Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/252

262 the church, but they who by means of Papal sanction, and the laying on of priestly hands, are consecrated thereto. Thus the Pope consecrates the Cardinals, and these again every new Pope, even though they be monsters, such as Alexander VI., and his worthy son, the Cardinal Cæsar Borgia! And they then receive the Holy Ghost and power “to bind and loose!” “But it was not to such men as these that Christ gave the power;” I have said many a time during my warfare with the Catholics; “it was to His Apostles, men who lived in Him, loved Him, obeyed and followed Him, men who were in themselves participant of His life and His spirit. Such only can constitute His church, such only can receive the Holy Spirit, and with it the right, in Christ's stead, to bind and to loose!”

“That which constitutes precisely the excellence of our church,” it is replied to me, “is that the individual persons are of so little consequence. The Holy Spirit does not inquire after the person; it is communicated to an Alexander VI., also to a Cæsar Borgia, at the moment they may resolve upon dogmas of faith, and converts them into organs of the truth, even though they themselves may afterwards have to be burned in hell for their actions!”

“In order to dissipate your doubts on this subject,” said Monsignor L——, on one occasion, to me, “I must tell you that the Pope is by no means the sole originator, or is alone responsible for the resolutions which proceed from him in matters of faith. They are prepared by from twenty to thirty persons,