anctuaries of pagan Germany are razed. Out of the wood of idols
crucifixes are erected along the highways. Chapels and abbeys and
cathedrals rise where the aurochs was hunted. Sturdy barbarians bend the
knee at the shrines of saints. Hosts set out to see the land where the
Lord had walked and suffered, and brave all dangers and hardships to
wrest its possession from infidel hands. But at the place where all
these activities center, and whence they are being fed, a shocking
abomination is seen: Venus is worshiped, and Bacchus, and Mercurius, and
Mars, while white-robed choirs chant praises to the mother of God, and
clouds of incense are wafted skyward. Here is a mystery--a mystery of
iniquity: the son of perdition in the temple of God! Proud, haughty
Rome, wealthy, wicked and wanton, is filling up her measure of wrath
against the day of retribution.--We are now so far removed from these
scenes that they seem unreal; in Luther's days they were decidedly real.
Rome's aggressiveness has been perceptibly checked during the last four
centuries; in Luther's days papal pretensions were a more formidable
proposition.

Human arrogance may be said to have reached its limit in the papacy. The
Pope is practically a God on earth. "Sitting in the temple of God as
God, he is showing himself that he is God" (2 Thess. 2, 4). He has been
addressed by his followers in terms of the Deity. "When the Pope thinks,
it is God thinking," wrote the papal organ of Rome, the _Civilta
Cattolica,_ in 1869. He has asserted the right to make laws for
Christians, and to dispense with the laws of the Almighty. Although this
seemed a superfluous proceeding, he declared himself infallible on July
18, 1870. Under a glowering sky, as if Heaven frowned angrily at the
Pope's attempt, Plus IX had entered St. Peter's. As a "second Moses" he
mounted the papal throne to read the Constitution "Aeternus Pater," the
document in which he made the following claims: Canon III: "If any one
says that the Roman Pontiff has only authority to inspect and direct,
but not plenary and supreme authority of jurisdiction over the entire
Church, not only in matters which relate to faith and morals, but also
in matters that belong to the discipline and government of the Church
scattered through the whole earth; or that he has only the more eminent
part of such authority, but not the full plenitude of this supreme
authority; or that this authority of his is not his ordinary authority