The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867.

our only form and semblan

cipline, and those writers who, like Gioberti, set themselves up as philosophers, thought proper, as a matter of tactics, to caress the Utopia of an Italian primacy, intrusted to I know not

ma which was the f

y of a religion,-a source of perennial corruption and immorality among the nations, and most fatally such to our own, upon whos

ulgences three centuries ago,-not because this or that Pope trafficked in cowardly concessions to princes, or in the matrimony of his own bastards with the bastards of dukes, petty tyrants, or kings, i

e sins are not cause

rs, should recall the misguided Popes to the charity and humility of their ancient way of life,-they could only cause the Papac

y say to the contrary-is fulfilled. It was fulfilled six centuries ago; and no power of genius, no miracle of will, can avail to revive it. Innocent III. was the last true Pope. He was the

ll,-Gregory VII.,-and yet he failed to prolong it. One hundred and fifty years afterwards, the gigantic attempt had become but the dim record of a past never to return. With the successors of Innocent III. began the decline of the Papacy; it ceased to infuse life into human

the impotent negation of all movement, of all liberty, of all development of science or life; destitute of all sense of duty, power of sacrifice, or faith in i

of heaven since changed,-from a notion of life since proved imperfect,-from a conception of the moral law inferior to that of the new epoch in course of ini

exhausted and consumed. It no longer inspires faith,

will re-link earth with heaven in a vaster s

ch, feigning to attack and venerate at one and the same time, do but parcel out, not solve the problem; because the future cannot be

d its existence and its mission was that of the fall of man and his red

ecessity of mediation

e in a privileged class,-naturally destined to centralize in one indi

consequent substitution of unlimited faith in the Mediator, for works,-henc

human race into the el

nd the eternal damnation of

et before man and a world condemned to anathema by the fall, and incapable, through the

bracing more than the individual; it offered the individual a means of salvation in despite of the egotism, tyranny, and corruption by which he is surrounded on earth, and which n

cience, by the intuition of genius and the grand results of scientific research-may be summed up in the single word Progress,[D] which we now know to be, by Divine decree, the inh

equences of the

a Mediator;-the idea of a continuous educational rev

uitions of the peoples, when roused to enthusiastic action in the se

ss already achieved; and the sanctity of individual consci

ed for mere faith alone, as the crite

ility granted to all men; as well as that of predestination, which is the negation of free-will, and th

ew view of the mission of man upon earth, and puts an end to the antagonism between earth and heaven, by teaching us that this world is an abode given to man wherein he is bound to merit salvation, by his own works, and hence enforces the necessity of endeavorin

of the past comprehends a new term,-the continuous collective life of humanity; and thi

the proclamation of a new dogma, the Papacy has no longer any raison d'être. On

h. And, I declare it a lie and a source of immorality at the present day, because every great institution becomes such if it seeks to perpetuate its authority after its mission is fulfilled. The substitution of the enslavement for the slaughter of the conquered foe was a step towards progress, as was the substitution of servitude for slavery. The formation of t

al power,-who should dare deny that to the admitted representative of God on earth?-but upon the Papacy itself. It is therefore our duty to go back to the dogma up

t profess to venerate the Pope, and to be sincere Catholics,

a free Church in a free State are either influenced by a fa

orthy the name. It is-like all the programmes of mere liberty-an implicit declaration that the institution agains

ven time, in order to protect others from infection. But the cause must be explicitly declared. By declaring it, you educate the country to look beyond the temporary measure,-to look forward to a return to a normal state of things,

blished, the State itself will be elected into a Church; it will incarnate in itself a religious

ith by a negative policy, such as that adopted by the atheistic and indifferent French Parliament, the State will fall a prey to the anarchical doctrine of the sovereignty of the ind

ong modern nations, we ha