Papacy

“ But, exclaims my vehement red-faced Saxon friend, you are making Papists by letting the Puseyites remain. I don’t know that. Papacy is alien to human nature, or it is not. If it is not, you cannot get rid of it. If cut down to-day, it will sprout up again to-morrow. It springs from a tendency, I take it, in the human heart. ”

“ Every principle of the papacy that existed in past ages exists to-day. The doctrines devised in the darkest ages are still held. Let none deceive themselves. The papacy that Protestants are now so ready to honor is the same that ruled the world in the days of the Reformation, when men of God stood up, at the peril of their lives, to expose her iniquity. She possesses the same pride and arrogant assumption that lorded it over kings and princes, and claimed the prerogatives of God. ”

“ The history of the Papacy is one long drama, in which every passion plays a part, in which the most earthly motives are abetted by celestial sanctions, in which the chief actors succeed each other with unexampled rapidity, where poetical justice plays its due part, and where it seldom happens that we are sent away with a disappointing anti-climax. ”

“ The Papacy is too old and too feeble even to die with dignity. Of itself the sight of a falling power, of a dynasy in extremis, commands something of respect if not of regret; but the conduct of the Papacy deprives it of the sympathy that is due to its misfortunes. ”

“ The ideal of the Papacy was perhaps the noblest which has ever entered into the heart of man to conceive. According to it, the Pope was to be the High Priest of God and Vicar of Christ, higher than the kings of the earth. ”

“ What immense services did not Catholicism render to existing states on their first formation, at a time when it was still strongly impregnated with the Gospel, and when the Papacy was only sketched above it in faint outline! But we are far away from those times. In our day an attempt is made to yoke Catholicism to the Papacy; and if catholic Christian truths are presented, they are little else than baits to allure men into the nets of the hierarchy. ”

“ POSITION OF THE PAPACY When Gregory the Great closed his remarkable career, the Papacy had reached a commanding place in western Christendom. To their spiritual authority the popes had now begun to add some measure of temporal power as rulers at Rome and in Italy. During the eighth century, as we have already learned, [17] the alliance of the popes and the Franks helped further to establish the Papacy as an ecclesiastical monarchy, ruling over both the souls and bodies of men. ”

“ Thus He established the service in the heavenly sanctuary. The little horn, the Papacy, as far as was within its power, took away from the people the mediation of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary, and substituted for it the Roman priesthood, with the Pope as Pontifex Maximus, or high priest. Power over this truth of the gospel and over the people of God was allowed to the Papacy because of transgression (Dan. 8:12, R. V.) , just as the people of Jerusalem were given into the hand of the king of ancient Babylon for the same reason. ”

“ The prophet was shown (Rev. 13:11-17) this likeness or image to the Papacy—ecclesiastical organizations not of the Papacy itself, but following papal principles in this matter—seeking to compel men to receive the mark of the papal apostasy.
Against the workings of both the Papacy and this image to the Papacy, the last message of the "everlasting gospel" lifts its warning cry:
"If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God." ”

“ To these sources of power and influence another has yet to be added. The power of the Papacy was the band which bound together the bundle of sticks, that is to say, which sufficed for a long time to outweigh all the jealousies between regulars and seculars, between monks and friars, between dignified and lower clergy, and to bind the whole sacerdotal order into one vast army, with the Pope for its emperor and generalissimo. ”

“ As we have, in the foregoing remarks, conceived of the papacy as the angle at which the two sides of Catholicism meet, the uniting bond of the outward and inward catholicity of the Church, we are further bound to show why precisely the papacy is the appropriate organ to establish that union between the essence and the manifestation of Catholicism, and thereby to mediate the actualization of the true idea of the Church. ”

“ The design which occurs to me is to write a study of the Papacy by taking a score of the outstanding Popes—which means, in effect, a score of the more significant or critical stages in the development of the Papacy—and giving an adequate account of the work and personality of each. The evolution of the Papacy has not, like the evolution of life in general, been continuous. ”

“ Indeed, its sphere of influence was still more extensive, for its labours in the field of dogma and ecclesiastical law conditioned the future evolution of the Roman Catholic Church. As regards the position of the papacy, it is of epoch-making significance—not merely in its actual pronouncements on the papal see, but also in its tacit subordination to that see, and the opportunities of increased influence accorded to it. ”

“ To him the Papacy was the representative of God on earth, the founda- tion and norm of all order in human society. The Pope could, he held, judge all men, but could be judged by none save God, who would judge him more sternly than the rest. ”

“ For a long time the Papacy had had no higher aim than to be a secular power exploiting its spiritual authority for the purpose of promoting its worldly interests, by which it was exclusively governed. ”

“ Yes, all; he who exalts our age, and he who bewails its errors, he whose heart is rejoiced, and he who sheds tears over the events of our century; princes and people, the priesthood and the laity, religion and civilization, faith and science. Assuredly, were any additional proof necessary to demonstrate to conviction, by the evidence of reason and history, that the Papacy is the heart of humanity, the heart in which all the aspirations of humanity converge and unite, here would be the proof in the summons that convened this Œcumenical Council. ”

“ But in the Church-confession of faith, as we have before shown, its inner being comes into visible manifestation. As medium of Peter's preaching of the faith, the papacy is consequently also a Church-constitutive principle, inasmuch as through the actualization of the supreme power delegated to him by Christ, the being of the Church is made visible, and obtains an historical form. ”

