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

INHERENT WEAKNESS OF POPERY. 4.97Popery, though outwardly strong, is inwardly and essentiallyweak. The reverse is the fact as regards Christianity:it is outwardly weak, but inwardly and essentially strong.Its power is within itself, and inseparable from its essence.It can lead those on whom it operates, whether an individualor a nation, to act contrary to their passions and interests.It originates and guides great movements, but isnever dragged in their rear. Not so the Papacy. All itspower is without itself. It governs men only in accordancewith their passions : it watches the rising of great movements,links itself on to them, and appears to guide, whilein point of fact it is constrained to follow. The crisis inwhich Pius IX. found the Papacy offeredhim the alternativeof opposing the movement, or of siding with it, and soappearing to lead it. Either alternative was attended withimmense risk; but on the principle we have stated, thatPopery is powerless in opposition unless she can wield thesword, and that her great strength lies in casting herselfupon the popular current, in whatever direction it may chanceto be running, Pius chose the last, as the least perilous ofthe two courses open to him. No one can yet have forgottenthe amazement which seized upon all men when they sawthat power which for ages had been the head of Europeandespotism, place itself at the head of the Italian movement,now sufficiently developed to be seen to be part of agrand European movement towards constitutionalgovernment.A new prodigy was beheld. That power which hadwarred with liberty during ten centuries, and ceased to assailitwith its thunderbolts only when it was prostrate beneaththe feeling against the sacerdotal government he found universal in theStates of tlie Church. That was in Gregory XVI.'s time. "If the Statesof the Church," said M. "Von Raumer, ujiwards of twenty years ago*' were surrounded by a high and continuous wall, shutting them out fromall intercourse with the rest of the world, and preventing all foreign interference,the inhabitants would rise the next day and annihilate thepriestly government, and with it perhaps the whole system of the Churchof Home in Italy."2k