goal beyond which the last effort of human wickedness
cannot pass?

[Sidenote: The philosophical conclusion at last attained.]

[Sidenote: The evils imputed to the nature of papal election.]

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 that could by any possibility
influence the descent of a power which claimed to be supernatural and
under the immediate care of God. The manner of election was this. The
Roman ecclesiastics recommended a candidate to the College of Cardinals;
their choice had to be ratified by the populace of Rome, and, after
that, the emperor must give his approval. There were thus to be brought
into agreement the machinations of the lower ecclesiastics, the
intrigues of the cardinals, the clamours of the rabble of Rome, and the
policy of the emperor. Such a system must inevitably break to pieces
with its own incongruities. Though we may wonder that men failed to see
that it was merely a human device, we cannot wonder that the emperors
perceived the necessity of taking the appointments into their own hands,
and that Gregory VII. was resolved to confine it to the College of
Cardinals, to the exclusion of the emperor, the Roman people, and even
of the rest of Christendom--an attempt in which he succeeded.

[Sidenote: Human origin of the papacy.]

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 intrigues; 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.

CHAPTER XIII.

DIGRESSION ON THE PASSAGE OF THE ARABIANS TO THEIR AGE OF REASON.

INFLUENCE OF MEDICAL IDEAS THROUGH THE NESTORIANS AND JEWS.

_The intellectual Development of the Arabians is guided by the
Nestorians and the Jews, and is in the Medical Direction.--The
Basis of this Alliance is theological._

_Antagonism of the Byzantine System to Scientific
Medicine.--Suppression of the Asclepions.--Their Replacement
by Miracle-cure.--The resulting Superstition and Ignorance._

_Affiliation of the Arabians with the Nestorians and