re believers in their system.

They are not ignorant of the frauds, the knaveries, the fables, and
hypocrisies, by which that system is supported. They cannot shut their
eyes to these, which they regard, in fact, as sanctified by the end to
which they are devoted; but they separate between these and the system
itself; and though they cannot tell the line where truth ends and
falsehood begins, still they look upon their system, on the whole, as
founded in truth, and carrying with it the sanction of Heaven. Indeed,
belief is a weak term to express the power the system has over them. It
is rather a paralyzing awe, a freezing terror, like that with which his
grim deity inspires the barbarian, which holds captive the strongest
mind, and lays reason and conscience prostrate in the dust. Such I
believe to be the state of mind of the greater number of the Italian
priesthood.

But how comes this? What is it which has produced this universal
slavery? Is it the Pope? Is it the cardinals? Is it the Jesuits? No; for
these men, though the tyrants of others, are themselves slaves. All are
bound by the same chain of adamant, to the car of the same demon. A
mournful procession of dead men truly, with the triple crown in front,
and the sandals of the barefooted Capuchin bringing up the rear. What is
it, I repeat, that holds the whole body in subjection, from the Pope
down to the friar? It is the system, the abstract system, with its
overwhelming prestige,--that system which lives on though popes die; the
genius of the Papacy, if you will. This is the real monarch of that
spiritual kingdom.

A little power of mental abstraction,--and the subtile genius of the
Italian gives him that power in a high degree,--will enable any one to
separate betwixt the system and its agents. Some one has remarked, that
he could form an abstraction of a lord mayor, not only without his
horse, and gown, and gold chain, but even without the stature, features,
hands, and feet of any particular lord mayor. The same can be done of
the Papacy. We can form an abstraction of the Papacy not only without
the tiara and the keys, but even without the stature and lineaments, the
hands and feet, of any particular Pope. When we have formed such an
abstraction, we have got the real ruler of the Papacy. That it is the
system that is the dominant power in the Church of Rome, is evident from
this one fact, namely, that councils have sometimes deposed the Pope to
save the Pap