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

THE PAPACY GROWING WORSE. 155mummy, carry it into the latitude of Britain, and bury it inthe earth ; the climate, and many other things, will all bedifferent, but the seed is the same. Its incarceration offour thousand years has but suspended, not annihilated, itsvital powers ; and, being the same seed, it will grow up intothe same plant ; its leaf, and flower, and fruit, will all bethe same they would have been on the banks of the Nileunder the reign of the Pharaohs. Or let us suppose thatthe mummy, the companion of its long imprisonment, shouldstart into life. The brown son of Egypt, on looking up, wouldfind the world greatly changed ;—the Pharaohs gone, thepyramids old, Memphis in ruins, empires become wrecks,which had not been born till long after his embalmment ; butamid all these changes he would feel that he was the sameman, and that his sleep of forty centuries had left his dispositionsand habits wholly unchanged. Nay, will not thewhole human race rise at the last day with the same moraltastes and dispositions with which they went to their graves,so that to the characters with which they died will link onthe allotments to which they shall rise ? The infallibility hasstereotyped the Papacy, just as nature has stereotyped theseed, and death the characters of men ; and, let it slumberfor one century, or twenty centuries, it will awake with itsold instincts. And while as a system it continues unchanged,its action on the world must necessarily be the same.It isnot more accordant with the law of their natures that fireshould burn and air ascend, than it is accordant with thenature of the Papacy that it should claim the supremacy,and so override the consciences of men and the laws of kingdoms.Nay, so far is it from being a truth that Popery is growinga better thing, that the truth lies the other way : it is growingrapidly and progressively worse. So egregiously do theclass to which we have referred miscalculate, and so littletrue acquaintance do they show with the system on whichthey so confidently pronounce, that those very influences onwhich they rely for rendering the Papacy milder in spirit