enthralling the mind of Christendom; and Stephen boldly renewed the attempt at domination commenced by his predecessor Victor.  His opponents deserved far greater credit for the sturdy independence with which they upheld their individual rights than for the scriptural skill with which they unmasked the sophistry of a delusive theory; for all their reasonings were enervated and vitiated by their stupid admission of the claims of the chair of Peter as the rock on which the Church was supposed to rest. [358:3] This second effort of Rome to establish her ascendancy was, indeed, a failure; but the misinterpretation of Holy Writ, by which it was encouraged, was not effectively corrected and exposed; and thus the great Western prelate was left at liberty, at another more favourable opportunity, to wrest the Scriptures for the destruction of the Church.

From the middle of the third century, the authority of the Roman bishops advanced apace.  The magnanimity with which so many of them then encountered martyrdom elicited general admiration; and the divisions caused by the schism of Novatian supplied them with a specious apology for enlarging their jurisdiction.  The argument from the necessity of unity, which was urged so successfully for the creation of a bishop upwards of a hundred years before, could now be adduced with equal plausibility for the erection of a metropolitan; and, from this date, these prelates undoubtedly exercised archiepiscopal power.  Seventy years afterwards, or at the Council of Nice, [359:1] the ecclesiastical rule of the Primate of Rome was recognised by the bishops of the ten suburbicarian provinces, including no small portion of Italy. [359:2]

For the last forty years of the third century the Church was free from persecution, and, during this long period of repose, the great Western see enjoyed an unwonted measure of outward prosperity.  Its religious services were now conducted with increasing splendour, and distressed brethren in very distant countries shared the fruits of its munificence.  In the reign of Gallienus, when the Goths burst into the Empire and devastated Asia Minor, the bishop of Rome transmitted a large sum of money for the release of the Christians who had fallen into the hands of the barbarians. [359:3] A few years afterwards, when Paul of Samosata was deposed for heresy, and when, on his refusal to surrender the property of the Church of Antioch, an application was made to the Emperor Aurelian for his interference, that prince submitted the matter in dispute to the decision of Dionysius of Rome and the other bishops of Italy. [360:1] This reference, in which the position of the Roman prelate was publicly recognised, perhaps for the first time, by a Roman Emperor, was calculated to add vastly to the importance of the metropolitan see in public estimation.  When Christianity was established about fifty years afterwards by Constantine, the bishop of the chief city was thus, to a great extent, prepared for the high position to which he was suddenly promoted.