In the second place, it should be borne in mind that the claim of papal supremacy is no small and innocent matter. The Popes wrested to themselves the supreme spiritual and temporal power in the world. They pretended to be the custodians of heaven, the directors of purgatory, and the lords of the earth. Across the history of the world in the era of Luther is written in all directions the one word ROME. It is Rome at the altar swinging the censer, Rome in the panoply of battle storming trenches and steeping her hands in gore, Rome in the councils of kings, Rome in the halls of guilds, Rome in the booth of the trader at a town-fair, Rome in the judge's seat, Rome in the professor's chair, Rome receiving ambassadors from, and dispatching nuncios to, foreign courts, Rome dictating treaties to nations and arranging the cook's _menu,_ Rome labeling the huckster's cart and the vintner's crop, Rome levying a tax upon the nuptial bed, Rome exacting toll at the gate of heaven. Out of the wreck of the imperial Rome of the Caesars has risen papal Rome. Once more, though through different agents, the City of the Seven Hills is ruling an _orbis terrarum Romanus,_ a Roman world-empire. The rule extends through nearly a thousand years. How deftly do cunning priests manipulate every means at their command to increase their power! Learning, wealth, beauty, art, piety,--everything is used as an asset in the ambitious game for absolute supremacy which the mitered vicegerent of Christ is playing against the world. Rome's ancient pontifex maximus --the pagan high priest of the Rome before Christ--had been a tool of the consuls and the Caesars; the new pontiff makes the Caesars his tools. Princes kiss his feet and hold the stirrup for him as he mounts his bedizened palfrey. An emperor stands barefoot in the snow of the Pope's courtyard suing pardon for having dared to govern without the Pope's sanction.--The forests of Germany are reverberating with the blows of axes which Rome's missionaries wield against Donar's Oaks. The sanctuaries of pagan Germany are razed. Out of the wood of idols crucifixes are erected along the highways. Chapels and abbeys and cathedrals rise where the aurochs was hunted. Sturdy barbarians bend the knee at the shrines of saints. Hosts set out to see the land where the Lord had walked and suffered, and brave all dangers and hardships to wrest its possession from infidel hands. But at the place where all these activities center, and whence they are being fed, a shocking abomination is seen: Venus is worshiped, and Bacchus, and Mercurius, and Mars, while white-robed choirs chant praises to the mother of God, and clouds of incense are wafted skyward. Here is a mystery--a mystery of iniquity: the son of perdition in the temple of God! Proud, haughty Rome, wealthy, wicked and wanton, is filling up her measure of wrath against the day of retribution.--We are now so far removed from these