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

lOGFOUNDATION AND EXTENT OF THE SUPREMACY.single hairbreadth the just limits of their power, judgedaccording to the fundamental axiom out of which thatpower springs. But we are not to suppose that Romanistshave all been of one mind respecting the nature and extentof the supremacy. On this, as on every other point, theyhave differed widely. By a curious but easily explainedcoincidence, the Romanist theory of the supremacy has beenenlarged or contracted, according to the mutations whichthe supremacy itself, in its exercise upon the world, has undergone.The papal sceptre has been a sort of index-hand.Its motions, whether through a larger or a narrower space,have ever furnished an exact measure of the existing stateof opinion in the schools on the subject in question. Infact, the risings and fallings of tlieory and iwactice on thehead of the supremacy have been as coincident, both intime and space, as the turnings of the vane and the wind,or as the changes of the mercury and the atmosphere ; furnishingan instructive specimen of that very peculiar infallibilitywhich Rome possesses. We distinctly recognise threewell-defined and different opinions, not to mention minuteshades and variations, among Romish doctors on this importantquestion. The first attributes temporal power tothe Pope on the ground of express and formal delegationfrom God. We are, say they, Peter's representative, God'svicegerent, possessors of the two keys, and therefore therulers of the world in both its spiritual and temporal affairs.This may be held, speaking generally, as the claim of thepopes who lived from Gregory VII. to Pius V., as expressedin their bulls, and interpreted (little to the comfort of sovereigns)in their acts. They were the world's priest andmonarch in one person. And, we repeat, this, which is thehigh ultra-montane theory, appears to us to be the mostconsistent opinion, strictly logical on Romanist principles,and, indeed, wholly impregnable if we but grant their postulate,that the Pope is Christ's vicar. Prior to the Reformationthere was scarce a single dissentient from this viewof the supremacy in the Romish Church, if we except tho