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

THE TRIPLE CROWN. 45sions of the Church, and secured a powerful friend and protectorto the Pope in the person of the Emperor. Thus theperils which had threatened to destroy the Papacy tendedultimately to consolidate it ; and thus did Rome, skilled toprofit alike by the weakness and the strengthsteadily pursue thatof monarchs,profound scheme of policy, the objectof which was to chain kings, priests, and people, to thepontifical chair. Henceforward the Pope takes his placeamong the monarchs of the earth. First the Vandals andOstrogoths, and now the Lombards, had fallen before him.Their territories were given tothe Church, and formed thepatrimony of St Peter ; and the haughty pastor by whomthese powers had been supplanted, unaware that prophecyhad pointed very significantly to the fact, and marked it asa noted stage in the rise of Antichrist,"" now appeared inthe glories of the triple crown.While the Papacy was laboriously building up its externaldefences, conciliating princes, contracting alliances withpowerful monarchs, and intriguing to acquire in its ownriglit temporal sovereignty, let us mark the growth of thatsuperstition in which lay the life and strength of the Popedom.These two,—the inward principle and the outward development,—wefind ever advancing pari p)assu. By the timethe barbarians arrived in southern Europe, Christianity hadbeen grossly corrupted. It lacked, as a consequence, thepower to dispel the ignorance or to purify the morals ofthose whom the convulsionsof the times brought into contactwith it. As they issued from their native forests, sowere they received within the pale of the Church,—uninstructed,unreformed, unchristianized. The only change theChristianity of the age exacted had respect to the names ofthose divinities in whose honour the invading nations continuedto celebrate the same rites, slightly modified, whichthey had been accustomed to pay to their Druidical andScandinavian idols.It follows that the term Christendom* Dauiel, vii. 8, 20-24.