Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/189

Rh spirit was right in his view, and wrong only in so far as he sought, from that which was merely a temporal form, a mode of government fitted for a few centuries, a time of education and discipline for the new human race, to construct a normal condition, an eternal divine ordination. His portrait expresses a certain contraction of mind, as well as the steadfastness of an immovable will. It gives me the impression of a species of spiritual petrifaction. The powerful character of his own mind, and the weakness of the world, inspired him with faith in his papal infallibility, and in the destructive force of his excommunication. Certain it is, that under the alternating anathemas and blessings of himself and his successors, princes and peoples were seen by degrees to bow themselves, and the whole Christian world became obedient to the legislator on the chair of St. Peter. But when the pontifical crook was changed into a sceptre of the world, then it was broken. Popes worthy of detestation, such as Alexander VI.; worldly and vain Popes, such as Julius II. and Leo X.; but beyond every thing else, the want of tenacity in the system itself, and its natural decay in proportion to the increasing culture of the Christian world; the exhibition of a pure, religious life, amongst the men and the nations who were influenced by the reformation, and in times which were at hand, brought about that conflict of the world which overturned forever the system of Gregory, and the exclusive power of the Pope, at least in the sense that Gregory understood it. For although still the greater part of Christendom acknowledges itself as of the papal