But the "Lord God, the Pope," who claims by divine right to be lord paramount of the world, has unwarily invalidated his title even to the "patrimony of St. Peter," by an attempt to establish it by forged decretal letters. Forgeries are criminal acts, and punished by all nations as high misdemeanors. They are prejudicial to the ground of action of a claimant, and as evident proof of an intent to swindle, as they are of a base and contemptible origin. When successful, they may overhang the mind for a while, as clouds in a dead still atmosphere do the earth; but at the slightest breeze they are dissipated, and the superstructure based upon them, though gorgeous as the setting sun, will, like its area! enchantment, break up and dissolve away. Yet of such base and flimsy material are the pope's claim to temporal power constructed. Innumerable bulls, decretals, receipts, briefs, canons, letters, interdicts, and other documents, have been forged, altered and interpolated by the holy brotherhood, to furnish a legal basis for the pope's temporal power. These documents were prepared between the third and ninth centuries, and carefully treasured up in the papal archives, ready for use as occasion might require. One of the boldest of these pious forgeries is the decretal letter attributed to Constantine the Great, forged probably by Benedict of Mentz, in the ninth century. It reads as follows: "We attribute to the Chair of St. Peter all imperial dignity, and power and glory. We give to Pope Sylvester, and to his successors, our palace of Lateran, one of the finest in the world; we give to him our crown, our mitre, our diadem, all our imperial vestments. We give to the Holy Pontiff as a free gift the city of Rome, and all the cities of Western Italy, as well as all the cities of other countries. To make room for him we abdicate our authority over these provinces, transferring the seat of our empire to Byzantium, since it is not just that a temporal emperor shall retain any power where God has set the head of his church."