obedience.  The republican forms under which the Churches existed in primitive Christianity have gradually merged into an absolute centralization, with a man as vice-God at its head.  This Church asserts that the divine commission under which it acts comprises civil government; that it has a right to use the state for its own purposes, but that the state has no right to intermeddle with it; that even in Protestant countries it is not merely a coordinate government, but the sovereign power.  It insists that the state has no rights over any thing which it declares to be in its domain, and that Protestantism, being a mere rebellion, has no rights at all; that even in Protestant communities the Catholic bishop is the only lawful spiritual pastor.

It is plain, therefore, that of professing Christians the vast majority are Catholic; and such is the authoritative demand of the papacy for supremacy, that, in any survey of the present religious condition of Christendom, regard must be mainly had to its acts.  Its movements are guided by the highest intelligence and skill.  Catholicism obeys the orders of one man, and has therefore a unity, a compactness, a power, which Protestant denominations do not possess.  Moreover, it derives inestimable strength from the souvenirs of the great name of Rome.

Unembarrassed by any hesitating sentiment, the papacy has contemplated the coming intellectual crisis.  It has pronounced its decision, and occupied what seems to it to be the most advantageous ground.

This definition of position we find in the acts of the late Vatican Council.

The oecumenical council.  Pius IX., by a bull dated June 29, 1868, convoked an Oecumenical Council, to meet in Rome, on December 8, 1869.  Its sessions ended in July, 1870.  Among other matters submitted to its consideration, two stand forth in conspicuous prominence—­they are the assertion of the infallibility of the Roman pontiff, and the definition of the relations of religion to science.

But the convocation of the Council was far from meeting with general approval.

The views of the Oriental Churches were, for the most part, unfavorable.  They affirmed that they saw a desire in the Roman pontiff to set himself up as the head of Christianity, whereas they recognized the Lord Jesus Christ alone as the head of the Church.  They believed that the Council would only lead to new quarrels and scandals.  The sentiment of these venerable Churches is well shown by the incident that, when, in 1867, the Nestorian Patriarch Simeon had been invited by the Chaldean Patriarch to return to Roman Catholic unity, he, in his reply, showed that there was no prospect for harmonious action between the East and the West:  “You invite me to kiss humbly the slipper of the Bishop of Rome; but is he not, in every respect, a man like yourself—­is his dignity superior to yours?  We will never permit to be introduced into our holy temples of worship images and statues, which are nothing but abominable and impure idols.  What! shall we attribute to Almighty God a mother, as you dare to do?  Away from us, such blasphemy!”