We have now sketched the pope's temporal monarchy, which has its seat in Rome, and its subjects in every part of the world. He claims to be invested by divine right with supreme sovereignty over earth, heaven and hell. To question the legitimacy of this claim is condemned, and has been punished as blasphemous by his authority. Joseph Wolf, of Halle, a Jew who had been converted to the Catholic faith, was, while studying divinity at the Seminarium Romanum, imprisoned for blasphemy for having expressed a doubt of the pope's infallibility. Fra Paola, who had expressed in a private letter that so far from coveting the dignities of Rome he held them in abomination, and who had advocated liberty in a dispute which had occurred between the pope and the Venitian government, was summoned to Rome to answer for his criminal assertions and conduct; and though acquitted of the allegations preferred against him, narrowly escaped the assassin's dagger.

But the "More than God," the Pope, is a very jealous "more than God." He allows no master to stand between him and his subjects. His authority over mind and body must be direct, and all influences or institutions that obstruct it must be annihilated.. Hence Cardinal Ballarmine, the distinguished papal controversialist, who was so devout a Catholic that when he died he bequeathed one half of his soul to Jesus Christ and the other half to the Virgin Mary, provoked the censure of the holy father by asserting in a publication that the pope's influence in temporal matters was not direct but indirect. As husbands obstruct the direct influence of popes on wives, parents on children, and friends on friends, he would nullify the conjugal, parental, filial and social relations. Hence in a canon of the Council of Trent, he pronounces a curse on all who say that marriage is preferable to celibacy. Should the prompting of the social instincts be too strong to be repressed by the terrors of canonical anathemas, and should they in natural indifference to them still create the bonds, connections, and institutions of friendship and families, he has a clerical machinery skilfully adapted to moderate their influences and reciprocities, and to maintain the predominence of his direct authority. Michelet, the philosophical historian and celebrated controversialist, in a work entitled "Priests, Women and Children," has explained the ingenious method by which this object is effected. By separating as much as possible the husband from the wife, and the children from their parents, the direct papal influence, through the priest, is exerted on the isolated husband abroad, on the lonely wife at home, and the defenceless children in nunnery schools and Catholic asylums. Examples of a similar policy are portrayed by Eugene Sue, a Catholic, in his "Wandering Jew." The logical consequence of the dogma of the pope's direct authority has, in fact, made the Catholic church a "free love" institution. Chastity and marriage she tolerates because she cannot do otherwise; but in the lives of her monks, her priests, her popes, and her saints, she as practically ignores as she consistently hates them.

The jealous claim of the pope to a direct influence on the mind of his subjects, has unavoidably made the church an inveterate enemy of human slavery. The pope hates slavery, not because he wishes men free, but because he wishes to exercise a direct authority over their minds. The master nullifies the pope's influence on the slave, and therefore he wishes him removed. No influence is equal to that of a master. The whip he holds over the back of his slave, and the power he has over his life, annihilates all other influences. Hence the Catholic church has always been opposed to slavery. Guizot remarks, respecting feudal slavery: "It cannot be denied, however, that the church has used its influence to restrain it; the clergy in general, and especially several popes, enforced the manumission of slaves as a duty incumbent on laymen, and loudly enveighed against keeping Christians in bondage."—(Gen. Hist., Lect. VI., p. 132). Pope Pius II., in 1462, in a letter addressed to the bishops of Eubi; Pope Paul III., in 1537, in his apostolic letter to the cardinal bishops of Toledo; Pope Urban VII., in 1590, in an apostolic letter to the Collector Jurium of the apostolic churches of Portugal; Pope Benedict XIV., in 1731, in his apostolic letter to the clergy of Brazil; and Pope Pius VII., in his official address to his clergy, all denounced the traffic in blacks, and demanded that every species of slavery should cease among Christians. Pope Gregory, in his apostolic letter of 1839 says: "We, then, by virtue of our apostolic authority, censure all the aforesaid practices as unworthy the Christian name, and by that same authority we strictly prohibit and interdict any ecclesiastic or layman from presuming to uphold, under any pretext or color whatever, that same traffic in blacks, as if it were lawful in its nature, or otherwise to preach, or in any way whatever publicly or privately to teach in opposition to these things which we have made the subject of our admonition in this our apostolic letter." We are aware that African slavery owes its origin to a Catholic priest, who, perceiving that the demand for laborers in the West India was likely to subject the Indians to bondage, suggested as a less wrong that negroes should be purchased of the Portuguese settlements in Africa, and held as slaves for life; but whatever were his private opinions respecting the propriety of African slavery, his church has never recognized it as legal.

