from all terrestrial
cares, reigning over the world of souls?

In the early times of the Church the papacy from being merely local,
merely Roman, gradually became catholicised, universalised, slowly
acquiring dominion over all Christendom. In the same way the Sacred
College, at first a continuation of the Roman Senate, acquired an
international character, and in our time has ended by becoming the most
cosmopolitan of assemblies, in which representatives of all the nations
have seats. And is it not evident that the Pope, thus leaning on the
cardinals, has become the one great international power which exercises
the greater authority since it is free from all monarchical interests,
and can speak not merely in the name of country but in that of humanity
itself? The solution so often sought amidst such long wars surely lies in
this: Either give the Pope the temporal sovereignty of the world, or
leave him only the spiritual sovereignty. Vicar of the Deity, absolute
and infallible sovereign by divine delegation, he can but remain in the
sanctuary if, ruler already of the human soul, he is not recognised by
every nation as the one master of the body also--the king of kings.

But what a strange affair was this new incursion of the papacy into the
field sown by the French Revolution, an incursion conducting it perhaps
towards the domination, which it has striven for with a will that has
upheld it for centuries! For now it stands alone before the people. The
kings are down. And as the people is henceforth free to give itself to
whomsoever it pleases, why should it not give itself to the Church? The
depreciation which the idea of liberty has certainly undergone renders
every hope permissible. The liberal party appears to be vanquished in the
sphere of economics. The toilers, dissatisfied with 1789 complain of the
aggravation of their misery, bestir themselves, seek happiness
despairingly. On the other hand the new _regimes_ have increased the
international power of the Church; Catholic members are numerous in the
parliaments of the republics and the constitutional monarchies. All
circumstances seem therefore to favour this extraordinary return of
fortune, Catholicism reverting to the vigour of youth in its old age.
Even science, remember, is accused of bankruptcy, a charge which saves
the _Syllabus_ from ridicule, troubles the minds of men, and throws the
limitless sphere of mystery and impossibility open once more. And then a
pr