churchman; and though, as we have seen, there is cause to suspect that certain ecclesiastical movements in the chief city had long before excited much ill-suppressed dissatisfaction, the Christian commonwealth was now startled for the first time by a very flagrant exhibition of the arrogance of a Roman prelate. [340:1] Because the Churches of Asia Minor celebrated the Paschal feast in a way different from that observed in the metropolis, [340:2] Victor cut them off from his communion.  But this attempt of the bishop of the great city to act as lord over God’s heritage was premature.  Other churches condemned the rashness of his procedure; his refusal to hold fellowship with the Asiatic Christians threatened only to isolate himself; and he seems to have soon found it expedient to cultivate more pacific councils.

At this time the jurisdiction of Victor did not properly extend beyond the few ministers and congregations to be found in the imperial city.  A quarter of a century afterwards even the bishop of Portus, a seaport town at the mouth of the Tiber about fifteen miles distant from the capital, acknowledged no allegiance to the Roman prelate. [340:3] The boldness of Victor in pronouncing so many foreign brethren unworthy of Catholic communion may at first, therefore, appear unaccountable.  But it is probable that he acted, in this instance, in conjunction with many other pastors.  Among the Churches of Gentile origin there was a deep prejudice against what was considered the judaizing of the Asiatic Christians in relation to the Paschal festival, and a strong impression that the character of the Church was compromised by any very marked diversity in its religious observances.  There is, however, little reason to doubt that Victor was to some extent prompted by motives of a different complexion.  Fifty years before, the remarkable words addressed to the apostle of the circumcision—­“Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church” [341:1]—­were interpreted at Rome in the way in which they are now understood commonly by Protestants; for the brother of the Roman bishop Pius, [341:2] writing about A.D. 150, teaches that the Rock on which the Church is built is the Son of God; [341:3] but ingenuity was already beginning to discover another exposition, and the growing importance of the Roman bishopric suggested the startling thought that the Church was built on Peter! [341:4] The name of the Galilean fisherman was already connected with the see of Victor; and it was thus easy for ambition or flattery to draw the inference that Victor himself was in some way the heir and representative of the great apostle.  The doctrine that the bishop was necessary as the centre of Catholic unity had already gained currency; and if a centre of unity for the whole Church was also indispensable, who had a better claim to the pre-eminence than the successor of Peter?  When Victor fulminated his sentence of excommunication against the Asiatic Christians he probably acted under the partial inspiration of this novel theory.  He made an abortive attempt to speak in the name of the whole Church—­to assert a position as the representative or president of all the bishops of the Catholic world [342:1]—­and to carry out a new system of ecclesiastical unity.  The experiment was a failure, simply because the idea looming in the imagination of the Roman bishop had not yet obtained full possession of the mind of Christendom.