The perversion of public opinion by the Catholic church, and the practical beguilement of her warmest friends, effected by the consummate craft with which she plots to achieve her objects, have presented fresh evidence to the world in the singular fact, that while she is radically the most efficient abolition society that ever was projected, and that while in her official mandates to the clergy she has invariably denounced the traffic in human beings as infamous, yet has she commanded the homage of the American slave-holder for her friendly disposition towards the Southern institution; and induced her members, while using them as instruments in the accomplishment of her projects for the abolishment of slavery, to hate, denounce, and to anathematize the North for its abolition proclivities.

But there were other considerations which probably stimulated the humanity of the church in her labors for the abolition of slavery. The condition of the slave precludes the possibility of his serving her in the capacity of a spy on the opinions and conduct of his master; and as he received no wages she could not assess him for her benefit. The perfection of the pope's system of espionage, and the augmentation of his revenue, were both connected with the slave's disenthralment. These advantages could not be undesirable to the church, and the avidity with which she has improved them, shows how clearly she foresaw them. Through accident or Jesuistical craft, it has happened, that colored servants have been supplanted to an incredible extent by white Catholic servants, who as serviceable spies far excel them. I regret not the abolishment of the revolting traffic in human beings, nor do I censure the Catholic church for the important aid she rendered in its achievement; but I hope American freemen will not want the vigilance to prevent her from improving the new condition of things, so much to her advantage as to endanger the liberty of the country.

But the "Lord God, the Pope," who claims by divine right to be lord paramount of the world, has unwarily invalidated his title even to the "patrimony of St. Peter," by an attempt to establish it by forged decretal letters. Forgeries are criminal acts, and punished by all nations as high misdemeanors. They are prejudicial to the ground of action of a claimant, and as evident proof of an intent to swindle, as they are of a base and contemptible origin. When successful, they may overhang the mind for a while, as clouds in a dead still atmosphere do the earth; but at the slightest breeze they are dissipated, and the superstructure based upon them, though gorgeous as the setting sun, will, like its area! enchantment, break up and dissolve away. Yet of such base and flimsy material are the pope's claim to temporal power constructed. Innumerable bulls, decretals, receipts, briefs, canons, letters, interdicts, and other documents, have been forged, altered and interpolated by the holy brotherhood, to furnish a legal basis for the pope's temporal power. These documents were prepared between the third and ninth centuries, and carefully treasured up in the papal archives, ready for use as occasion might require. One of the boldest of these pious forgeries is the decretal letter attributed to Constantine the Great, forged probably by Benedict of Mentz, in the ninth century. It reads as follows:

"We attribute to the Chair of St. Peter all imperial dignity, and power and glory. We give to Pope Sylvester, and to his successors, our palace of Lateran, one of the finest in the world; we give to him our crown, our mitre, our diadem, all our imperial vestments. We give to the Holy Pontiff as a free gift the city of Rome, and all the cities of Western Italy, as well as all the cities of other countries. To make room for him we abdicate our authority over these provinces, transferring the seat of our empire to Byzantium, since it is not just that a temporal emperor shall retain any power where God has set the head of his church."

