"The pope is supreme over all the world, may impose taxes, and destroy crowns and castles for the preservation of Christianity."--_St. Thomas Aquinas_.
"The supremacy of the pope over all persons and things is the main substance of Christianity."--Bellarmine.
"The pope is crowned with a triple crown, and is constituted over his (God's) hand to regulate concerning all inferiors; he opens heaven, sends the guilty to hell, confirms emperors, and orders the clerical orders."--_Antonius of Florence, Dist. 40, Si Papa_.
"The pope is the only Vicar of God; his power is over all the world, Pagan as well as Christian, the only Vicar of God, who has supreme power and empire over all princes and kings of the earth."--_Blareus, De Rom,. Eccl., Art. 5, sec. 19_.
"The pope has supreme power over kings and Christian princes; he may remove them from office, and in their place put others."--_Browns, De Rom. Pontiff, Cap. 46, p. 62_.
"The pope is the Lord of the whole world. The pope has temporal power; his temporal power is most eminent. All other powers depend on the pope."--_Marcinus, Jure Princep. Pom., Lib. 2, cap. 1, 2_.
"The pope is divine monarch, supreme emperor and king. Hence the pope is crowned with a triple crown, as King of heaven, of earth, and of hell. He is also above angels; so that if it were possible that angels could err from the faith, they could be judged and excommunicated by the pope."--_Feraris in Papa, Art. 11, No. 10_.
"The vicar of God in the place of God, remits to man the debt of a plighted promise."--_Dens._ 4, 134.
"The pope can do all things that he wishes to do, and is empowered by God to do all things that he himself can."--_Tiba_.
"The pope can transubstantiate sin into duty, and duty into sin."--_Durand_.
"The bishop of Rome cannot even sin without being praised.''--_Moscovius_.
"God's tribunal and the pope's tribunal are the same."--_Moscovius_.
From the loftiness of these pretensions, we are involuntarily impelled to look to the holy fathers for corresponding principles, character and conduct. If they possess the moral attributes of the deity, they must possess also his physical attributes; and if they possess his physical attributes, they can much easier create some world out of nothing over which to domineer, than they can create a claim to all the crowns, riches, and territory of the earth, out of the patrimony of St. Peter, who was never worth a cent. If, indeed, the pope's tribunal and God's tribunal are the same; if he above all in heaven would be the proper judge, and anathematizer of angels, should any of them fall; if he can annul the obligation of any oath which man is under to his maker, then he must be the associate judge of God Almighty, equal to him in dignity, superior to him in jurisdiction, and supereminent to him in authority. If the pope can transubstantiate sin into duty and duty into sin, he can annihilate all distinction between right and wrong, and convert the worship of God into a sin, and the adoration of himself into a duty. But these extraordinary pretensions, if unsupported by irrefragable proofs of divine power and virtue; if the administrative abilities of the popes have not transcended those of infinite wisdom and goodness; and if their monarchy is not such a just embodiment of unquestionable and universally accepted principles as has produced and maintained among their subjects on earth a degree of peace, order, and concord superior to that which subsists among the angels in heaven, then are their pretensions not only presumptuous but ridiculous, not only arrogant but blasphemous; denying the existence of God by claiming equality with him, contemning his authority by usurping his prerogatives, and trampling under foot his name and character, by presuming to exercise a superior degree of executive and judicial authority.