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Excerpt from History of Latin Christianity, Vol. 4 of 9: Including That of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicolas V
The Papacy has still the more splendid part of its destiny to accomplish. It has shown vital power enough to recover from its seemingly irreco verable degradation. It might have been supposed that a moral and religious depravation so profound, would utterly have destroyed that reverence of opinion, which was the one groundwork of the Papal power. The veil had been raised; and Italy at least, if not Europe, had seen within it, not a re ex of divine majesty and holi ness, but an idol not only hideous to the pure moral sen timent, but contemptible for its weakness. If centuries of sanctity had planted deeply in the heart Of man his veneration for the successor of St. Peter, it would have been paralysed (the world might expect) and extin guished by more than a century of odious and un Christian vices. A spiritual succession must be broken and interrupted by such unspiritual inheritors. Could the head of Christendom, living in the most un - Christian wickedness, perpetuate his descent, and hand down the patrimony of power and authority, with nothing of that piety and goodness which was at least one of his titles to that transcendant power?
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