24. "More than a thousand years had elapsed since the birth of our Savior, and such was the condition of Rome. Well may the historian shut the annals of those times in disgust. Well may the heart of the Christian sink within him at such a catalogue of hideous crimes. Well may we ask, Were these the vicegerents of God upon earth--these, who had truly reached the goal beyond which the last effort of human wickedness cannot pass? Not until several centuries after these events did public opinion come to the true and philosophical conclusion--the total rejection of the divine claims of the papacy. For a time the evils were attributed to the manner of the pontifical election, as if they could by any possibility influence the descent of a power which claimed to be supernatural and under the immediate care of God. * * * No one can study the development of the Italian ecclesiastical power without discovering how completely it depended on human agency, too often on human passion and intrigue; how completely wanting it was of any mark of the divine construction and care--the offspring of man, not of God, and therefore bearing upon it the lineaments of human passions, human virtues, and human sins."--(Draper, "Intellectual Development of Europe;" Vol. 1, p. 382.) 25. By increasing changes and unauthorized alterations in organization and government, the earthly establishment known as "the Church," with popes, cardinals, abbots, friars, monks, exorcists, acolytes, etc., lost all semblance to the Church as established by Christ and maintained by His apostles. The Catholic argument that there has been an uninterrupted succession of authority in the priesthood from the Apostle Peter to the present occupant of the papal throne, is untenable in the light of history, and unreasonable in the light of fact. Authority to speak and act in the name of God, power to officiate in the saving ordinances of the gospel of Christ, the high privilege of serving as a duly commissioned ambassador of the court of Heaven,--these are not to be had as the gifts of princes, nor are they to be bought for money, nor can they be won as trophies of the bloody sword. The history of the papacy is the condemnation of the Church of Rome.--(See Notes 2 and 3, end of chapter.) NOTES.