These lines had been enthusiastically accepted
by the great council of Chalcedon--held in the year of Attila's Gaulish
campaign--and remain from that day to this the authoritative utterance
of the Church concerning the mysterious union of the Godhead and the
manhood in the person of Jesus Christ.
And all these gifts of will, of intellect, and of soul were employed by
Leo with undeviating constancy, with untired energy, in furthering his
great aim, the exaltation of the dignity of the popedom, the conversion
of the admitted primacy of the bishops of Rome into an absolute and
world-wide spiritual monarchy. Whatever our opinions may be as to the
influence of this spiritual monarchy on the happiness of the world, or
its congruity with the character of the Teacher in whose words it
professed to root itself, we cannot withhold a tribute of admiration for
the high temper of this Roman bishop, who in the ever-deepening
degradation of his country still despaired not, but had the courage and
endurance to work for a far-distant future, who, when the Roman was
becoming the common drudge and footstool of all nations, still
remembered the proud words "_Tu regere imperio populos, Romane,
memento!_" and under the very shadow of Attila and Genseric prepared for
the city of Romulus a new and spiritual dominion, vaster and more
enduring than any which had been won for her by Julius or by Hadrian.
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