terly reproaches Protestantism. She was the first to abandon the Catholic rule of the interpretation of the sacred books; she has put aside the collective interpretation of which the fathers of the Church have been the faithful echoes, and upon her own authority she has presumed to discover in Scripture that which the Church Catholic has not found there. She has come thus to arrogate for her usurped sovereignty a divine foundation. She has drawn from this principle all its consequences; the Pope has become the vicar of Jesus Christ, the necessary centre of the Church, the pivot of Christianity, the infallible organ of heaven. These Papal errors were so skillfully disseminated in the western countries that they were there gradually adopted. The protests which they drew forth were indeed continued, but partaking of the spirit of the age, they were not sufficiently pointed; such even as were raised against the abuses of the Papacy, admitted as beyond question a divine basis for that institution.
At the present day, these errors have penetrated not only among the clergy and religious men; the rationalists — anti-Christians themselves — admit the idea that the Pope is the sovereign chief of the Christian Church, and that his spiritual prerogatives are derived from Jesus Christ. Many Protestants themselves do not conceive of a Catholic Church without a Pope, and see this church only in the Roman Church.[1]
We ourselves have been misled by the common error,
- ↑ The author thus touches two of the greatest advantages which modern writers, unfortunately, concede to the Papists: 1st. That of identifying historical Christianity with the Mediæval Roman system; 2d. That of calling the Trentine Church the Catholic Church.
