The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

;82 PROGRESS OF THE TEMPORAL SUPREMACY.even compared their legates with the pro-consuls of ancientRome ! While this closely-knit body, so compact in itself,yet so widely extended through all lands,—influencing all byits large possessions, and controlling every relation of life byits ministry,—was concentrating itsmighty force under theobedience of one chief, the temporal powers were crumblinginto ruin. Already, in the beginning of the twelfth century,the Provost Gerohus ventured to say, ' It will at last cometo this, that the golden image of the empire shall be shakento dust ; every great monarchy shall be divided into tetrarchates,and then only will the Church stand free and untrammelledbeneath the protection of her crowned highpriest."""* Thus did Rome seize the golden moment whenthe iron of the German race, like that of the Carlovingianbefore it, had become mixed with miry clay, to completeher work of five centuries. She had watched and waitedfor ages ; she had flattered the proud and insulted thehumble ; bowed to the strong and trampled upon the weakshe had awed men with terrors that were false, and excitedthem with hopes that were delusive ; she had stimulatedtheir passions and destroyed their souls ;she had schemed,and plotted, and intrigued, with a cunning, and a malignity,and a success, which hell itself might have envied, and whichcertainly it never surpassed ; and now her grand object waswithin her reach,—was attained.She had triumphed overthe empire ; she was lord paramount of Europe ; nationswere her footstool ;and from her lofty seat she showed herselfto the wondering tribes of earth, encompassed by thesplendour, possessing the attributes, and wielding the power,not of earthly monarchs, but of the Eternal Majesty.Accordingly, we are now arrived at the golden age of thePapacy.In a.d. 1197, Innocent ascended the papal chair.It was the fortune of this man, on whose shoulders had fallenthe mantle of Lucifer, to reap all that the popes his predecessorshad sowed in alternate triumphs and defeats.• Ranke's History of the Popes, vol. i. p. 22.