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

:108 FOUNDATION AND EXTENT OF THE SUPREMACY.poral power would carry the pontiff as far, and enable himto do as much, as the direct temporal authority.This indirecttemporal power, the Cardinal taught, was supreme, andcould enable the Pope, for the welfare of the Church, toannul laws and depose sovereigns.* This was dexterousmanagement on the part of the Jesuit. He professed topart the enormous power which had before centred inPeter''s chair, between the kings and the pope, giving thetemporal to the former and the spiritual to the latter ; buthe took care that the lion''s share should fall to the pontiff.It was a grand feat of legerdemain ; for this division, madewith such show of fairness, left the one party with not aparticle more power, and the other with not a particle less,than before. Bellarmine had not broken or blunted thetemporal sword ; he had simply muffled it. He had leftthe pope brandishing in his hand the spiritualmace, withthe temporal stiletto slung conveniently by his side, concealedby the folds of his pontificals. He could knockmonarchs on the head with the spiritual bludgeon ; and, havinggot them down, could despatch them with the secularpoignard. What was there then in Bellarmine's theory toprevent the great spiritual freebooter of Rome doing asmuch business in his own peculiar line as before? Nothing.But Bellarmine''s opinion has become antiquated in itsturn. The papal sceptre now describes a narrower politicalcircle, and the opinions of the Romish doctors on the subjectof the supremacy have undergone a corresponding limi-* " Pontificem, \it pontificem, non habere directe et immediate ullamtemporalem potestatem, sed solum spiritualem, tamen ratione spiritualishabere saltern iiidirecte potestatem quamdam, eamque summam, in temporalibus."(De Rom. Pont. lib. v. cap. i.) " Quantum ad personas, non potestpapa, ut papa, ordinarie temiJorales iDrincipes deponere, etiam justa decausa, eo mode, quo deponit episcopos, id est, tamquam ordinarius judextamen potest mutare regna, et uni auferre, atque alteri conferre, tamquamsummus princops spiritualis, si id necessarium sit ad animorum salutem."(Idem, lib. v. cap. vi.)