act as a perfect society and spiritual commonwealth, instituted in
like manner the polity under which He willed it to be governed,
namely, the Papal monarchy, begun in St. Peter and carried to
completion according to our Lord's design under the line of Popes,
Peter's successors. The monarchy thus established is essential to the
Catholic Church. We speak not here of the temporal power which the
Pope once enjoyed in the Roman States, but of his spiritual
sovereignty over all Christendom. The Pope cannot validly resign and
put out of his own and his successors' hands, nor can the Cardinals
take away from him, nor the Episcopate, one jot or tittle of this
spiritual prerogative. He cannot, for instance, condition his
infallibility on the consent of a General Council, or surrender the
canonization of saints to the votes of the faithful at large. Such are
the inalienable, Christ-given prerogatives of the Papacy. Henry VIII.
feloniously set himself up for Pope within the realm of England.
Blending together temporal and spiritual jurisdiction, he made out his
rights and prerogatives as a monarch, even in the civil order, to be
inalienable as in the spiritual. Spiritual and civil attributes
together formed a jewelled circlet, one and indivisible, immoveably
fixed on the brow of the King's Most Sacred Majesty. Grown and swollen
by their union with the spirituality, the civil attributes of the
Crown were exaggerated to the utmost, and likewise declared
inalienable. They were exaggerated till they came to embrace all the
powers of government. The privileges of Parliament, and the
limitations to the royal authority, set forth in the Petition of Right
in 1628, were regarded as mere concessions tenable at the King's
pleasure: from which point of view we understand the readiness of so
conscientious a monarch as Charles I. to act against such privileges
after he had allowed them. But to vest all the powers of government
inalienably in the King, so that whoever else may seem to partake in