The reason assigned for the bestowal of this magnificent donation was gratitude on the part of Constantine, for having been cured of leprosy through the administration of the rite of baptism at the hands of Pope Sylvester. But it is historically established that Constantine did not receive the rite of baptism until a late hour in his last sickness; that when he did receive it, it did not cure his malady; and that the rite was administered, not by the Pope of Rome, but by an Arian bishop. Whatever donations of crowns, kingdoms and cities were bestowed on the bishop who officiated on the occasion, were unquestionably granted to a heretical sectary; and if Rome does not wish to confess herself an Arian, she cannot consistently claim their gifts. But even had the case been otherwise, how could Constantine bestow on the pope all the cities of Western Italy, and of all other countries, when he did not possess them himself? As the gift of a donor is worthless unless he has an actual right in what he bestows, the pretensions of the pope on the ground of Constantine's gift, are an actual nullification of all his claims to temporal sovereignty. It is generally conceded that Constantine allowed the pope the use of some buildings in Rome; but it is denied that he ever invested him with a title to them as lord paramount. This limited indulgence was the pope's precedent for holding real estate, and formed the basis of his claim to all the crowns and kingdoms of the world. But like the rapacious dog, who, with his mouth full of meat, lost all he had by snapping at the shadow of more in a river, the pope, by attempting through forged documents to grasp at all the world, has lost his title, to any part of it.

Although the decretal letter attributed to Constantino was palpably spurious, yet such was the general ignorance of the times, the respect for the sanctity and infallibility of the pope, and the danger of provoking the wrath of the inquisition by questioning a dogma of the church, that its validity was not called into question.

At length, however, in a legal proceedings of a monastery at Sabine, its fraudulent character was attempted to be substantiated. The bold criticisms of Laurentius Valla, in the fifteenth century, gave the first decisive blow to its credibility, and in the succeeding age it sunk into public contempt, beneath the scorn of historians, the ridicule of poets, and the concessions of theologians. But notwithstanding its universally acknowledged spurious character, such is the reluctance of the popes to yield a point, that it still continues to remain a portion of the canon law of the holy Catholic church.

The alleged gift of Pepin to the Roman See forms another pretext by which the popes have endeavored to lay a basis for their claim to the right of temporal sovereignty. Pope Gregory excited a rebellion against the authority of the Emperor Leo III., in the course of which the Italian Exarcate was dismembered from the empire. It was decided by the victors that the government should be administered by two Consuls, in which the pope should participate, not in a secular, but in a paternal capacity. For a monarch claiming the world as a just inheritance, and all princes and governors as his menials, to accept such a humble concession to his unlimited authority, and such an ambiguous office, is the most remarkable instance on record of a monarchial condescension. He, however, not only accepted it, but what is still more surprising, accepted it with eagerness and gratitude; and even intrigued to obtain it. But during the administration of Pope Stephen II. the victorious sword of the Lombards wrung the Exarcate from the Consular government of Rome. The pope, to retrieve his fortunes applied to Pepin, Mayor of France, who, responding with an adequate force, reconquered the Exereate, and expelled the barbarians. Grateful for the martial services of Pepin, the pope solicited of the civil authority the privilege of appointing him Patriarch of Rome, a title which was borne by the former Exarchs; and by this innocent method initiated a precedent which soon ripened into a prerogative of appointing civil magistrates. Having thus advanced the interests of the Holy See by complimenting its deliverer, he next ventured to anoint his head with oil, in hopes that in thus imitating the example of Samuel in anointing kings, future popes might have a pretext for usurping his prerogatives in acknowledging their right to reign. Pepin, who ruled France under the title of Mayor, wished to imprison the heir to the throne and usurp the government, and the pope gave him his opinion that it was best for him to do so. In grateful consideration of these extraordinary favors, it is alleged by the popes that Pepin bestowed the conquered domains, consisting of the Exereate and the Pentopolis (five cities) on the See of Rome, as supreme absolute lord. It is, nevertheless, certain, that Pepin's donations to the Holy See were on condition of its vassalage to the Frankish power, and that during his life he exercised absolute sovereignty over Rome, and over all his conquests, and allowed no pope to be either elected or consecrated without his permission.

