SUBJECT OF THE TREATISE XXV that he has been "made a judge or a divider over them." He will neither sit in judgment over the conflicting claims of the kings of the earth, nor put his hand to the partition of their inheritances. He will neither crown nor discrown them; neither anoint nor exor- cise them; he will lay no interdicts on their kingdoms, nor absolve their subjects from allegiance. "Before him," indeed, "shall be gathered all nations," and to him, in honour of his mediatorial work, shall " all judgment" be committed by the Father; but this shall not be till he shall have " put down all rule, and all autho- rity, and all power," and men shall appear before him stripped of all earthly jurisdiction. Thus it appears that the pope claims, as the vicar and representative of the Headof the church, powers and pre- rogatives withwhich the Mediator himself has not been invested, and that the powers and prerogatives which do belong to the Mediator are such as no created being could possess or exercise. Having made these remarks, which we consider essential to the right understanding of the question, we may be prepared to judge of the real quarter from which, among the multiform pretensions of the Papacy, danger is to be apprehended. It is not from what has been generally, and, we think, mistakingly, called the temporal power of the pope, meaning by this term his prerogatives as a sove- reign, occupying a certain territory, and "armed with a little brief authority" in Rome. Of this adventitious distinction there are not a few proofs in "the signs of the times" that he may soon be de- nuded. To suppose that Italy, having once tasted the cup of liberty, will tamely allow it to be dashed from her lips, that she will much longer submit to see the best of her children dragged off before her eyes to the dungeon or to exile, at the bidding of superannuated superstition, upheld byforeign bayonets,wouldbe contrary to all the experience of history and the ordinary laws of human nature. The temporal sovereignty of the pope, as that phrase has generally been understood, is now, in fact, a nonentity. The world has become too old to bedazzled and cajoled by the spectacle of a crowned priest in the Vatican. Mere earthly pomp and local dignity, so omnipotent during the dark ages, have lost their virtue. In an earnest and spiri- tual age like the present, nothing can be expected to stand that is not based on some assumed moral or religious principle. Already the more knowing of the modern advocates of Rome are beginning to talk of the papal supremacy as purely spiritual. Their language is almost evangelical. The pope is Christ; his seat is no longer on the seven-hilled city, but on the rock of St Peter; his Vatican is the conscience of man. The grade, and, it may be, the final struggle,
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