1 000th year of redemption, The bishop of Rome becomes Antichrist , even by the power of the sword.
It was by no instantaneous metamorphosis that the Pope passed from the spiritual simplicity of the first bishops to a height beyond all majesty of the world ; but he imperceptibly acquired authority and influence, until, by an effort altogether extraordinary, he reached the highest point. From this origin the new kingdom used its own state, its own form, its own style, much more than before : and wdiereas hitherto the Pope had been a shepherd, with a princi- pality annexed to his office, now he has come forth as a monarch, with the episcopate annexed to his office, yet with the title of the episcopate. On which account, even at the present day, foreign kings, for instance the Chinese, in their letters, address the Pope as King. Let us go through the chief points of the facts. He gra- dually obtained his own senate, the cardinals, who rejoiced in raising themselves by equal steps with the Pope, who, having first excluded the people, and then also the wdiole of the clergy and the Emperor, elected the Pope, and that too out of their own body : his own sol- diers, the clergy, who were withdrawn from the civil power, bound to the Pontiff by celibacy, and distinguished from the laity by the use of the cup at the Eucharist : most ample territory, especially by means of Matilda : his own vassals, Christian kings, as we have said : his own body of laws, the Canon Law, fenced in by the scho- lastic theology : his own assemblies, the Councils, called under his own auspices ; for formerly all the oecumenical councils had been in the east, afterwards all were in the west : his own satellites, monks, especially of the Dominican and Franciscan orders, and recently the Jesuits : his own tribunal, that of the Inquisition : his own badge, that mystic tiara, which was made threefold, A. 1048, and which is called the Kingdom of the world. From Gregory VII. espe- cially the pontiffs omitted the years of the emperors , and substituted their own ; and this custom they afterwards retained , together with the Indiction , as Mabillon says, p. 181 ; and what is the meaning of this usage, is plain from 1 Macc. xiii. 41, 42 : and Paschal II., a few years afterwards, began to do that very thing more solemnly. From about that time, greater regard is paid by historians to the coronation of the Pope than to his consecration ; for instance, by Panvinius, in his Chronicle of the Pontiffs, and by the Pope him- self, in reckoning his own years. The same Gregory at that time claimed for himself alone the very name of Pope , and the title of Holiness , and the kissing of his feet , which had been common to
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