Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/339

 The papal authority has been diminishing for a considerable period, and it is now shrunk up into a small compass in all the nations in which it was once powerful. Great changes have taken place, and are still progressing, in the Italian peninsula. The people whose energies have been paralysed by ecclesiastical governments have had their patience exhausted, and they are now invoking the return of that liberty of which they have been so long despoiled. The pope is no longer a prince capable of inspiring the nations with a dread of his displeasure. Multitudes of his own subjects, tiring of his reign, are seeking to break up his authority, and this they would have accomplished before now if they had not been prevented by a foreign army, present for a political purpose. No less than nine thousand priests have recently petitioned in favour of the renunciation of his civil authority; and nearly the whole literature of the country expresses the same feeling. Religious reforms are being asked for. Societies are established to promote the reading of the Bible in the vernacular, to obtain a removal of the laws which impose celibacy on the clergy, and to effect many changes favourable to progress and to liberty. It seems impossible to look at these facts and not to perceive that some remarkable influence is at work upon the Church, and that its tendency is to bring about some change favourable to the spiritual welfare and intelligence of men.