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

;;158 PRINCIPLES OF SUPREMACY UNCHANGEABLE.these claims ? We have shown a priori that he cannotand with this agrees the fact that he has not :therefore hemust, in all fairness, be held as still retaining, though notactually asserting, this claim. No conclusion is more certainthan this, that the essential principles of the systembeing the same, they will, in the same circumstances, producethe same evils and mischiefs in future which they havedone in the past. What has been may be. In the sixthcentury, had any one pointed out the bearing of these principles,affirming that they necessarily led to supremacy overkings, one might have been excused fordoubting whetherpractically this result would follow. But the same excuseis signally awanting in the nineteenth century. The worldhas had dire experience of the fact ; it knows what thePapacy \& practically as well as theoretically/.Moreover, arenot the modern chiefs of the Papacy as ambitious and asdevoted to the aggrandizement of the Papacy as the pontiffsof the past IIs not universal dominion as tempting an objectof ambition now as it was in the eleventh century ? and,provided thepopes can manage, either by craft or force, topersuade the world to submit to their rule, is any man sosimple as to believe that they will not exercise it,—that theywill modestly put aside the sceptre, and content themselveswith the pastoral staff? There is nothing in that dominion,on their own principles, which isinconsistent with their spiritualcharacter ;nay, the possession of temporal authorityisessential to the completeness of that character, and to thevigour of their spiritual administration. Is it not capableof being made to subserve as effectually as ever the authorityand influence of the Church ? In times like the present,pontiffs may affect to undervalue thetemporal supremacy; they may talk piously of throwing off the cares ofState, and giving themselves wholly to their spiritual dutiesbut let such prospects open beforethem as were presentedto the Gregories and the Leos of the past, and we shall seehow long this horror of the world's pomps and riches, andthis love of meditation and prayer, will retain possession of