The right of the monarch of the world to temporal power, which was first founded upon the usurpation of Constantine, and next upon the conquests of Pepin, was annihilated by the conquests of the Lombards. Desiderious, their king, wrested the Exercate from Rome; and wishing to subjugate Charlemagne under his authority, proposed to Pope Adrian I. that he should excite the subjects of that prince to rebellion, declare him a usurper, and crown his nephews in his place. Adrian listened to these overtures with seeming friendship, but with malignant delight, and secretly communicating their substance to Charlemagne, the sword of the latter was immediately drawn in behalf of the church; the pope revenged; Desiderius imprisoned for life in a monastery; and all Italy, except the Duchy of Benevento and the lower Italian republics, were reconquered. Upon this signal success of his arms, it is alleged by the popes that the blood-stained warrior, to purchase masses for the benefit of his soul, confirmed the Holy See in the absolute possession of the former grants of Pepin. The only copy ever known of these pretended donations is one received by Cancio, the pope's chamberlain, in the twelfth century. The undeniable historical fact that Charlemagne asserted, and maintained during his whole life, a jealous and inalienable right to Rome, and to every other portion of his dominions, casts a dark shade of suspicion upon the genuineness of these documents. Even were they, authenticated, yet as the right of a monarch to annul is equal to his right to grant, and as his practice is the evidence of what he surrenders or annuls, the exclusive sovereignty which Charlemagne maintained over his Italian conquests, until the day of his death, is a complete nullification of any grant that he had made to the pope, and positive proof that any right or title to Rome, or to temporal power, constructed upon them by the holy fathers, is as invalid, futile and ludicrous, as if they were based on a grant from the man in the moon; in whose place of abode a traveller, according to Ariosto, once found some of the lost documents upon which the popes base their claim to temporal dominion. Besides these laborious but ineffectual efforts to fabricate historical data in support of the papal pretension to temporal sovereignty, Gregory VII., in 1075 asserted that Matilda, Duchess of Tuscany, had bequeathed to the church her domains. These possessions consisted of Tuscany, a part of Umbria, a part of Mark Ancona, and the Duchies of Spoleto and Verona. The validity of these bequests was disputed by the natural heirs; the contest lasted three hundred years, during which Italy was distracted, and Germany depopulated. Frederic I., in vindication of his claims against the pretensions of the pope, invaded Italy on three different occasions. Henry IV. emperor of Germany, thrice crossed the Alps to chastise the popes for aggressions on the Germanic possessions in Italy. During the first campaign pope Paschal was made a prisoner; but on the approach of the imperial army a second time he fled from Rome. Yet amid the disputes of the Germanic succession, and during the minority of Frederic II., the arms and intrigues of the pope won the concession of Europe to his claim of Matilda's estates.

The spurious character of the pope's title to temporal power has been exposed by the ablest Catholic authors, and rejected with impatient contempt by history. But the arguments which have converted a world, have never been able to convert the popes. They still maintain that the reputed donations of Constantine, of Pepin, of Charlemagne and of Matilda, are real and valid. This assertion may appear incredible, but in 1822 Marino Malini, the pope's chamberlain, endeavored to establish the genuineness of the fictitious charters of Louis-de-Debonnaire, of Otho I., and of Henry II., in vindication of the pope's titles of the alleged grants to the See of Rome.

If the apostolic chair of St. Peter is endowed with a divine title to universal temporal sovereignty, a human title is superfluous. The indefatigable exertions of the popes to establish a human title to their temporal possessions, is a concession that they have no divine title to them, and that a human title is necessary to the validity of their claim. But as they have based their title on the authority of forged documents, and endeavored to fortify and maintain it by successive fabrications of the same nature, it is evident that they are fully and alarmingly conscious that they have no title, either by virtue of their office, or by that of any donation whatever, to temporal possession or Authority.

Not only is the holy fathers temporal power a usurpation, but so is also his exclusive claim to the use of the title of pope. Every bishop, and even some laymen, in the first centuries of Christianity, bore this title. In the ancient Greek church it was bestowed upon every clergyman. At the General Council of Constantinople, in 869, its adoption was first limited to the four patriarchs. And in the course of the usurpations of the holy fathers, pope Gregory VII., by authority of an Italian Council, finally assumed it as the exclusive title of the bishops of Rome.

The popes, the monarchs of the world, in vindicating their title to the States of the Church, had to maintain a long, bloody and desperate struggle, during which their domains were abridged or enlarged, lost or wont according to the varying fortunes of their arms and intrigues. But as these warlike enterprises of the holy fathers were intimately connected with the convulsions and revolutions of Europe, it will prevent repetition by deferring further allusion to them until we arrive at the subsequent chapters, in which we shall consider the papal political intrigues in general.