“ Yet, though the Papacy is so obviously an essential part of a Church whose mission is to all mankind, it is the chosen object of attack both to enemies of Catholicism and to discontented Catholics. Serious and learned men complain of its tyranny, and say that it claims universal dominion, and watches for an opportunity of obtaining it; and yet, in reality, there is no power on earth whose action is restricted by more sacred and irresistible bonds than that of the Holy See. ”

“ The papacy has been a jealous mother, seeking to supplant a husband in the temporal power, and she has lost the confidence of her children, while the temporal power in its usurpation of the priesthood is not less ridiculous than a man who should pretend to know better than a mother how to manage the home and nursery. ”

“ In what manner is the Society of Jesus to become a counterpoise to the papacy, and, if need be, dominate the papacy itself, should the latter swerve from the route it should pursue in order to insure the absolute government of the nations of the world to the Catholic Church? ”

“ In Paul III., we have the last representative of the Papacy of the Renaissance wavering between the grim menace of Germany and the unpleasantness of reform. In Sixtus V. and Benedict XIV. we study two of the great efforts of the new Papacy [Pg xi] to preserve the remaining half of its territory. In Pius VII., Pius IX., and Leo XIII. we see the Papacy meeting the successive waves of the modern revolution. ”

“ The papacy is well adapted to meet the wants of all these. It is prepared for two classes of mankind, embracing nearly the whole world,—those who would be saved by their merits, and those who would be saved in their sins. ”

“ The story of the Papacy itself in the fourteenth century is as important and striking as that of any of the larger European States. The State of the Church had been built up by successive papal assumptions on the basis of religious authority perverted into secular feudalism, and by means of extravagant tolls levied upon the religious devotion of Christendom. ”

“ The one has sustained the other; either one would long since have fallen if it had not been upheld by the other. The Papacy, considered as a spiritual domination, was in fact a new power starting up in the same place as the old Roman dominion, to give life to that as it was tending to decay, and to continue its ascendency over the world. ”

“ The spectacle will have been exhibited of a bishop who had, during a life already long, given strong proofs of devotion to the Church and to the Papacy, becoming all at once the butt for insult and for those indignities against which you protest, because on a capital question he said what he believed, and still believes, to be for the true interests of religion and of the Papacy. ”

“ After endeavoring to connect every great movement of recent and mediæval history inimical, or supposed to be inimical, to Germany with the machinations of the Papacy, he goes on to say: “It is, in my estimation, a falsification of politics and of history when His Holiness the Pope is considered exclusively as the high-priest of any one confession, or the Catholic Church as representative of churchdom in general. The Papacy has been in all times a political power which, with the determination and with the greatest success, interfered in all the relations of this world ”

“ In this book, the argument for the Papal Supremacy from Scripture and Tradition is presented in a clear and cogent manner, with solid learning, admirable reasoning, and in a lucid and charming style, rendering it perfectly intelligible to any reader of ordinary education. It is impossible for any sophistry or cavilling to escape from the irresistible force of Mr. Allies's reasoning. It is a moral demonstration of the perpetual existence and divine institution of the papacy in the Christian church. ”

“ For the natural and necessary development of one of the chief factors of pure Christianity was seen to be in direct conflict with the teaching and practice of the Papacy. If the Spiritual Franciscans were right, the Pope, the superior clergy, the monks, the Dominicans themselves, were all unapostolic, not to say anti-Christian. ”

“ The traditions in the long run have made the papacy; they are its chief support to-day. To accept them bodily, in mass, is to appeal to actual Christendom—to the historic church—as to a standard and law, and not as to a witness of truth. It is to acknowledge the identity of Christian truth and the Christian Church visible. This brings us again to Romanism, or this is the postulate of the Roman Catholic apologist. ”

“ A Baptism of Fire, a New Pentecost, a rapidly diffused reign of righteousness all the earth over, and other such expressions, intimated the marvels that were to inaugurate the fresh era. The calculating men had counted on the display of power and union, whereof the Papacy was made the centre, to produce a great impression upon princes and politicians; an impression to which they would, on the other hand, be predisposed by the fear of revolution. ”

“ Temporal dominion was taken away from the Papacy in 1870, but nevertheless its power and influence among the nations have been increasing since then. “In that year,” says Mr. Guinness in his work “Romanism and the Reformation,” page 156, “the Papacy assumed the highest exaltation to which it could aspire, that of infallibility.” To such a position of influence over the nations is the Papacy finally to attain that just before her complete overthrow and destruction she will say, “I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.” ”

“ To submit to such thraldom men must be bigoted in its favour; and that we see is the case of Spain, in Portugal, in Austria, in Italy, in Flanders, in Ireland, and in all countries where you have Papacy in full blow. And does not history prove, that however other sects may have languished under the relaxing influence of good fortune, Papacy has ever been most fiery and rampant when most prosperous? ”

“ THE storm of words aroused the world over by a Papal diplomatic Note is another proof that the Papacy has lost none of its power and prestige, and is still, on this threshold of the twentieth century, the incarnation of moral power opposed to mere brute force, the right of the strongest. ”

“ Had the question whether the Papacy was a divine organ of truth, or merely a contrivance of clever old men, liable to be overseen, like other mortals, in their words and deeds, been designedly subjected to a fair test, we can with difficulty conceive of one fairer or more conclusive, than that first utterance from the recognized seat of inerrancy. There is nothing divine in it, and the human elements do not rise above a very ordinary level. ”

“ In the Papacy, so Luther says in so many words, “people sought to be saved through Aristotle.” [318] “In the Papacy the parents did not provide for their children. They believed that only monks and priests could be saved.” [319] “In the Papacy you will hardly meet with an honest man who lives up to his calling” (i.e. who performs his duties as a married man) . ”