c. A.D. 450), speaks thus (Serm. lxxxii. 2): 'That the result of this unspeakable grace (the Incarnation) might be spread abroad throughout the world, God's providence made ready the Roman Empire, whose growth has reached so far that the whole multitude of nations have been brought into neighbourhood and connexion. For it particularly suited the divinely planned work that many kingdoms should be leagued together in one empire, so that the universal preaching might make its way quickly through nations already united under the government of one state. And yet that state, in ignorance of the author of its aggrandisement, though it ruled almost all races, was enthralled by the errors of them all; and seemed to itself to have received a great religion, because it had rejected no falsehood. And for this very reason its emancipation through Christ was the more wondrous that it had been so fast bound by Satan.' Leo further recognizes that the Popes are entering into the position of the Caesars (c. 1), that Rome, 'made the head of the world by being the holy see of blessed Peter, should rule more widely by means of the divine religion than of earthly sovereignty.' But his statement of the relation of Peter to Paul in the evangelization of the world (c. 5) is remarkably unhistorical.
NOTE B. See p. 29.
THE (SO-CALLED) 'LETTERS OF HERACLEITUS.'
Nine letters under the name of the great philosopher of Ephesus remain to us. In one of them (iv) Heracleitus is represented as saying to some Ephesian adversaries, 'If you had been able to live again by a new birth 500 years hence, you would have discovered Heracleitus yet alive [i.e. in the memory of men] but not so much as a trace of your name.' This probably indicates that the author is writing 500 years after Heracleitus' supposed age. His age was differently estimated. But '500 years after Heracleitus' would mean, according to all reckonings, about the first half of the first century A.D. All the other indications of age in the letters agree with this. (See Jacob Bernays' Heraclitischen Briefe, Berlin, 1869, p. 112.) They were written presumably at Ephesus, and all or most of them by a Stoic philosopher. I do not think that it is necessary to assume traces of Jewish influence in these letters, any more than in the writings of Seneca. And the bulk of the letters is so thoroughly Stoic and contrary to Jewish feeling, that a Jew is hardly likely to have interpolated them. They illustrate therefore the current philosophic ideas which were at work in the world in which St. Paul lived and taught, when he was outside Judaea. That St. Paul was familiar with these ideas, however his familiarity may have been gained, is shown beyond possibility of mistake by his speeches—supposing them substantially genuine—at Lystra and Athens.
The following passages in these letters are interesting: