’The theory that the sun is in the centre of the world, and stationary, is absurd, false in philosophy, and formally heretical, because it is contrary to the express language of Holy Scripture.  The theory that the earth is not the centre of the world, nor stationary, but that it moves with a daily motion, is also absurd and false in philosophy, and, theologically considered, it is, to say the least, erroneous in faith.’

The exigencies of despotic government thus supply the key to the whole policy and history of the Papacy.  ‘The worst form of State’ can only be bolstered up by the worst form of government.  There should therefore be no difficulty in distinguishing between the official policy of the Roman See—­which has been almost uniformly odious—­and the history of the Christian religion in the Latin countries, which has added new lustre to human nature.  The Catholic saints did not fly through the air, nor were their hearts pierced with supernatural darts, as the mendacious hagiology of their Church would have us believe; but they have a better title to be remembered by mankind, as the best examples of a beautiful and precious kind of human excellence.

The papal autocracy has now reached its Byzantine period of decadence.  During the Middle Ages Catholicism suited the Latin races very well on the whole.  Their ancestral paganism was allowed to remain substantially unchanged—­the nomina, but not the numina were altered; their awe and reverence for the caput orbis, ingrained in the populations of Europe by the history of a thousand years, made submission to Rome natural and easy; a host of myths ’abounding in points of attachment to human experience and in genial interpretations of life, yet lifted beyond visible nature and filling a reported world believed in on faith,’[54] adorned religion with an artistic and poetical embroidery very congenial to the nations of the South.  But a monarchy essentially Oriental in its constitution is unsuited to modern Europe.  Its whole scheme is based on keeping the laity in contented ignorance and subservience; and the laity have emancipated themselves The Teutonic nations broke the yoke as soon as they attained a national self-consciousness.  They escaped from a system which had educated, but never suited them.  Nor has the shrinkage been merely territorial.  The Pyrrhic victories over Gallicanism, Jansenism, Catholic democracy (Lamennais), historical theology (Doellinger and the Old Catholics), each alienated a section of thinking men in the Catholic countries.  The Roman Church can no longer be called Catholic, except in the sense in which the kingdom of Francis II remained the Holy Roman Empire.  It is an exclusive sect, which preserves much more political power than its numbers entitle it to exert, by means of its excellent discipline, and by the sinister policy of fomenting political disaffection.  Examples of this last are furnished by the contemporary history of Ireland, of France, and of Poland.