That would be a curious history which would trace, in the same picture, the spiritual empire and the temporal empire of the popes. Who would not be surprised at seeing in it, on one side, a force which nothing could resist, which moves the very world,—a will always the same, which is transmitted from pontiff to pontiff, like a deposit, or like a sacred heritage; on the other, a policy weak and changeable, like man,—a power which can scarcely defend itself against the lowest of its enemies, and which at every moment the breath of revolutions has power to shake? In this parallel, the imagination would be dazzled when such an empire should be presented to it as has never been seen upon earth, and which would lead to the belief that the popes did not belong to this fragile and transitory world,—a power which hell cannot pull down,—which the world cannot corrupt,—which, without the help of any army, and by the simple ascendancy of a few words, subdues things sooner, and proves itself more formidable, than ancient Rome, with all her victories. What more magnificent spectacle can the history of empires present to us? But, in the other part of the picture, who would not be moved to pity at beholding a government without vigour, an administration without foresight,—that people, descended from _the king people_, led by an indolent, timid old man, the eternal city falling into ruins, and as hidden beneath the grass? When we see—so near to a power almost supernatural—weakness, uncertainty, the fragility common to things below, and humanity with all its miseries, why may we not be permitted to compare the double power of the popes to Jesus Christ himself, of whom they were the vicars and images upon earth,—to Jesus Christ, whose double nature presents us, on one side, a God beaming with splendour, and on the other a simple mortal, loaded with the cross, and crowned with thorns? If the principal features of this picture are not wanting in truthfulness, how can we believe in the policy of the popes as it is represented to us?—is it not more natural to think that the sovereign pontiffs, in all they did that was great, followed the spirit of Christianity? In the middle ages, which was the period of their power, they were much more directed by this spirit than they directed it themselves; later, and when popes entertained projects like those that are attributed to their genius and ambition, their power declined. We have but to compare Gregory VII., giving himself up to the spirit of his age, and supporting himself by the ascendancy of the Church, with Julius II., whom Voltaire calls a great prince, and who only employed the known combinations of policy.