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

DESPOTISM OF PAPAL GOVERNMENT. 431tralized all power in one man. This centralization is of thevery nature of the Papacy. The vicegerent of God can liaveno equal ; none can share his power ; he must reign alone.It would be equally absurd to suppose that an infallible rulercould admit constitutional advisers, or take himself boundto follow their counsel. If the course they recommend iswrong, the infallible pontiff cannot follow it ; and if it isright, infallibility surely does not need fallible promptersto tell him so : this, it is presumed, is the very course inwhich the pontiff would move if left to the guidance of hisown supernatural instincts. The popes cannot admit, therefore,of a consulta, or popular assembly with judicial andlegislative functions, such as those which in constitutionalcountries limit the prerogatives and divide the authority ofthe sovereign. In the hands of one man, then, all powerunder heaven came to be centred,—the legislative and thejudicial, the temporal and the spiritual jurisdictions. Thepapal theory placed the fountain of law and authority on theSeven Hills, and theredone inof it.was not an edict passed nor an actwide Europe, but virtually the Pope was the doerFor ages as was the theory, so substantially was thefact. It would have been one of the greatest miracles theworld ever saw if liberty had co-existed with this vast accumulationof power. Even in the hands of the wisest ofmen, fettered by constitutional checks, and bound to assignthe reasons of hisprocedure, such overgrown power couldscarce have failed to be abused ; and if abused, the abusecould not be other than enormous ; but in the hands of menwho claimed to reign by divine delegation, and who on thatground sustained themselves as above the necessity of vindicating,or so much as explaining, their proceedings, and whoclaimed from men an implicit belief that even the most outrageousof their acts were founded on divine authorityandembodied infallible wisdom, tlie abuse of this power far surpassedthe measure of all former tyrannies. The despotismof an Alexander, a Nero, or a Napoleon, was liberty itselfcompared with the centralized despotism of the Papacy.