The papal monarchy is certainly one of the most crafty, demoralizing, and oppressive despotisms that has ever disgraced the name of government. Its ambition is insatiable, its duplicity inscrutible, and its policy and measures are disgraceful and unprincipled. The popes have converted the courteous indulgence of friendship into inviolable rights, and from the feeblest concession have manufactured the most exorbitant claim. Pretending to be spiritual advisers, they became temporal despots. Soon as they had acquired the right of owning a farm, they asserted the fight of owning a kingdom; and when the right was conceded of owning a single kingdom, they claimed the right of owning all the kingdoms of the earth. A church, a mission-house, an acre of land they construed into an implication that they had a right to all power, temporal or spiritual, for which their capacious maw could crave. They first founded mission-houses in different parts of the world; next they claimed absolute jurisdiction over them. Disputes respecting property arising between the citizens of Rome and these foreign mission-houses of the church, the popes claimed the exclusive right to arbitrate between them. The right to arbitrate gave them the power to judge, and the opportunity of adjusting disputes according to their advantage. As ecclesiastical litigation conduced to the extension of their authority, pontiffs were not always too honorable to discourage the causes which favored their mediatorial interposition. From the right to arbitrate between churches, they next claimed the right to arbitrate between subjects, then between cities, then between nobles, and then between monarchs. As their mediation in church or state affairs enabled them to adjust disputes according to their policy, they insidiously labored to multiply the causes which favored their friendly intervention.

By a succession of forgeries, usurpations, and skilful manoeuvres the papal government advanced, in the progress of events, from an obscure origin to supreme secular and spiritual jurisdiction. By gradual steps the popes acquired the right to decide on ecclesiastical and matrimonial questions; to dispose of church dignities and benefices; to protect their temporal acquisitions from alienation by the interdiction of the marriage of the clergy; to abridge the investiture of bishoprics by the princes; to reduce the clergy to absolute dependence on their favor by dissolving all bonds of interest which subsisted between the bishops and the princes; to convene at option synods and councils, and to exercise the prerogative of ratifying their decrees; to command the concession of their infallibility; to enforce confessors on princes and statesmen; to introduce the inquisition into kingdoms; and to regulate and superintend schools and colleges. The attainment of these objects was the work of centuries. Conceiving a desire in one age, they plotted for its accomplishment through the events and discords of succeeding ages; and when machinations had matured their plan, they consummated their wishes by usurpation. The pretensions to the alleged donation of Pepin, of Charlemagne, of Matilda, and of the Gothic princes, were not asserted until long after the death of the pretended donors, nor until art and intrigue had prepared the way for it. The alleged grant of Constantine was first announced in 765 by Pope Adrian I., in an epistle to Charlemagne. The claim to the estates of Matilda was first made by Pope Paschal, on the ground that they were granted to the Holy See as a fief; and next by pope Innocent II., on the ground that they had been granted to it as lord paramount. The participation of Pope Leo III. in the Consular government of Rome, in a paternal capacity, was the first instance of a pope's exercising temporal authority. The anointing of Pepin by Pope Adrian I., in imitation of the example of Samuel, was the first semblance of the pope's usurpation of the prerogatives of that official in acknowledging the right of kings. The victory of Nicholas I, over the Emperor Lothair, was the first papal triumph over the secular authority. The coronation of Charles the Bold, in 875, by Pope John VIII., was the first act of the papal monarch in disposing of crowns. The conquests of Robert Guiscard, instigated by promises of the popes, furnished the first ground of their feudal claims. The fear of the terrible consequences of their anathemas and interdictions, the ill regulated constitution of the European States, the imperfection of domestic and international law, and the efficient operation of the papal machinery, enabled them to render kingdom after kingdom tributary to the Holy See. England, from the period of the introduction of the Catholic church into her realm; Belgaria and Aragon, from the eleventh century; Poland and Hungary from the thirteenth century; and the kingdom of the two Sicilies, from 1265, had been reduced to dependency on the sacerdotal monarchy; and had the crusades been successful, favored by the confusion which it had universally' produced with regard to the rights of citizens and the titles of property, it would have, under the pretext of a zeal to wrest the sepulchre of Christ from the possession of the Infidels, reduced the world to a state of vassalage. The success of the political measures and intrigues of the Holy See havings at the time of Gregory VII., raised it to a high degree of power and importance, he attempted to convert it into a theocratical government, with the pope for its head, the priests for its officials, the people for its subjects, and the world for its dominion. Under Innocent III, elected in 1195, it acquired almost unlimited spiritual and temporal authority. Under Sixtus V., in 1585, it contemplated the subjugation of Russia and Egypt, but the death of Bathore, Duke of Tuscany, frustrated the design. But under Pope Clement XII., in 1652, its power began to decline. He was obliged to cede Naples to Germany, the quarters of the pope's embassadors in Venice to the Venitian government, and the right of investiture in Savoy to the secular authority. Pope Pius VI., elected in 1775, beheld the church property in France confiscated, and the religious orders suppressed; in Naples the abolition of the customary tribute of a horse; in Germany the interdiction of the nunciature; in Italy the dismemberment of Romagna, Bologna and Ferrara; and finally, the French troops entering Rome and declaring it a republic.

