One is put in mind of nineteenth-century visitors to Rome, such as Hawthorne's Hilda in The Marble Faun, who deliberately exposed themselves to the lure of
Papism to prove their powers of resistance.
The vitriolic words and images on the subject of Papism scream the corruption of the Catholic establishment in contradistinction to Christ and Lutheran theology.
(101.) In the sermon How Law and Grace may be thoroughly Distinguished from One Another, (Wie das Gesetz und Evangelium recht grundlich zu unterscheiden sind) of 1532, WA 36, 8-23, Luther writes: In Papism, the Pope, with all his advisors, Cardinals, (and) Bishops ...
Radically different ideas of what Protestantism connoted divided one establishment church from another--possessing as they did opposed theologies as a result of their different experiences during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--and prevented their being more than wary co-belligerents in struggles again infidelity and
papism. Among churchmen only Thomas Arnold hoped to persuade Trinitarian Protestant churches to sink their credal differences so as to create a broader and more inclusive communion--though even he was not eager to embrace the growing number of Unitarians, and once again Roman Catholics were beyond his pale.
(88) They believed, however, that the Church of England had been corrupted by non-Christian elements (mostly vestigial
papism), and that it had to be "purified" (89)--hence their name.
While the earl remained silent about his own beliefs -- mindful of how Dunfermline's church papism had left the chancellor constantly vulnerable to political attack -- he did maintain as his private chaplain George Abbot, dean of Winchester and future archbishop of Canterbury, who would accompany his master to the Linlithgow assembly of July 1608.(96) Abbot possessed strong pro-Calvinist credentials that would be useful in Dunbar's dealings with the so-called Melvillian ministers, and was not yet the uncompromising antagonist of whom bishops Neile and Laud would later complain.(97) Dunbar would be less politic in his flamboyant observance of the Christian year.
Dunbar balanced his apparently cavalier attitude towards the Kirk by occasionally cracking down on papism, a proven means of garnering positive public opinion without risking controversy.(106) Here again, his credentials were good.
Maistre's papism is quite different from traditional Catholic accounts.
The answers to these questions reveal the un-Hobbesian elements of Maistre's papism. Maistre distinguishes the infallibility of the temporal sovereign from the infallibility of the spiritual sovereign.
