That which the Sixth Canon of the Council witnesses, therefore, is the original jurisdiction of the two great mother Sees of Alexandria and Antioch over their daughter churches, which it corroborates by referring to the norm, as it were, supplied by the still greater See of Rome. Though these Sees were not called at the time of the Nicene Council patriarchal, a name which arose in the fifth century; yet the thing itself, and the institution which it denoted, existed from the beginning. The system of mother and daughter churches is shown in the highest degree in these three great Sees, in two of which St. Peter himself sat, while he founded the third by his disciple Mark. It is, in fact, a derivation from St. Peter's Primacy, and the constituent principle of the hierarchy in its intermediate gradation of ranks. As the institution of bishops throughout the world is a derivation of apostolic authority, so likewise is the repartition of jurisdiction among them. One and the same principle—power coming from above—made the whole hierarchy, whether in the bishop over the simple diocese, or in the metropolitan over a single province, or in the primate over several metropolitans, or in the central See of St. Peter, the Head of all. The three former of these gradations, the Sixth Canon of the Council recognised as of immemorial existence. With regard to the fourth, when the Roman legate at the Council of Chalcedon cited this canon, he cited it with the heading: "The Roman church always had the Primacy." And although the Greek copies of the Council did not bear this heading, the Greek bishops there did not dispute the fact which it stated. And it must be noted that this heading did not assert the Primacy of Rome to be given by the Council, but that it had always existed; nor was any fact more constantly repeated by Pope after Pope when addressing the Church in her bishops, than this, that his authority, whatever it was, was the gift of Christ to St. Peter, and not bestowed by any Council: and so of divine, not apostolical, institution.
Suburbs Digest
Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom — Part 173
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