A Seer, is a Bishop in the literal sense of the word; and this Church claims the universal Bishopric.
With his mouth he gives laws to kings and nations as an Oracle; and pretends to Infallibility, and that his dictates are binding to the whole world; which is to be a Prophet in the highest degree.
In the eighth century, by rooting up and subduing the Exarchate of Ravenna, the kingdom of the Lombards, and the Senate and Dukedom of Rome, he acquired Peter’s Patrimony out of their dominions; and thereby rose up as a temporal Prince or King, or horn of the fourth Beast.
In a small book printed at Paris A.C. 1689, entitled, An historical dissertation upon some coins of Charles the great, Ludovicus Pius, Lotharius, and their successors stamped at Rome, it is recorded, that in the days of Pope Leo X, there was remaining in the Vatican, and till those days exposed to public view, an inscription in honor of Pipin the father of Charles the great, in these words: Pipinum pium, primum fuisse qui amplificandae Ecclesiae Romanae viam aperuerit, Exarchatu Ravennate, & plurimis aliis oblatis; “That Pipin the pious was the first who opened a way to the grandeur of the Church of Rome, conferring upon her this Exarchate of Ravenna and many other oblations.” In and before the reign of the Emperors Gratian and Theodosius, the Bishop of Rome lived splendidly; but this was by the oblations of the Roman Ladies, as Ammianus describes. After those reigns Italy was invaded by foreign nations, and did not get rid of her troubles before the fall of the kingdom of Lombardy. It was certainly by the victory of the see of Rome over the Greek Emperor, the King of Lombardy, and the Senate of Rome, that she acquired Peter’s Patrimony, and rose up to her greatness. The donation of Constantine the great is a fiction, and so is the donation of the Alpes Cottiae to the pope by Aripert King of the Lombards: for the Alpes Cottiae were a part of the Exarchate, and in the days of Aripert belonged to the Greek Emperor.
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