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

BREAKS IN THE APOSTOLIC CHAIN. 239What be-genuine popes, but even members of the Church.came of the apostoHc dignity in these cases I How was itpreserved, and how transmitted ? Sometimes we find thechair of Peter vacant, at other times it is filled with a hereticalpope,* at other times it is claimed by two or morepopes, each of whom is as like or as unlike Peter as hisrival.So far is the line of succession from being continuous,that we find it broken, at short intervals, by wide gaps,through which, if there be any truth in Romanist principles,the mystic virtues must have lapsed, leaving theChurch ina most deplorable state, her popes without pontifical authority,her priests without true consecration, and her sacramentswithout regenerating efficacy. The great geographicalproblems which have been undertaken in our day, iiiwhich mighty rivers have been traced up to their source,through tangled forests, and low swampy flats on which themiasma settles thick and deadly, and through the burningsands of the trackless desert, have been of easy achievement,compared with that of the man who would traceup to its source that mystic but powerful influence which isheld to pervade the Church of Rome. And even whensome bold spirit does adventure upon the onerous task, andpushes resolutely on through the moral wastes, the tangledcontroversies, and the perplexed and devious paths of thePapacy, and through the dense clouds of superstition andvice that overhang the pontifical annals, what is his disappointmentto find that, instead of being conducted at last tothe pellucid waters of the apostolic fount, he is landed onthe mephitic shores of some black and stagnant pool,—someAcheron of the middle asres !Thus have we examined, severally, the assumptions ofRome on this fundamental point. Some of them are utterlyfalse, the rest are in the highest degree improbable, andnot one of them has Rome been able to establish. This* Pope Liberius avowed Arianism, aud Pope Honorius was a Monothelite.