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

o6PROGRESS OF ECCLESIASTICAL SUPREMACY.God's Vicar, was the judge of all, and could himself bejudged by no one.""* " In this apology," remarks Mosheim," the reader will perceive that the foundations of that enormouspower which the popes of Rome afterwards acquiredwere now laid." Thus did the pontiffs, providing timeouslyagainst the changes and revolutions of the future, place thefabric of the primacy upon foundations thatshould be immoveablefor all time. The primacy had been promulgatedby synodical decrees, ratified by imperial edicts ; butthe pontiffs perceived that what synods and emperors hadgiven, synods and emperors might take away. The enactmentsof both, therefore, were discarded, and the Divineright was put in their room, as the only basis of power whichneither lapse of years nor change of circumstances couldoverthrow. Rome was henceforward indestructible.*'Dum domu«s ^neos capitoli iniitjobile saxumAccolet, imperiumque Romanus pater liabebit."+Thus was accomplished in the destinies of the Papacy achange of so vast a character, that the imagination can withdifficulty realize it. Quickened with a new life, Rome returnedfrom her grave to exercise universal dominion asecond time. The element of power which was lost whenthe empire fell was at best of an extraneous kind: it wasinfluence reflected from without upon Rome,—foreign in itscharacter and earthly in its source. But the element onwhich she now cast herself was of a nature analogous to thePapacy, and so, incorporating with it, that element becameits life.It made Rome self-existent and invincible,—invincibleto every principle save one, and that principle was toremain in abeyance for a full thousand years. The day ofLuther was yet afar off*. It was this element that gave toRome the superhuman power she wielded over the world.* Moslieim, cent. vi. part ii. chap. ii. " Vice Dei judicare pontificem,a luillo Tnortaliuni in jus vocari posse docuit." Adopted by the RomanSynod, under Synniiaclius, a.d. 503. (Ilarduin, vol. ii. p. 9S3.)t Virgilius, iEneid. lib. ix.