Here ecclesiasticism found its real opportunity. Here human authority and government could be and was substituted for that spiritual dominion of Christ which gave life, form, and character to his church in primitive days. Here grew up that conception of the church as identical with the hierarchy whose power and authority was handed down by direct descent from the apostles and without whose priestly mediation there was no hope of salvation. Here was introduced the idea of world-wide centralization of administrative, legislative, and judicial functions in a self-perpetuating human headship. What a contrast! With Christ absent, the church an ark for the saving of the world, the truth a mere deposit made to the church for safe keeping to be handed down like a heirloom from generation to generation, and with a self-perpetuating priestly corporation as master of the destinies of the universe, we are prepared to understand the tyrannical rule of the church of Hildebrand and Innocent III. Traced to its source, this evil system is found to have sprung from that worldly conception of the kingdom of Christ which was substituted for the inconceivably grander conception of its Founder--a kingdom whose dominion is moral and spiritual under the personal supervision of Christ himself in all ages, and which embraces in its membership the entire spiritual brotherhood.
The age of popery's greatest glory was the world's midnight. I have not attempted to give an adequate description of that long reign of superstition and error preceding the reformation of the sixteenth century. Such is the particular province of ecclesiastical historians. I have simply confined the discussion to certain features essential to our present purpose.
One point of importance I have endeavored to impress, namely, that the papal hierarchy, with all its attendant evils, corruption, superstition, and spiritual despotism, was the logical successor of the Ante-Nicene church; that the ripened fruits of papalism were the direct results of the seeds of error planted in the second and third centuries. In view of this fact, one is led to inquire why true Christianity was not permanently buried in oblivion beyond the possibility of resurrection, how any reformation could be possible.