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

THE PAPACY AND MILTON's FIEND.S7robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitantslike a valiant man. And my hand hath found, as a nest,the riches of the people ; and as one gathereth eggs thatare left, have I gathered all the earth ; and there was nonethat moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.""'Thus have we traced the course of the papal power, fromits feeble rise in the second century, to its full developmentin the thirteenth. We have seen how the infant pontiffwas suckled by the imperial wolf (for the fables of heathenmythology find their truest realization in the Papacy, and,from being myths, become vaticinations), and how, waxingstrong on the pure milk of Paganism, he grew to manhood,and, being grown, discovered all the genuine pagan and vulpinequalities of the mother that nursed him,—the passionfor images and the thirst for blood. The Ethiopian cannotchange his skin ; and the world has now found out thatthe beast of the Roman hill is but a wolf in sheep"'s clothing.How often have slaughter and carnage covered the foldwhich he professed to guard ! Take it all in all, the storyof the papal power is a dismal drama,—the gloomiest thatdarkens history ! We look back upon the past ; and, as webehold this terrible power growing continually bigger anddarker, and casting fresh shadows, with every succeedingage, upon the liberty and religion of the world, till at lastboth came to be shrouded in impenetrable night, we are remindedof those tragedies and horrors with which the imaginationof Milton has given grandeur to his song. Tonothing can w-e liken the progress of the Papacy, throughthe wastes of the middle ages to the universaldominationof the thirteenth and succeeding centuries, save to thepassage of the fiend from the gates of pandemonium cOthe sphere of the newly-created world. The old dragon ofPaganism, broken loose from the abyss into which he hadbeen cast, sallied forth in quest of the world of young Christianity,as Satan from hell, with the like fiendish intent of* Isaiah, x. 13, 14.