scenes that they seem unreal; in Luther's days they were decidedly real. Rome's aggressiveness has been perceptibly checked during the last four centuries; in Luther's days papal pretensions were a more formidable proposition. Human arrogance may be said to have reached its limit in the papacy. The Pope is practically a God on earth. "Sitting in the temple of God as God, he is showing himself that he is God" (2 Thess. 2, 4). He has been addressed by his followers in terms of the Deity. "When the Pope thinks, it is God thinking," wrote the papal organ of Rome, the _Civilta Cattolica,_ in 1869. He has asserted the right to make laws for Christians, and to dispense with the laws of the Almighty. Although this seemed a superfluous proceeding, he declared himself infallible on July 18, 1870. Under a glowering sky, as if Heaven frowned angrily at the Pope's attempt, Plus IX had entered St. Peter's. As a "second Moses" he mounted the papal throne to read the Constitution "Aeternus Pater," the document in which he made the following claims: Canon III: "If any one says that the Roman Pontiff has only authority to inspect and direct, but not plenary and supreme authority of jurisdiction over the entire Church, not only in matters which relate to faith and morals, but also in matters that belong to the discipline and government of the Church scattered through the whole earth; or that he has only the more eminent part of such authority, but not the full plenitude of this supreme authority; or that this authority of his is not his ordinary authority which he holds from no intermediary, and that it does not extend over all churches and every single one of them, over all pastors and every single one of them, over all the faithful and every single one of them, --let him be accursed!" Canon IV: "With the approval of the Sacred Council we teach and declare it to be a dogma revealed from heaven that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks _ex cathedra,_ that is, when, in accordance with his supreme apostolic authority, be discharges his office as Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, and defines a doctrine relating to the faith or morals which is to be embraced by the entire Church, he is, by divine assistance promised to him in the blessed Peter, vested with that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer desired His Church to be endowed in defining the doctrine of faith and morals; and that for this reason such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are in their very nature, not, however, by reason of the consent of the Church, unchangeable. If--which God may avert!--any one should presume to contradict this definition of ours,--let him be accursed!" Amid flashes of lightning and peals of thunder this document was read to a council whose membership had shrunk during seven months of deliberation from 767 to 547 attendants,--277 qualified members had never put in an appearance,--and of these all but two had been cowed into abject submission.