Breakers ahead in the Construction of the Kingdoms of Papal Europe.
By J. Stewart
AMONG the wonders of our day is the dethronement of Pius IX. and his main stay in Europe, Napoleon III. But though the former is deprived of his temporal sovereignty and become the subject of Victor Emanuel, he is yet, as the pretended “vicar of Christ,” invested with a spiritual empire of which the kings of papal Europe cannot deprive him, and of which they have no wish to deprive him. In this view of the case, it becomes a question of momentous importance to the Christian world, how the kingdoms of papal Europe are to be constructed, so that the principles of civil and religious liberty may prevail against the despotism and tyrannies which have ruled these kingdoms for the last thousand years. In all the kingdoms of the pagan or papal world, from Nebuchadnezzar down to Pius IX., with a few anomalous exceptions, the principles of despotism, confusion, and anarchy, have swayed the scepters of the emperors and kings of our world. That another kingdom should exist, reigning in virtue of a divine and inherent jurisdiction, claiming complete independence of secular authority, owning Christ as its sole king, this is an idea not to be tolerated by the monarchs of the world. And now that Victor Emanuel has succeeded by force of arms and with the consent of united Italy to dethrone the pretended ruler of the papal world, how is his kingdom or that of any papal king in Europe to be constructed? He professes to establish a popular monarchy within a spiritual empire; the subjects of which profess unreasoning, unlimited obedience to an “infallible pope”—the “vicar of Christ”—subjecting themselves to eternal pains and torment by rebelling against a single dogma issued by him and his predecessors from the chair of St. Peter. Their intellects and souls must be disenthralled from the superstition in which they profess to believe, before they can be loyal subjects of Victor Emanuel. And what will be the logical result of casting off the spiritual fetters of the papacy but in their blindness of falling into the skepticism and atheism which have revolutionized France? The cumulative waves of that destructive revolution have not yet spent their force throughout papal Europe. The fearful surges of that “unquiet sea,” which in 1848 swept all the reigning monarchs (Spain excepted) from their thrones and drove them into exile, require only the winds of anarchy to blow afresh, and the present reigning monarchs will be hurled from their thrones in spite of their armaments of defense. The infidel and atheistic mob effected this once, and what was done once, may be accomplished again. And what is the papal world at this day, but a mixture of atheism, tyranny, superstition, and political confusion? And yet, within this arena of wild disorder, the reigning monarchs expect to erect popular, constitutional governments. Let the form of government be monarchical or democratic, it has to come into direct collision with the code of laws by which the pontiff rules his spiritual empire; every dogma of which being infallible, claims implicit, unreasoning submission from every human being upon the face of the earth. The problem which Victor Emanuel in Italy, Asmodeus in Spain, and any ruler that may be in France, has to solve is, how to give effect to constitutional enactments, granting civil and religious liberty to their subjects, under the spiritual rule of the papacy, controlling these subjects by canon law. The code of law known as canon law is made up of the “constitutions or canons of councils, the decrees of popes, and the traditions which at any time received the pontifical sanction,” and by these the church must be governed, if it is to exist. Of these laws or canons, there are upwards of twenty folio volumes treasured up in the Vatican, and they are the tabulated law of the Romish church throughout the world. Every one of its iniquitous dogmas, every archbishop, bishop, priest, friar, and Jesuit, is under solemn oath to uphold and establish against the sovereignty of emperors, kings, or presidents, throughout the world. Take Italy as an example; now freed from the temporal sovereignty of the pope, with a popular constitutional government, bound up with an infallible church, ruling by canon law. By the constitutional law, the subjects of the State are to have that freedom of religious profession and worship which the church by its canon law absolutely denies them. The church by its unlimited control over the intellects and souls of her devotees, fetters the liberty of the State, so that the bodies of its subjects only are under the constitutional government, while their intellects and souls are bound by Stygian chains of darkness forged in the Vatican. Here, then, light and darkness are to rule together in Italy. That State cannot be a free State that is bound up in an enslaving church, and the Italians have failed to understand that their church has been their true enslaver. With a State whose fundamental principle is “that God alone is Lord of the conscience and which grants the right of private judgment to its subjects,” there can be a free church in such a State. But with the church of Rome which claims as her sole prerogative “to be lord of the conscience, and demands absolute, unconditional submission to her authority,” with an anathema of eternal damnation suspended above the head of the offender, if he claim the liberty of thinking for himself. Where, then, is the boasted freedom of Italy with the Romish yoke imposed on its inhabitants. This freedom can only be obtained by the abjuration of the dogma of authority, and the recognition of the right of private judgment, which is the fundamental principle of Protestantism; or rather, by the extinction of the papacy, temporal and spiritual. But the papal kings of Europe are perfectly willing to support the pope in his spiritual empire as the “vicar of Christ” and the head of the Roman Church; and ostensibly to submit to his spiritual rule, while enacting laws that are in direct antagonism to that rule, cherishing the hope, no doubt, that by the subjects who profess fealty to their government, they can keep in check, control and subdue the subjects who have sworn eternal fidelity to the pope, who, according to his government of the church as the “vicar of Christ,” is as much the head of kings as the meanest subject that composes his extensive domain. This, however, is a delusion that may very soon be dissipated, and these kings find to their cost that the spiritual machinery which the pope by his magic wand (which they consent he should wield) can, by his tens of thousands of priests and Jesuits, summon into action such an army as will overmatch all the forces of the subjects that may cling to their governments, raise such a revolutionary wave as may waft Pius back to his throne in the Vatican. Revolutions gravitate to Rome as a center of union, and of power to quell them by the force of the sword. The pope in dread of abdication from the signs appearing in the horizon, summoned the Ecumenical Council, that he might surround by an iron hoop his spiritual domain, and enlist in his cause the spiritual army of priests and Jesuits throughout the world. And Europe at this moment is pervaded by tens of thousands of these emissaries, educating the enslaved masses in the idolatrous creed of Rome; holding them fast in the fetters which priestly craft can effectually throw around them, by the assurance that there is no salvation out of the Romish Church. And, as has been the state of papal Europe for the last three centuries, through the machinations of the popedom, the worst is yet to come, ere the papacy be finally overturned, and He whose right it is to reign shall be acknowledged as the “King and Head” of his church—when the world shall acknowledge his word as its own law, himself as its one King. Then only will there be true freedom for the inhabitants of our world, when Christ shall make them free from the yokes which the “god of this world,” through the papacy and every false system upheld by him in it, shall forever be removed.—Rev. J. Stewart.