The Popish organ here has been equally plain-spoken, and pronounced, in the most dashing style, the triumph of Rome, and the return of _all Protestants_ under its yoke, _on pain of damnation_! Who but must be indignant at this language! But who can henceforth be deceived?
Mr Warren, in reverting to the character and pretensions of the Papacy, lays it down as a fundamental proposition, that "the Pope's avowed spiritual power is pregnant with disavowed political power." He, tells us further, "that we have to tolerate a rival, who condescends to equality only as an advance to ascendency." He then gives the memorable Florentine canon of 1439, which the Romish lawyers regard as containing "the true doctrine of their church," and for the consequences deducible from which all Papists are answerable. These are its words:--
"Moreover, we define that the Holy Apostolic See, and the Roman Pontiff, have a primacy _over the whole world_!--and that the Roman Pontiff is the successor of St Peter, the chief of the apostles, and true Vicar of Christ!--and that he is 'head of the whole church,' and the father and teacher of all Christians!--and to him, in St Peter, was delegated by our Lord Jesus Christ full power to _feed, rule, and govern_ the universal church, as also is contained in the Acts of General Councils, and in the holy canons!" In this daring proclamation of power, we have the assumption of an authority obviously incompatible with the peace of any nation under heaven, and equally incompatible with the common liberties of mankind--for there can be no liberty where the arbitrary will of a stranger is the fountain of the law, and most especially contradictory to that Scripture which declares that Christ's kingdom is _not_ a kingdom after the fashion of this world. When the question was contemptuously put by Pilate to our Lord himself, "Art _thou_ a king?" the answer was, that he was not a king in the sense of the Roman; that, if he were such, "his servants would fight"--in other words, that he would have the troops and attendance of an earthly king, that he would have resisted and made war. "But now is my kingdom _not_ of this world."
But what is the Papacy, with its princes and pageantries, its armies and intrigues, its cabinets and alliances? In what does all this complicated and systematic mixture in the affairs of the world differ from the kingdoms of this world? except perhaps in its deeper intrigue, in its more perpetual artifice, in its more insatiable craving for power, and in its more habitual gratification of every daring and dangerous passion of man.