It is evident from the facts that have been adduced, that the Catholic church, or the papal monarchy, designates an institution which has politics for its principles, monarchy for its object, and religion for its garb. It is not only political in its nature and design, but it is a political despotism, insulting in its pretensions to the common sense of mankind, and dangerous in its principles to the rights of independent governments. When we consider the monarchial principles with which it is constituted; its blasphemous arrogation of the attributes and prerogatives of the deity; its presumptuous claim to supreme jurisdiction over all other governments; the base forgeries which it has committed in the support of its arbitrary pretensions; its impious scoff at secular promises, contracts, laws, oaths and constitutions; its atrocious sanctions of prevarication, of evasion, and of mental reservation; its disgraceful system of espionage; its system of finance, by which it wrings from beggars their pittance, from the laborer the reward of his toil, from the dying the inheritance of heirs; that it may pile the wealth of the world in secret coffers, to be lavished on bribery, on corruption, on political intermeddling, on fomenting sedition and conspiracies, and ultimately, through the means of their disorganizing agencies, for the subjugation of all governments under its absolute authority. When we behold the blood-stained sword which it has drawn in the support of its frauds and usurpations; the frequent convulsions with which its unprincipled ambition has shaken the world; its triumphs over science, freedom and human right; the rapine, devastated fields, and burning cities which has marked the progress of its career; or when we turn our eyes to its late condition in Italy, and see, in the nineteenth century, under its authority, the inquisition at its bloody work; the study of philosophy banished from universities; no book allowed to be published, or imported, except such as meet the approval of bigoted censors; the government sustained only by suppressing insurrection; the prisons crowded with heretics; political offenders cruelly put to death; the nation struggling for freedom, but bound in the fetters of despotism—good heavens! what a scourge is it, and has it been to mankind. Bigotry and superstition may chaunt its victories; but a land once prosperous, now choked up and oppressed with the ruins of its former greatness; fields once fertile now turned into barren wastes; a people once the most valiant, polished and civilized, now the most debased, rude and imbecile—with ancestors that governed the world, now not able to govern themselves; a commonwealth of kings, now a commonwealth of slaves; where for liberty Cicero plead, Brutus stabbed and Cato died, now a pope curses, an inquisition murders, and prisons reverberate with the groans of patriots and freemen. These, oh patriots! are the eternal monuments that commemorate the progress and achievements of the papal monarchy. The usurper of all rights, the sanctifier of all wrongs, the shrine of bigotry, the model of despotism: the church now stands reaffirming the crimes and errors of centuries, and is thirsting for an opportunity of repeating its past horrible history. Such is the papal monarchy; such is the Catholic church; such is the political institution which she claims the divine authority to obtrude, by any means, on the world; and such are the demoralizing, seditious and treasonable principles which she carries in her bosom, scatters in her pathway, and is laboring to implant in the American republic, in order that she may overthrow its structure, that monarchy may supplant its liberal principles, despotic decrees its legislative enactments, arbitrary appointments its popular elections, aristocracy its equality, slavery its freedom, usurpation its guarantees of natural rights, and bigotry, violence, and superstition its tolerance, order and science.