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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 Head
of
the
church, powers and
pre-
rogatives
with
which
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 by
foreign
bayonets,would
be 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 be
dazzled
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,