Thus, the bishops, or metropolitans, of certain of the most important cities were exalted to a still higher position as special heads of the church.  They were termed Exarchs at first, after the title of the provincial governors, but afterwards received the more ecclesiastical appellation Patriarchs.  The term Patriarch had been in use for a long time in the church signifying merely a bishop, irrespective of the dignity he possessed, but it was finally limited to this higher class of the clergy, in which sense I now employ it.  The cities that first enjoyed this chief distinction were Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch.  The general council of Nice (A.D. 325) in its sixth canon recognized the superior authority already possessed by these cities.  See D’Aubigne’s Hist, of Reformation, Vol.  I, p. 41.  The general council of Constantinople in its third canon placed the bishop of Constantinople in the same rank with the other three Patriarchs; and the general council of Calcedon exalted the See of Jerusalem to a similar dignity, doubtless because of its ancient importance as the birthplace of Christianity.  Thus, Patriarchs were established in the five political capitals of the Roman empire; and they were considered the “heads of the church,” having spiritual authority over the whole empire.  These were the only Patriarchates of importance.  Certain ecclesiastics of the Church of Rome even at the present time bear the honorary title Patriarch; but, to quote the words of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “In a strictly technical sense, however, that church recognizes only five Patriarchates, those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome.”  Art.  Patriarch.  In the years 637 to 640 Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch fell into the hands of the Saracen followers of Mohammed, which terminated their importance, and later the Greek schism separated the Patriarch of Constantinople from Rome; and thus the Patriarch of Rome was left in undisputed possession of the field and was soon recognized as universal head of the church.  So under the symbol of this dread rider on a pale horse is portrayed the great hierarchal system by which the Papacy was fully developed in the West.

It is fitting that we notice particularly the agents of destruction employed by this rider.  He possesses a sword with which to kill—­the same instrument wielded by the rider of the red horse—­but it is evident that he uses it with more terrific energy, by reason of which he receives the name Death, or The Destroyer.  It is possible, also, that in this case a sword, wielded by the hand of an ecclesiastical power, may be used as a symbol of a spiritual cutting off, or excommunication.  The sword of excommunication has been the most terrible ever wielded by human hand.  When this pale horseman was careering over the world in the zenith of his power, excommunication and interdiction were the terror of individuals and the scourge of nations.  At his word the rights of an individual as king, ruler, husband or father, nay, even as a man, were forfeited, and he was shunned like one infected with the leprosy.  At his command the offices of religion were suspended in a nation, and its dead lay unburied, until its proud ruler humbled himself at the feet of the ecclesiastical tyrant who bore rule over the “fourth part of the earth."[4]