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

1D6UNITY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME.not less on the questions of thesupremacy and infallibility.Oonti'ariety of opinion has been the rule ; agreement theexception. Council has contended with council ;pope hasexcommunicated pope ; Dominican has warred with Franciscan; and the Jesuits have carried on ceaseless andfurious battles with the Benedictines and other orders.What, indeed, are these various orders, but ingenious contrivancesto allay heats and divisions which Rome couldnot heal, and to allow of differences of opinion which shecould neither prevent nor remove ? What one infalliblebull has upheld as sound doctrine, another infallible bull hasbranded as heresy.Europe has been edified with the spectacleof two rival vicars of Christ playing at football withthe spiritual thunder ; and what we find one holy father,Nicholas, commending as an assembly of men filled with theHoly Ghost, namely, theCouncil of Basil, we find anotherholy father, Eugenius, depicting as " madmen, barbarians,wild beasts, heretics, miscreants,monsters, and a pandemonium."*But there is no end of the illustrations of papalunity. The wars of the Romanists have filled history andshaken the world. The loud and discordant clatter whichrose of old around Babel is but a faint type of the interminabledin and furious strife which at all times have ragedwithin the modern Babel,—the Church of Rome.Such is the unity which the Romish Church so often andso tauntingly contrasts with what she is pleased to term "Protestantdisunion." As a corporation, having its head at Rome,and stretching its limbs to the extremities of the earth, sheis of gigantic bulk and imposing appearance ; but, closelyexamined, she is seen to be an assemblage of heterogeneousmaterials, held together simply by the compression of force.It is a coercive power from without, not an attractive influencefrom within, that gives her being and form. The appearanceof union and compactness which she puts on at adistance is altogether owing to her organization, which is of* Elliott's Delineation of Romanism, p 4G3.